'Cloak & Dagger' - What? A GOOD Video Game Movie?

Hello, and welcome back to Second Chances where I'm loading up the maligned and forgotten and pressing the "Start" button.

As far as I'm concerned, the 1980s were one of the greatest decades in movie history. I'm not saying that just because of the spectacle that came from new special effects or because of more chances being taken on crazy ideas like a time-traveling DeLorean (Back to the Future) or ice cream that eats people from the inside out (The Stuff). The 1980s were great because the movies of that decade (for the most part) respected their audience. That was especially true of family films. Unlike family films today which, outside of Pixar's stuff, tend to treat kids like little idiots with spines made of jelly and attention spans of moths, family films of the 80s actually challenged kids, got them to think critically, and weren't afraid to scare them a little. Look at some of the all-time classics from that decade including Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, Return to Oz, The Secret of NIMH, and especially The NeverEnding Story (which is my #3 favorite movie of all time). Another movie that deserves to be on that pedestal is the 1984 suspense thriller Cloak & Dagger.

(Please excuse the use of this grainy TV spot. I couldn't find the original theatrical trailer anywhere. That's how obscure this movie is.)

Yes, you read that right, a suspense thriller that's family-friendly. We're talking the genre that brought Hannibal Lecter and Annie Wilkes to the world! Yet, here we are with a legitimate suspense film with a PG rating and a child protagonist. Those who've kept up with my work on Vocal remember that I placed this movie at #24 on my favorite movies list with plans to go into detail later. Well, that time has come now. Time to gush over a thirty-five-year-old film that deserves a lot more attention than it got.

Cloak & Dagger was the fourth adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's short story "The Boy Who Cried Murder." The boy here is named Davey, played by Henry Thomas who is best known as Elliot from E.T. He'd lost his mother recently and hardly gets to spend time with his father Hal (Dabney Coleman), who's a Technical Sergeant at Kelly Air Force Base. To cope, he gets lost in the tabletop and arcade spy game of Cloak & Dagger with the game's protagonist Jack Flack (also played by Dabney Coleman) becoming his imaginary friend. He goes on a pretend spy mission with his best friend Kim (Christina Nigra) to get game catalogs for their mutual friend Morris (William Forsythe). Soon, an Atari 5200 cartridge loaded with stolen plans falls into Davey's lap, and he's on the run from spies who have no qualms about shooting a kid or two to get it back.

Yes, you read that right. Despite this being a family film, it pulls no punches when it comes to ramping up tension. The antagonists, led by the chilling Mr. Rice (Michael Murphy), do spend the majority of the movie trying to kill an 11-year-old kid and his friends. Despite it being a family film, director Richard Franklin (a known devotee of Alfred Hitchcock) treated this like a legitimate suspense thriller. The cinematography was absolutely fantastic; the climatic scenes on San Antonio's famous River Walk are absolute nail-biters due to how they were shot. All this is aided by an excellent and haunting score provided by Brian May (no, not the guitarist from Queen, the guy who scored the Mad Max films).

The performances are largely great. Henry Thomas is believable as a kid who absorbed too many spy stories, and Christina Nigra played her exasperation at Davey's imagination perfectly (though a couple of her line deliveries are a little poor). Dabney Coleman deserves major props for his performances. Though he is mostly known for his sillier parts in 9 to 5 and The Beverly Hillbillies, he proved he can handle more serious material quite well as well as easily bouncing back to silliness when he's Jack Flack. The antagonists aren't multifaceted, but they are effectively menacing. They even provide a couple of moments that can leave audiences transfixed (which I absolutely won't spoil). This movie also makes excellent use of my hometown of San Antonio with excellent scenes on the River Walk and at the Windsor Park Mall (though the scenes inside the Alamo had to be shot on a soundstage recreation rather than in the real thing). I actually get a little homesick watching this movie.

As I see it, there are only a couple of problems with this movie. Like another 80s thriller I talked about, Gotcha!, this one is effectively outdated. Unlike how Gotcha! became outdated by changes in the geopolitical climate due to the end of the Cold War, Cloak & Dagger became outdated by technological advancements. The whole thrust of the plot is on the idea of piggybacking stolen military data onto the ROM chip of an ordinary Atari 5200 cartridge. While I'm sure there can be a way to do something similar with an SD card for the Nintendo Switch, with all the other ways of smuggling data that exist thanks to the Internet, I can't see spies going to that kind of trouble today. There are also a few moments that stretch credibility a bit too much. Just what kind of range do Davey and Kim's walkie-talkies have? CBs at the time would've had trouble transmitting from the Windsor Park Mall all the way to Alamo Heights! Mr. Rice does go into a cliche villain monologue near the end rather than just shooting Davey (though, to be fair, it was a very pants-wetting monologue). Hell, since I am also a retro game reviewer, I even have to call bullcrap on the depictions of WORKING Atari 5200 controllers in the movie!

Cloak & Dagger is one of the best video game movies in existence, mainly because the titular game is just a plot point rather than the basis. (For the record, I have played the game at a local arcade, and it is a very good expansion on Robotron's ideas.) Richard Franklin was more concerned with creating a great suspense thriller than a promotion for the arcade game, and he succeeded! Unfortunately, the movie didn't even make $10 million at the box office (despite decent reviews), and it largely disappeared. Universal weren't even that concerned when they put it on DVD. It doesn't have a trailer, subtitles, or even a main menu! However, it's still a fantastic thriller from that wonderful time in history when movies for kids didn't talk down to them. I watched it again for probably the 40th time this week, and I still enjoy it. It is on DVD and various streaming services like Amazon Prime. Check it out, and see how a kids movie should be.

What do you think? Any other movies that deserve a Second Chance? Let me know, and take care!