Welcome back to B-Movie Enema!

We’ve got something of a returning character in this week’s movie. Writer/director Michael Davis originally got started as a storyboard artist. Between 1989 and 1992, he actually had a few interesting credits on his resume. In 1989, he did the storyboards for the Kevin S. Tenney film The Cellar. The very next year, he stepped up in terms of quality films with 1990’s Tremors. The very next year, 1991, he did the storyboards for a highly anticipated sequel, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. In 1993, he wrote the first of three Prehysteria! movies released through Full Moon Features under their Moonbeam Entertainment imprint for children and family films. Then, in 1994, he wrote one of the main stars of 2016’s Alyssa Milano Month, Double Dragon.

But this week, we look at Davis’s sophomore outing as a director, Eight Days a Week.

Now, naturally, if that title sounds familiar, it should. It’s a hell of a bop from The Beatles. I don’t know if it’s the original title of the movie or not. The film doesn’t exactly have a great deal of information or trivia on its Wikipedia or IMDb pages. What I can say, though, is that this darling of the Slamdance Film Festival is often overshadowed by how it was able to get into video stores a couple of years after it premiered at the festival.

The Slamdance Film Festival has been running for about 30 years now. Its primary focus is to showcase emerging talent for their work on films with budgets under a million dollars. It’s fair to say the festival’s screenplay competition is the most prestigious thing about it. Over the years, winners of the competition would go on to actually have decent starts to pretty decent careers. By 2016, there were more than 3,500 scripts submitted to the competition across the various categories.

Again, we’re dealing with pretty small pictures. Sure, critics still get access to the films, and that was certainly the case here as critic Emanuel Levy was in the middle of writing what many consider his masterpiece book on film, Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of Independent Film, when he likely would have had an ear to the ground on this movie’s popularity at the 1997 Slamdance Film Festival. He even had the right insight on who might have a shot at becoming a legitimate star.

So, let’s just get to that star, shall we?

Despite being a favorite at the film festival, Eight Days a Week would still take a couple of years to get to a wide audience. It was not released until 1999. Officially, Wikipedia and IMDb both state it as February 26, 1999, but it had to be a fairly limited release. I didn’t know anything about it until it showed up in the video store I worked at later that year. It’s also VERY clear by looking at the poster/box art why it was able to finally get distribution:

To people of a certain age in 1999 (roughly early 20s), it seemed as though Keri Russell was everyone’s girlfriend. Her extremely cute face, bright eyes, lovable smile, and gloriously curly locks made her an instant star of the WB’s young adult drama Felicity. Felicity ran for about four seasons and was created by J.J. Abrams at an early stage in his career. It also featured our previous girlfriend, Amy Jo Johnson, who we all crushed on as the Pink Power Ranger just a handful of years before. When the first season became a quick hit, distributors were looking for a way to find anything of Russell’s to release to capitalize on. Enter Legacy Releasing, which was able to get this into a few theaters and then release it to video with the help of who else? Warner Bros. Home Video.

Despite that lovely smile, those voluminous curls, the sexy midriff, and those sparkling eyes of Keri Russell prominently featured on the box, the movie wasn’t that well-received. I hardly remember many people renting it. Okay, I mostly remember guys aged 18-25 renting the movie because of the cover, but it wasn’t one that got a lot of attention. I don’t think many people even knew it even existed.

But I remember, and it’s time for me to remind all of you!

Alright… So this is Peter (Joshua Schaefer).

This is the home of Peter’s friend, Erica (Russell).

The first words that come out of Peter’s, uh, mind as he thinks over his grand scheme are, “This has got to be more retarded than the time I got a gumball stuck up my nose or when I wanted to become the first white Harlem Globetrotter.” Ah, the 90s. He also says this plan of his is even more embarrassing than the time his mom walked in on him trying to simulate vaginal friction by rubbing his boner between his mattress and box spring. Yup… It’s the 90s, alright. Especially because he’s saying this retarded, embarrassing machination he’s cooking up is because of Erica.

This is Erica…

Goddamn… Okay, well, maybe your plans aren’t so silly. Tell me more, young man.

