Eddie and the Cruisers
Tags: cult

Plot synopsis:
A television reporter named Maggie Foley (Ellen Barkin) investigates the mysterious disappearance of legendary rock star Eddie Wilson (Michael Paré). Flashbacks dramatize Eddie's life and the rise and fall of his rock and roll band, Eddie and the Cruisers.
The band gets its start at a Somers Point, New Jersey club called Tony Mart's. Not adept at writing lyrics, Eddie hires Frank Ridgeway (Tom Berenger) aka "Wordman" to be the band's keyboard player and lyricist, over the protests of band manager Doc Robbins (Joe Pantoliano) and bassist Sal Amato (Matthew Laurance). Rounding out the Cruisers are saxophonist Wendell Newton (Michael "Tunes" Antunes), background singer and Eddie's girlfriend Joann Carlino (Helen Schneider), and drummer Kenny Hopkins (David Wilson).
The band's first album, Tender Years, became a major hit album. But recording their next album, A Season in Hell, turns out to be a nightmare. Inspired by the bleak, fatalistic poetry of Arthur Rimbaud, Eddie pushes his bandmates beyond their limits, musically and personally. Eddie wants to be great, but bassist Sal replies, "We ain't great. We're just some guys from Jersey." Eddie makes this clear that if the band cannot be great, there is no reason to ever play music again. A Season in Hell is ultimately rejected by Satin Records on the grounds that it is "dark and strange". In the early morning hours, Eddie's car crashes through the railing and over the Stainton Memorial Causeway. Eddie vanishes without a trace, his body never found.
Almost 20 years later, Satin re-releases the band's first album, which charts even higher than it did originally. A television documentary is soon in the works, exploring the mystery of the band's second album, which had disappeared from the vaults of Satin Records the day after Eddie's disappearance. All of the original Cruisers are set to participate in it except Eddie and Wendell Newton, who had died of an overdose in August 1963 at age 37. The others are now living ordinary lives: Sal Amato fronts a Cruisers tribute band. Ridgeway is a high school English teacher in Vineland. Doc works as a radio disc jockey in Asbury Park. Joann is a stage choreographer in Wildwood, and Hopkins works in an Atlantic City casino.
During the documentary interviews, the band expresses a desire to relive the past, even though many of their memories are humiliating. For example, during a concert at Benton College, where Frank was once a student, Eddie ridicules Frank repeatedly by referring to him as "Toby Tyler". The other Cruisers members share similar stories.
Joann is able to complete the one piece of the puzzle that Frank could not: revealing what happened to the band's second album. After storming from the studio, Eddie brought her to the Palace of Depression, a makeshift castle made of garbage and junk that he visited often as a child. She reveals it was in fact she who took the master tapes for the album from Satin Records, hiding them in the Palace of Depression, where she felt they belonged.
Frank and Joann go back to the Palace of Depression to retrieve the master tapes. A mystery man driving a blue '57 Chevy Bel Air convertible identical to Eddie's arrives at the house and calls to Joann. But before she can reach the car, Frank unmasks the impostor, revealing him to be Doc, who was after the master tapes all these years. Moved by his story, Frank and Joann give him the master tapes. Doc drives off into the night vowing that the Cruisers will finally conquer the world this time.
In a surprise reveal near the ending, a bearded, much older looking Eddie is shown alive, watching the ending credits roll of a documentary tribute to him and the band. He smiles serenely, proud to know that his work is finally being heard, and then disappears into the night.

Review: The underlying premise of the film, that there was, indeed, a definitive crossover point between the innocent early rock and roll music of the 1950's and the deeper coming of age sounds of the mid to late sixties is quite real.
However, this IS good.It features solid music by John Cafferty, whose "The Dark Side," is played quite a bit during the movie but is a great song and always enjoyable to hear.
I love the music and have been to see John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band many times since the release of this movie.
Mystery surrounds the death of a rising rock star in director Martin Davidson's `Eddie and the Cruisers,' starring Tom Berenger and Michael Pare.
With one successful album under their belts, lead singer and guitarist Eddie Wilson (Pare) takes his Cruisers into the recording studio to make an album he hopes will stand the world on its collective ear.
Now, eighteen years later, a reporter, Maggie Foley (Ellen Barkin) is doing a story on the Cruisers, and attempting to uncover the mystery behind the disappearance of the master tapes from the recording sessions, which inexplicably vanished the day after Eddie's apparent death.
Pare is perfectly cast as Eddie, the Bruce Springsteen-like rocker; he lip-synchs convincingly to John Cafferty's vocals and deftly captures the persona of an early sixties rock n' roll idol on the rise.
Tom Berenger (who is actually the star of the movie) does an excellent job as lyricist Frank Ridgeway, the keyboard player known as  `Word Man' by the band.
