Weird Science | |
---|---|
Directed by | John Hughes |
Written by | John Hughes |
Based on | "Made of the Future" by Al Feldstein |
Produced by | Joel Silver |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Matthew F. Leonetti |
Edited by |
|
Music by | Ira Newborn |
Production companies | |
Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 94 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $7.5 million |
Box office | $38.9 million |
Weird Science is a 1985 American teen science fantasy comedy film written and directed by John Hughes and starring Anthony Michael Hall, Ilan Mitchell-Smith, and Kelly LeBrock. It is based on the 1951 pre-Comics Code comic "Made of the Future" by Al Feldstein, which appeared in the magazine of the same name. The title song was written and performed by American new wave band Oingo Boingo.
Nerdy social outcast students Gary Wallace and Wyatt Donnelly of Shermer High School (the same fictional high school used in The Breakfast Club ) are humiliated by senior jocks Ian and Max for swooning over their cheerleader girlfriends Deb and Hilly. Humiliated and disappointed at their direction in life and wanting more, Gary convinces the uptight Wyatt that they need a boost in popularity in order to win their crushes away from Ian and Max. Alone for the weekend with Wyatt's parents gone, Gary is inspired by the 1931 film Frankenstein to create a virtual woman using Wyatt's computer, infusing her with everything they can conceive of to make the perfect dream woman.
After they hook electrodes to a doll and hack into a government computer system for more power, a power surge creates Lisa, a beautiful and intelligent woman with reality-warping powers. She promptly produces a pink 1959 Cadillac Eldorado convertible to take the boys to a blues dive bar in Chicago, using her powers to procure fake IDs for them.
They return home drunk, where Chet, Wyatt's mean older brother, extorts $175 from Wyatt in exchange for his silence. Lisa agrees to keep herself hidden from him, but she realizes that Gary and Wyatt, while sweet, are very uptight and need to unwind. After another humiliating experience at the mall when Max and Ian pour a slushie on Gary and Wyatt in front of a crowd, Lisa tells the bullies about a party at Wyatt's house, before driving off in a Porsche 928 she conjured for Gary.
Despite Wyatt's protests, Lisa insists that the party take place. She meets Gary's parents, Al and Lucy, who are shocked and dismayed at the things she says and her frank manner, to Gary's embarrassment. After she pulls a stainless .44 Magnum on them (later revealed to Gary to be a water pistol), she alters their memories so that Lucy forgets about the conflict; however, Al forgets that they have a son altogether.
At the Donnelly house, the party has spun out of control. Gary and Wyatt take refuge in the bathroom, where they resolve to have fun despite having embarrassed themselves in front of Deb and Hilly. In Wyatt's bedroom, Ian and Max convince Gary and Wyatt to recreate the events that created Lisa, but the process fails. Lisa chides them over their misuse of the process to impress their tormentors. She also explains that they forgot to connect the doll; thus, with the bare but live electrodes resting on a magazine page showing a Pershing II medium-range ballistic missile, a real missile emerges, crashing through the house.
Meanwhile, Wyatt's grandparents arrive and confront Lisa about the party, but she places them in a frozen, catatonic state and hides them in a kitchen cupboard. Lisa realizes that the boys need a challenge to boost their confidence and has a gang of mutant bikers crash the party, causing chaos and terrorizing the guests.
When the bikers take Deb and Hilly hostage, Wyatt and Gary confront them, causing Deb and Hilly to fall in love with them. The bikers leave, and the next morning, Chet returns from duck hunting to discover the house in disarray, including a localized snowstorm in his room, and the missile. Lisa has the boys escort the girls home while she talks to Chet alone. Gary and Wyatt proclaim their feelings, and both girls reciprocate.
Returning to the house, the boys discover Chet, now transformed into a foul, talking toad-like creature. He apologizes to Wyatt for his behavior. Upstairs, Lisa assures them that Chet will soon return to normal, and, realizing that her purpose is complete, tearfully hugs both Gary and Wyatt before de-materializing. As she leaves, the house is "magically" cleaned and everything transformed back to normal, including Chet. Wyatt's parents return home, completely unaware that anything unusual has happened. Later, Lisa turns up as the new gym teacher at Shermer High School [1] .
In addition, Hughes regular John Kapelos plays Dino, while Playboy Playmate Kym Malin (May 1982) has a cameo as a girl playing piano.
