A Night in Heaven (1983) 20th Century Fox/Drama RT: 83 minutes Rated R (language, nudity, sexual content) Director: John G. Avildsen Screenplay: Joan Tewksbury Music: Jan Hammer Cinematography: David L. Quayle Release date: November 18, 1983 (US) Cast: Christopher Atkins, Lesley Ann Warren, Robert Logan, Deborah Rush, Deney Terrio, Sandra Beall, Alix Elias, Carrie Snodgress, Amy Lyndon. Box Office: $5.5M (US)
Rating: *
If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear A Night in Heaven is somebody’s idea of a practical joke. I find it hard to believe director John G. Avildsen (Rocky, The Karate Kid) is responsible for such a badly made picture. I have a theory about it though. It looks as though the studio butchered it prior to its release without consulting Avildsen. Surely he would have asked to have his name removed upon seeing what Fox did to it. Crucial scenes are missing. Characters are introduced only to go on to play no vital role in the story. It asks big questions about love, fidelity and career ethics, but doesn’t really answer them. It barely explores them.
What’s even more disheartening about A Night in Heaven is that it was written by Joan Tewksbury who also wrote the script for Robert Altman’s brilliant Nashville (1975). This can’t be what she had in mind, can it? Like she did with Nashville, she spent a month living in the place she wrote about (in this case, Florida). She visited male strip clubs, trying to get the color and feel. I don’t know what she put down on paper, but what ended up on screen is a simple-minded sex drama in which a younger man seduces an older married woman. Before that even happens, we’re subjected to one boring, confusing movie.
Christopher Atkins (The Blue Lagoon) plays Rick Monroe, a popular college student who works nights as a male stripper named “Ricky the Rocket”. He flunks his final after his uptight speech teacher, Faye Hanlon (Warren, Victor Victoria), objects to him cracking a joke at the end. Her marriage to Whitney (Logan, The Wilderness Family), a rocket scientist at Kennedy Space Center, is in a slump at the moment.
That night, she goes to a strip joint called Heaven (hence the title!) with her sister Patsy (Rush, Honky Tonk Freeway) visiting from Chicago. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s the same place where Rick/Ricky dances. What are the odds? When he spots his teacher, he gives her one hell of lap dance, forcing her hand on his crotch and kissing her passionately. Things at home get worse after Whitney quits his job because he doesn’t want to make missiles. He shuts her out emotionally which makes her vulnerable to Rick’s slick moves. Eventually, they end up having sex.
There are many, MANY things wrong with A Night in Heaven. At 83 minutes, it’s a very half-assed movie. A character named Tony is introduced. He’s played by Dance Fever host Deney Terrio whose name appears fifth in the opening credits. He’s not in it all that much even though Tewksbury appears to be building a subplot for his character, one involving an ethical dilemma about taking a job as a stripper. It’s raised but never explored. Near the end, it’s shown to be resolved, but how did Tony arrive at the resolution? Rick’s sister Eve (Lyndon, The Poughkeepsie Tapes) is introduced as a character, but exits the film almost immediately after she first shows up. We meet Rick’s mother (Snodgress, Murphy’s Law), a waitress at a coffee shop in the same hotel where he later hooks up with Faye. We only ever see his mom at her place of work except once, when she leaving the trailer home they presumably share to go to work. What is Rick’s home life like? Did he have it tough growing up? Is that why he wants to succeed in life so badly? Probably. There are just so many unanswered questions in A Night in Heaven. How are we expected to care about the central characters when we know so little about them?
Another one of the movie’s big problem has to do with how it was marketed. The ads make it sound like a Flashdance rip-off, but other than the different identities by night and day story angle and a soundtrack filled with hopeful #1 hits, the two movies aren’t at all alike. The poster is especially misleading. Atkins assumes a Saturday Night Fever pose while dancing with a girl decked out in Flashdance gear. There’s no such girl in the movie. Let me be clear, A Night in Heaven is to musicals what 1981’s Tarzan the Ape Man is to jungle adventures. It’s a sex film that doesn’t even have all that much sex in it, just two scenes.
The acting is pretty bad too. Atkins might be the only one in his element here, playing a character so vacuous that you wonder how much of it is actually acting. And what the hell is Warren doing here? She was nominated for an Oscar the year before. Is this really the best offer she received after that? The two actors generate zero chemistry. It’s okay though because Warren and Logan aren’t much better as a couple either.
The only good thing about A Night in Heaven is the soundtrack. It contains two songs- “Heaven” by Bryan Adams and “Obsession”, later recorded by Animotion- that would go on to become hits two years later.
A Night in Heaven is, unquestionably, a bad movie, but allow me to qualify that statement. It’s an amusingly bad movie, unintentionally funny. I honestly don’t know how to react other than bemused. I give it one star because it’s so utterly, hopelessly inept. It’s very badly made, but like I theorized earlier, it’s likely the fault of the studio rather than the makers. It is, however, watchable on the level of an entertainingly bad movie. If you’ve never seen it and love bad movies, give it a shot. All other will likely think that A Night in Heaven is more like 83 minutes in Hell.