`Eddie and the Cruisers' is entertaining, if not entirely memorable, but the music and performances are good, and all in all this movie will do for a pleasant evening's viewing, with maybe a little popcorn thrown in for effect.
Every time I watch this movie(and I do - over and over), the scene where Frank introduces his first song to the band - nearly whispering it in a high, cracking falsetto: "...from out of the shadows she walks like a dre-eam...", and while the other band-members giggle and squirm as though they're in 8th grade and just saw Mary Ellen's tidy-whities when the wind blew her skirt up - Eddie's silencing them and kindly guiding Frankie The Wordman's stumbling efforts toward something that can really get your blood moving("This is Rock 'n Roll!" he exclaims joyfully)always makes me marvel at the unexpectedly-good acting coming out of pretty boy Michael Pare'.
The proof is here; right here, in his very authentic portrayal of an artist trapped in the too-confining skin of a 60's rock star(Eddie: "If we can't be great, then there's no point in ever making music again!").
Classic lines like, "Do it my way with the cesarean", "We ain't great--we're just a bunch of guys from Jersey", and the all time rocker, "WORDS AND MUSIC" (with the appropriate finger gesture), can be heard in every recording studio and rehearsal room in the English speaking world.So if you're a musician--or even if you just want to hang out with musicians--you must watch this film, otherwise you'll look like a total n00b.Even to non-musical audiences, this movie is a work of art.
Acting is absolutely flawless, camera-work is both tense and dreamy, and the clincher is the fantastic music, a retro soundtrack by John Cafferty with songs you'd swear you'd heard from the 50s but were actually written in 1980: "On the Dark Side", "Tender Years" & "Wild Summer Nights" to name some of the best.
I'll leave you to discover the philosophical implications of their conflict and its outcome.Notable supporting performances are made by young actors Joe Pantoliana ("Risky Business", "The Fugitive", "The Matrix", perhaps best known for "The Sopranos"), Matthew Laurance (tons of 80s-90s TV), Ellen Barkin ("The Big Easy"), and Eddie's girl played by Helen Schneider who surprisingly never did any other feature films.Some people criticize this film as being "B grade" or "cheezy".
Powered by a sensational Rock n Roll soundtrack, Eddie and the Cruisers takes you on a journey through a glimpse of the other band members lives more than twenty years after.
I thought Michael Pare would go on to be a big time actor, but looking at his profile, i never heard of any of his movies, except that horrible sequel he should of never of been involved with.
and I don't care how seductively Ellen Barkin wraps her lips around a cancer stick or her legs around a chair, I'm just not buying her theories and I'm just not buying The Cruisers as a group that would eclipse the Beatles or anybody else in music in 1963-1964, had Eddie lived, and she is out to determine if Eddie is still alive, since his body was never found after his car went off of a bridge in 1964.Nor am I buying that although the cruisers have seemed to move on, as in they are making a living doing something else, that ALL of them seem to be stuck back in 1964, right down to "Eddie's girl", Joann Carlino, who after 19 years still has the outfits she wore back in the day, even more amazingly she fits in them.
Actually, Eddie was not very nice to any of the other Cruisers, so I could never really get why they were so stuck in the past.Joann is so stuck in the past that when it appears that Eddie's car drives up into her driveway, she just dresses the way she would have dressed twenty years before and goes downstairs to find - well, watch and find out.Yes, "The Dark Side" is good music, but it is obviously 80's music - even more obviously over 30 years later - and Michael Pare as Eddie is obviously lip syncing the vocals..
Sensational rock music film ,today considered a cult movie.
The film deals a rockers band in the 1960s,the successful group is constituted by the leader Eddie(Michael Pare) and the rest band (Tom Berenguer,Joe Pantoliano,Matthew Laurance among others),but the lead singer dies in a car accident without appear mysteriously the body.Nowadays a reporter named Maggie(Ellen Barkin) is interviewing the surviving but another member has deceased by a stroke heart.Memories group are being relived by Frank (Tom Berenguer).The journalist and members of band are looking for the last unpublished tapes what turn out to be the band's final recording.The tapes have the title : ¨time in the inferno¨ like as a Rimbaud poem(written in 1873) .Maggie thinks what Eddie following the Rimbaud life(he had a tempestuous existence and was Paul Verlaine lover and disappearing early, his biography was brought to the life in a film with Leonardo DiCaprio)committed a suicide simulated and she doesn't believes to be dead.It's an interesting film with excellent music and nowadays is deemed a cult movie.Casting is frankly enjoyable,the film results to be the best Michael Pare performance.The magnificent music is by John Chafferty and Beaver Brown Band.The motion picture is well directed by Martin Davidson,he's a director at his beginning realized good movies with known actors : Lord's of Flatbush,Hero at large and of course Eddie of the Cruisers; however today he makes solely for television episodes.