He says that “Erica” sounds a lot like “Erotica.” Peter (which also sounds like someone’s dick) explains that a simple glance from her could get your pecker so hard that it could be picked up on radar. While watching Erica playing with and in a sprinkler, Grandpa Nonno sits down next to Peter to ask him if he’s in love with her. Peter claims that he is not, but his awkward crossed legs to hide that radar boner of his say otherwise. Peter claims Erica has a boyfriend, so he’s got no shot. The old man says as long as she and her boyfriend are not “lovers” Peter has a shot.

After all, and this is free love advice from this old man and your friendly neighborhood Enema Man, “One pubic hair between a man and a woman is stronger than the Atlantic Cable.”

Erica is going off to college in three months. So Nonno says he had better act quick to declare his love for her. Nonno tells a story about Peter’s Great-Great-Great-Grandfather. He loved the most beautiful girl in the village. He declared his love for this woman, and she rebuffed him. So, he stood on her front lawn for days on end until she finally came out and declared her love for him in return. He climbed up onto her balcony and into her bed.

Okay, so… Maybe this retarded embarrassing plan of Pete’s here is not really to be blamed on Erica but on his grandpa because now he’s ready to stand outside all summer, if need be, to win Erotic… er, ERICA’S heart.

When he tells Erica what his plans are, she tells him it’s sweet, but they are just friends. Still, he’s not giving up. The problem, though, is Nick, Erica’s boyfriend. Nick has been Peter’s nemesis since they were five years old. Nick is what Peter likes to call a “gaping asshole” who happens to also be a jock going to college on a football scholarship. He also drives a bitchin’ Dodge Charger (or possibly Challenger – I can get those two confused sometimes). When he comes to pick her up, she goes out dressed a little more revealing than her Christian parents want her to be. She also jumps up into Nick’s arms, wraps her legs around his waist, and they make out right on the front lawn.

I will say that there are a few things in the early stages of this movie that I really like. For one, Joshua Schaefer is actually quite a good young-ish actor. This was Schaefer’s only lead performance in anything, and it was his last movie. After 1997, he left acting. He had a little 4 or 5-year career in acting. His first movie was in a bit part in the surprisingly good melodrama Untamed Heart with Christian Slater, Marisa Tomei, and Rosie Perez. I’m particularly impressed with his voice-over work in this. He does great reads to help elaborate on what’s going on in the scene. He also has an alter ego in this movie. A couple of times early on, like when Nonno was telling the story about his ancestor, Giuseppe, he played that version of himself. He defers to that other character to give him some additional guts or advice.

That’s another thing about this movie I like, it’s the black and white cutaways, as we kind of see what Peter is imagining things to be. He’s Giuseppe, and Keri Russell plays the woman his ancestor was trying to woo in 1874. Giuseppe is kind of Peter’s id. He’s the one that Peter needs to look up to, and the costuming, the additional role for Schaefer, all of it, works nicely for a little added chuckle here and there. When he tells Erica his plan to win her heart, and she responds by saying they are just friends, it goes to another black and white cutaway scene in which she plays a 50s-style femme fatale who murders him with her words… and a pistol.

That stuff is fun, and I think it makes this more than just a 90s boner comedy about a lovestruck Romeo who sang the streets a serenade. I like that we soon find out that Nonno isn’t exactly completely in command of his faculties when Peter’s dad tells Peter he can’t just sit out front of Erica’s house like he is. By the way, the father’s right, and we can talk about that later, but when he’s saying that Nonno is a bit bananas, the old man is pissing himself (though this is more of a trick that Nonno does to get Peter’s dad off the kid’s case whenever needed). Still… There are some harder-edged jokes that go beyond just the teenage sex stuff.

I have a few qualms, but I’ll reserve them for the moment.

So Peter’s parents don’t want him to do what he’s doing to win over Erica. Erica’s parents want him to win over Erica. The idea that her parents are in favor of Peter is kind of a double-edged sword. They like him, so that’s great. But they like him, and that’s not good for him because Erica is kind of a modern, rebellious type. He needs Giuseppe to help him make her parents hate him to make him more attractive to Erica. This is a task that Giuseppe takes on and considers what that thing will be to make them hate him.

Mostly, Peter spends his time watching the neighborhood and the various characters in it. He’s given some discouragement from his stoner/slacker buddy Matt. Matt says that Peter should probably give up on a babe like Erica. Sometimes, some guys are just born defective in the genes department. Guys like Nick have all the looks, charisma, and ability to get the girls. That’s the asshole gene, but still, that’s just a fact of life.

