Two Moon Junction

Yikes! So in my defence, your honour, I’ve been reaching back to the 80’s to cast a critical eye over some now-forgotten movies that were a big deal back in the day; there’s various reasons why these movies are poorly represented today in terms of reviews. Zalman King’s tawdry overheated melodrama was verging on a household name back in 1988, when my teenage self was lured into Two Moon Junction in the hope of having my morals thoroughly corrupted, and left disappointed by the result. Now it’s got just a handful of review on Rotten Tomatoes, they’re all bad, and rightly so.

A VHS bonanza, but never a tv staple, Two Moon Junction arrives on 2023 streaming uncut, but there’s not much worth cutting here; the star is Sherilyn Fenn, a big star after her role as Audrey Horne in Twin Peaks and soon to make pop culture history playing Jess’s step-mom in The Gilmore Girls, a series where she was the original choice to play protagonist Lorelai Gilmore. King casts her as Southern belle April Delongpre, kicking her heels while awaiting her marriage to a well-heeled but boring gentleman. But April longs for excitement, and it turns up in the form of a travelling carnival and hot hunko-man Perry Tyson (Richard Tyson with full Fabio mode engaged).

I guess the recent 50 Shades movies are a throwback to this kind of Skin-e-max fare, and if so, at least such films accurately capture the underwritten banality of movies like this. ‘You excite me so much I can’t help myself…’ April tells Perry, before shifting her position to ‘Once you excited me…now you repulse me!’ so there’s a certain amount of mixed messaging here. Perry proudly describes himself as a ’phantom of the night’, but lines like that submerge in a script overflowing with purple prose that lands awkwardly to modern ears. ‘The Delongpre family can claim three governors, two United States senators, three electives of the House of Representatives, a Supreme Court justice, and an ambassador to Chile,” says old stager Louise Fletcher without much conviction and Burl Ives looks equally baffled to be here, Fantasy Island’s Herve Villechaize has a cameo, and there’s yet another role for a young Milla Jovovich; she’s all of ten here. Kirsty McNichol turns up for a couple of scenes as Perry’s old flame Patti Jean, and gives a lively performance, showing that sometimes it helps to be in the wrong movie from everyone else.

“I ain’t got no secrets. I ain’t got nothing. Except a bike, a truck, and post office box in Clearwater, Florida,’ says Perry, but he’s got more up his sleeves than this film does, which seems as reoccupied as April Delongpre with ‘shoes and hats’. Fenn rubbished this film later as exploitative, and it is; it’s historical interest only as a male-orientated film that diminishes women and the idea of sex as a mutually enjoyable pursuit. They don’t make them like this anymore, and a good thing too; at least the internet super-pornography highway saves frustrated voyeurs time that would be wasted sitting through drear films like this.