If the decade of the 80s is known for anything, it is its cornucopia of coming-of-age movies. Some live on still today, as hallmarks of the blossoming angst percolating in the rapscallions of youth, classics such as The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, Teen Wolf, etc etc. But there are other failed coming-of-age attempts that haunt our collective already-come-of-age minds. One in particular, 1985’s St. Elmo’s Fire, attempts to work with the formula other movies before and after its time implemented successfully. St. Elmo’s Fire cannot be so lucky.
The film is the typical genre of the coming-of-age, with struggling, white, middle-class Georgetown University students striding confidently(?) into the world, adjusting to their lives in the post-university haze and responsibilities of the choker hold that is adulthood. We’re introduced to our characters as they stride confidently away from some frat houses, walking seven astride and still wearing their caps and gowns. The most picturesque opening scene, all smiles and dream-like, it suggests a peaceful transition filled with fun, understanding, and good, clean fun.
And that is all promptly shattered by a naked man in a hospital. So nonchalantly he walks about, as if to say, yeah, I’m naked, who gives a fuck? This blasé stroll through the crowded halls of a hospital acts as the embodiment of everything that this movie despises. This movie, which Rotten Tomatoes lists with a 45% rating and for which Rob Lowe won Razzle’s Worst Supporting Actor of 1985, is in reality an abstinence teacher’s greatest wet dream. Andrew McCarthy, as Kevin Dolenz, aka our Tortured Artist, pretty much says it all. While being an emo kid about his tortured writer’s soul he asks, “Who really won the sexual revolution?”
And that’s what it comes down to. According to this movie, no one won the sexual revolution. In actuality, we’re all losers. This is why a naked man can stroll through the hospital, bumbling and lost, naked as the day he was born only with a bit more wrinkles and a bit more fat, and, sadly, a bit more hair in places where no one ever wants to see. He’s the embodiment of everyone’s sexuality, bumbling and lost, thrown haphazardly into a jumbled movie to elicit some kind of response. A call into the darkness, as if to ask Am I truly alone? The best part is that this naked man just keeps showing up. He shows up throughout the scene where Emilio Estevez is being Grade A creeptastic and working the cogs in his head about how best to stalk a pretty doctor he dated once his first year at Georgetown.
It’s our Tortured Artist that we pinpoint most. Sitting in his messy room, near his Mickey Mouse phone, tapping on his bongos, he bemoans his sorry state, lamenting how much “love sucks!”. And yet, this same tortured artist falls into the age-old love triangle, in which two guys lust after a girl who, frankly, has about as much personality and intrigue as a stump. But that’s an insult to trees everywhere. By far the worst part about this is, after realizing her boyfriend is cheating on her with leggy blondes the world over, Boring Love Interest has sex with our Tortured Artist!
In the single worst sex scene of all time. There are no words to illustrate the horror that is this sex scene. This sex scene, presumably lasting multiple rounds and through the night, approaches its climax (har har) on top of a coffin.
A coffin.
I shit you not, a coffin. They do the nasty on a coffin. If this doesn’t demonstrate some kind of metaphor for who won the sexual revolution, nothing will. Every moment of sexuality in this movie is disgusting, grotesque, and, frankly, a little insulting and disturbing. An abstinence teacher should sit back and stop talking about unwanted pregnancy. What budding teenagers need to learn to avoid is a sexual exploit like this. Or, a naked man in a hospital. Or, Emilio Estevez stalking a pretty girl. Or, stereotypical Saudi Arabian men watching MTV. Or, Billy Joel on a bright pink wall, badly painted, thus sucking out any libido any stupid soul may have managed to shore up.
But back to the coffin sex.
Their luscious lovemaking finds the nearest flat surface and goes from there, seemingly just as nonchalant about having sex on a holder of dead bodies as the naked man in the hospital was with walking around with a hairy ass. But the scene doesn’t stop there. No, after smearing the camera with enough Vaseline to make a 1970s porno jealous, they progress to the shower. As the horrible, horrible music reaches its crescendo, the shower breaks. There is so much awkward laughter, lippy movements of what I can only imagine is supposed to be endearing kissing, and a flustered “I broke your shower!”. So gross. Worst sex scene ever.
The most excruciating lasting sex scene of all time is the only thing that quite compares to sex in this movie. This is the focal point. This is the moment when we, as an audience, are supposed to sit up and triumph for Tortured Artist finally finding his meaning of life (a question that tortures any true Tortured Artist). His earlier cynicism of love and sexual revolutions are forgotten! He finally got laid! He broke the Bro Code to do it, but damn it, his breath was taken away somewhere between coffin splinters and slippery shower surfaces. Hot.
But is this is truly a moment of triumph or just a horror that must immediately be brain bleached from our mind? The world may never know.
So happy Independence Day, USA. At least that’s one revolution St. Elmo’s Fire can agree we won.
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