Something much more encouraging happens when Peter tries to pass the time at night. He begins reading the book The Joy of Sexuality. He figures that if he becomes Erica’s boyfriend, he will need to know how to please her physically. While reading the book, he sees something odd. All the illustrations in the book feel… off at first glance. The drawing of the woman is very sexy. She’s the general babe you might see any ol’ place. However, the guy doing all the different sex positions with her is butt ugly. If a guy that looks like a fucking Neanderthal can get laid, surely Peter can too!

Nick brings Erica home. She is quite excited that her parents aren’t home yet from church. Before going in for ostensibly will be a sloppy teenage fuck sesh, Nick has a word with Peter. This leads to a trick in which Nick puts a knee into Peter’s junk. Okay, so the asshole wins another battle in this war, but Peter’s not deterred. The next morning, Peter takes it as a good sign that Erica at least poked her head outside to see if he’s still there. However, Peter’s situation is going to get a little dire pretty quickly. His father has changed the locks on the doors. If Peter doesn’t give up this camping out in front of Erica’s house thing, he won’t be allowed back into the house, so he’ll have no food and no shower.

Luckily, Nonno is on Pete’s side. He sneaks some food out to Peter so he can keep up with the front lawn vigil for Erica’s affections. Nonno also gives him another pep talk. He says people’s main goal in life is to make love. The only thing that matters in life is to find someone to make love with. That means everything else is just passing the time until you can make love again. He also tells a story about how a young, superstar naval pilot got diagnosed with hemorrhoids and met the nurse who cared for him. That led to them falling in love. The pilot and nurse are Peter’s parents.

More days pass. More time is spent watching the neighborhood. He never sees Erica wear the same thing twice all summer. One of the kids he saw on the block was often picked on by another kid. They reminded him of his childhood with Nick, so he took it upon himself to be a little bit of this kid’s guardian angel. Reading a story to him catches the attention of Erica. He still gets some erotic entertainment some nights by watching Erica’s neighbor, Ms. Lewis (played by Catherine Hicks of all people), do workouts.

Another story he’s been watching all summer is an old man who lives across the street. Every day, he takes his invalid wife for a walk in her wheelchair. Peter points out that he always looks sad. One day, he began going on walks by himself. While Peter hopes the man’s wife is okay, he also takes note of a younger woman that the old man began meeting with and talking to. One of the talks turns into the younger lady friend imploring the old man for something.

It’s not until August that Erica and Peter have any kind of significant discussion. That discussion is to help her escape being grounded. She wants to go out with Nick, so she takes advantage of her “friend” camping outside, knowing he would do just about anything for her. This turns out to be a nightly thing. Every night, she wants to sneak out to see her boyfriend. Every night, he figures out a way for her to fall on him. Later, he begins falling on her. So, he begins to succeed in getting a little physical satisfaction that seems to begin to trigger something in her.

This leads to something a little more than physical. Because he helps her escape and they have a little laugh each time they fall, she starts carrying on conversations with him. One of the conversations is her proclaiming that, without a doubt, the best James Bond is Roger Moore. Internally, he thinks this is ridiculous because “everybody knows” Sean Connery is the best Bond (ask me what I think someday, okay, I’ll tell you right now: I don’t think there actually is one “best” Bond because they all were from different eras and brought different qualities to the role). He swallows his pride (and his own opinions) to agree with her. He blames her beauty having too much power over him to make him agree that Moore is the best Bond. She continues on saying that she thinks Connery is too hairy.

Okay… I no longer think she’s a 25 out of 10. She’s just a 23.5 now. I need to stick up for my fellow hairy-chested men.

But the key thing here, though, is that in just a couple of weeks, he’s spoken more to Erica than he had in over 15 years of living across the street from her. They talk about Bond. They play “would you rather,” which gives him a chance to really lay his feelings on thick. It’s a little bit of a win for Peter, but I think it becomes something very telling that I’m going to go into more detail later.

He wakes up after a restless sleep and sees Ms. Lewis wearing something he’s never really seen her wear before… A gown. I’ve mentioned that Catherine Hicks is here kind of off-handedly. But yeah, this is Dr. Gillian Taylor from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. She’s the mom in Child’s Play. At the time this was made, shown at festivals, and then released to home video, she was the mom on the somewhat niche, but popular, series 7th Heaven. I’m guessing she’s the one who helped get this movie funded, made, accepted into festivals, and what have you. Schaefer was never going to be a star. Keri Russell wasn’t Felicity yet. For such a small budget film, I have to assume she was a major get for a small role.

