‘Twas the heady days if the late 70s and EMI Films had just raked it all in following The Deer Hunter winning all the awards or something at the Oscars. Truly it was a wonderful time for the then biggest British film studio (not that there was all that much competition at that point); British films were making massive bank, provided they obfuscate more or less anything that might suggest the ‘British’ thing. And so, with that came a whole lot of US-centric films and a joint distribution venture with fellow British studio ITC to get their films out Stateside without having to try and sell the things to rotten old American studios. Here’s one of them now! As you can tell by how active both these companies are to this day, the move was a great success.

With that unnecessary preamble out of the way, let us talk about 1980’s Times Square, a critical and commercial flop that pretty much destroyed at least one person’s career, but that is now a moderate cult favourite. That preamble was largely so I can say that of the EMI/ITC partnership era, this was apparently one of only two(-ish) films that they co-produced,* the others being straight either/or things. This is according to the poster at any rate; the film itself makes no mention of ITC at all. Still, Park Circus list both StudioCanal and ITV (owners of the EMI and ITC libraries respectively) as having rights to the film, so I guess it’s true to some extent. Again, this isn’t hugely important. I just thought it was neat trivia.

Anyway, Times Square is the tale of two teenage girls (played by actual teenagers shockingly enough) who break out of a psych ward and run amok in Manhattan. I use the word ‘tale’ fairly loosely, as there’s not really much of an overarching narrative. In fact, the supposed need to turn it into a conventional narrative is one of the thing’s big shortcomings in the end. The film sort of falls apart in the last act as it abruptly decides to change which of the girls is the focal character (we spend the first two acts following the sheltered Pamela’s (Alvarado) perspective, but the last switches to her counterpart, volatile rock chick Nicky (Johnson)) and veers off into more credulity stretching shenanigans involving putting on a concert for the hordes of screaming fangirls that the pair have acquired somehow, and everything wraps up in an implausibly neat and tidy fashion. It all smacks of not knowing how to end the thing. Arguments could be made that this is not quite the departure it seems; it’s said early on that Nicky has trouble discerning fantasy from reality, so one could interpret this distinct shift as being intentional and very much the point, though if that is the case then I’m not sure the film really pulls it off. Whether or not this failure is entirely baked into the fabric of the film is open to debate perhaps however. Allan Moyle was fired from the film during post for apparently refusing Robert Stigwood’s demands for more musical montages; the record producer wanting to be able to sell the film’s soundtrack as a double album. And so Moyle got the boot and the second unit were made film some montage appropriate stuff, with a bunch of more dialoguey scenes getting cut to make room (incidentally, this apparently includes stuff that makes plain the romantic nature of the girls’ relationship; we could and maybe should interpret something about homophobia, though if the intent was to cut it outright, they didn’t do a great job, as it’s still pretty obvious. There’s a reason the film enjoys popularity on the LGBT+ circuit after all). Stigwood also ordered the addition of a really out of place disco number from one of the Gibbs (apparently to remind people that he totes did Saturday Night Fever, you guys, y’all liked that right?) to play over the denouement. Whether or not the missing presumed footage would sort out the problems in the last act as the director and star both seem to think would help, I can’t say. The footage is seemingly lost and I haven’t seen the script. Regardless, the film as available is difficult to give a wholehearted recommendation to due to the sudden shift in tone and story in the last act; it just doesn’t really land, which is a shame because there’s a lot to like about the film overall, not least a mostly pretty great soundtrack stuffed with post-punk/new wave wonders. It’s a tale of teen rebellion, encroaching gentrification and lowkey queer romance, unfortunately it also wound up an advert for the aforementioned soundtrack album.

Also, did you watch that trailer? Check out Tim Curry's accent, such as it is. Do you think he manages to keep that thing up for the whole film? I'll spoil it for you: mercifully not. And yet apparently he filmed all his scenes over two days, and he still couldn't?

*The other was, again seemingly only according to the poster, 1980’s The Mirror Crack’d, which sought to do for Marple what EMI had done for Poirot a few years prior (it didn’t). Oddly, ITV isn’t listed as having a claim on that one. Elsewhere, Wikipedia reckons that Lew Grade, in his 1987 autobiography, invested in EMI's ill-conceived 1980 remake of The Jazz Singer, though neither he nor ITC (or any of its myriad offshoots) appear to be credited either in the film or on the poster. Regardless, these aren’t the only ones the companies ever co-produced however. Before their pact, apparently they’d previously both been involved with Sam Peckinpah’s war movie Cross of Iron (1977), not that ITC get a mention there either. Park Circus similarly doesn't list ITV as having a stake in either of those.