I always felt bad for Corey Haim. I'm not sure what he did to piss off God or Hollywood or whoever, but if you look at his IMDB page, he went from scoring big with 80s classics Lucas and The Lost Boys, to License To Drive and Dream a Little Dream (which, okay, not great movies, but they shouldn't have been career-killers, either), and then he went right off the cliff into straight-to-video obscurity.
Granted, most 80s teen actors didn't fare especially well once they could no longer play high school students, but it seemed like Haim (and of course, his fellow Corey, Feldman) got the really awful scripts that even the Judd Nelsons of the world passed on.
Some of them actually weren't half-bad, though. And because 10, 15 years ago, HBO was a lot more willing to run crappy, low budget movies than it was once it became "It's Not TV. It's HBO," I saw a fair number of them. (Not to mention other great films like Body Slam, starring Dirk Benedict and Roddy Piper, Miracle Beach, starring Dean Cameron and Ami Dolenz, and Troll 2 starring absolutely no one of any importance, although Sonny Bono was in the first one.)
So in memory of a great thespian taken before his time, here's my tribute to the oeuvre of Corey Haim.
1) The Double 0 Kid (1992)
Haim stars as an intern at the CIA or something. His boss asks him to take a package to California, where he runs into the always-entertaining Wallace Shawn, playing a Bond villain-esque psychopath whose gimmick is that he has a video game arcade in his basement where the games kill you if you can't beat them. Nicole Eggert plays Haim's spunky love interest, and Brigitte Nielsen plays some sort of dominatrix working for Shawn. Or maybe I'm confusing that with another movie she was in where she played a dominatrix. I'm pretty sure Brigitte Nielsen played dominatrices in almost all of her later films.
2) Fast Getaway II (1994)
Forget Fast Getaway, unless you're either really hard up for entertainment or a huge Cynthia Rothrock fan. In Fast Getaway II, Haim's character has moved on from robbing banks with his dad, to working as a security specialist with his hot female friend. I'm not sure I'd take security advice from a couple of kids in their mid-20s, but they seemed to be doing okay. At least until Rothrock shows up as the bad guy--er, gal--and starts kung-fu-ing stuff, prompting Haim's dad (Leo Rossi) to break out of prison to save his son. There's a lot of shooting and car chases, but sadly not enough to justify making a Fast Getaway III.
3) Demolition High (1996)
Remember how after Die Hard came out, for years, other action movies tried to replicate its formula? Some of the more notable attempts were Passenger 57 (Die Hard on a plane), Under Siege (Die Hard on a boat), Under Siege 2 (Die Hard on a train), and Toy Soldiers (Die Hard in a school). Well, someone evidently decided that last concept still had some juice, so they made this, finally giving Haim legit action hero cred. You're probably wondering if they made a sequel called Demolition University, and the answer is yes.
4) Fever Lake (1996)
The dynamic duo of Corey Haim and Mario Lopez star in this horror film about a bunch of college students who head up to a lake (a fevered lake, if you will) for vacation. As I recall, this film is mainly notable for bucking the horror movie tradition of gradually picking off stupid teen characters one by one, and leaves them alive until the last 15 minutes or so, at which point all of them get slaughtered. Oh, uh, SPOILER ALERT! Sorry.
5) Never Too Late (1997)
A rare dramatic turn for Haim found him in a supporting role alongside Academy Award winner Olympia Dukakis. Okay, I didn't actually see this one. I was just channel surfing one day and came across a scene with Corey Haim and Olympia Dukakis, and was sort of stunned. I'm sure it's worth watching, though.
So RIP, Corey. Drugs are a bitch, Hollywood's a cruel place, and you probably deserved a better career than the one you had. But you were Lucas, and at the end of that movie, you got the best slow clap ever. So you'll always be aces in my book.
Granted, most 80s teen actors didn't fare especially well once they could no longer play high school students, but it seemed like Haim (and of course, his fellow Corey, Feldman) got the really awful scripts that even the Judd Nelsons of the world passed on.
Some of them actually weren't half-bad, though. And because 10, 15 years ago, HBO was a lot more willing to run crappy, low budget movies than it was once it became "It's Not TV. It's HBO," I saw a fair number of them. (Not to mention other great films like Body Slam, starring Dirk Benedict and Roddy Piper, Miracle Beach, starring Dean Cameron and Ami Dolenz, and Troll 2 starring absolutely no one of any importance, although Sonny Bono was in the first one.)
So in memory of a great thespian taken before his time, here's my tribute to the oeuvre of Corey Haim.
1) The Double 0 Kid (1992)
Haim stars as an intern at the CIA or something. His boss asks him to take a package to California, where he runs into the always-entertaining Wallace Shawn, playing a Bond villain-esque psychopath whose gimmick is that he has a video game arcade in his basement where the games kill you if you can't beat them. Nicole Eggert plays Haim's spunky love interest, and Brigitte Nielsen plays some sort of dominatrix working for Shawn. Or maybe I'm confusing that with another movie she was in where she played a dominatrix. I'm pretty sure Brigitte Nielsen played dominatrices in almost all of her later films.
2) Fast Getaway II (1994)
Forget Fast Getaway, unless you're either really hard up for entertainment or a huge Cynthia Rothrock fan. In Fast Getaway II, Haim's character has moved on from robbing banks with his dad, to working as a security specialist with his hot female friend. I'm not sure I'd take security advice from a couple of kids in their mid-20s, but they seemed to be doing okay. At least until Rothrock shows up as the bad guy--er, gal--and starts kung-fu-ing stuff, prompting Haim's dad (Leo Rossi) to break out of prison to save his son. There's a lot of shooting and car chases, but sadly not enough to justify making a Fast Getaway III.
3) Demolition High (1996)
Remember how after Die Hard came out, for years, other action movies tried to replicate its formula? Some of the more notable attempts were Passenger 57 (Die Hard on a plane), Under Siege (Die Hard on a boat), Under Siege 2 (Die Hard on a train), and Toy Soldiers (Die Hard in a school). Well, someone evidently decided that last concept still had some juice, so they made this, finally giving Haim legit action hero cred. You're probably wondering if they made a sequel called Demolition University, and the answer is yes.
4) Fever Lake (1996)
The dynamic duo of Corey Haim and Mario Lopez star in this horror film about a bunch of college students who head up to a lake (a fevered lake, if you will) for vacation. As I recall, this film is mainly notable for bucking the horror movie tradition of gradually picking off stupid teen characters one by one, and leaves them alive until the last 15 minutes or so, at which point all of them get slaughtered. Oh, uh, SPOILER ALERT! Sorry.
5) Never Too Late (1997)
A rare dramatic turn for Haim found him in a supporting role alongside Academy Award winner Olympia Dukakis. Okay, I didn't actually see this one. I was just channel surfing one day and came across a scene with Corey Haim and Olympia Dukakis, and was sort of stunned. I'm sure it's worth watching, though.
So RIP, Corey. Drugs are a bitch, Hollywood's a cruel place, and you probably deserved a better career than the one you had. But you were Lucas, and at the end of that movie, you got the best slow clap ever. So you'll always be aces in my book.
3 comments:
clap.........clap......clap......clap.......clap.....Clap....Clap Clap....CLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAPCLAP!!!!!!!
Four words: Prayer of the Rollerboys.
The loss of Haim is really sad, but not a complete surprise. Here's hoping his good pal, Feldman, steps in to start production on "Demolition Grad School: Magna Cum Louder"
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