Model Kelly Emberg was initially cast as Lisa, but she left after two days due to creative differences. LeBrock was hired as her replacement. Vernon Wells reprises his memorable biker character Wez from Mad Max 2 , but is credited in this movie as "Lord General". Filming was originally planned to begin on September 24, 1984, in Skokie, Illinois but was ultimately delayed to October 2, 1984, and the location changed to the Northbrook Court Shopping Mall in Northbrook, Illinois.
Most of the location shooting was filmed around neighborhoods outside of Chicago, Illinois, whereas the rest of production was filmed on sound stages and the backlot at Universal City Studios in Los Angeles, California. Production wrapped on December 21, 1984. The production was kept closed in order to keep the film's plot a secret. [2]
Roger Ebert, who gave the film three out of four stars, called LeBrock "wonderful" in her role and thought that as a result the film was "funnier, and a little deeper, than the predictable story it might have been". [3] Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote that "Mr. Hughes shows that he can share the kind of dumb joke that only a 14-year old boy could love. There are enough moviegoing 14-year old boys to make a hit out of Weird Science, of course, but for the rest of the population, its pandering is strenuous enough to be cause for alarm." [4]
Variety wrote, "Weird Science is not nearly as weird as it should have been and, in fact, is a rather conventional kids-in-heat film, and a chaste one at that. Director-writer John Hughes squanders the opportunity to comment on the power struggle between the sexes for a few easy laughs." [5] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film one-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, "What a disappointment Weird Science is! A wonderful writer-director has taken a cute idea about two teenage Dr. Frankensteins creating a perfect woman by computer and turned it into a vulgar, mindless, special-effects-cluttered wasteland." [6]
Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times described LeBrock as "triumphant" and the "film's greatest asset", but thought the film's appeal was limited to audiences of 15-year-old boys and "maybe the 16-year olds, if they aren't yet too fussy". [7] Rita Kempley of The Washington Post wrote, "Unbelievably, John Hughes, the maker of Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club , writes and directs this snickering, sordid, special effects fantasy, with Kelly LeBrock in a demeaning role as love slave to a pair of 15-year olds." [8]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 60% based on 40 reviews, with an average rating of 5.7/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Hardly in the same league as John Hughes' other teen movies, the resolutely goofy Weird Science nonetheless gets some laughs via its ridiculous premise and enjoyable performances." [9] The film is now regarded as a cult classic. [10] [11] It grossed $23,834,048 in North America and $15.1 million in other territories, totaling $38,934,048 worldwide. [12]
The film's theme song, "Weird Science", was performed by Oingo Boingo and written by the band's frontman, Danny Elfman. [13] The soundtrack album was released on MCA Records. [14]
Side one
Side two
A television series based on the film ran for 88 episodes, from 1994 to 1998. Following the same basic plot as the film, the series starred Vanessa Angel as Lisa, Michael Manasseri as Wyatt, John Mallory Asher as Gary, and Lee Tergesen as Chet. [15]
As of 2013 [update] , Universal Studios was planning a Weird Science remake with original producer Joel Silver returning, and Michael Bacall writing the film. The film was set to attempt to distinguish itself from the original Weird Science by being an edgier comedy, in line with 21 Jump Street and The Hangover , which were R-rated; the studio stated the rating for this Weird Science remake was not certain at that stage of the movie's development. [16] However, as of mid-2024, nothing of the remake had materialized. [17] In 2017, Ilan Mitchell-Smith talked about a sequel to Weird Science starring Channing Tatum. [18]
Daniel Robert Elfman is an American film composer, singer, songwriter, and musician. He came to prominence as the lead singer and primary songwriter for the new wave band Oingo Boingo in the early 1980s. Since scoring his first studio film in 1985, Elfman has garnered international recognition for composing over 100 feature film scores, as well as compositions for television, stage productions, and the concert hall.
John Wilden Hughes Jr. was an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He began his career in 1970 as an author of humorous essays and stories for the National Lampoon magazine. He went on in Hollywood to write, produce and direct some of the most successful live-action-comedy films of the 1980s and 1990s. He directed such films as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, She's Having a Baby, and Uncle Buck; and wrote the films National Lampoon's Vacation, Mr. Mom, Pretty in Pink, The Great Outdoors, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, Dutch, and Beethoven.
