I made a find the other day. A DVD with both Eddie and The Cruisers movies on it for ten bucks. As the two movies, the second in particular, are among long time favorites of mine. I had to grab them.

It’s been years since I saw either film, the last time being before my VHS player died and I went to DVDs.

Eddie and The Cruisers came out in 1983, based on a novel by P.F. Kluge. Eddie had died in an accident(or suicide?) eighteen years before, aborting the band’s fledgling career.

Ellen Barkin plays a journalist doing a TV special on the band. Their one album has been re-released and is climbing the charts. She wants a retrospective on them and is interviewing surviving band members. Her angle is that the body was never found, so maybe Eddie is still alive.

Tom Berenger is a high school teacher in Jersey now. Back then he was Stan Ridgeway, keyboard player and lyricist for the band, known as Word Man. He doesn’t want to be interviewed at first, but it touches off memories. As with most of us, he remembers only the good times.

As he touches base with the other members, the main story is told in flashbacks, how they met, the good and bad times, building up to the climax.

Someone breaks into Ridgeway’s home, trashing it looking for something. They get the old band manager’s place as well. When he hooks up with Joann Carlino, Eddie’ girl friend and the back-up singer, he learns her home has been searched too. Someone is looking for the tapes for the unreleased second album, A Season In Hell, which disappeared the day after Eddie’s death.

Not only that, Joann had been getting several phone calls a week recently. No one speaks, just plays a Cruisers song, then hangs up the phone. One night recently, a ’57 Chevy identical to Eddie’s old car had parked in her drive, flashing the lights low, high, then low, Eddie’s signal.

I won’t say anymore, though most people have probably seen the film. Just in case, you know.

Eddie Lives! was released in 1989. I knew it was coming. At the end of the first one, a reflection in a department store television screen showed us indeed that Eddie was still alive.

He lives in Canada and works in construction. He plays and writes music alone, scared that he’s not good enough. He’s been “dead” for eighteen years and wants to leave it that way.

He makes a mistake in a bar one night when he criticizes a young hot shot’s guitar playing and is challenged to show his stuff. When he blows them away, the kid wants him to play in his band and keeps pressuring him. At the same time, he’s started a relationship with an artist that wants to paint him.

Upon revealing who he really is, not Joe West, she too urges him to play.

As the new band comes together, Eddie keeps putting off the inevitable. he’s afraid he won’t measure up. He has to be dragged kicking and screaming into playing some clubs for practice and building an audience. When a chance to audition for a big music festival comes along, he doesn’t want to do it. The band badgers him into it, they earn the opening spot, and all seems well until Eddie’s old nemesis from the record company, the one who told him his second album was garbage which led to his “death,” shows up at the festival and recognizes him.

The Cruiser songs written and performed by John Cafferty and The Beaver Brown Band have a lot of energy and capture the time period perfectly.

As i said, they are two of my favorite films. Here’s a clip:

One thing I noticed here. Michael Pare’s lipsynch is a bit off.