I find her character to be very interesting. Actually, the most interesting characters in this movie are not Peter or Erica. They are the people who don’t really have many lines up to this point in the movie. These are the set dressing that Peter’s been watching while sitting on Erica’s front lawn and whittling away the entire summer. It’s the world around this guy whose world has mostly just been this one girl he’s obsessed over.

Ms. Lewis is always seen working out. In the video link I posted above, Peter identifies her as someone who might be a good woman, even if she’s a little older. He seems to have a little bit of compassion for her. She is constantly working out… for whom? For herself? To still feel sexy and to find a man? Peter seems to think that she’s good enough as is. She saw him watching her working out one night, and this time, she plans on giving him a little show.

That gets interrupted by Matt, who shows off that he’s been experimenting a bit with his regular jerk off schedule while wearing a bra. Peter sees the old man closing the curtains, and he asks Matt if he has noticed that the old man no longer takes his wife out for walks anymore. They then hear the guy sawing away at something with a hacksaw.

As much as that might seem like a horror story playing out, the scarier thing happens later that night. When Nick and Erica get back from a day trip to the lake, Peter takes note of how large Nick seems in his Speedos. What’s more, they are talking about needing protection. Peter tries to interrupt the sex by singing a hymn, which works, only for a moment. Peter discovers Nick stuffs his pants to make it look like he’s got a big dick, but it doesn’t stop Nick and Erica from having sex.

The next day, Peter’s dad tries to sell all of Peter’s stuff at a yard sale. Nonno tries to stop him by saying he has no right to sell Peter’s stuff. Nonno seemingly pretends to have a heart attack, but it’s not an act. He actually dies. Peter considers giving up on Erica, but she is sweet to him in his time of mourning. Plus, he witnesses the kid he has been mentoring finally successfully stand up to his bully, proving that nice guys don’t always finish last.

Ms. Lewis tries to fuck Peter on Erica’s front lawn, but he rebuffs her. Matt breaks his neck trying to suck himself off. The old man across the street loads a bunch of trash bags into the back of his car one night, increasing the intrigue over what happened to his wheelchair-bound wife. Also, Peter is running out of time. There are two more weeks of summer left, and Erica will be gone soon.

One thing Peter hadn’t tried yet was to make her parents hate him so she’d like him more. His imaginary alter ego, Giuseppe, has been working on a plan to do just that the whole summer. The time presented itself when Erica tries to leave to go to Lollapalooza with Nick. Her father stops her and tells her that he forbids her to leave. Peter steps in and holds a sculpture of the Baby Jesus that her father made hostage in exchange for letting her go out. He then tells her father that he’s not giving the Baby Jesus back until the end of the summer. He and his bible buddies try to stop him, which only leads to the Baby Jesus getting destroyed.

Well, that succeeded, but it didn’t really move the needle for Erica too much. They continue their talks each night before she goes to bed. Some are interesting. Some are mundane but typical stuff people getting to know each other talk about. Peter begins to wonder if maybe he’s made a mistake spending the entire summer in Erica’s front yard. Maybe they really were just friends.

Peter receives some interesting advice and information from an older lady neighbor. She does a lot of strange things like eating dinner in her car, or doing gardening with a scuba mask on, or calling her friend while sitting on the roof, or mowing her lawn at night. All these things seem strange to others, and Peter in particular. But she has a perfect reason for why she does each of these things. None of them is strange or crazy. She basically says that sometimes things may seem strange on the outside, but there is almost always a reasonable reason behind the actions.

After seeing his dad make a mistake on his mom and dad’s anniversary, Peter reconciles with his father, even helping him figure out how to spice up his parents’ marriage. That basically only leaves two pieces of the plot to be resolved. The first, the sad old man across the street whose wife has no longer been seen and who keeps bringing bags in and out of the house every night. Nick dares Peter to go over and go inside and try to figure out what’s going on. Erica says they all three should go and see. Just as they are about to go inside, the old man catches them and threatens to show them what he’s done inside. When he pushes them inside, they fall into a pool. He built the pool and a bunch of tropical resort stuff in secret inside the house because the city wouldn’t have given him the permits needed for an outdoor pool in the time he had left with his wife before she passed away. They had planned to go to Tahiti for a second honeymoon, but she got sick, which made those plans moot.

