Bad Boys (1983)

When Amy isn’t home for the night, I tend to stay up way too late.  With August upon us, that means that Amy is once again at her camp as the director and will be spending a few nights each week there.  Once I get all my household chores done, I then have time to sit around and watch movies that, more likely than not, Amy would never watch with me.

Last week I watched Bad Boys.  No, not the one with the Fresh Prince and Martin Lawrence.  This one came out in 1983 and starred Sean Penn.  I remember first seeing this on HBO back in either ’83 or ’84.  It was on at like one or two in the morning.  I remember my older brother Petr goading me to stay up late to watch it.  At one point he made me put a cold washcloth on my face to stay awake.  I remember this movie scaring the crap out of me.  At the time I didn’t understand all of the criminal aspects of what was going on, but did begin to think that if you did bad things then you’d end up in a nasty place like the juvenile detention center in the movie.  I remember hearing about bad kids being sent to “juvie hall” or “reform school” and always picturing this is where they went.

Watching this movie now at this point in my life, I find it to be a really good movie.  Sure it’s got your typical prison movie clichés, but they don’t detract from the story.  I always find the portrayal of high schools in movies from the 80’s to be quite interesting.  The high school here looks quite unwelcoming and past its’ glory days. It seems like existence as a student there is tough in such an intimidating place, and that you need to be aware of your surroundings at all times.  This setting is familiar to the high schools in Wildcats, Lean On Me, and many episodes of 21 Jump Street. Other smaller details also popped up that I found funny, watching from a 2011 perspective: The RC Cola machine in the detention hall.  I think it cost a quarter for a can of soda.  Then there’s the kids who go around selling name-brand cigarettes for ten dollars a carton!

It’s interesting to see actors who emerge later in their careers here, too. Clancy Brown plays the cell block alpha male ‘Viking Lofgren,’ and will go on to play such memorable roles as ‘The Kurgan’ in Highlander and prison guard ‘Byron Hadley’ in The Shawshank Redemption. Also, Alan Ruck plays Sean Penn’s character’s best friend.  Ruck, of course, will live on forever as ‘Cameron Frye’ in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  It’s hard to imagine a young Sean Penn and not think of ‘Jeff Spicoli,’ but he is excellent in this role, even when he doesn’t have many lines to speak or much to say.  Because of his roles in this movie as well as La Bamba, I can’t help but subconsciously always think of Esai Morales as a bad guy.  After watching the movie and reading reviews about it, I was surprised (in an, ‘oh that’s interesting’ way) to find out this was Ally Sheedy’s first film (as well as Esai Morales).  Upon further research, I also found out that the actor who played Ramon Herrera, the social worker who believes some of the kids can be rehabilitated, Reni Santoni, would go on to play Poppy in a few classic episodes of Seinfeld.

I’ll always remember watching this movie as a six or seven year-old and the profound effect it had on me.  I always figured some kids are just bad because they’re bad, I guess.  But now, I understand that there are reasons some kids are bad: poverty, family situations, the people they associate with, etc.  I may have been way off base on that, but maybe this movie did help me in one way: the scary juvenile hall scenes made me realise I never wanted to end up in a place like that.