Despite the Title, It Was Not

I love trawling through streaming services and finding the random old movie detritus of yesteryear. Every decade produced its high points, of course, but I think it’s honestly more interesting to go back and look at the crap that failed, that some studio thought was a sure thing, can’t miss hit, only to see it crash and burn at the Box Office. Sometimes those films are more edifying, illustrating the sensibilities of a decade better than even a massive success could. Does Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure feel like pure 1980s? Sure, but it’s also an incredibly watchable film that somehow transcends the decade it was made in. As such it has nothing on an awful movie like RAD.

Made in 1986 (and released internationally as Hell Track), RAD (all caps, very important) feels like a 1980s movie thorough and through. This isn’t just because of the cast, who feel like B-squad 1980s fillers, or because the film is trying to make BMX biking seem cool despite having no idea how to actually do that. Every inch of this film feels like one of those 1980s Afterschool Specials that somehow, inconceivably, made it to the big screen on a budget way outside anything it deserved. In a different world this would have been made by Disney and shoved out direct-to-video. In this, better world, though, RAD somehow made it to the Silver Screen, and we were all better and worse for it at the same time.

RAD is a certain kind of 1980s magical, a terrible look, awful sounding film that should have remained forgotten. It has all the worst aspects of 1980s cinema in it, from a soundtrack loaded with overly earnest, truly terrible power ballads, to a script that fails to acknowledge the fact that these poor, unfortunate kids trying to escape their poor little town actually have a pretty awesome middle class life and are doing just fine. Nothing about RAD makes sense… and that’s kind of why it works. It’s a truly terrible film, but a perfect time capsule of 1980s sensibilities.

RAD stars Bill Allen as Cru Jones, a BMX biker who has a paper route and works at the local diner in his small town. Cru dreams big, though, wanting to one day prove himself as a BMX biker. He has the speed, and the skill, all he needs is the chance. That chance comes along in the form of Hell Track, a BMX competition that arrives in his small town. Organized by Duke Best (Jack Weston), owner of Mongoose biking equipment, Hell Track is a grueling course designed to test the best of the best among all the sponsored bikers in the competition.

However, the locals in town don’t think it’s fair that a competition has come to their town but their own kids aren’t allowed to compete. Duke eventually agrees, saying that a qualifying round will be held, and any local can enter. Cru, with the help of Mongoose-sponsored, female BMX star Christian Hollings (Lori Loughlin), manages to qualify and get into the competition, but at every turn Duke and his associates try to block Cru from actually competing. Why? Because Duke has his own winner picked out, top BMX biker and Mongoose-sponsored star Bart Taylor (Bart Conner), and he’ll stop at nothing to ensure Bart wins the race. Can Cru compete when the whole tournament is rigged?

From the first frame to the last, RAD is patently ridiculous. It’s just not ridiculous in a way it actually intends. This is an earnestly made film that really wants to be a serious take on its “poor kid makes good” storytelling, functionally stealing much of its plot and structure from Rocky, all wrapped up in a high school setting and with BMX, instead of boxing, as its sport of choice. It’s an incredibly stupid film, it just doesn’t realize it, and that’s part of the movie’s charm. It thinks it’s good, even when it’s very much not.

We can pick on a lot of the film, but let’s actually analyze the story first. Duke, the bad guy, arranges for a BMX competition, that he has sponsored and that he operates, to come to this small town no one has heard of, all so he can promote his own top BMX biker, who is already the number one biker in the world (as we’re told repeatedly) before launching a whole product line around his biker. Bart has to win the race for the product line to be successful. If Cru wins, the whole product launch goes down in flames.

Why? Well, that’s not ever really answered. It’s not as if Hell Track is official in any real capacity beyond however Duke defines it. It’s his race, his competition, and his roster of people racing in it. It’s basically an exhibition race, since it’s not tied to any larger league. Whether Bart wins or loses here really shouldn’t matter, logically, because no one outside this shitty little town is really going to care. The film builds it up as this massive event that will completely shatter the world of BMX biking… but then doesn’t actually give us the context to understand how that’s even possible. The whole plot is contrived, and the second you think about any of it the entire production falls apart.

That’s to say nothing of how desperately this film wants to be Rocky, but for the After School Special crowd. Not only is Cru our put-upon, lower class dude (who lives in a really nice, wealthy little middle class town, mind you), but his mother is played by Adrianne herself, Talia Shire. The beats of this film’s story are basically set in stone because the film even rolls, with our “outside” competitor getting lifted from obscurity to have a fighting chance, only for everyone at the top expecting him to fail. Sure, the film layers on needless complexity, but it’s pretty clear the inspiration for this movie and what it’s desperately trying to be.

And maybe that could work if the film had any clue how to actually make its sport look cool. Rocky works because boxing is a pretty easy sport to understand, and Sly Stallone has a real, honest earnestness to his performance that sold the material. BMX biking is cool to watch when it’s done by professionals, but you can’t quick-edit and fast-film your way around it. The sport looks best when you get a single rider, in a continuous shot, performing their feats in a competition setting. A film like RAD simply can’t pull this off, especially with limited cinematography and actors on bikes. It can’t compete.

Not that the cast helps matters at all. RAD is populated with a C-list group of television performers, most of whom never managed to escape this film’s level of mediocrity. The most famous star, beyond Shire (who, bear in mind, is mostly famous for the Rocky and Godfather films), is Lori Laughlin, and that’s only because she went on to play Aunt Becky on Full House (and its sequel series, Fuller House). You’d be hard pressed to think of anyone else in this film, including lead actor Bill Allen, who went on to have real careers after this. The work they put into this film illustrates why, as they’re all universally mediocre.

And yet, somehow this film was made on a budget of $3 Mil. That’s not huge by today’s standards, but when you consider that this film’s clearest inspiration, Rocky, was made for $1 Mil, you have to wonder what anyone that worked on this movie was thinking. They had to know this film was going to be a stinker, right? It came and went at the 1986 Box Office, only making $2 Mil against that $3 Mil budget, and then was quickly forgotten afterwards. No one wanted this movie, and no one cared when it vanished after.

To be clear, RAD is not a forgotten gem. This is a bad movie, start to finish, and you can clearly understand why it bombed upon its release. But the film, all the same, has a certain charm to it. It leaks the 1980s out of its every pore, and because it’s so bad it never finds a way to transcend its era. From its soundtrack to its set design, storytelling, and costuming, RAD is a 1980s film through and through. If you wanted to illustrate to someone this specific decade, you’d be hard pressed to find a film better suited to it than RAD. Just… don’t bother, because this film sucks.