St. Elmo's Fire: Classic or BETTER THAN CLASSIC?

Well, that and I have a Breakfast Club bias.

I'm watching the Breakfast Club right now! I do not own St. Elmo's Fire :(

I first saw this movie when I was in my early 20s or very late teens (it's one of those things where I remember the relationship I was in at the time -- so sometime between 17-21), so it was like the Lost Brat Pack movie for me.

http://www.judd-website.co.uk/images/alec3.jpg

http://bitchcakes.topcities.com/images/stemosfire.jpg

Ally, it appears we've done this once or twice before :)

the empathising with AM in SEF is endemic i think, and possibly partially responsible for me thinking smoking was way cool, as he smokes almost constantly during the film, if i recall the only scene he doesn't have a fag at any point is when he's shagging...

"St.Elmo's Fire"? K-rap!

I have not read all this thread.

oh man, watching this on hulu for the first time since i saw it in the theater. so many crimes i forgot... the billy idol neon mural! andrew mccarthy & the hooker!

Yeah, Judd was hot, but Rob Lowe was the hottness. How do you stay hot for DECADES?

dude has barely aged at all

lowe that is

some kind of wonderful should be sat with the grown-ups

"St.Elmo's Fire" should have been good, but it ended up being a directionless, self-indulgent dollop of spooge. It's not even in the same zip code as "Breakfast Club". Let's say that "Breakfast Club," "Sixteen Candles" and "Weird Science" were hosting a Thanksgiving, "St.Elmo's Fire" wouldn't even be welcome at the kids' table in the kitchen (where, y'know, "Some Kind of Wonderful" and "Out of Bounds" would be sitting (although "Out of Bounds" would be allowed to enter the main dining room to have coffee with the adults afterwards, if only for its inspired inclusion of Siouxsie & the Banshees as "club band".

"St.Elmo's Fire"? K-rap!

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, August 30, 2004 7:57 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark

boy, this movie sucked. (and i only just NOW watched it ... the missing 80s brat pack/joel schumacher film. feh.)

I've seen just about every well-loved "generation" movie from the 80s except for this one, and I'm still in no rush.

which means that the only joel schumacher film i can sign off on is falling down ... and i don't know if i want to watch that one again, to see if it's still as good as i remember it being (watching the lost boys a year or so ago, for the first time since like high school, dispelled me of any fond teenage memories of THAT film it sure did).

FWIW, it had the honor of being one of the few films i just turned off about 15 minutes into it (an honor shared with napoleon dynamite, BTW).

Awful, awful movie. Characters who you don't care if they live or die. Especially Emilio Estevez the stalker and Rob Lowe the lame sax player would be bad boy.

i think this movie was where i first learned of gustav mahler's existence

lol xps

also I confess to a TOTAL brain fart re St Elmos Fire/what it has to do with the movie, becuase I totally forgot this lame speech
I love how in 80's movies there's always that scene that explains the title

Billy: Jules, y'know, honey... this isn't real. You know what it is? It's St. Elmo's Fire. Electric flashes of light that appear in dark skies out of nowhere. Sailors would guide entire journeys by it, but the joke was on them... there was no fire. There wasn't even a St. Elmo. They made it up. They made it up because they thought they needed it to keep them going when times got tough, just like you're making up all of this. We're all going through this. It's our time at the edge.

yeah that speech "explains" the title except that it makes no damn sense!

even as a kid i was like "...i am not buying that metaphor one bit."

she's making up her drug problem? coke addiction is a real thing people!

There wasn't even a St. Elmo. They made it up.

LIES

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XdP6Lp2ceqY/TCyTc34wUdI/AAAAAAAAVZ0/Pc8SjY-YdYs/s1600/st-elmos-fire-big.jpg

Reading through IMDB quotes, there's a definite rhythm to the dialogue...they're all like catchy advertising slogans...it's like if it was written now every scene they planned for a piece of dialogue to go in the trailer.

also there totally was a st elmo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_of_Formiae

St. Elmo's Fire

YOU FUCKED MANY

Coming Soon

"It's our time at the edge" LOLOL Oh Billy, you with your shirts covered in bats and your saxophone, what does that even MEAN

Erasmus was ... beaten around the head, spat upon and "besprinkled...with foulness.

kinda like what watching this movie is like

His teeth were ... plucked out of his head with iron pincers. And after that they bound him to a pillar and carded his skin with iron cards, and then they roasted him upon a gridiron...and did smite sharp nails of iron in his fingers, and after, they put out his eyes of his head with their fingers, and after that they laid this holy bishop upon the ground naked and stretched him with strong withes bound to horses about his blessed neck, arms, and legs, so that all his veins and sinews that he had in his body burst.

