Semiquincentennial Movie Project #29: Cloak & Dagger

 

The Semiquincentennial  Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).

 

Week #29: Texas -

 

 

 

The state of Texas was established on Dec. 29, 1845 

Details about Texas:

State bird: mockingbird

State flower: bluebonnet

State tree: pecan

Additional historical trivia:

There is a radio station in Waco who's call letters are WACO. Only one other city in the U.S. has that distinction: WARE in Ware, PA.

The first ever rodeo was hosted in Pecos in 1883.

Texas has the largest and longest-running State Fair in the US.

Maybe not the longest running college rivalry, but the Texas - Oklahoma Red River Rivalry is (probably) the most watched annual football game.  

Dr Pepper was invented in Waco.

The first Six Flags amusement park opened in Texas, so named because at one time or another Texas has been a country under six nations (Spain, France, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the Conferderate States of America and the USA).

Austin is home to the largest urban bat colony in the US.  

Texas has the largest state capitol building ("Everything is bigger in Texas" is not just hubris).

The King Ranch in Kingsville is larger than the state of Rhode Island. (Again...)

The world's largest set of cowboy boots, 35 ft. tall, stands outside North Star Mall in San Antonio (ditto)

There are 15 states combined that could fit inside Texas' borders (Maybe I'm overdoing it here...) 

The Alamo in San Antonio does NOT have a basement (PeeWee Herman made me add that one...) 

Famous people born in Texas: Willie Nelson (of course), Gene Autry, Beyonce, George Strait, Buddy Holly, Janis Joplin, Lance Armstrong, Nolan Ryan, Rogers Hornsby, Brittney Griner, Drew Brees, Earl Campbell, Vince Young, Larry McMurtry, Steve Martin, Woody Harrelson, Matthew McConaughey, Carol Burnett, Tommy Lee Jones, Sissy Spacek, Dabney Coleman (see movie below), Henry Thomas (again, see movie below) and US Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Lyndon B. Johnson 

Note: You can say I'm overdoing it this time on trivia, but Texas IS my home state, so...

 

 

Cloak & Dagger (1984): 

Growing up is tough. It can be especially tough, as a kid, when your mother is dead and your father is somewhat distracted by being a single parent trying to raise a kid on his own while trying to work a job.

There is a tendency, at least as far as films go, for the kid to dive deep into a fantasy world, with the requisite imaginary friend. At this point in my life I really can't remember if I had any imaginary friends. But then, I had both of my parents still around until I was well into my 50's, and a sister who is still with me. I had a stable childhood, and although I did not have very many real friends that I palled around with, I don't think I would have had to create an imaginary friend to accompany me on my "adventures". And even if I did, I seriously doubt that imaginary friend would have gotten me into the kind of trouble that Jack Flack gets young Davey (Henry Thomas) into.

 

Davey is a typical kid on most levels. He is heavily into video games, and even into role-playing games. I should point out here at this point that I was a product of an era that preceded Dungeons and Dragons and the rest of the RPG games that flooded the childhood experience in the late 70's and early 80's (and even to this day). I might have been attracted to it had I had a different upbringing. Note: In my experience I was well into my 20's before I was ever introduced to actually playing Dungeons and Dragons. Being raised in a fundamentalist Baptist church household, even the mention of the game brought up serious religious problems, because D&D and the like were considered doorways into Satanism. I've since become more enlightened. D&D and the like are just harmless fun. 

I imagine Davey plays D&D, but his primary interest is in spy role-playing. As such, his hero is Jack Flack (Dabney Coleman), a dime store knockoff of a James Bond type spy. Jack is a dead ringer for Davey's father, Hal (also played by Coleman). It seems to me that Jack is the character that Davey wishes his father really was, thus emphasizing the fact that Jack and Hal are played by Coleman. 

 

 

But Davey's obsession with spy games takes a dark turn when his friend, Morris (William Forsythe), sends Davey on a "mission" to the local tech lab, (ostensibly to get him out of Morris hair, I think). 

 

Davey takes his friend, Kim (Christina Negri) with him on this mission, still trying to play out this spy game for what it's worth. Except that Davey runs into a real spy game. Three guys kill off a laboratory worker who, before he dies, passes off a video game cartridge called Cloak & Dagger to Davey, with the mission now being that Davey get the game to the FBI.

 

It turns out that the game cartridge is disguised as a regular copy of a video game, but has some hidden data that the bad guys are looking to get their hands on. Remember this is 1984, so even though they never come right out at say it, the implication is that the hidden data is going to be handed of to enemies of the US (probably the Russians, who were in the middle of the Cold War with the US).

 

The bad guys, who are played by Michael Murphy, Eloy Casados and Tim Rossovich, are unscrupulous, to say the least. They have no intention of letting even a little kid stand in the way of the big payday they are expecting. Much of the film involves these three trying to retrieve the game cartridge and kill off (yes, I said "kill off") Davey. These unscrupulous characters even are trying to take out young Kim. (Ye gods!)

