Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: The Golden Child (1986)

4/21/2020

The Golden Child (1986) - Get silly with this!

♥♥♥

With its star in a shiny black jacket and drenched in 1980s colors, this delightful poster for Michael Ritchie's The Golden Child also teases the film's fantastic dual California-Nepal settings

Chandler Jarrell is a social worker in Los Angeles, when he becomes the Chosen One, who is to rescue a divine Tibetan boy child from an evil rat monster-demonic man with the help of a good-looking local woman.

The Golden Child is written by Dennis Feldman (Just One of the Guys (1985)) and directed by Michael Ritchie (Downhill Racer (1969)). Eddie Murphy (48 Hrs. (1982)) is the 'Chosen One', and Charles Dance (The Great Fire (2014, miniseries)) is the rat monster villain, who also naturally has a British accent.
Everything in The Golden Child is as super silly as this summary makes it sound like, and I fall hard for it. It seems like it has about a million drum solos awkwardly wedged into its soundtrack, and The Golden Child is a 1980s film that has 1980s kitsch quality going through the roof.
Murphy is intermittently funny, although it seems involuntarily so in this unusual mix of fantasy, action, adventure, comedy and romance. The effects are funny, and the film's detour to Nepal is handsome and thrilling as another unusual feature in a big mainstream Hollywood comedy. Some may argue that The Golden Child is so bad that it's good, and there's definitely something to be said for that argument.

Watch clips of a body double walking around wit his back to the camera in real Kathmandu, Nepal and Murphy on a Nepalese backlot set in LA in a 5-minute clip from the film here

Cost: 25 mil. $
Box office: 79.8 mil.$ (North America only)
= Uncertain - but certainly a big hit (returned 3.19 times its cost domestically alone and reportedly more than 4 times its cost worldwide)
[The Golden Child was released 12 December (North America) and runs 94 minutes. Feldman's spec script was bought by Paramount in a bidding war for 300k $. Shooting took place in Nepal, including Kathmandu, and California, including Los Angeles, from February 1986 - ?. The Golden Child is played by a 7 year-old girl actress. Composers Alan Silvestri and John Barry walked away from the film, with Michel Colombier's synth-pop score instead being made for the film. It opened #1 to an 11.5 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed in #1 for another 4 straight weeks and spent another 2 weeks in top 5, grossing 79.8 mil. $. Its international total is not known, only that it is above 100 mil. $. Roger Ebert gave it a 3/4 star review, translating to a notch higher than this one. Murphy called the film "a piece of shit" in a 1989 Rolling Stone interview and reportedly involved himself in the writing of the screenplays for his starring movies after it. Ritchie returned with The Couch Trip (1988). Murphy returned in Beverly Hills Cop II (1987). The Golden Child is rotten at 26 % with a 3.89/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

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4/21/2020

The Golden Child (1986) - Get silly with this!

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