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Desperation behind the groove, as the song goes ("Life goin' nowhere, somebody help me"). Brooklyn dead end, Manhattan reverie, limbo of the proletarian rooster. Italian-American adolescent, hardware-store drudge, narcissistic, vacant, vulnerable under the swagger, John Travolta as a newly-minted icon of pout and pompadour and polyester. Weekdays are endured for the Saturday trips to the 2001 Odyssey discotheque, where the mook takes flight on the blazing ballroom. "You're the king out there!" A more permanent escape takes the form of the potential dance partner (Karen Lynn Gorney), a name-dropping typist who stands for class but is really a manicured version of the local clinger she's replacing (Donna Pescow). Provincial prejudices, tribal vendettas, a bridge to be crossed. "Fuck the future!" "You can't fuck the future. The future fucks you." Fred and Ginger by way of Accattone, a fervor of neon and grime. (Perpetually tuned to the Bee Gees beat, John Badham's camera swings high for the view from a mirrored ball and low for a crotch-shot of the preening protagonist.) The priest brother (Martin Shakar) leaves behind a strangulating collar, the neurotic chum (Barry Miller) toes the edge of the precipice until he falls in. "There are ways of killing yourself without killing yourself." Dancing is a serious art even if rehearsed to "Disco Duck," the couple glide in a galaxy of their own with "More Than a Woman" yet the lad knows enough to pass the trophy to his betters. New guises for familiar hormonal yearnings, like nothing as much as Mussorgsky fed through electric bass and synthesized bells. Celebration yields to rape and suicide, so it goes "in a world of fools," nothing left afterward but the hope to build on a flicker of bruised grace. "Dream good, jerk off better." The best response is Verhoeven's Spetters. Cinematography by Ralf D. Bode. With Joseph Cali, Paul Pape, Bruce Ornstein, Val Bisoglio, Julie Bovasso, Sam Coppola, Fran Drescher, Denny Dillon, and Bert Michaels.
--- Fernando F. Croce |