 

Over the course of the film Davey's imaginary friend keeps helping young Davey with "advice" better suited for a real adult spy rather than a youthful wannabee. It's hard to actually like Jack, since his main goal seems to be to stay the course of the spy he is supposed to be without any care or remorse for his young companion. Often he puts young Davey in extreme danger. But his goal of getting the game cartridge away from the bad guys takes precedence over any such trivialities as "child endangerment".

 

But since Jack is a product of Davey's imagination, perhaps all the blame can't be put on Jack. More fault could be handed of to Hal who seems a bit clueless how to raise a kid on his own. And then, since Jack is a carbon copy of Hal in Davey's mind, perhaps Davey is just trying to create his own father figure who is much more adventurous than the dull air traffic controller Hal is.

To his credit, Davey gradually matures on his own, realizing that Jack is not the sort of friend that he really needs.  But, since he does still have to do something about the un-American forces that are determined to win at all costs, he does have to grow up pretty fast. He has to. At one point he is faced with a situation where he has to either kill or be killed.

 

There are a couple of twists that I found extremely interesting in this film. For one thing, the three hoodlums have a backing that was almost unexpected. At least, at the beginning. It may be obvious to you before very long into the film that not everybody in this film is exactly who they seem to be. The surprise may be, however, the actors who played the parts. I bet my sister, who is a fan of old movies, would be shocked that a couple of "good guys" could play evil characters.

Cloak & Dagger was released in the summer of 1984. It was, in fact, released on the same day as Red Dawn, and with competition from such blockbusters as Purple Rain and The Karate Kid, as well as Star Trek III and Revenge of the Nerds, which were (probably) still in the theaters, it probably wasn't going to have much of an impact in the first place. The main reason, it seems, for it's August release, was that the big event was the Summer Olympics, and since most kids would have not been very interested in that event, it was thought that the theater would be pulling a larger crowd of kids.

Unfortunately that didn't happen. It only pulled in about $10 million in box office receipts. And the expected tie-in with the video game fell through when it was only released as an arcade game and was not immediately put out for home use. This despite the fact that the movie hinges on this Atari Cloak & Dagger video game that was supposed to be a release for the home video game market.

 

Henry Thomas, the star of Cloak & Dagger, was just coming off a star making role as the best friend of a creature from another world (E.T.: The Extraterrestrial). His career as a child actor was fairly limited, only appearing in a handful of films, but unlike other child actors of the day, he was able to transition to adult roles later in life. Recently he has appeared in no less than three movies based on stories by Stephen King (Gerald's Game, Doctor Sleep and Pet Semetary: Bloodlines).

Dabney Coleman, who passed away in 2024, had a prolific career. You may remember him as the sexist boss Franklin Hart in 9 to 5, or as the soap opera director in Tootsie. He was the murderer in one of my favorite Columbo movies in 1991 (Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star). 

Michael Murphy is a familiar face, having appeared in such films as the big screen version of M*A*S*H*, Nashville and Batman Returns, but possibly may be more familiar as a voice. He was the narrator of the PBS series of "American Experience". Tim Rossovich, who started out as a professional athlete in the NFL, often cropped up in film and TV in the late 70's and 80's. 

Christina Nigra may look vaguely familiar. If you saw Twilight Zone: The Movie you may remember her as the annoying little brat who keeps pestering John Lithgow in the "Nightmare  at 20,000 Feet" segment, or possibly as Evie Garland's best friend in the TV series Out of This World.

The cast is rounded out with the appearance of a couple of classic movie and TV stars, John McIntyre and Jeanette Nolan, as an elderly couple who may or may not be on Davey's side in his adventure.  

For pure entertainment, I think Cloak & Dagger is a decent movie, It somehow is able to appeal to both the kid and the "kid at heart" and genuinely holds the viewer's interest, despite a few flaws. 

The MacGuffin of the film seems to be a little flimsy to me; how the video game could hold such detailed information that could only be accessed if you got to a specific level of playing it seems to be a little contrived, at least as far as 1984 technology is concerned. Nowadays it would be child's play to hide info this way, and even the youngest wannabe computer kid could crack it with no effort...

The other thing, although obligatory in a kid-friendly movie, is that the three main bad guys are pretty much incompetent. Any real professional criminals could have pulled off eliminating an 8 year old kid without much problem, but these guys probably couldn't eliminate a snail trapped in a 4" x 4" box... 

The highlight for me is the setting of the film. It takes place in San Antonio, and even though I never visited San Antonio until about 8 years later, it still looked familiar to me. The obligatory scene at the iconic Alamo (you CAN'T set a movie in San Antonio without featuring a scene with the Alamo..) is one of the highlights. (Of course, that HAS to be the place where the hoodlums drop off their illicit contraband).

Give this film a try, if for nothing else to see how Henry Thomas was not just a "flash in the pan" with his star making role in E.T. 

Well, that's it for this time. Drive safely, folks. And leave your imaginary friends behind. They are only going to cause you trouble.

Quiggy