Film - Weird Science

With the film now available in ultra sharp 4K on Blu-ray, a reminder of Steve Taylor-Bryant's (slightly dribbly) thoughts on Weird Science...

Back before I was the gentleman I am now I was a manchild who leered over women. One in particular to be fair to me (two if we include my Drew Barrymore obsession but no one knows about that [yeah, right - Ed]) and that was Kelly LeBrock.....

Hmmmm.....

Mmmm-hmmm.....

Yeahhhh... er... I've lost where I was going with this...

Oh yes! Weird Science.

Yes, I'm composed now, honest.

John Hughes had a knack of tapping into stories of youth. The likes of Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club handled school pretty well and had something for everyone in it but younger boys and their ill educated male fantasies didn't really get coverage until Weird Science. All boys dreamed of building the perfect woman, becoming a sexualised Dr. Frankenstein if you will and if your boyfriend/husband/son says otherwise he is a big fat liar liar pants on fire, but Hughes as well as playing on that fantasy brought with him an intelligence and foresight. Weird Science was 1985 and yet here was a writer using the new computer boom as a storytelling piece, young boys locked away in their rooms with just a computer and an imagination before being a lonely computer geek was even a thing. Yes he played the fantasy card well appealing to all young boys (and many growdy uppy boys) with his casting of Kelly LeBrock, but again he was ahead of his time in that LeBrock didn't just play a, well, plaything she saw right through her creators and tried to teach them that the ultimate male fantasy was wrong and demeaning... In an era when money was to be made from being wrong and demeaning!

There was a message for the male viewer, a huge sigh of relief from the female viewer, and a comedy played out by Anthony Michael Hall as Gary Wallace and Ilan Mitchell-Smith as Wyatt Donnelly that is one of the best of the 1980's. Add in the brilliant Bill Paxton and all of a sudden you realise what actual genius, a director ahead of his time John Hughes actually was. There was also Oingo Boingo...

Images - Wiki, IMDb, MGM, YouTube