Lead singer Eddie (Michael Pare) is angry to learn that not only the band hates it, but so does the record company.
Reporter Maggie (Ellen Barkin) wants to put together a retrospective, and with the help of former band member Frank (Tom Berenger), they set out to uncover the mystery of what really happened to Eddie.
"Eddie and the Cruisers" by P.F. Kluge is probably the best novel ever written about rock'n'roll, and even though it lost a lot in translation to the big screen, the magic is still there.
I am familiar with the sequel, but would love to see another rock movie as good as Eddie and the Cruisers..
Released in 1983 and directed by Jon Amiel, "Eddie and the Cruisers" is a rock drama about a TV reporter (Ellen Barkin) who picks up the story of a legendary early 60's rock band that prematurely ended when their charismatic leader, Eddie Wilson (Michael Paré), died when his Chevy went off a bridge, although his body was never recovered.
The band members are Frank (Tom Berenger), Joann (Helen Schneider), Sal (Matthew Laurance), Kenny (David Wilson) and Wendell (Michael "Tunes" Antunes), while their bullcrappin' manager is Doc (Joe Pantoliano).This was the inspiration for 2009's "The Perfect Age of Rock 'n' Roll" but both movies have their distinctions, as well as pros and cons.
In my opinion the music's better in the latter, but then I prefer the heavier side of rock/metal over the Bruce-Springsteen-in-the-early 60s style of "Eddie" (which is good for what it is, don't get me wrong).
Then there's the powerful climatic scene in "Perfect Age" at Spyder's ritzy mansion with Jane's Addiction's "Three Days" playing in the background, which just so happens to rank with the all-time best cinematic scenes utilizing rock songs, like the close of 1998's "Buffalo '66" with Yes' incredible "Heart of the Sunrise." The songs by the fictitious Eddie and the Cruisers were composed/performed by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band.
A television newswoman (Ellen Barkin) picks up the story of a 1960s rock band whose long-lost leader Eddie Wilson (Michael Pare) may still be alive, while searching for the missing tapes of the band's never-released album.The 1980s, among many other great things in the movie world, were apparently the decade of music films.
This might be the time to visit (or revisit) the film, especially now that we have had thirty years to reflect on the careers of Michael Pare, Tom Berenger and Joe Pantoliano.Hats off to Shout Factory for releasing this as a double feature on Blu-ray.
Here's the premise of the film: years after Eddie, the tempestuous and dumb (can he spell Rimbaud?) lead singer of the Cruisers, has disappeared (he died in a car accident, but his body was never recovered), a reporter decides to write a story about the band.
An intriguing and likable yarn about a former member of a sixties rock band now high school teacher, Frank Ridgeway (Tom Berenger) who is interviewed by an eager magazine reporter, Maggie Foley (Ellen Barkin) about what might have happened to the band's fiery lead singer, Eddie Wilson (Michael Pare).What makes "Eddie and the Crusiers" work so well is the musical score by John Cafferty, which mostly consists of soft rock songs.
One must wonder how much detail is too much for a movie like this?Overall, "Eddie and the Crusiers" is a respectable blend of music and mystery..
Also was a very good book, but this movie and soundtrack still hold an important place in my collection, and BTW, my mothers as well.Everyone says the music was bad yet it brought old styled rock back to the top 10!
The plot revolves around the mysterious 1964 death of rock singer Eddie Wilson, played by Pare.
The film's dialogue, acting, and cinematography are acceptable, if unremarkable.As an oldie but goody, "Eddie And The Cruisers" is not real good, but the story is mildly interesting, despite a mediocre script.
But the film's execution, particularly as it relates to nostalgia, is poor, mostly as a result of bad casting, and a lack of understanding of early 60's rock and roll music..
We're also robbed of the fun of seeing songs created through rehearsals; it's pretty clear the director has never been to a band rehearsal, as the songs sound as polished and final the first time they play them as in the final recordings.I'd love to see this movie remade by some competent people.
In the right hands, it could be the best rock-and-roll movie ever.One last aside: everyone mentions Eddie's resemblance to Jim Morrison, which is clearly there, but it seems obvious that the Season in Hell stuff is also based on Brian Wilson's difficulties which the never-released Beach Boys' "Smile" album.
Though I've never cared for actors lip sync-ing to other vocalists, especially in light of having the Buddy Holly Story break new ground in the same year ( 1983 AAW best music adaptation ), Michael Pare was quite good.As this was a hybrid of the Jim Morrison ' what if ' myth & the Springsteen story, it did offer some insight into the era & at that time a look into the genesis of a band & the internecine struggles.Picking movies like this apart misses the point.
