#17: Cloak and Dagger (1984) (dir. Richard Franklin)

My love of this comes from a geyser of nostalgia and an immeasurable amount of watches when I was younger but I also think this is more than just "Hitchcock for kids."

There are a few movies that magically capture the essence of my late, great father. Dabney Coleman and Gene Hackman will always remind me of my dad - the wrinkles in the forehead, the thinning hair, the man’s man type of swagger but in a subtle way, the offbeat sense of humor. Not to mention the fact that he was a fan of both actors to boot.

When I go back and watch Cloak & Dagger from 1984, I always feel like I’m experiencing time travel. I had the same need to escape that Davey does, the same striped t-shirt, a spunky girl next door best friend and an attentive, understanding father that was in the Navy. Plus the overactive imagination. Around the time this film had come out, I was slowly being turned into a cinephile so I was imagining myself as a spy, running around outside with a walky-talky.

Thankfully I never came into a video game cartridge that was embedded with secret government plans or a downright evil Michael Murphy might threaten to blow my knee caps off. It’s funny to think about how the first dubbed VHS I owned had a copy of this movie along with Ghostbusters. The latter doesn’t make me cry at the end. Granted it’s a manipulative, cheesy ending, but I don’t care.

Despite E.T scaring the shit out of me seeing it around the same time at a double feature screening alongside Follow That Bird, it was The Last Starfighter, Cloak & Dagger and Back to the Future that turned me into a young movie nerd. Not much has changed and all three of them I have watched so many times that I probably know every line of dialogue by heart. With those caveats, if someone else watched this today only to shrug it off, keep in mind my own personal history. Though I personally always get caught up in this adventure to the point where my adrenaline races even when I know what’s going to happen.

Originally released on a double bill with The Last Starfighter, Cloak & Dagger failed to make an impression at the box office and has been all but forgotten over the past 30 years aside from an incredible Vinegar Syndrome release recently. It’s not hard to understand why: The film, despite its wise, agreeable message and remarkably executed Hitchcockian set-pieces, feels a bit slight for the average viewer. It might be the too-perfect ending (or is it) or the by-the-numbers plot, but the reason most likely lies within the movie’s oddly low stakes at least until we realize a bomb may go off. The Atari cartridge is nothing more than a MacGuffin, and the antagonists are your typical Cold War cookie-cutter terrorist types carrying automatic weapons and wearing permanent sneers.

Cloak & Dagger is about a lonely 11-year-old boy named Davey Osborne (Henry Thomas) who recently lost his mother. His father, Hal (Dabney Coleman), doesn’t spend time with him because he’s busy at work. Davey has an imaginary friend named Jack Flack (also Dabney Coleman)—who just so happens to be a secret agent. One day when Davey accidentally finds the aforementioned Atari 2600 cartridge with secret government plans on it, he quickly learns some spies are after him and they will do anything possible to get that cartridge. Davey has to rely on his wits and imaginary friend to save him that is until his dad shows up to be a real human being and a real hero.

The film’s approach to its story and characters is somewhat unique in its subtlety. The thugs looking to shoot down Kim and Davey never once come across as buffoons like the Fratellis in The Goonies, and Davey rarely pulls off any incredibly unlikely feats, often escaping by way of outside help. You’re genuinely concerned whether he will make it through this even if in the end, this is a kid’s movie but a dark one. Michael Murphy especially is a memorable villain because he actually can’t wait to shoot Davey for all the trouble he is causing. That alone was enough to get under my skin around age 7.

The film is deadly serious: Davey witnesses a violent murder up close and later gets stuffed into a car trunk with a dead body. He repeatedly dodges very real bullets and is forced to make life-or-death decisions at the drop of a hat. Children’s films today look neutered compared to Cloak & Dagger‘s uncensored carnage. At one point, the central antagonist (Murphy) threatens Davey with such explicitly detailed violence. Hearing this today is shocking.

I could turn you into shredded meat in about three seconds with this gun if I wanted to. But you’ve been a real pain in the neck, so I’m not gonna be that nice. You know what I’m gonna do to you, boy? I’m gonna blow both your kneecaps off. It won’t kill you, but it’ll hurt worse than any dying you can imagine. Then you know what I’m gonna do to you? Huh? I’m gonna shoot you in the stomach. Then when you beg for me to finish the job, I won’t do it. I’m just gonna watch you die. Slowly.

Seeing Davey being chased down by some creepy hit men especially during a tense San Antonio tourist boat ride was enough to make me afraid of any stranger out in the world. Even the initially friendly elderly couple in this become something else entirely and the Alamo manages to trump another memorable moment in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure as the setting for a trade-off between these nasty spies.

