ALPHABET CITY [1984 / FUN CITY EDITIONS]

‘Alphabet City’ occupies a space about as improbable to land on intentionally as a hole-in-one. This space isn’t simply one of quality, ‘Alphabet City’ may or may not be a perfect film, that is beyond improbable and ventures into the chaotic world of subjective taste that I lurch back in fear from. Rather, this is a sort of space typically reserved for hindsight. In the manner that ‘The Guest’, made in 2014, is capable of being the perfect 80’s film thanks to decades worth of understanding what the 80s were; a ton of perspective feels like no magic trick. Yes, it is an execution of impressive craftsmanship, but doing anything with the understood tools for doing it doesn’t melt our sense of the time/space continuum.

Here is the thing, ‘Alphabet City’ from 1984 is in the same space as ‘The Guest’ without the tools. It is a film through which 80s cinema looks at its own eye without the use a mirror. Stage magic fails to capture how unlikely this feels. Real magic attributes a level of pompous prophecy that would undermine the naturalness and ease of the film in a sort of time travel paradox. Rather, it just can be this film and so it is that one day director Amos Poe made a movie and the movie landed launched off the tee and went straight into the hole. The space. The space known as the platonic form of 80s filmmaking. I should get a little more specific though. Like ‘The Guest’ which tackles DTV 80s themes primarily, with its revealing lines blurred between action hero and slasher villain, ‘Alphabet City’ is also emanating its gel infused glory from that DTV space. Those neon floods made be the keystone as well, linking the aesthetic aspirations of both quality trash genre flicks like a million Charles Band bubble gum horror films at once along with every teen white boy gang film to depict rainbow punks listening to essentially anything except punk rock. Our protagonist gears up in pure fashion leather to convertible around town, maybe just as much to be a mid level drug lord as to make sure we see his headlight trails reflected off of the wet moody streets. Every thick, syrupy drop of dialogue is to remind you of just how serious being cool is; just how dangerous a life of slapstick level melodrama can be. This is the beating heart of 80s DTV passion that every other example tends to be just slightly askew from. For every ‘Ghoulies’ giving us the thrills of wacky rubber there is a ‘Suburbia’ giving us high concept faux realism so good to be true. High adventure with art school truth bombs polka dot the landscape of 80s film making, allowing us years later to back away far enough to see what those of us felt living through it: The ‘Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte’ of Reagan era artistry. ‘Alphabet City’ was seeing the Georges Seurat from an inch away and still knew the shape of the whole. Again, this is no prophecy though, just a simple way of being for the film. When the hole-in-one is actually a million tiny dots of color to land squarely in at once, it has to be simple. Zen koan riddle solver simple. So apparently the apocryphal work was being done by ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’ instead. Not sure I’m ready to mind bend around that hypothesis yet though.

*‘Alphabet City’ is available on Blu Ray at Vinegar Syndrome*.