Strangers in Paradise (1986)

Several months ago, The Onion, a periodical with which I have a bizarre, passive-agressive love/hate relationship, did a feature in their "Films That Time Forgot" segment on The Apple, a mind-numbingly awful, yet energetic, sci-fi-fantasy-new-wave-musical-cult film. Now, those that know me know how much I love The Apple and it's, erm, questionable charms, and I'd certainly not consider it a "film that time forgot." I mean, it's got a small, if devoted, fan base, mostly consisting of me and a few other people dumb enough to know me. But it's there. When it came out on DVD, The Apple was reviewed in Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly. That hardly sounds like something that time forgot to me, and the cult of The Apple is growing, which is pretty frightening. Perhaps The Onion was thinking of Strangers in Paradise, another mid-'80s sci-fi-fantasy-new-wave-musical-cult film with garish production numbers, blatant homoeroticism and hopelessly inane social commentary. Strangers in Paradise isn't on DVD. In fact, Strangers in Paradise has only one comment attached to it on the IMDb compared to The Apple's 51, and less than one-tenth the number of votes. Oh yes, time has not been kind to Strangers in Paradise. But that's what I'm here for. Strangers in Paradise is the brain child of Ulli Lommel, the once-promising protege of Fassbinder who directed the decent Tenderness of the Wolves and the enjoyably trashy Boogeyman* before descending into a pit of crap, as evidenced by his latest opus, the shot-on-video Zodiac Killer. Lommel not only co-wrote and directed Paradise, he also co-wrote the music and plays not just the main character but Hitler as well. Somehow, despite having all of these titles, he manages to screw up every single job he has in a completely different way, resulting in a bizarre mish-mash of so many bad ideas that the contents of your skull may long for something more captivating, like, say, a "Tommy Lee Goes to College" marathon or Voyage of the Rock Aliens. Lommel plays Jonathan Sage, a master hypnotist whom we first see (in black and white) being recruited by Hitler to mesmerize troops at the frontlines in 1939. Sage runs away to the similarly colorless England, where he's part of a nightclub act that recalls the finer points of Taco. When the bombs start to fall, Sage in convinced the best way to stay out of trouble is to have himself frozen cryogenically, and he finds a British scientist willing to "keep you on ice until the world cools off." Cut to the modern, colorful day, where new wave teenagers run amok in California with their wild, pink hair and leather collars. Their parents are the usual ultraconservative reactionary stuffies found only in teen films and Utah, and they're so troubled by their kids that one mom takes to sobbing on the grass when her daughter uses hairspray. They've gotten to the point that they've created an underground lair where scientists have designed a "Repentogram" capable of reforming the degerates of society. They kidnap new wavers Sukey and the So-Whats, and through the magic of the Repentogram, Sukey's internal Pretenders-esque musical number suddenly turns into a sneery, Tammy Wynette-like country warble. The change, however, doesn't last, nor does a duet between a gambler and a hooker ("I only like the thrill of the windfall/When I win, I throw you hookers a bone") that transforms into the pair praying in church. The Repentogram is a failure, but thanks to, wait for it, another musical number, the frustrated parents decided to thaw out Sage and give it a shot with a psychic boost. (There's some half-assed explanation here about how the parents even know where Sage is, having to do with one of them working for the CIA, and how it's exactly logical for the son of the aforementioned scientist to just hand over a cryogenically-frozen psychic, but it's far too stupid to be put into human words, so I won't bother.) There's a Devo-esque cryogenic thawing number (don't ask) and another number immediatley after that as Sage gets back up to health that involves a doctor singing "We've got to get him up/So he can start gettin' down!" before the conversion process really starts taking off. Sage is pretty much at the mercy of the parents ("I wish my brain worked the way it used to," he sighs, a lament I soon shared) as he starts converting the kids, starting with... er... ...The Hard Rock Cafe. Now, okay. The Hard Rock Cafe has become a symbol of Hootie-level lameness since everyone under 30 started wearing their damn T-shirts back in, well, the mid-to-late-'80s, but has the Hard Rock Cafe ever, ever, ever been a symbol for counterculture rock music? At this point, even if Lommel had built up any sort of "hipster cred" to the audience he's obviously trying to cowtow to, he would have instantly lost it. Anyway, the Doors rip-off song at the Hard Rock Cafe (in which all the waiters and waitresses dance around with masks on) becomes another half-assed country number. Sage then manages to convert a gay guy (in a ripped T-shirt and reallllllly tight jeans) and a lesbian (in leather), and along with some of the obviously-sarcastic song lyrics ("Lock them in their closets and burn them all down! Heteros make the world go round!") I guess it could be considered progressive for the time, but the fact that gays are lumped in with junkies and hookers all the time in the film kind of distorts it. But, hey, Ulli. Thanks for, um, trying. I guess. Eventually, of course, there's a musical number with Nazis in a dive bar that turns Sage's feelings toward everything around, and then one, big, last musical number consisting mostly of footage of the previous musical numbers. It then ends, and that's a plus. Strangers in Paradise has so many problems that keeping track of them requires ample knowledge of shorthand. For one, it's trying so desperately hard to be a "cult film," yet it has no idea how the hell to do that. Say what you will about the performances in The Apple, but they were sincere. That's part of what made it so enjoyable--sure, Vladek Sheybal mugs constantly, and the main duo is so sweet it's laughable, but it's the sincerity to the performances that make it laughable. Paradise has a lot of actors prancing around goofily, making stupid faces and dancing awkwardly at inappropriate moments, and it's all so self-consciously silly that it never really manages to be funny at all. The sole exception is Lommel, who, as the films central character, spends the entire time staring into space and idly looking at people as a quick cut to a strobe light shows that he's trying to take over their mind. Lommel doesn't dance, so the musical numbers have to be staged around him as he gets operated on, stares at people or, at one point, plays Zaxxon(!). The adults are completely interchangable, and none of the depraved teenagers ever get established outside of their musical numbers. And, man, do the musical numbers suck. The music isn't really that bad--in fact, a couple numbers are almost catchy--but the dancing is awful. It's not so much that it's bad, but every number is choreographed almost exactly the same, no matter what the style of music, and nothing cinematically is done with them at all. Sure, they're all in different locations--an air base, a bowling alley, a casino--but you might as well be watching a play.** And who the hell wants to watch a new wave musical with washed-out colors and no visual flair? Strangers in Paradise is a justifiably obscure flick with a certain curiosity value, especially for the technologically fascinated. (I, for one, would love to be able to address an E-mail "TO: ALL OF OUR FRIENDS AND SUPPORTERS ACROSS THIS GREAT NATION.") It's got a certain dated charm about it, and it's mercifully short, so fans of jaw-droppingly inept musicals might want to seek it out, but it never quite grabs the brass ring of energetic badness that The Apple scored in spades. It's more akin to Voyage of the Rock Aliens--stupid fun for the first half hour, slightly tedious dreck for the second, and mind-numbing torture for the last, painful third. * -- No, not that one. The decent one. Look it up, I'm not Jeeves. ** -- "I've seen plays better than this! Honest to goodness! Plays!"