What is this movie?

August 30, 2009 12:10 PM

Movie Identification Filter: Can anyone identify this movie based upon my faint recollections?

So, I remember seeing this movie on tv when I was in my teens, let's say mid to latish 80's.

Who I believe to be the main protagonist was this bottle blonde girl, always getting the raw end of the deal, possibly aged in her early 20's, who was always wearing nylons with a stripe down the back. Whenever a bad situation happened she always just took off because she had "a million and one better places to be" or something like that.

I remember the movie being a bit grey in character and a scene with a record player playing something seriously heroin inspired (at least to my young ears)!

I also think that this was an urban movie, set in a city.

Hopefully this is enough for an identification! This movie has been bugging my brain on and off for some years, and I reckon it's time to watch it again.

posted by starscream to media & arts (10 comments total)

I also remember that the girl was kind of a mess, rather like Courtney Love used to look like in the late 90's.

Sorry that I don't have more detail....
posted by starscream at 12:27 PM on August 30

The Grifters?
posted by nax at 5:35 PM on August 30

Thanks, nax! I'll scope The Grifters, though I don't think it's the right one considering the timeline...
posted by starscream at 6:06 PM on August 30

Do you recall anything else? The first movie that sprung to mind was Desperately Seeking Susan, but surely you would remember Madonna in a movie, right?

You watched in on tv in the late 80s, but when do you think the movie was from? Was it a made for tv movie? Where was the record player? Whose record player was it?
posted by iconomy at 6:41 PM on August 30

I was the victim of of a super religious bible-thumper family, so even in my teens I was seriously sheltered from the "secular" part of society. In the books that my parents bought me Madonna was evil, so her stuff at the time I know only secondhand.

I wonder if Desperately Seeking Susan is it?!? I'm hitting netflix now :)
posted by starscream at 6:57 PM on August 30

Hmm, doesn't specifically trigger the DSS vibe for me, but there were a fair number of vaguely similar 80s female-protagonist urban adventure movies.

Girls Just Want to Have Fun

Adventures In Babysitting
posted by dhartung at 10:40 PM on August 30

I watched Desperately Seeking Susan last night; that that wasn't the one, unfortunately. It was a fun movie though :)

Sadly, I can't recall anything else about the movie. I do have a feeling that it was from the mid 80's, and that it was probably not a made for tv movie.

I'm pretty certain that it's not Girls Just Want to Have Fun or Adventures In Babysitting either. It was not any kind of lighthearted movie.

And I wish I knew what was on the record player... it's one of the reasons I want to find this movie :)
posted by starscream at 7:27 AM on August 31

That's a good clue tho - it wasn't a light-hearted movie. I'll try again...check back later!
posted by iconomy at 9:07 AM on August 31

Simply a guess on my part and likely to be on TV in the early nineties rather than mid to late eighties, but could it be last exit to brooklyn?
posted by aninom at 6:59 PM on August 31

Since the imdb link says it's set in the 50's, I don't think it's that one, aninom. I firmly recall that the movie in question was set in the 80's.

But, let me give it a go... one never knows! :)
posted by starscream at 7:52 PM on August 31