Miracle Mile (1988) Capsule Review

I love unearthing old gems. Has anyone out there in the electronic wilderness heard of Miracle Mile, the 1988 cult oddity which has developed something of a fevered fan base over the past few decades? Anthony Edwards ‘stars’ as a likeable young dude who meets and falls in love with a young lady at the famous LA La Brea tar pits, only to find something of a spanner in the works when he inadvertently picks up this rather alarming phone call;

I’d heard about this for years as part of the 1980’s Armageddon / nuclear threat sub-genre, but it’s never had a region 2 release or UK TV transmission. It’s incredibly 1980’s in the best way, rather garish colour schemes and a portfolio of then contemporary supporting character actors (Denise ‘TNG‘ Crosby, Mykelti ‘Heat‘ Williamson, Robert ‘Robocop‘ DoQui, Vasquez from Aliens and the always furtive Eddie Bunker) plus a pulsing score from the always seething Tangerine Dream. I’ve always liked ‘real-time’ movies when done well – as in the film unfolds in seventy minutes once the terrifying call is intercepted – and as a social document of LA at the time the locations and paraphernalia irradiate their own isotopic interest;

The whole picture has that Scorsese’s After Hours, John Landis unappreciated Into The Night or a Risky Business vibe, of one night inverting a malingering suburban malaise with some rather more lethal implications, disrupting a bourgeois apathy via the best and worst night of your life. Recommended as something of a pop art antidote to the UK’s Threads which took a rather more bleak view of the then imminent end of days…..