But he didn't have to see Rob Lowe in that getup so it all balances out.

Good call by Alec though on letting her take all the Billy Joels except the Stranger. He's not all bad.

by "that getup" do you mean THE BATS, Ned

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XwPAvjSqL._SL500_AA280_.jpg

Billy: Jules, y'know, honey... this isn't real. You know what it is? It's St. Elmo's Fire. Electric flashes of light that appear in dark skies out of nowhere. Sailors would guide entire journeys by it, but the joke was on them... there was no fire. There wasn't even a St. Elmo. They made it up. They made it up because they thought they needed it to keep them going when times got tough, just like you're making up all of this. We're all going through this. It's our time at the edge.

This vs. anything Ethan Hawke dribbles out of his mouth in Reality Bites

hottness trumps dialogue Ned

...trying to figure out which one of those is the one you think is hot.

how about BOTH

:D

never underestimate my depravity, sir

YOU FUCKED MANY keeps cracking me up

I really need to watch this movie again, relive all of the many many lols

I'm not sure what I'll do for the rest of my life now that I've seen pic of St. Elmo.

I recommend besprinkling yourself with foulness

hahahahah

isn't he also turning into a republican over the course of the movie? worst

he's like a proto-Gabbneb.

i find some of this movie v moving. i want to find a picture of ally sheedy all red-eyed & eyes-narrowed, looking wounded, or sparring in the kitchen with the drippy-proto-macavoy guy to prove my point.

"drippy-proto-macavoy guy"

Ahem I believe you mean the wonderful Mr. Andrew McCarthy.

yeah i do like him & he's great and kind of weirdly radiant in it?, but it's that he transforms to a v convincing kind of drippy-awful-guy that sorta takes the edge off. like up until he confesses his love with pretty accurate awkwardness he's great.

i just rewatched this, and the act of scanning back afterward to try to correlate the actors with their previous (non-breakfast-club) roles felt like some sort of deep cognitive thought exercise

I watched this for the first time since I was a kid and was repulsed by all of the characters. I couldn't believe how loathsome the movie was, because I remember really liking it when I was younger -- I guess I was taken in by Rob Lowe's handsomeness. And bat t-shirt.

That shirt WAS really awesome.

he looks a bit like a banana playing the saxophone, in that bit. he is playing some real rasping saxophone.

(Man in Motion)

Man in Motion is a fucking kick-ass song. Let me tell you something about that song. Sometimes it'll come on my iPod and I'll get a little extra pep in my step and all of a sudden anything seems possible and it's all I can do to stop myself from just punching the air with enthusiasm. You know why? Because just once in his life a man has his time, and my time is now, I'M COMING ALIVE! Yep.

(hi five)

lol if andrew mccarthy is proto-mcavoy that explains a lot. about me.

but yes this is a repulsive movie filled with repulsive people. i believe it reflects joel schumacher's soul.

love this movie love this movie love this movie

it brings me faith

also YOU FUCKED MANY iirc

lol HS I thought the same about that Mcavoy comment. Love him.

Nameless, faceless Many

Damn this thread for getting the aforementioned "man in motion" single stuck in my head WHICH I CANNOT STAND.

I've never seen this movie.

dead 2 me

alas Trayce, I never knew youse

Ive seen all the other 80s teen canon. Just not that one for some reason.

and you are...?

Andrew McCarthy never became a star because Hollywood only had room for one narrow-mouthed, small-lipped male lead of Irish extraction with a penchant for trying to play "interesting" teen movies. And John Cusack won that battle.

;_; vg

While this movie’s pretty wack (tho fun to watch), it makes me wish there had been a different (better) movie built around the Demi Moore character… played by Moore, of course, who’s excellent in this.

Also, has there ever been a more extraneous character/plotline in a film than Emilio Estevez’s here(??) Someone should make a fan edit that removes that cringy/creepy nonsense (except, of course, the movie’s best line – “They’re laughing!”)