A Night in Heaven: A Strange and Terrible Movie You Never Saw

I don't think I've done any movie reviews here, which is odd, since I've written a lot of them. But I guess I didn't feel like just throwing them in willy-nilly. This review rates an exception because it's a movie I'd always wanted to see that few others likely will ever see, so there's no need to post the review anywhere people might read it. I think it's a safe bet no one will if I post it here. Be forewarned---I guess it's as much a review as it is an exploration in hopes of answering why?, so spoilers abound.

I love a lot of the corny, cheesy movies everyone else hates or simply forgets. But there's still a basic degree of filmmaking that has to be achieved, or at least met in part, in order to qualify. A coherent plot, even if it's implausible. Some characters you get to know at least well enough to remember their names. A few exchanges or conversations that actually go somewhere. This film does not meet that criteria. I could only recommend watching it for a glimpse into the era, which you could easily do more enjoyably with other films. Otherwise, if you want to be confused and feel embarrassed for the people involved in a project, go ahead and try A Night in Heaven.

I always wanted to see this movie when I was a kid, because I loved The Pirate Movie and wanted to see other movies with Christopher Atkins (not much luck for me there; The Blue Lagoon wasn't age-appropriate either). I tried to catch it a few times on TV, but the TV editing seemed to be making a confusion of things, so I never got too far.

I finally saw the theatrical version, and it wasn't TV editing that was the problem. This is one of the strangest attempts at a movie I've ever seen. As it started, I thought perhaps I'd gotten the wrong movie. The opening is a long sequence introducing the female lead's husband Whitney (Robert Logan) as he finishes up work at Cape Canaveral and rides home on his recumbent bike. It's the first in a long collection of areas where the film gives us a bunch of information we don't need to know, rather than focusing on the story or at least delving into the minds of the main characters (which never happens). At first you don't realize you don't need the information: it seems like backstory, sidestory, the regular plot- and character-developing stuff. It will pay off when it all comes together. Unfortunately, nothing ever comes together, and the few events that do unfold are mostly in surprising contradiction to or having absolutely no sensible relation to anything we learn earlier.

I don't know if the writer originally had a much longer, more involved script, if he couldn't decide what story he wanted to tell, or if he just chose an extremely convoluted way to tell one. A major problem is that none of the characters are fleshed out enough for you to know which ones you're supposed to care about. Another problem is that the plot relies upon a series of ludicrous turning points and silly clichés. The aforementioned female lead Faye (Lesley Ann Warren) is a professor who fails her student Rick (Christopher Atkins) because he gives a smart-aleck reply to a question after he completes his mediocre, but decent final presentation. Realistically, the kid would have a strong case to take to the dean. The professor's sister Patsy (Deborah Rush) visits, does a surprise makeover and takes the professor to a male strip performance without her realizing where she's been dragged until she sees the madness. The professor isn't a teenage girl who doesn't know she can transform with clothes and makeup. And from the rest of the film, we know she's not blind, and would therefore be able to see the signs advertising the show.

But that's just the opening (well, 30 minutes) of the film. Once the unbelievable setup was in place, I expected the romance and conflict to begin. Nope. First there's some pointless rehashing of the same scenarios, wasted time, meetings and followups with characters we've never met/don't know/don't care about, and a lot of phone calls, many with no answer or conversation, just ringing. If you want to show someone 1980s phones, including several public phones and hotel house phones, this is the movie to use.

I'll describe the situation with Slick (Sandra Beall), the stripper's supposed girlfriend, as an example of the odd venture at character and plot development in this movie. Slick may herself be a stripper (not enough information to say for sure), and certainly is in a ridiculous commercial that appears to be for a strip club but apparently is for a car dealership. In spite of exposition describing her as the daughter of someone at the professor's husband's job (who cares? That information goes nowhere.) and the girlfriend of Tony's friend (at this point we don't know Tony or his friends, or that one of them is Rick the stripper, so this isn't helpful), at first I thought she was Rick's sister, since she arrives to pick him up in the morning and has a catty chat with him after watching him kiss and goodbye another girl he just slept with. And that's all we know of Slick, apart from her red hair. She wanders in and out of a couple of scenes like she's got a tracker on Rick and a head only filled with pouty, nonsensical one-liners. "Cramming for finals?" "Aren't you getting a little old for this? I know I am." Her longest scene is the commercial, which we see in its entirety on a security guard's portable TV. Because that's necessary.

We never get to know Tony (Deney Terrio, choreographer and Dance Fever host) either---he buffs the floor, coincidentally teaches a dance class attended by the professor's sister (even though the sister is only visiting Florida from Chicago), gets fired, and tries stripping, but that's shown in literally one scene each, without any point I can see. Also, Rick does have an actual sister, though I don't know why she's present. She arrives to work with their mom at a coffee shop, then begs Rick to take care of her cats as she's bequeathing him her car and rental apartment to take off for San Francisco, where she plans to sell mail-order hearts while she waits 3 years for her boyfriend to get out of prison. That's the two scenes the sister gets. A bunch of random details, and the only thing we ultimately get from it is that Rick is willing to take care of her cats, and chooses to screw a girl in someone else's hotel room rather than the rent-free apartment he has for a month.

And what about the professor's husband, who we spent so much time watching during the opening sequence of the movie? He works an odd schedule at Cape Canaveral, then gets fired (quits) in an inexplicable scene where the actors are talking over one another, another phone call makes a ringing interruption, and we're led to believe the space program is being abandoned and rocket scientists must move on to defense work or elsewhere entirely. He rides and works on those recumbent and experimental bikes in his free time, but for reasons never explained to us, resists repeated encouragement to explore that as an alternate profession, instead moping, going to the shooting range for an 8-second scene, and visiting a friend in the arcade game industry, who apparently covers both game design/production as well as manufacturing the physical arcade units. How do I know that? We accompany the husband job hunting there. Why? I don't know. He also runs into an old friend divorcée and is suddenly in her bedroom, wistfully discussing 1980 like it was those good old days long gone, even though this movie was released in 1983. He says he wanted to kiss this (then married) woman on New Years Eve 1980, but it wouldn't have been right. End scene, of course, because that gave us all the meaningless, disjointed history we needed.

The moment where any characters are most emotionally accessible is when Faye brings her sister Patsy (the only character whose name I could remember without looking other than Rick, because they call him Ricky Rocket) to the airport and Patsy doesn't want to leave. One of her kids is sick, and even though it's not serious, her husband wants her home. All of a sudden she explains that she can' t be herself around her husband, that he tells her what to do and doesn't appreciate her. Her sister Faye gives her rather odd advice that doesn't seem appropriate to the situation, but then Patsy says "you're right. Bye!" And cut.

I'd say the first half of the film spends most of its time showing stripper guys dancing in sequined thongs (not Rick---he only bares to a much more palatable pair of small shorts while dancing) and Faye covering her face. The second half is mostly phone calls. Altogether, it reads like several possible stories that never got told about people we never quite met, leaving a viewer not sure what or why you watched.

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A curious coup for this failure of film is the soundtrack, made up of a lot of Jan Hammer, two solid Bryan Adams songs (including "Heaven," which this movie totally doesn't deserve and squanders bizarrely), English Beat, Split Enz, Rita Coolidge, the Europeans, the Metromen's Tom Teeley, P-Funk spinoff Kiddo, and an early version of "Obsession" performed by its writers, Michael Des Barres and Holly Knight.

After writing all this, I wonder if it's worth it to warn the few people straying to IMDB to investigate it to stay away from this one. I'd have still gone through with seeing it myself, but someone else might be saved two hours of good living.