The actors,Michael Pare,Tom Beringer and the entire cast did a great job especially Pare's performance as "Eddie".I have never seen such a great lipsink job you totally believe thats he's singing.Which brings up the best part of this movie,THE MUSIC!!,"On the Darkside,Tender years.wild summer nights etc" you will fall in love and want the sound track.I just enjoy this movie and the music so much I don't want anyone to miss it..
This of course is not to detract from the well structured script which plays on the "Jim Morrison lives" myth (with the character of Eddie Wilson as the Morrison substitute).All in all, this film will keep you on the edge of your seat, singing away, until the movie's surprise ending.
Eddie and the Cruisers is the story of a one hit wonder band that is experiencing a revival in their music 18 years later.
So, if you are looking for some great music and a feel-good movie, this is the one to watch.
It captures a time that I can relate to, but it's for people of any age whole just like movies about musicians.I agree with Michael Pare's own analysis when he said this movie made him a movie actor.He has been in tons of B- movies and some television an after "The Cruisers" and apparently he always has work, so his style of acting obviously is in demand !!!!!
Eddie wants to be great and he sees that with him and Frank writing the songs the Cruiser's making the music that they'll go places and be Big. When frank joins things start breaking big for them one of their songs ON THE DARK SIDE is a hit.
If your into rock and roll that made sense and had feeling, Which is what Eddie Wilson tried to show then you will enjoy this movie as much as I did and you will want to watch the second.
In 1983, journalist Ellen Barkin starts digging into the story of a supposed accident which killed Eddie Wilson, lead singer for Eddie and the Cruisers, a hot 60's band who made one hit album.
When Eddie and the Cruisers are playing their stuff the movie suddenly comes alive, and Michael Paré is an excellent performer on stage and lip syncs to perfection.
I just watched "Eddie and the Cruisers" on DVD, and there's a scene when the reporter is looking up something on Eddie on the computer (it's supposed to be 1983 in the film's story).
Eddie and the CruisersWhen the singer of a band dies it is customary to wait 2-weeks before going on a European tour with their hologram.Thankfully, this drama takes places decades before technology ruined music.In 1983 a music journalist, Maggie (Ellen Barkin), pitches a story to her television bosses about the mysterious death of 1960s rocker Eddie Wilson (Michael Paré) and his unreleased album that disappeared.
For those of you who like your rock and roll pre-British invasion than Eddie And The Cruisers is your kind of film.
hook as they might have back in the 60s if Pare wasn't around.And the music, a rock and roll fan's paradise.Enjoy Betty Lou getting a new pair of shoes as you watch Eddie And The
I don't think I've ever seen a movie that has so accurately captured the "feeling" of it's setting as did Eddie and The Cruisers.That "was" the Jersey shore in the 1970s.
A great cast of characters with a story that intertwines a series of friends and band members who still live with the memory of Eddie.
The movie looks and feels like a seventies Avco Embassy picture, and if you can get past the dreadful John Cafferty "classic rock" songs there are a number of good--or at least well-intended--performances, notably an extremely touching Tom Berenger as the lyric-writer turned high-school English teacher, Barkin as the avid journalist, and a sultry young Michael Pare as the hero, a smoldering amalgam of Jim Morrison and Arthur Fonzarelli..
I remember working in a music store late in 1983 (when this movie came out), and one day we got in the soundtrack for "Eddie and The Cruisers".
TV reporter Maggie Foley (Ellen Barkin) want to find an infamous '60s rock band whose leader Eddie Wilson (Michael Paré) was presumed dead.
Eddie was a bit before his time.Berenger says he isn't really musically inclined & had to learn piano for this film.
Eddie and The Cruisers is the greatest Rock and Roll Fib of all time.
Plot in a nutshell: Eddie Wilson (Michael Pare) was the lead singer of "Eddie & The Cruisers", an on the rise rock band in the early 1960s that played late 1970s/1980s style music.
In the midst of this, more about the band's tragic downfall comes to light.Major Spoiler: at the end we see the older, long lost Eddie Wilson alone in the streets watching as his lost music is played on a big store TV; he smiles serenely, proud to know that his work, misunderstood and rejected all those years ago, is finally being heard, and disappears into the night.All in all, a well made, well acted film that speaks for all those rock singers who almost had it but for whatever reason couldn't hold on.
Michael Pare (in the role that should have made him a star) is well cast as Eddie Wilson, the charismatic but self-destructive rock singer, though the true star is Tom Berenger as the lyricist who must uncover the truth of it all.Excellent showcase for the music of John Cafferty (Eddie's singing voice) and the Beaver Brown Band.