Since John Hughes recently departed these mortal climes for The Big Breakfast Club In The Sky, I've been itching to do a post dedicated to the genius of Weird Science - in my opinion, his crowning achievement. I can't actually explain how much I wanted to be Lisa when I was younger. Not only was she crazy hot, she also had a totally ass-kicking wardrobe full of Jane Fonda-esque workout-wear, lamé cocktail dresses and stonewashed denim skirt suits. Swoon.
Premise: take two high-school losers, a parent-free house and a computer that looks like a microwave from the early '90s. The horny duo, pumped up on diet coke, hormones and The Bride of Frankenstein, decide to make a girl. Obvers. They hack into a military computer base, feed in countless pages of porn, put bras on their heads, hook up a doll, create a mushroom cloud and voila - Lisa emerges from the settling fog wearing a teeny pair of knickers and a cutoff sweatshirt, '80s bubble perm blowing in the wind, and iconically purrs: 'So, what would you little maniacs like to do first?' Surely the best movie entrance of all time? Much hilarity ensues; the token humiliation-at-the-mall scene, blind dog bourbon-drinking hi-jinks in a dive blues bar downtown, Lisa throwing the mother of all parties in their house, mutant bikers, school bullies, overcoming both and, finally, the realisation that Lisa was merely a handy, sexed-up vehicle for learning a few life lessons, John Hughes-style.
Not only were his movies chock full of these bittersweet adolescent moments, but the spot-on fashion represented everything that was glorious and feel-good about the '80s. From Andie's offbeat charity-shop layering and Duckie's flamboyant new-romantic Rockabilly get-ups in Pretty in Pink, to Bender's plaid and denim tough-guy grunge in The Breakfast Club, the characters' ensembles were an integral part of why his movies were so uplifting and why I'll keep watching them, over and over again.
