Audio connection (sort-of): Commando, which is the worst Ah-nold movie (and that’s saying something).
We wandered into it because we wanted a THX demonstration—this was when THX was brand new. After the THX trailer, the guy in front of us stood up and said, “I saw what I came to see” and left.
We should have followed him. And we knew that in the opening scene, where Ah-nold was carrying a 20-foot log over a shoulder that could only have been made from Styrofoam. The whole audience erupted in laughter.
Normally, I feel murderous about people who make snide remarks in a movie theater, but somehow it was okay with Commando.
In one scene, the heroine finds a receipt for aviation fuel in a bad guy’s car, and announces, “Type 4 aviation fuel—that’s amphibian!”
The guy behind us: “Does that mean it’s water-based?”
A later scene: Ah-nold getting in an inflatable dinghy from said amphibious airplane with about 50 weapons, needed to kill a couple of hundred bad guys on an island. He removes his shirt, the better to row, one supposes. He takes a mighty pull on the oars. Behind him, in the direction he’s going, is clean, landless horizon.
My turn: “You’re rowing out to sea, friend.”
It was Schwarzenegger’s first comedy, and it sure seemed like he was the only person who didn’t realize it.
Rick “don’t watch it” Denney