•
Rating: Lucas Rainer - Saturday Night Visitors (1990)
The year after "Back to the Future 2" came out, this little movie revolving around the same theme of time travel was released: only here the journey is to the past. The film was a flop in Italy, while in America, perhaps due to its astounding soundtrack, it enjoyed moderate public success. I found it again in a rental still-sealed stereo(!) VHS, and upon rewatching it, it didn't seem too bad compared to a lot of the trash out there. In fact, unlike its older brother by Zemeckis, it has fewer pretensions, and by moving on the edge of the trash swamp, it has more freedom of action and is more edgy in its themes and the director's intentions.
Among the main characters, we find the beautiful Olivia D'Abo, the Devo, and a cameo by Barbara Bain (Space 1999): it's a mix of genres and sub-genres, from musical comedy to sci-fi and comedy, with a dash of trash that never hurts... It made my heart leap with a dive into the golden - and leaden - seventies.
Have you ever woken up one morning in a panic asking yourself...what the hell year is it?
Well, we are in the year 2176, and all earthlings are homogenized and dull like cyborgs, dressed in white suits in a gray world and having lost the Historical Archive years ago, they no longer know anything about the past and are ignorant of what the world was like long ago. Some scientists from the Ministry of Knowledge - the Devo! Here are the forthcoming effects of the Lega's devolution! - to learn about it, vainly question the very old Professor Von Mobil - a prestigious name from one of the Seven Sisters of oil which we hope will disappear in the future - ; the ancient one is now comatose and obsolete, and only babbles and mumbles a few disjointed phrases about July 4th, freedom, and 1776, the year of America's birth.
Thus, three young astronauts, Heinz 57, Adam 11, and the beautiful Chanel 6 - the D'Abo - are tasked with a special mission: they set off in a small flying saucer - internally decorated with dollars which in the future have become mere scraps of paper! - with which they travel back in time to recover historical memory; they have only 12 hours, otherwise, they won't be able to return through the space-time portal.
They set off to return to 1776, but alas, the counter jams, and without the crew realizing it, they instead land in the year 1976. And so a series of adventures begin for our heroes: they meet two young long-haired rockers who understand their situation as alien earthlings and do everything they can to save them from the clutches of the CIA and a nerdy schoolmate who tries in every way to inform the feds. The older brother of one of the rockers is, instead, already in full disco phase, a bleached and unhealthy Tonymanero who seduces Chanel, not knowing that she is one of the visitors, woos her, teaches her the hustle and takes her to a dance contest very Saturday Night Fever. After chases, spacecraft repairs, and various amusements, the group of terrestrial martians sets off for 2176, not without having copied down by rubbing charcoal - with bizarre remote control-video cam-pendrives - all the crazy and situational knowledge of those years. Including and especially a copy of the American Constitution - and its continuous violations as learnedly listed by a high-class prostitute dressed as the Statue of Liberty for the 4th of July.
The set designs, the modern antiques, the music - from Discoinferno to the Grandfunk, to the punky pop of the Red Kross - the dances, the disco clubs, the skates, the frisbees, the rockers of the kissarmy, this film for a moment seemed more real to me than those of that time, and I saw myself trying hustle steps with my neighbor, under the shadow of a lava lamp and 2 improvised psychedelic lights, while placing 45 rpm records on the turntable of Rock the Boat, Figli delle Stelle, Kunfufighting... And one could live without Iron Maiden which didn't exist! How wonderful...
The future can already be conjugated to the present: the time travel of the film's protagonists serves us all. Mobil, Heinz 57, Adam 11, Chanel no. 6 are all names of commercial products given to human beings, a current trend, consider Chanel no.6, Ilary's daughter, with Totti babbling incoherent phrases like Von Mobil; and what about the continuous violations of our Constitution? Or about the dollar becoming scrap and petroleum that is running out at an expensive price?
And the new scholarly youth visitors who graduate from schools even more dysfunctional than before and without historical memory? Prepare the toilet paper, the future is already here.
Loading comments slowly
