cult film freak: JOHN G. AVILDSEN'S CINEMA HELL IN 'A NIGHT IN HEAVEN'

Year: 1983 Cast: Leslie Ann Warren, Christopher Atkins, Robert Logan Rating: **1/2 Camp Value: ***1/2

Why would a movie centering on a young male stripper and an uptight, slightly older woman begin with – and continue through the entire opening credit sequence on – an average guy who works at NASA?

Leslie w/ Deborah Rush

Leslie Ann Warren’s mousy housewife Faye Hanlon is married to the NASA engineer: she’s who he comes home to. Robert Logan plays Whitney Hanlon; he's been down lately... not giving his wife a good time after hours, or wanting to work for the military (sound familiar?). She’s got a wild sister, played by the always cute and energetic Deborah Rush, and both wind up spending a night at… Let’s back up a bit...

Faye is a community college speech teacher/professor who fails a student too flaky and optimistic for his own good. That would be hot property Christopher Atkins, famous for his role opposite Brooke Shields in THE BLUE LAGOON and, as Ricky “The Rocket” Monroe he appears in a space suit on stage, eventually stripped down to the bare essentials and providing special attention to women who give him an F during the daytime… This is how our May/August romantic-interests connect, and yet their windswept romance is hardly enough to base an entire movie on...

Leslie Ann Warren and Christopher Atkins in A NIGHT IN HEAVEN

The problem with this RAZZIE nominated clunker directed by ROCKY Oscar winner John G. Avildsen (partnered with otherwise talented NASHVILLE writer Jan Tewkesbury) is there’s no chemistry between the leads, nor is there a point to their relationship.

Signed by L.A. Warren

Meanwhile, the guy who opens the film winds up losing his job, buying a gun and scaring the piss out of the womanizing boy toy (the NASA worker facing off with a dude named Rocket, get it?)...

Which provides Atkins an opportunity to really act as he cries naked on the deck of a boat, but alas, he winds up embarrassing himself more than ever. (Farewell, movie career, you're headed to television.) What’s really impressive is how they make the gorgeous Leslie Ann Warren so homely in the beginning before the sexy/sultry transition for two “heavenly” nights...

That first strip club outing and then in a hotel room during a steamy yet ponderous sex scene between lovers more suited to a fantasy driven porno – at least as the simplistic storyline goes. It’s when pointless characters, like Rocket’s hardworking waitress mother and his banal actress girlfriend – and completely useless subplots are added – that the pace really meanders, turning what could have been a guilty pleasure into an exercise in humiliation, for the actors and especially editor/director John G. Avildsen. But a year later he'd redeem himself ROCKY style by waxing on and off with that winning underdog sports theme in THE KARATE KID. Which couldn't have happened at a better time.