There are two SATURDAY NIGHT FEVERs. One is the famous SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER that is now an essential part of the cultural identity of the late 1970s: John Travolta in big shoes and a white suit sticking his finger in the air. Constant airings of this FEVER on basic cable over the course of 25 years have kept the film in the public eye, but only at a disservice to the other SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, the bleak, R-rated film about a loser from Brooklyn whose only escape from his dead-end life and his scumbag friends is the one night of the week when he gets to dance.

I'm not so naive as to believe that SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER is the only movie that's ever been butchered for television viewing, but I'm also confident enough to declare that few have ever been butchered this badly. This is not a television print with the profanity overdubbed; on television, FEVER is nearly ten minutes shorter, with large important pieces of the movie removed, including a great deal of the characters' racism and sexism and, therefore, their complexity (For all his looks and charms, Travolta's Tony Manero in this SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER is basically just a really likable asshole).

As a result of the television cuts, FEVER isn't just a tamer movie, it's also a drastically weaker one that's basically only worth watching for the fifteen minutes of Travolta's remarkable dancing. On DVD, FEVER puts the dancing sequences in their intended context, surrounded by a world of darkness. In proper form, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER seems to harken back to the musicals of the Depression like GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933, where people came together on the stage to triumph over economic failures through dance.

Based on an unremarkable article from New York magazine entitled "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night," SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER is the story of a couple of weeks in the lives of a bunch of Italian kids in Brooklyn. Travolta's Tony is their Darwinian leader - he's the best looking and the best dancer and the best fighter. He rules the 2001 Odyssey disco, where he practically has to fight the women off with a stick (one begs for the chance to simply wipe his sweaty brow). The rest of the week Tony has a dead-end job in a paint store, and spends his nights quarreling with his overbearing mother and unemployed father (played with ethnic perfection by Julie Bovasso and Sam Coppola).

The nice thing about Travolta's dancing is that as impressive as he is in his solo number (performed to "You Should Be Dancing," one of six Bee Gees tracks on FEVER's soundtrack), he is not perfect. Somehow Travolta and his dance teachers managed to convincingly create the picture of a guy who is a good enough dancer to become the star of a tiny club in Brooklyn but still awkward enough at points to suggest that he's totally self-taught and not a professional.

Tony's practicing these moves in preparation for 2001's upcoming dance contest, and decides to team up with a girl he spies there one Saturday night named Stephanie, whose job as a secretary over the bridge in Manhattan excites Tony. Stephanie is played by an actress named Karen Lynn Gorney, whose sole credit of note is in this picture. I used to believe Gorney was FEVER's one significant weakness; she's not a great actress, and she's certainly not as good a dancer as the character requires her to be. But in another way, it’s possible that Tony’s attraction to Stephanie blinds him to the truth. He thinks she's a sexy chick who escaped his Brooklyn neighborhood, so he cannot see her sub par dancing. Later, we learn that Stephanie has made it in Manhattan by -- at least in part -- sleeping with someone in her office, which has the opposite effect on Tony (probably because this seems exactly like something one of the girls from his neighborhood would do to secure financial security).

The Bee Gee's music in the film, most of which was written specifically for the project, are unqualified masterpieces (hopefully we're well beyond the point where we have to maintain the irrational posture that all disco sucks). Everyone knows the opening credits, where Travolta walks a cocky strut in sync with "Stayin' Alive" but few remember that the song is used again later in the film, in the moments immediately after the climactic contest at 2001, when Tony is at his lowest point; moments later one of his friends will be dead. "Stayin' Alive" indeed.

The songs have seemingly simple messages, and on the "Behind The Music" that's included on FEVER's DVD everyone insists that the songs brilliantly propel the story, but they're actually placed in the film by director John Badham in ways that turn them into ironic comments on the action. The romantic "How Deep Is Your Love" comes while Tony wanders the subway system, lost and distraught, and then again after he has agreed with Stephanie to become friends, not lovers.

It is these moments from the real SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, with a heartbreaking ending that gives the character everything he wants at the exact moment he realizes he no longer wants it, that make it a classic. The movie only works when Tony's dancing is surrounded by horror that makes some scenes painful for the audience to endure. Those dances aren't just meant as his escape, but as ours as well.

IF YOU LIKED SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, CHECK OUT: MEAN STREETS (1973), Martin Scorsese’s breakthrough film about a bunch of young New York crooks. With its comparable themes and visual style, and equally impressive acting and screenplay, it would make a great double bill with SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER.

THE BAD

1984's sci-fi bomb THE ICE PIRATES tries very hard -- too hard, really -- to be a lighthearted action adventure. The finished result is a spirit-killing chore: few movies ask so much and give back so little. I suppose it had the best intentions, but you know what they say about good intentions: they can still lead to a terrible movie like ICE PIRATES.

The film is centered around an impossible premise that grows more and more infuriating as screenwriters Stewart Raffill and Stanford Sherman pile more and more inconsistencies upon it. Robert Urich plays Jason a space pirate, which is not a particularly cool name for a pirate, but nevermind. In his future, water is incredibly scare and very valuable and he takes on a quest to find a new supply to save humanity.

Well and good in theory, but Raffill and Sherman were clearly not paying attention to their own script. If there no water in the future, why isn't anyone ever thirsty? And why are everyone’s clothes clean? What are they washing them in? And why are the characters always eating apples? Don't you need water to grow apples? And if you've engineered a way to grow apples without water, wouldn't that imply you could figure out a way to create water? Come to think of it, if you could create advance engine systems that transport people faster than the speed of light, how much more difficult could it be to figure out a way to synthesize water?

