Pam Gidley Movies

Valley boys take on the punk rockers in this teen-age adventure. This time they use skateboards instead of zip guns, knives and fists. The rich Valley kids, "The Ramp Locals," are led by Corey Webster, while the leather-clad, street-wise punks follow Tommy Hook. The trouble begins when Corey falls in love with Tommy's little sister who has come from Indiana for a visit. The rivalry between the gangs culminates during the grueling "LA Massacre," a 20-mile downhill skateboarding race. The winning team will earn a corporate sponsor. For the final race, the filmmakers strapped a camera in front of a skateboard to give viewers a sense of the thrills experienced by the daring "thrashers." ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this arch sci-fi sex comedy-cum-action extravaganza, a hard-nosed female mercenary helps a hapless yuppie find a new body for his robot girlfriend in the post-industrial wasteland of the American Southwest. In the year 2017, what little remains of civilization feeds off the scrap heap of 20th century waste, while even casual sex has become a matter of regulations and contracts. Like many other members of the L.A. white-collar elite, Sam Treatwell (David Andrews) takes refuge in a quasi-marriage with his beloved sex robot, Cherry (Pamela Gidley). After a soft-focus, bubbly sexcapade short circuits Cherry's body, Sam considers replacing her, but the shoddy production values of modern robots make it obvious that the vintage appliance is irreplaceable. To put it simply, the guy's in love. The wistful romantic therefore heads out to The Zone, a forbidding no man's land, where he hopes to find a new "chassis" in which to insert Cherry's unique personality chip. To do so, he needs the help of a "tracker," and E. Johnson (Melanie Griffith) is just the woman for the job. The gun-toting, red-headed road warrior leads Sam through a dystopian desert landscape full of psychopaths and opportunists toward their final destination: an abandoned warehouse full of antique androids. Along the way, Sam learns what it's like to interact with a woman who has brains and a heart instead of a microchip. Filmed in 1986, Cherry 2000 didn't receive its limited theatrical release until 1988, the same year star Griffith received an Oscar nomination for her role in Working Girl. Griffith and director Steven de Jarnatt previously worked together on the pilot for the 1980s revival of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Ben Johnson, veteran of many a Hollywood Western, appears as E. Johnson's mentor, Six Finger Jake. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

High school student Alan Boyce has it all: looks, charm, popularity, excellent grades, a promising future. So why does Boyce abruptly commit suicide? As the shock waves of the boy's death reverberate through the halls of his school, the other students--particularly Boyce's best friend Keanu Reeves--ask themselves if they, too, are capable of self-destruction. As for the adults, Boyce's suicide is one more of a myriad of mysteries concerning "Generation X" (though it was not yet so labelled in 1988). While the film offers no easy answers, either for the characters or the audience, Permanent Record ultimately demonstrates that there are ways to cope with the pressures of life other than taking one's own life. An added bonus: the teenagers in the film act like genuine teenagers, not like TV sitcom wisecrackers or oversexed cretins. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Alfre Woodard plays a Los Angeles DA who moves back to her home town of New Orleans. She does this so that her teenaged son (Keith Williams) can be nearer to his estranged dad (Mario van Peebles). No sooner has Woodard arrived in "The Big Easy" than she is swept up in a local sex scandal. While the main plot is resolved, several secondary story lines are left unresolved, suggesting that Blue Bayou was the pilot film for an unsold series. The film was written by LA Law's Terry Louise Fisher and directed by Cagney and Lacey's Karen Arthur. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The terror in this erotic horror thriller begins in the past when Dr. Russell, the director of a mental hospital, rapes a patient who afterward kills herself. Many years pass and the main story begins when a lovely model checks into the asylum. Dr. Russell feels those old lustful, violent stirrings upon seeing her, but during the drug-induced "seduction" something goes terribly wrong and the model seems to have died. With the aid of his weird staff, the doctor tries to get rid of the body, which mysteriously vanishes by the next day. Later, the shrink begins to seriously question his own sanity when he keeps seeing the form of the model surreptitiously sneaking around the grounds. Things only get stranger from there. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Liebestraum is a moody, stylish suspense thriller written and directed by British director Mike Figgis. Nick (Kevin Anderson) is an architectural writer who goes home to be with his dying mother, Mrs. Anderssen (Kim Novak) from whom he was separated as a baby. There he meets an old friend and has an affair with the friend's wife, who was herself adopted after her mother went insane. Through a series of coincidences and a good deal of investigation Nick learns some terrible truths concerning everyone. The film, while beautiful to look at, and with a wonderful score composed by Figgis, is more interested in style and emotion rather than cogent explanations for the actions of the characters, however, taken for what it is, a mood piece, Liebestraum succeeds beautifully. Figgis has beautiful technique and is greatly aided by Juan Ruiz-Anchia's stark and evocative images. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

