26 Films: Pink Nights

Pink Nights

1985

87 minutes

Staring: No one you ever heard of.

It’s always hard to write about something that just kinda leaves you …. Ehhhh… Pink Nights is one of those films. It’s set in Chicago during the mid 80s. The plot follows Danny, a recent High School Grad who has been left on his own by his mother and attracts the attention of 3 lovely young ladies who all eventually flop at his apartment.

This is supposed to be a romantic comedy about a shulb, or the 80s version of one, being pursued by three women. During my viewing of the film, and I only watched it once, and am not sure if it’s really worth repeating I did not note this plot. I never got the idea that all three of these women were interested in Danny. There’s a bunch of goings on and everyone get’s sorted out in the end.

…. However, that’s not really all that interesting to me, what was of interest was the time, the place, the clothes and the music. It’s been noted that the 80s were a special time (see House of Self Indulgence for a better recap of the era movie wise than I can provide) and you can make a case for the organic composition of the music, clothes and hair style of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 90s, and even the 00’s, the 80s were plastic, chemical and fully not natural. Ripped Jeans, leg warmers, two tone leotards during a dance sequence, the film is almost a bingo card or drinking game of 80s specific fashion. There is a shabby charm to seeing all of that again, and it’s almost worth watching the film just to see the streets of the windy city circa 85, I hope that someday some kid is going to string together a couple of hours of shot on location street shots of a city like Chicago showing us the city from let’s say 1940 to 2000. Where was I, oh yeah? Pink Nights, I really don’t have much else to say other than it’s not awful, it’s not great, there is one scene with a punk rocker that made me giggle

Random thoughts Observations:

Why was it in the 80s/90s when parents didn’t understand their kids the default answer was always “my kids on drugs”

80’s fashion alerts:

Guys wearing Half Shirts

Girls wearing off the shoulder shirts

A Tee Shirt with one large Chinese character

Leg warmers

(I think the 80s might have been the decade of the shirt?)

Next time: 90s indie flick Living in Oblivion