Oingo Boingo was an American new wave band formed by songwriter Danny Elfman in 1979. The band emerged from a surrealist musical theatre troupe, The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, that Elfman had led and written material for in the years previous. Their highest-charting song, "Weird Science", reached No. 45 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
Pee-wee's Big Adventure is a 1985 American adventure comedy film directed by Tim Burton in his feature-film directing debut. The film stars Paul Reubens as Pee-wee Herman, along with E.G. Daily, Mark Holton, Diane Salinger and Judd Omen. The screenplay, written by Reubens with Phil Hartman and Michael Varhol, tells the story of Pee-wee's nationwide search for his stolen bicycle and has been compared to the 1948 film Bicycle Thieves.
Ilan Mitchell-Smith is an American academic and former actor, best known as a co-star of the film Weird Science (1985) and Andy McCalister in Superboy.
Kelly LeBrock(born March 24, 1960) is American-English actress and model. Her acting debut was in The Woman in Red (1984), alongside Gene Wilder. She also starred in the John Hughes film Weird Science (1985), and in Hard to Kill (1990), opposite her then-husband Steven Seagal.
Bachelor Party is a 1984 American sex comedy film directed by Neal Israel, written by Israel and Pat Proft, and starring Tom Hanks, Adrian Zmed, William Tepper, and Tawny Kitaen. The film revolves around a bachelor party that a group of men throw for their friend Rick Gassko (Hanks) on the eve of his wedding and whether he can remain faithful to his fiancée Debbie (Kitaen).
Dead Man's Party is the fifth album by American new wave band Oingo Boingo, released in 1985 by MCA Records. The album contains the only two singles by the band to chart on the Billboard Hot 100: "Weird Science" at number 45, and "Just Another Day" at number 85. The album was the band's first to be certified gold for sales of 500,000 units. The album cover art is an homage to the Mexican holiday Día de Los Muertos.
The 25th Daytime Emmy Awards were held in 1998 to commemorate excellence in daytime programming from the previous year (1997).
Vanessa Madeline Angel is an English actress and former model. She played the role of Lisa on the television series Weird Science. She is also known for her role as Claudia in the film Kingpin.
Weird Science is an American television sitcom, based on John Hughes' 1985 film of the same title, that aired on the USA Network from March 5, 1994, to April 11, 1997. Six previously unaired, "lost" episodes aired on the Sci-Fi Channel from July 11 to 25, 1998.
Vernon Wells is an Australian character actor. He began appearing on Australian television shows in the mid-1970s, such as Homicide, Matlock Police and All the Rivers Run. He is best known to international audiences for his role of Wez in the 1981 science fiction action film Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior and Bennett in the military action film Commando.
Weird Science is the name of:
Suzanne Snyder is an American former actress.
"Weird Science" is a song by American new wave band Oingo Boingo. Written by frontman Danny Elfman, it is the theme song to the Weird Science film and television series. It was released on the film's soundtrack, as well as Oingo Boingo's fifth studio album, Dead Man's Party (1985), in a longer mix. The song reached No. 45 on the US Billboard Hot 100, No. 21 on the US Dance Club Charts, and No. 81 in Canada. It is Oingo Boingo's most successful single.
Ivor Barry was a Welsh film and television actor.
Don't You Forget About Me is a 2009 Canadian documentary film about screenwriter, director, and producer John Hughes. Directed by Matt Austin, the film was named after the 1985 song of the same name by Simple Minds, which in turn was the theme song for Hughes' film The Breakfast Club. The film specifically focused on Hughes' fade from prominence in the early 1990s.
The New Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal was a commemorative medal awarded in New Zealand in 1990 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, and was awarded to 3,632 people.
Shermer High School is a fictional high school, and the nexus for many of American director John Hughes' films. The Breakfast Club and Weird Science (film) explicitly reference it by name. Hughes has stated in interviews that all of his films take place in the same fictional town of Shermer, Illinois and that the characters know and interact with each other outside of the narrative thread:
John Hughes: When I started making movies, I thought I would just invent a town where everything happened. Everybody, in all of my movies, is from Shermer, Illinois. Del Griffith from Planes, Trains and Automobiles lives two doors down from John Bender. Ferris Bueller knew Samantha Baker from Sixteen Candles. For 15 years I've written my Shermer stories in prose, collecting its history.
{{cite AV media notes}}
: Unknown parameter |people=
ignored (help)