The students at the Falcon
Academy of Athletics in Massachusetts strive their little hearts out to be the
very best in their chosen disciplines. However,
once they all make it to “The Nationals” (because, hey, they’re each the very
best in their chosen disciplines), they start dropping like flies when a mad
javelin thrower starts picking them off, one by one.
So, that’s basically Michael Elliott’s Fatal Games (aka Olympic
Nightmare aka The Killing Touch),
and it’s a film about drive and obsession.
The kids in the film are compelled to push themselves further every day,
and while they don’t choose the augmentation of their regimens, they go along
with it to the point that they become taken over by the desires of the adults
in their lives. The students begin to
reflect the “winning is everything” mentality of guys like Coach Webber (Christopher Mankiewicz). Before they made “The Nationals,” the kids
behaved like just that: kids. At the
celebration dinner which opens the film, the students surreptitiously throw
food at each other, and wind up playing tug of war with the tablecloth while
some moneyed windbag drones on about how proud of them he is. After this celebration, the kids become much
more focused on exceeding their limits.
For example, Nancy (Melissa
Prophet) turns down an offer to go out and party in order to pump
iron. Joe (Nicholas Love), also turns them down, at least in part because he
is essentially a self-loathing rage-o-holic, and the film allows us to believe
that he became this way through his compulsion to do better at javelin
tossing. He remains out on the field,
throwing pointed sticks and visibly berating himself for his deficiencies. Even Frank (Michael O’Leary), the class quasi-clown, develops this
neurosis. After injuring his leg, he
tells the others to keep practicing in a scene reminiscent of the classic,
clichéd War film scenario where the injured soldier implores his
brothers-in-arms to “go on without me.”
The yearning to be number one is toxic for these young adults, something
which rings very true, considering that there are far too many real life stories
of this ilk out there.
Likewise, in the quest for
physical/athletic perfection, there is the notion of “the dream” (as in “living…”). That said, these dreams appear more than
anything else to be those of the adults who live vicariously through the kids who
may achieve the goals they themselves couldn’t reach. Coach Webber is the Type A guy who barks at
the students for their flaws and then comforts them quickly afterward, like a
pimp working one of his girls. In
private, he pisses and moans about “the kids today” lacking the passion that
they had back when he was a little nipper, et cetera, et cetera. Dr. Jordine (played by the director) essentially
believes in juicing in order “to push [the students’] athletic potential to
their limits.” The kids gather for their
regularly scheduled medical appointments to not only get check-ups but also to
receive their new experimental drug diets (is it any wonder, then, that Joe is
so tense?). Sweet girl-next-door Annie (Lynn Banashek) is put on drugs in order
to stop her breasts from growing. They
physically retard a natural process for the sake of gymnastics, but she goes
along with it because adults know best, and she wants to make them happy. And while Nurse Diane (Sally Kirkland) voices her disapproval (kind of quietly, all things
considered) of Jordine’s approach, she goes along with it, as well. Phil’s (Sean
Masterson) dad gets Phil a tryout with a professional baseball club (Phil
is a Track and Field guy). This isn’t
about Phil’s dream to play for the Yankees or any other team. It’s about his father’s desire to fit Phil
into the mold he has carved out for his son.
The adults in Fatal Games are,
it could be argued, more dangerous to the kids than the mad javelin
chucker. At least with a javelin through
your torso, it’s all over; you’re dead.
It’s the long, slow, painful process of the adults eroding these youths’
wills and self-esteem that is infinitely more damaging than the killer.
To call this a Slasher film is a
bit misleading. Yes, there is an unknown
killer taking out the students in mildly interesting sequences. Yes, there is a final girl who refuses to
have sex with her beau before marriage (after going over to his place, he does
push-ups, which is funny since, one, it reinforces the idea that these
youngsters are more obsessed with their physiques than with the normal drives
of young adults, and two, he seems perfectly okay with not getting laid even
though that was the whole point of his relentless push to get this girl over to
his pad [I would argue this ties in with the first point, as well]). Yes, there is a deep red herring, who you
know isn’t the killer because that would be entirely too obvious (go on and
guess who it is). Yes, everyone in this
film wanders around dark buildings without even thinking of turning on a
fucking light, positively begging to get speared. Yes, it has characters too stupid to call the
police when students go missing. Yes, it
has a climactic reveal as dumb and confusing as it is intriguing. But the kills are almost afterthoughts in
this film. They just pop up every now
and then in order to fill their quota and then go away. The film is much more interested in the lives
of the kids and the abusive, masochistic relationship they have with the adults
in their lives. But even this plays like
flat, bad soap opera-esque melodrama.
It’s all superficial character sketches and attempts at tension in order
to build sympathy for the victims which, sadly, just don’t work. The film plays largely like an episode of Kids, Incorporated in terms of how these
are rote scenarios for rote characters in between mini-set pieces that still
don’t fully satisfy as they should, because, with the exception of one, the
kill scenes are filmed in the most unimaginative ways possible. The filmmakers also could have improved Fatal Games greatly with a stronger
commitment to the story they were telling and developing their characters
beyond being merely snapshots from a high school yearbook. Fatal
Games is a film that should have profited (ironically) from the
boundary-pushing attitude of its characters.
It just doesn’t have the Eye of the Tiger.
MVT: The primary conceit of
the destructive influence of adults and the cult of physique/perfection on young
athletes is a rich vein to mine. The
film only digs down a few inches, unfortunately.
Make or Break: The swimming
pool scene is actually pretty good, and is even vaguely reminiscent of the
“white bathing suit” scene from The
Creature from the Black Lagoon. None
of the film’s remainder lives up to this.
Score: 4/10
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