Carradine and his Night Children

Happy New year everyone! I know that the predictable thing to do at this point would be to review a movie based on new years eve or Christmas or something but I don’t want to start my year off safe , I want to start my year out on the streets and I can't think of anyone better to be stuck out on the streets with than David Carradine and his Night Children. 

Night Children is a movie that I have been meaning to watch for a while now, It’s been in my vhs collection for an absurd amount of time without being touched. It has David Carradine in it, It’s rated R for frequent violence and it is supposedly filled with a whole bunch of “hard hitting action. Presented in a clam shell box, which happens to be my favourite cover format, the quality of the tape is quite good. However, the cover art leaves a lot ot be desired, with an odd looking compostion of floating heads and a tag line “ the Streets their kingdom, violence their law”, the back cover features out of focus action stills of the characters halfway through a movement, I guaranetee you there were literally hundreds more images they could have used to better sell this cover.

There were only two trailers on this video, which is strange for an ex rental.

Mystic Pizza: Vince D’Onofrio, Julia Roberts and everyone else in Hollywood circa 1988. We all know this movie as a romantic comedy that taught us  “ when life gives you anchovies, make pizza”.

Lady in White: actually a fantastic movie but not such a fantastic trailer. Literally gives away the ENTIRE FILM in complete chronological order.  Don’t watch this trailer if you haven’t seen the movie. 

In saying that though don't read my review of Night Children If you don't want to know what happens in the film, I get pretty in depth with my VHS reviews. 

·         Night Children, 1989

·         Duration: 83 minutes

·         Directed by: Norbert Meisel

·         Rated R for frequent violence and drug use.

The  film opens with a panning shot of the streets of L.A ( presumably) and heavy metal music. You have David Carradine in big letters and Night Children straight after, oh we know what we are in for. We’re on the streets during the day and we are following two cops chasing a mullet. Carradine is no fool, he knows what the deal is and his facial expressions are relaying a big “ this is so go damn tedious” vibe the whole time, he finds this “trying to get away” business quite humorous. They get to a house with two female family members ( or girlfriends, I never really figured that out) who are wearing the most awful lingerie I have ever seen and are trying ( terribly) to hide the persued under the sheets of their bed. 

We are introduced to Carradine’s partner who exclaims that they have “ six inches on that kid” and that he is so hungry he could eat a yak. They continue being weird and not taking their job very seriously by trying to break up a domestic dispute with a husband who beats on his wife and then everything turns into a goofy slapstick comedy moment and I’m totally lost. So far I get the felling that Carradine’s character cares very little about anything and his partner is going to totally die and change all that. Another set of credits roll, maybe we’ll get some plot once they get this over with. 

Punks! Finally we have met our antagonist. We have the usual suspects,a rogues gallery of cliche 80s punk coke heads and one out of place nerdy chic who is definitely going to have the worst possible thing done to her. They assert their dominance over the street by bullying an old lady and the nerdy chick helps her up and the camera stays on the old lady for long enough for it to be the saddest damn thing you have ever seen. This movie has a bad habit of lingering too long on shots, for an 83 minute film they seemed to use a lot of filler. The punks do more useless and stupid things and then we are introduced to the female protagonist of film Diane, who I am not afraid to say looks exactly like a female version of Henry Silva, it could be because she always looks so damn unimpressed ( I like both Nancy Kwan and Henry Silva a lot so I don’t think that is an unfair comparison) . After noticing this I couldn’t un-see it and I was waiting the whole time for her to have a freak out, Silva style.

Carradine and Silva are lovers, they have a petty argument about social justice and the subtext of the film is revealed. We jumped again to the punks fucking with a couple of yuppies on the street and assaulting them for no reason, sudden boobs follow. Nerdy chick surprises me with having some actual balls to say that she doesn’t like what they are doing, there is NOTHING more annoying than people being too “scared” to speak up against their friends when they do some fucked up shit. This movie is a little confusing in that the people dirft in and out of your favour very quickly. Carradine gains chase and what follows is a hilarious play by play of the dumbest chase scene in history.

