1980 Week: Can’t Stop the Music & Xanadu

          Since disco was already dying by the time these two spectacularly bad dance-themed movies were released, it’s not fair to say that either picture killed disco. Nonetheless, the sleazy Can’t Stop the Music and the wholesome Xanadu certainly inflicted wounds. Starring the Village People, Can’t Stop the Music is perplexing right from the first frame, because the opening-credits sequence features Steve Guttenberg roller-skating through New York City, in a split-screen effect, as he listens to the Village People on his personal radio and as the credits reveal the motley crew assembled for the movie. Beyond Guttenberg, the cast includes athlete Bruce Jenner and sexpot Valerie Perrine. Stranger still, the picture was directed by Nancy Walker, best known for playing greasy-spoon waitress “Rosie” in ’70s commercials for Bounty paper towels.

          Can’t Stop the Music purports to tell the story of the Village People’s formation, and like everything else related to the ridiculous vocal group behind “Macho Man” and “Y.M.C.A.,” Can’t Stop the Music avoids the elephant in the room—the fact that the Village People coyly repackaged homoerotica for mainstream consumption. Can’t Stop the Music is outrageously sexualized, featuring scenes in gyms and saunas and swimming pools—there’s even the occasional glimpse of a penis, despite the film’s PG rating. The five singers in the Village People give terrible acting performances, as does Jenner, and the whole movie is cut so fast that it feels like a hallucination. Weirdest of all, perhaps, is the unrelentingly upbeat tone—Can’t Stop the Music is like an old Garland-Rooney “let’s put on a show” picture, only set in a bathhouse.

          Xanadu is just as exuberant, and occasionally just as surreal, but it lacks the subversive quality of Can’t Stop the Music. Instead, Xanadu is an infantile phantasmagoria. However, I must confess to loving the movie’s soundtrack album, featuring songs by Electric Light Orchestra and the film’s leading lady, Olivia Newton-John. (True confession: Xanadu was the first LP I bought with my own money.) Michael Beck, a long way from The Warriors (1979), plays Sonny, an L.A. artist who paints billboard-sized versions of album covers. While roller-skating around Santa Monica one afternoon, Sonny meets the beguiling Kira (Newton-John), who turns out to be one of the Muses from Greek mythology. Kira provides magical inspiration to both Sonny and aging song-and-dance man Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly) as the three contrive to build a roller-disco palace called Xanadu. That is, until Zeus decides Kira must return to Olympus.

          In the course of telling its silly story, Xanadu toggles between cinematic styles with great abandon. There’s an animated sequence, lots of special effects, endless roller-disco jams, and a bizarre mash-up number combining a WWII-style big band performance and a guitar-heavy throwdown by L.A. pop-punkers The Tubes. As with Can’t Stop the Music, the genuinely terrible Xanadu is best experienced with either abject disbelief or ironic amusement. The only unassailable aspect of the film is the leading lady’s appearance, because Newton-John was at the apex of her girl-next-door sexiness. Amazingly, Xanadu has enjoyed a long afterlife, even spawning a Broadway musical. Turns out you really can’t stop the music—no matter how hard you try.

          FYI, the collective awfulness of Can’t Stop the Music and Xanadu led to the creation of the Golden Raspberry Awards, which honor cinema’s worst achievements.

Can’t Stop the Music: FREAKY

Xanadu: FREAKY

The Warriors (1979)

          Existing somewhere between time-capsule kitsch and timeless badassery, Walter Hill’s hypnotic urban-violence fable The Warriors is a wholly unique creation. Set in a fever-dream vision of New York City populated by roving street gangs, brutal policemen, and the occasional innocent bystander, the picture tracks the adventures of a Coney Island-based posse called the Warriors. They join dozens of gangs converging on Manhattan for a rally with messianic underworld leader Cyrus, who envisions the gangs joining forces to take over the city, but nutjob gang-banger Luther (David Patrick Kelly) pops Cyrus and blames the Warriors for the murder. Our heroes then become targets for every gang in the city, allowing Hill to string together scary episodes of the Warriors clashing with colorful troupes like the Baseball Furies, whackos in sports uniforms and face paint who beat the crap out of their enemies with, naturally, baseball bats.
          Loosely based on a novel by Sol Yurick, the plot is ingenious, pushing the heroes through a nightmarish gauntlet—and since Hill and his collaborators don’t expend much energy differentiating characters as individuals, the travails of the Warriors play out like a nihilistic comic book. Michael Beck and James Remar star as two lieutenants jockeying for command of the Warriors; Beck plays a pragmatist who realizes running is the safest option, and Remar’s a hothead who wants to take on every comer.
          Yet it’s the sights and sounds that really command attention. The Warriors look like gladiators wearing just brown leather vests over their torsos, Hill shoots subway trains as if they’re boats racing down rivers, and ghostly nighttime streets feel like dangerous forests. Hill also employs several clever transitional devices, like Lynn Thygpen’s recurring role as a gang-friendly DJ (we only ever see her mouth) who gives running commentary on the action playing out on the streets. Barry DeVorzon’s synth-rock score is perfect, just the right mix of gritty swagger and mechanical menace, and the movie gets capped by Joe Walsh’s evocative tune “In the City,” which DeVorzon and Walsh co-wrote.
          The picture sparked controversy during original release because of reports that gang violence broke out at screenings, but viewed in the safe environs of the home, it’s an engrossing exercise in bloodthirsty style. As Cyrus says before he takes a bullet: “Can you dig it?” (Sidenote: Stick with the original version and avoid the “Ultimate Director’s Cut,” which adds cheaply rendered comic-book flourishes that don’t work.)

The Warriors: GROOVY