In ICE PIRATES' most obnoxious scene Urich and his costar Mary Crosby share a complete unerotic love scene where they get it on in a weird compartment that projects idyllic images behind them; a lo-fi version of the Star Trek holodeck, basically. Then as their love becomes more stormy, I guess, the images become darker and eventually clouds form and rain falls on them. Rain...which...means...WATER! WATER! STOP NECKING AND OPEN YOUR MOUTHS AND DRINK IT YOU CRETINS! If this is all an elaborate joke to point how silly the idea of scarce water resources, it's as funny as a knock-knock joke.

Speaking of which, here's one I just made up:

Knock-knock.
Who's there?
Shitty movie!
Shitty movie who?
THE ICE PIRATES!

You know a movie is bad when you actively root for the heroes to be castrated when they are captured and seemingly turned into eunuchs (Sadly it was all just a clever ruse to allow them to do some undercover pirate work). And though the level of intellect showcased by the rest of the movie should have made this fact completely unsurprising, it is worth mentioning that there is almost no ice in the film called THE ICE PIRATES.

Though it has a worthless script, terrible special effects THE ICE PIRATES has an impressive cast. Urich is supported by Ron Perlman, Angelica Huston, and John Carradine who must have been lured in for substantial paychecks. Best of all Bruce Vilanch, the chubby bearded (not to mention mildly flamboyant) future star of "Hollywood Squares," appears as a planetary overlord who exists as a disembodied head protected by a legion of scantily-clad women and pet lynx. I would make a joke about all this, but it seems unnecessary doesn't it?

I suspect a lot of people watched this movie as children and thought it was exciting fun. If true, this proves my theory that all children are idiots. I also suspect some may choose to watch it again for a bit of nostalgia for the early 1980s. I have a better suggestion: move on.

INSTEAD OF THE ICE PIRATES, CHECK OUT: PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL (2003), whose ghost pirates kick all sorts of ass on lame old ice pirates.

THE UGLY

In the late 1970s Clint Eastwood went out on a limb.

Despite the protests of his managers and advisers who said the film would be a disaster his audience would not understand, he personally decided the best thing for his career was to make a buddy comedy about a guy and his pet monkey.

His advisers were totally right. EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE looks more like something that would end a politician's career than a mainstream Hollywood film. But Eastwood was right too. Somehow, despite the film's lack of a compelling story, a roster of peculiar characters including a legion of gay Nazi bikers, and the pervasive stench of career-ending failure for everyone involved, the American audience loved -- loved!! -- this movie. According to IMDb, LOOSE grossed more than $80 million 1978 dollars, and it even spawned a popular sequel (cleverly titled ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN). Even the decade's rampant drug use doesn't excuse the sort of success which LOOSE undeservedly enjoyed.

Eastwood's character is Philo Beddoe, a redneck who lives with his mother (Ruth Gordon) and his ape buddy Clyde. Now, if I was sitting in a bar, minding my own business and enjoying a fine domestic brew, I would be at least somewhat surprised to see a tall dude in a cowboy hat sidle up to me with a large orangutan hanging from his back. I would at least say something like "Hey, where'd you get the monkey?" or maybe "Dude, you do realize you have an ape hanging off your back right?"

But no one in EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE is surprised in the least that Philo has an ape. Even the movie isn't impressed by Clyde; one would expect that it would want to explore how a guy like Clint Eastwood wound up becoming the guardian to a waddling zoo animal. But when LOOSE begins, Philo already has Clyde. Finally, a half hour later, he casually explains to his new girlfriend where he happened to come across his hairy buddy (Turns out the zoo didn't want him so he took him off their hands). If you hadn't seen the opening credits (with a delightful theme song about how things end up coming every which way but loose, whatever that means), you would swear you'd joined this movie already in progress.

The girlfriend is named Lynn (played by Eastwood's lady at the time Sondra Locke). She is a country singer in one of the many bars Philo frequents and he takes a liking to her just before she up and disappears. Philo piles Clyde and his human chum Orville (Geoffrey Lewis) into his RV and heads off across the country afterwards. Along the way he earns his living exactly as you'd expect he would: by participating in underground pit fighting.

Wait, WHAT?!?

Yes it's another completely peculiar trait that is treated benignly by director James Fargo (who also made the schlock-rock classic VOYAGE OF THE ROCK ALIENS). As strange as things get, no one on screen or behind the camera so much as bats an eyelash. Instead, they fill EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE with a parade of useless timewasting scenes (the Philo-follows-Lynn plot isn't quite complex enough to carry the film). An hour and fifteen minutes in, LOOSE has an all-important target practice sequence. Eight minutes later, the crucial jogging scene. Three minutes later, it's kayaking. Is this a Clint Eastwood movie or a goddamn Eastern Mountain Sports commercial?

I say EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE is an inexplicable joy ride of absurdity and stupidity ("stupurdity" if you will). 1978 said EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE was a hilarious comedy. Who are you going to believe?

IF YOU LIKED EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE, CHECK OUT: PLANET OF THE APES (1968). Charleton Heston plays an astronaut who lands on a planet filled with super-intelligent monkeys. One can only imagine what would have happened if Eastwood had played the part instead.