·         Kid tries to intimidate Cop with a two by four

·         Carradine looks at him like a duck

·         Kicks kid into the wall

·         Foiled by garbage ( now he’s pissed)

·         Kids throw ( countless?) trash cans at cop

·         Kids jump to next building, try to coax innocent chick over

·         She falls and dies.

Now the cop is the bad guy ( controversial subtext!), Punks re group , take drugs and suddenly decide that they need money to buy guns so they can kill the cop. I’m getting dizzy.

There is a whole section of the film dedicated to trying to make you feel sympathy for these young douche bags and then ripping it away from you. The leader  loves the girl, doesn’t want her to sell her ass, then he gives her drugs. He explains how his childhood was traumatic and it was hard for him, then explains that he thinks that how his dad used to beat his mum was his dad showing that he cared. Diane, the social worker wants to butt into everyone’s lives and is determined to prove that she has balls of Silva. She lets herself into their hideout, totally cockblocks them and gets beaten for it. Top job there Henry. 

Carradine and Silva are in the most PG relationship I have ever seen in an r rated film. They are both wearing dressing gowns and walking around the apartment talking about their feelings. They almost have sex but then keep talking, I decided I didn’t want to see the sex so I’m letting this one slide.  The punks start doing really bad things, presumably becasuse they don’t have their straight edge chick to hold them back anymore. Blade ( the leader, such a lame name) kills some people and now the friends are predicatably scared of him and will do anything he says. 

They escape in a cop car and are surprised when old Maxy boy ( carradine) gives chase. Displaying an attitude of “ oh man this is such a drag” the whole time. The longest and most boring chase through a carpark follows, some punks get away and decide to break into someones home and fuck with the people living there. Nothing gets me in the mood for a little rape time like running from the cops, I find it amusing that the punks went from stupid drugged up kids to murderous psycopaths in the span of twenty minutes. The predictble happens and his partner dies, the events that follow can only be explained if you decide that after this event he completely lost all ability to reason.

Jenny the crack whore girlfriend of Blade is grazed by a bullet and decides to give up like a little sissy girl and sits down, Max sees her she turns around and he shoots her in the head, WHOOPS! She didn’t have a gun and in the ballsiest thing I have seen in this movie so far he contemplates planting one there. This is what I am looking for in my cop movies, some duality, some moral ambiguity about how life really is on the streets and what you have to do to keep yourself out there fighting the good fight  because you have convinced yourself it would be so much worse if you weren’t there.

The punks beat up on Diane but all that bleeds is her heart again and Max is getting tired of her shit. He’s playing by his own rules now and he knows his girlfriend wont forgive him for blowing that kid away. He goes after them by himself like a god damn vigilante,  gets caught and tied up and then

SPOILERS

He gets fucking shot in the head.

Wow, if they stick with that, that could be the boldest thing I have seen in a movie ever. Kill off the main character and let the audience realize it was Diane Silva all along that needed to resolve this. Maybe Max didn’t deserve to live because he never really cared anyway. He didn’t see them as human, he never saw the streets as being alive with anything but disease so it consumed him.

Diane finally decides to Silva it up and get all badass on these brats. She realizes in her infinite wisdom that there needs to be a balance between the hand that hits and the hand that holds to keep order in this crazy city. She visits the hospital….

COP OUT ENDING OF THE CENTURY.

Max is okay because somehow you can survive a bullet to the head at point blank range. I hate this, this movie lost all its balls, the balls were there swinging in the breeze like two proud medals of honor and then they were yanked off and put next to Max’s comfortable hospital bed in a glass of tonic water.

Fuck that ending. A final fuck you from a movie that never really decided what it wanted to be, a great movie that wanted to say something or an okay movie that just didn't really want to be driving around looking for bratty kids anyway.

Maybe Diane looking up at the sky means that she finally decided to leave his ass. You’ve done well Diane, you’ve done well.