If green grass and warmer weather aren’t enough to signal the season, one surefire way to tell it’s spring is the return of Landmark La Jolla’s Midnight Madness movie series. Just down the street from campus, our local indie theater scrounges up classic films easy to watch and laugh at, whether or not this was the filmmaker’s original intention.
This time around, the focus is on time-travel, and the series will range from exciting and thought-provoking to goofy and comical, with at least one featured flick that desperately wants viewers to take it seriously. The monthlong event started last week with the director’s cut of the coming-of-age, dimension-hopping “”Donnie Darko.”” But the ride is just getting started, so grab your roommates, some overbuttered popcorn and expensive sodas, and come join the cults that keep these loony – and, in most cases, awesome – sci-fi milestones alive.
4/7 “”Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home”” (1986)
In perhaps the most mainstream camp to ever exist on both TV and film, the “”Star Trek”” franchise gave birth to a whole new brand of sci-fi geek, facing off for the past 30 years with the “”Star Wars”” nerd. In the fourth installment, William Shatner’s hilariously earnest Captain Kirk leads the crew of the USS Enterprise back in time to, of all things, save the humpback whale. Why is this sea-faring mammal the key to future civilizations? To be honest, no one really knows, but it’s a good excuse to watch a crew that is hopelessly out of water in 1986 San Francisco, and a filmmaker’s attempt to raise environmental awareness before Al Gore made it fashionable. Plus, it gives you reason to use your Klingon without anyone being the wiser. Buy’ ngop!
4/14 “”Army of Darkness”” (1981)
Before Sam Raimi got a crack at filming the famed webslinger Spider-Man, he spent his days cooking up action/gore/comic fests – the “”Evil Dead”” trilogy. Starring B-movie king Bruce Campbell as Ash, the concluding film in the series finds our chainsaw-wielding hero transported to the Middle Ages, where he has to – you guessed it – battle a dead army in order to get home. “”Darkness”” is a film made for crowds: Camp and cool meet in a way that makes you want to turn to the person next to you, friend or complete stranger, and ask, “”Did you just f****** see that?””
4/21 “”12 Monkeys”” (1995)
At the time, it would have been surprising to think that ex-“”Monty Python”” member Terry Gilliam would reinvent himself in the 1980s and ’90s as a director of mind-bending films such as “”Brazil,”” “”Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”” and, in possibly his greatest venture, “”12 Monkeys.”” Sent from the 21st century back to the late 20th, Bruce Willis must either prevent the release of a virus that would make Earth’s surface inhospitable or face an entire century in prison. Despite the creative subterranean universe in which Willis dwells most of the time – and the engrossing story that bobs and weaves with intrigue – the greatest point of interest is probably a psychotic and deranged performance by Brad Pitt, years before he would hit his mark in “”Fight Club.””
4/28 “”Back to the Future II”” (1989)
Traveling both forward and backward this time around, Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) takes the DeLorean for another spin, with Christopher Lloyd’s Doc in tow. Director Robert Zemeckis built his 1980s repertoire on screwball adventures like “”Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”” and the first “”Back to the Future”” – two staples of many childhoods – and this go-round doesn’t come as much of a shock. The “”Back to the Future”” trilogy is a throwback to old popcorn cinema (somewhat hard to come by these days) in which plausibility or realism couldn’t matter less – all we have to do is sit back and lose ourselves in the perfectly impossible good time.
5/5 “”Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”” (1989)
Before Keanu Reeves went monotone in “”The Matrix”” (and just about every other film afterward), he was all about the surfing/stoner teen subculture as Ted Logan, one half of the very righteous Bill and Ted (the then-and-still-unknown Alex Winter was Bill). Bumming over an impending history presentation, the two are confronted by future hippie/guru Rufus (George Carlin), who gives them a time-traveling phone booth with which they proceed to visit everyone from Socrates to Napoleon to Freud. This ultimate time-travel adventure is a shining addition to the stupid-yet-great category, where logic takes a holiday and we’re set adrift into a sea of absurdity.
