Ah, the fabulous 80’s. It’s the decade that gave us MTV, skinny ties, parachute pants and a virtual cornucopia of memorable movies. I fondly recall films like Ghostbusters, Weird Science and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1961 Ferrari 250 GT Spyder California anyone?). I remember taking a date to go see the first Nightmare On Elm Street movie. My date spent the entire time with her face buried in my shoulder, so I’m not sure how much she saw, but there was this one unforgettable part where this black dude sitting in front of us literally ran out of the theater after Freddie killed his first nubile teenager…that brotha had moves that Lawrence Taylor would envy, but I guess he’d need some half melted white dude in need of a manicure to get the same velocity. But I digress. <\/p>\n
Yeah, there were tons of cheesy movies too and knock-offs of the more successful ones, but one in the bunch springs to mind when you start looking at movies that sort of defined the era. We were still in the grips of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was still a very real threat and at times we were being told that Europe was in all kinds of political turmoil. It was so bad, I remember a friend of mine doing a Civics class report on the number of warheads the Soviets supposedly had in stockpile, and that due to our proximity to the Savannah River Site, our little community had at least a couple of them pointed directly at us. Nice. So it came as no surprise that when the movie Red Dawn came out, more than a few of my friends and I felt compelled to see it. <\/p>\n
It was 1984, and we’d had almost a full term of Reagan under our belt. As most will recall, Ron wasn’t the biggest fan of the Soviets, and frankly, the sentiment was mutual. It was under this cloud of unease that Red Dawn made its premiere. For those who’ve been under a rock the past 40 years, the basic plot goes like this:<\/p>\n
– Commies are all over the place, in Europe and in Central America, stirring up shit.
\n– Famine has hit the Soviet Union due to a poor harvest, and living on vodka isn’t working out so well, so they invade Poland (jeez, why does everyone pick on those guys?). NATO won’t do shit (natch), and the UN can’t do shit (double natch) so we’re spiraling into WWIII.
\n– Flash to Colorado where kids in high school watch an amazing demonstration of Russian and Cuban joint military operations.
\n– People get rounded up. Some get killed. Gun registration schemes get the worst PR boost ever and a handful of quasi-teen stars from most of John Hughes’ movies escape into the mountains…but not without first pissing into an overheated truck radiator.<\/p>\n
This is quality stuff, gang…and only within the first 15 minutes! Imagine an impressionable 15 year old kid watching this…I mean, really…who could piss into a radiator with all his friends standing around? The horror!<\/p>\n
From here, the story revolves around how these kids, now joined by two hot chicks, turn themselves into an elite guerilla unit, embarrassing the shit out of the Russians and their Cuban flunkies. Taking the mascot from their high school team, they call themselves Wolverines…totally…frickin’…cool. The Russians send Spetznaz after them, and Mi-24 gunships and all kinds of other shit. But they fight on, despite the odds and without the benefit of a single Depeche Mode song playing in the background. <\/p>\n
In all seriousness, the movie at the time was an interesting reflection of the fear that many of my generation had. Its underlying foundation was very real, and scarily plausible. In relating the depth and breadth of the Soviet joint assault, the character of Lt. Colonel Tanner outlined the strategy employed…it had its roots in actual Soviet doctrine; infiltrators from Cuba, disguised as illegal immigrants acted as sappers, attacking vulnerable bases in the Southeastern US. This was coupled with an airlift of elite Soviet paratroopers in transports disguised as commercial airliners…add to this the nuke strikes on all of the US’s communication centers and ICBM facilities and you had the nation on its knees. From Mexico, the Soviets with their commie pals from Cuba and Nicaragua, swarmed into the plains states, while an invasion force from the Alaskan peninsula gobbled up everything in the north. Tanner relates that virtually all of Europe folds to Soviet pressure and abandons the US, with the exception of the UK…and curiously enough, China decides to counter attack the Russians, losing nearly half their population in the process. To a kid who slept through most of his Social Studies classes, this wasn’t just a movie, it could have been a real life documentary or a devastating prophesy of things to come. It evoked all manner of feelings, from anger and disgust at the collaborators, to sadness and dismay that while our nation was being attacked, 99% of our European “allies” didn’t do jack shit. Each death of a major character was like a kick in the stomach, knowing that there wasn’t anyone rushing in to replace them in the fight. In the end, the sacrifices of the Wolverines serves as a catalyst for a rising resistance movement, which according to the epilogue, eventually kicks the Russians out but I remember walking out of that movie feeling drained and strangely angry. I honestly believe, in retrospect, that Patrick Swayze may have contributed to my current political leanings…and that ain’t just pissin’ in a radiator. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"