David Lynch's prequel to his cult television series "Twin Peaks" concerns the last seven days in the life of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), whose plastic-wrapped corpse, found floating in a river, was the fulcrum for the television series. During the day in the town of Twin Peaks, Laura is a top honors student at the local high school. By night, she is a sex-crazed cokehead, prostituting herself at a sleazy sex club to get money to feed her drug habit. Her race to oblivion is fueled by her father, Leland (Ray Wise), who, as his alter ego Bob (Frank Silva), has been sexually abusing Laura since she was a child. But Laura has an attack of conscience when she realizes that she is leading her best friend Donna (Moira Kelly) down the same rocky road. Leland, however, discovers Laura's nocturnal debauchery when, during a business trip out-of-town, his mistress for a sexual tryst sets him up with his own daughter. In a fit of jealous rage, Leland follows Laura as she travels to a sex party in an abandoned railroad car. Consumed by insatiable longing, Leland transforms himself into Bob, with tragic results for Laura and her friends. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Rod McCall wrote and directed this slice-of-life melodrama about a woman in a mid-life crisis who struggles to preserve her home and family. Sally Kirkland stars as Jenny, who must deal with a serious problem involving her errant husband Henry (James Brolin) as she prepares for the wedding of her youngest daughter Kat (Renee Estevez). Henry has taken off for New Mexico with his most recent lover and business associate Patsy (Laura Johnson), where they plan to pay off Jenny's mortgage, sell the property and split the money. Meanwhile, Jenny's other daughter Samantha (Pamela Gidley) arrives at the wedding with her life in an uproar -- she is undecided whether to stay in New York City and pursue her classical music career or head back home and marry handsome cowboy Bill (Michael Moore). Henry arrives at the wedding only to be slapped by Jenny for his callousness. Afterwards, Patsy, tired of all the internecine family squabbles, denounces Henry for his cavalier ways and threatens to keep their proposed business deal (an auto dealership) all to herself. But heading in the same direction is Jenny and Samantha, with Jenny chaffing at the bit, preparing to let Henry have it in a final cathartic confrontation. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Embracing the supposed nihilism and cynicism of the "slacker" generation, S.F.W. (1995) caused nary a blip on the media-saturated cultural radar screen that it criticized. Stephen Dorff stars as Cliff Spab, an aimless, hard-drinking youth. Spab becomes a national hero when he is one of several people held hostage by gun-toting terrorists in a convenience store. He doesn't care much about his own life or anything else, and his attitude of "So f---ing what?" translates into debates with his terrorist captors and gloomy pronouncements that charm viewers. After a month-long siege, a crisis erupts when the store runs out of beer and junk food, so Cliff finds himself a free man whose celebrity image is emblazoned on t-shirts and whose presence is requested at a rock concert where he is required to do nothing other than appear. In the meantime, Spab's girlfriend Wendy (Reese Witherspoon) becomes a ubiquitous talk show guest. Ostensibly a satire of the celebrity-obsessed culture of the 1990s, the film was withheld from distribution for a year because of thematic similarities to Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

In this low-budget screwball-mystery, the death of an L.A. woman leads to a surreal murder investigation on the outer fringes of la-la land. When Molly McMannis (Justine Bateman) turns up dead, still impaled with the murder weapon -- a carrot -- the police launch a probe into the colorful world Molly inhabited. The suspects range from her ex-con brother to her roommate to her high-strung friend (Heather Graham). But a more likely culprit lurks among the ranks of a therapy group full of off-the-wall serial killers and the shrinks who coddle them. The fetishistic police detectives -- including sadistic interrogator Angela Pierce (Jill Hennessy) -- prove as disturbing as the people they're investigating. In fact, their unorthodox procedures leave the door open for the killer to strike again. Written, produced, and directed by Jordan Alan, who previously helmed the similarly offbeat Love and Happiness, Kiss and Tell features a who's who of obscure and indie Hollywood talent, including veteran actor Lewis Arquette and his three famous sons. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Scratch the Surface is former teen model turned documentary filmmaker Tara Fitzpatrick's examination of experiences in the fashion industry, and those of her friends and family. Fitzpatrick interviews her mother, aunt, and grandmother, and her sister Tracy Fitzpatrick, all of whom were models. She interviews her contemporaries, Phoebe Cates and her sister, Valerie, Whitney Houston, Brooke Shields, Pamela Gidley, and Lisanne Falk. They tell anecdotes about their experiences, offer their impressions of the business, and discuss the impact of growing up in the public eye. Eileen Ford of the Ford Modeling Agency, John Casablancas of Elite Modeling, former Seventeen Magazine editor Midge Richardson, and makeup artist Bonnie Maller also give their perspective, which often differs substantially from that of the former models. Supermodel Bridget Hall, at the height of her career when the film was made, gives a less detached view of that world. Most of these young women decry the powerful influence of beauty magazines and advertisements on American culture, and each seems to have at least one horror story about how she was treated. But almost all of them acknowledge that their exposure to the business at such a young age ended up having some kind of positive impact on their lives. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

In this exercise in horror, something strange is out in the woods, and it's taking a terrible toll on the nearby town -- animals are being brutally killed, people are suddenly going missing, and mutant beasts are attacking random passers-by. Can anything be done to stop it? ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Murder, revenge, and sex are at the center of this two-fisted suspense thriller by young writer/director Jeff Santo. The film opens in Cancun, Mexico, with a quintet of shady characters soaking in the sun by the pool. The group's ringleader is Jack (Richard Tyson), a crooked used-car dealer who has a penchant for roughing up children. Others in the group include Freddie (Flea), Jack's thick-skulled sidekick; geeky Art the accountant; Niko, the group's muscle bound meathead; and finally the unassuming Vic. Much of the film focuses around Creed, Vic's club where Jack invested a quarter of a million dollars as a not-so-silent partner. Art is sent by Jack to Creed to check out the books, but the accountant instead ends up in an alley bleeding to death. Vic quickly disposes of the body with a hacksaw and a blowtorch. Meanwhile, Niko and Jack are vying for the attention of Rebecca, a well-endowed floozy, at the same time as Jack's desperate wife looks to exact her own revenge. Scheming and intrigue eventually boils over into a bloody confrontation. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide