Love and WarGames

While my wife spent the evening swooning over Remington Steele, I got reacquainted with a love of my former life—Jennifer Kathryn Mack from the 1983 dystopian thriller, WarGames.

WarGames (1983) reappeared in the local movie theatre tonight

WarGames returned to theatres as part of a promotion for a 25th anniversary DVD that includes a sequel, WarGames: The Dead Code. Other than being set in more modern times and alluding to a plot device that takes advantage of the power of social gaming to defeat another computer gone mad, it looks to be pretty much the same movie. Without Ally Sheedy.

Ally Sheedy, as everyone knows, is hot. The featurette that, sadly, replaced all new movie trailers before the film, showed she still has her “It.” But it was seeing Sheedy’s WarGames appearance as the would-be girlfriend thurst into global thermonuclear war simulation angst that brought back the memories of one of my first on-screen crushes. She takes a back seat only to Olivia Newton-John in leather and pretty much anything Meg Ryan. I saw Maid to Order. Willingly.

All that summer love was not on the radar for my two sons, who accompanied me to the special $10 screening Thursday. Archie had to be talked into it, bribed to look the other way on the lack of animation by the promise of candy. Carter was up for it, however, and I was hopeful it would lead to a nice conversation on arms races and the global community. Instead,

Me: So, what did you get out of that movie? What’s the moral?
Carter: Don’t hack.

The highlight for Carter—who spent much of the evening perched on the arm rest between two seats—was recognizing the nerdy voice of Eddie Deezen, who play Malvin to Maury Chaykin’s Jim Sting. I was floored by how many recognizable faces were in this flick, including John Spencer and Michael Madsen as the two silo officers serving as the justification for automating the nuclear arsenal.

Archie climbed into my lap as the movie started, forced there by a couple who apparently couldn’t find any better seats in the half-packed house than the ones in front of my short little boys. He was asleep before Michael Madsen had pulled his gun on John Spencer.

The movie was 10-15 minutes longer than I recalled. It was probably due to the technical glitch that gave us a blank screen and brought up the lights for a while.

The sequel, The Dead Code (2008), is going straight to DVD