Watching it now - it’s less of an escapist adventure that owes a lot to Rear Window or North by Northwest. There’s more than meets the eye. Davey lost his mother and it’s through video games and “pretending” that he is able to deal with his grief. One can’t help but think of how this comes from a very different era: Davey even brings a realistic looking squirt gun into an office building and most don’t bat an eye. It’s truly sad to see countless scenes of Davey, a kid who just lost his mother, running around a city casually talking to an imaginary friend, all while people are constantly trying to kill him. Not to mention his best friend Kim getting involved who really had very little to do with any of this except just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It could be the conviction from all involved here especially Coleman who really is playing my dad (though he wouldn’t be too quick to my games away due to an overactive imagination). I think it’s a step above what we’re used to in these types of movies even if it’s a riff on the assured military man from WarGames - this time he has to be a responsible father. And for any young boy who did envision their dad as a hero figure, they are sure to identify with Davey’s idolization.

Dabney Coleman said in an interview:  "I’ll tell you, though, it's amazing how many people have come up to me and said something to me about that film, including Timothy Bottoms... So Timothy came up to my table at Dan Tana's, where I was, uh, kind of a regular... Timothy says, 'You don’t know me from veal parmesan, but I just want to thank you for playing Jack Flack. You don’t know what that movie means to my son and me.' That happens to me two or three times a year. It's always either a father saying, 'I saw that movie with my son,' or a son saying, 'I saw it with my dad.' But then they say, 'Seeing that movie was very important in my life.' And that's always very nice to hear.^"

Much like De Palma, Richard Franklin was definitely inspired by Hitchcock perhaps to a fault. I think that’s why some folks simply just write this off as being a carbon copy catered to children and that’s why it never achieved the cult following that I think it deserves. Written by Tom Holland - it taps into 80’s standard geekdom essentials: video games, role playing, prototype computers, even a geeky older friend who gets caught up in real heavy stuff regarding some top secret files and murder. Not to mention the fact that I would occasionally hang out at the local arcade in Calumet City (Friar Tuck’s) and for a brief while, they did have Cloak & Dagger, the actual game, for me to play.

It should come as no surprise that movies where our protagonist can’t escape an unfortunate situation (After Hours, anyone?) are something I gravitate towards. Perhaps this was the starting off point of that phobia of feeling trapped even if this isn’t an enclosed space. I have never been chased around a city but being unable to get away from something that I have no control over is definitely anxiety-inducing for most people. It’s why it makes for compelling fiction. How will this person overcome these outside forces that are life-threatening?

Revisiting this movie not too long ago for a feature-length commentary with Erik Childress made me realize how much I miss this era of filmmaking where kids could in this kind of peril. But there’s also no denying the shocking terror and trauma that will likely ensue as a result of the fact that Davey actually does kill someone. When I was younger, I always just looked at that as an act of self-defense to finally “win the game” sortaspeak. Now I can’t help but imagine the kind of therapy Davey will need after shooting that gun to save his own life.

In the end though, there’s no denying the fact that the ending of this story is downright sappy and eye-rolling on one level. Part of me gives it the alternative idea that maybe Dad couldn’t possibly make it out of that explosion alive so the ending is also a part of Davey’s imagination. Now he will be an orphan. But of course, there’s no way that they would go that dark. But when father and son embrace at the end, how could I not cry thinking I wish I could do the same especially since Dabney Coleman embodies the spirit and qualities he had?

Favorite movies don’t always mean “the best movies” that speak to everyone on a universal level of course. This just happens to be one that conjures up a lot of emotions in surprising ways over the years. The sense of childhood innocence lost, the longing for simpler times (and simpler video games), the desire to strongly connect with a parent and of course, Davey’s need to lose himself in some sort of alternative world of his own design accompanied by a hero that happens to resemble his dad. It’s even possible that maybe none of this actually happened to Davey and we’re incepted into the “game” that Davey has made perhaps due to his wild, wide-eyed imagination. All of what’s happening is loosely inspired by the game that has recently acquired. What if this is all in his mind??

But that’s probably going levels too deep for what is definitely a movie that was catered to a younger demographic. I was seven when I was saw this and it was the right movie at the right time. I wore out the VHS tape that contained this and Ghostbusters. The fact that it now makes me miss my dad adds to the experience but honestly, it’s also just a lot of fun to go back to the simplicity of a recurring line like “Jack Flack always escapes.” Davey was also able to escape into a world of a dangerous espionage and so was the audience willing to go along for the ride.