Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #232 Electric Dreams (1984)

Welcome, friends, to the latest entry in Control Nathan Rabin 4.0. It’s the career and site-sustaining column that gives YOU, the kindly, Christ-like, unbelievably sexy Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place patron, an opportunity to choose a movie that I must watch, and then write about, in exchange for a one-time, one hundred dollar pledge to the site’s Patreon account. The price goes down to seventy-five dollars for all subsequent choices.

Or you can be like four kind patrons and use this column to commission a series of pieces about a filmmaker, actor or television show. I’m deep into a project on the films of the late, great, fervently mourned David Bowie and I have now watched and written about every movie Sam Peckinpah made over the course of his tumultuous, wildly melodramatic psychodrama of a life and career. That’s also true of the motion pictures and television projects of the late Tawny Kitaen. 

A generous patron is now paying me to watch and write about the cult animated show Batman Beyond and I’m deep into a look at the complete filmography of troubled former Noxzema pitch-woman Rebecca Gayheart. Oh, and I’m delving deep into the filmographies of Oliver Stone and Virginia Madsen for you beautiful people as well. 

It may be hard to believe now, but there was a brief window in the early to mid 1980s when being compared to a music video was generally considered high praise. Why wouldn’t it be? At its inception, MTV was heralded as the white hot epicenter of music and fashion, a trailblazing pioneer in uniting sound and image, pop music and videos that at their best qualified as bona fide pop art. 

Besides, in its prime, MTV was the television home of “Weird Al” Yankovic, Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna, Run-DMC, Bruce Springsteen and Duran Duran. How could you not love it? 

Then the paradigm changed dramatically, and critics went from enthusing of style-heavy movies for kids filled with music and flashy visuals, “It’s like a feature-length music video! It’s great!” to grousing, “It feels like a 90 minute long music video! How terrible!” 

Before MTV represented everything shallow and empty in pop culture, it stood for everything great about it. 

MTV became a powerful cultural force in no small part due to the iconic work of masters like Steve Barron, who directed arguably the greatest music video of all-time in A-Ha’s “Take on Me” as well as Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” 

Barron directed the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie as well and, to a much lesser extent, helmed The Coneheads but in between making television magic with Michael Jackson and bringing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to the big screen Barron made his directorial debut with 1984’s Electric Dreams. 

The prolific music video director did not leave his day job at home when he made the big leap from directing three minute movies for MTV to making feature-length motion pictures. 

The folks behind Electric Dreams, who include Executive Producer and Virgin guru Richard Branson, wanted a music video director for their newfangled love story and hoo boy did they ever get one in Barron. 

There are at least three or four sequences in Electric Dreams that  wouldn’t need to be edited in the least to air on MTV at the time of the film’s release. The film’s whole aesthetic is borrowed shamelessly from music videos but it ends up working spectacularly in the film’s favor. 

Electric Dreams makes a lot of inspired choices. These unfortunately do not include the casting of Lenny Van Dohlen in the lead role of Miles Harding, an architect whose mundane existence is first greatly enhanced by the addition of a preternaturally powerful computer, then threatened by the very same instrument. 

Van Dohlen isn’t bad necessarily, even if his “handsome Jerry Lewis” vibe feels both derivative and underwhelming. But he’s nowhere near as strong or magnetic a presence as either Virginia Madsen as Madeline Robistat, a heartbreakingly gorgeous cellist neighbor who falls in love with him because she thinks he’s a musical genius, or Bud Cort as Edgar, a sentient personal computer who falls hopelessly in love with the pretty musician.

Electric Dreams is a much more satisfying movie if you see it as the tale of a heroic computer that becomes sentient in a noble bid to successfully woo a woman who looks like Virginia Madsen but must compete for her affections with a human twerp than if you incorrectly think of Miles as its hero. 

Edgar doesn’t even show up until over a half hour in but Cort manages to dominate the proceedings with only his voice the same way Scarlett Johansson did in a very similar role in Her. 

Johansson and Cort have indelible presences as actors but the magic of their performances in Electric Dreams and Her is that they’re able to convey sonically everything that they would physically. 

Miles begins the film not even owning a personal computer, despite being an ambitious young professional. It’s crazy to think that there was once a time, not terribly long ago, when that was even an option, when you could simply say, “computers are not for me” and not be considered a Luddite, a lunatic or a boomer.

Pop culture didn’t realty know what home computers could do in the 1980s. Or in the 1990s, for that matter. So movies and television shows lazily settled on “everything.” 

So Miles’ computer might look modest but it can do just about everything a fully automated house of the future might. Then one night the lovestruck architect spills champagne on its keyboard and it attains sentience. 

In a lovely sequence beautifully conceived and executed, Madsen’s radiant Madeline is practicing her cello when Edgar perks up and decides to accompany her from a neighboring apartment. 

At first Edgar’s contribution are some very Giorgio Moroder synthesizers. That makes sense, since the disco icon and prolific writer, producer, songwriter and composer contributed an electric dream of a score to Barron’s swooningly romantic comedy that’s perfect in its own deliberately artificial, synthetic way. 

Then the unmistakable sounds of a drum machine join that lonely but intense synthesizers Little by little Edgar creates a swooning electronic symphony that can’t help but dazzle the impossibly beautiful classical musician. 

Sequences like this make me feel like Edgar deserves to end up with Madeline despite being, you know, artificial intelligence and not a flesh and blood human being. It’s Edgar’s music that really wows Madeline, not Miles’ relatively milquetoast personality. 

Edgar learns about humanity and human behavior from television commercials and television in general, a development worthy of Frank Tashlin, Joe Dante AND “Weird Al” Yankovic. Edgar doesn’t understand love or romance but he nevertheless develops an instant crush on his owner’s girlfriend. 

Yes, Edgar uses and abuses his power over seemingly everything even vaguely digital or electronic, including an electric toothbrush, to undermine his rival and improve his chances with the human woman of his electronic dreams. Yet I’m nevertheless Team Edgar all the way, largely because Cort invests Edgar with all of the loneliness and longing he brought to Harold & Maude, another cult classic about a curious man in an impossible relationship. 

The romantic personal computer with the genius for composing and performing music further proves that it is morally superior to Miles by nobly sacrificing himself for the sake of love instead of selfishly pursuing its own desires. 

I developed a huge crush on Madsen about ten minutes into Electric Dreams. She’s utterly irresistible, an ethereal, otherworldly beauty (there’s a reason her next film would be Dune) who somehow manages to also be weirdly relatable.

Madsen is so winning in Electric Dreams that my toaster oven and laptop fell in love with her as well, and they’re not even sentient. 

Electric Dreams lives up to its billing as a “fairytale for computers.” Barron lends this charming exploration of love involving men, women and machines with the captivating slickness of his legendary video for “Take on Me” as well its swooning romanticism. 

I first wrote about Electric Dreams for a column over at The A.V Club called Films That Time Forgot about forgotten obscurities that have aged in terrible and hilarious ways. 

Electric Dreams is dated, alright, but in a manner I now find delightful. It’s a wonderful companion piece to Her but it’s terrific in its own right and while it is inexplicably not available for legal streaming it’s on YouTube in its entirety and very much worth the zero dollars it will cost to watch it. 

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