In the whole hubbub of the old man scaring the three teens at his front door, Nick took off running like a pussy and got hit by a car driven by the strange guy who drives around the block multiple times before coming home. He broke his leg and lost his football scholarship. On the final day of the summer, Matt tells Peter he’s decided to go to college. He’s leaving the next day and wants to spend the last day with his best friend. Peter nearly declines an invitation to a party, hoping Erica will finally say she fell in love with Peter. After they leave to spend the last day together, Erica comes outside looking to talk to Peter, but is disappointed he is no longer waiting on her front lawn.

On the way home from the party, Peter and Matt are walking back to Erica’s house, where they find Ms. Lewis. She invites the boys in for a cup of hot chocolate (which I think was slang for “raunchy sex with a sexy older lady” in the 90s). Peter declines, but says Matt would probably want a cup of ranchy sex with a sexy older lady (which I think was slang for hot chocolate in the 90s). When he gets back to Erica’s, Peter discovers that she’s waiting for him on his lawn this time. They fuck… HARD.

I’m a tad conflicted here. Generally, I think this is a much better movie than it was reviewed as back in the late 90s. I know if I saw this movie when it hit video, I would have REALLY liked it. I was 22. I was a hopeless romantic and still believed in the idea that making love is the most important thing in the world. I’m almost 49 now. I kinda wanna die? I’m no longer an idealistic young lover. I’m an old man who just wants to be left alone. Get the fuck off my lawn, kid!

So, there’s an element of myself being a different person as well as times having changed. On the surface, in 1999, the idea of spending a whole summer on a girl’s lawn trying to show how much a guy loved her and waiting for her to reciprocate is kind of innocent and could be handled in a very sweet way. In 2025, a guy camping out on a girl’s front lawn might seem dangerous and scary. Have you seen what the average guy is who might think this is a good idea? He’s likely a black leather duster away from shooting up an elementary school!

This movie does handle it as sweetly and innocently as possible. I actually like Peter a lot in this movie. Sure, he may be a massive victim of a 1997-era Keri Russell and her belly button and her perky tits, but he’s no threat. He’s not a jerk. He loves this girl… or at least he thinks he does. More on that in a minute. In some ways, he learns a lot about the world around him. He learns about his neighbors. He learns about their value as people. The worst thing he does is fritter away the final days of his grandfather and basically does nothing with his best friend in their final summer together. He also seemingly throws away any possible future by allowing everyone else to go off to college while he seemingly only has the ambition to win Erica’s heart. That’s… that’s not good enough, Pete. But I get it. You’re young, idealistic, and in love.

These are all very nice things about the movie. The best friend who is always trying to find new ways to get sexual gratification from himself is not handled in a creepy or terribly problematic way. In fact, he’s slightly coded to possibly be an early version of at least pansexual or maybe even bi. The point is, he’s quite willing to experiment. I loved learning what is really going on with the “crazy” old lady and the “sad” old man in their separate stories. In a way, it shows Peter what he could be missing out on by opening himself up more to a life where he can roll with the punches instead of only being focused on one very specific thing – Keri Russell’s perky as fuck nips. In a way, Peter’s shown as kind of a sad character himself, like with Hicks’ Ms. Lewis. They both seem overly desperate to find love from someone, and they fritter away their existences by either sitting on a lawn or doing high-impact workouts. Both of them put a lot of work into something that yields almost nothing.

Now, what makes this movie something I have a lot of conflicting feelings over is less the creepy element of a kid not taking no for an answer and camping out on a girl’s lawn all summer until she finally caves and fucks him. That’s something you can’t really think about. Just accept this is a male fantasy romance movie and move on. Why I have to split what I think about this movie between what I would have thought at the age of “going on 23” and “going on 49” is really simple. For as pretty as Keri Russell is, and for all the wet dreams a guy could have with her growing up across the street from you, it’s hard to actually see if she’s worth Peter’s entire wasted summer.

Yes, later, we do see them actually conversing back and forth with each other, and getting into some interesting topics, but she says some things that surprise Peter. One of those things is her favorite James Bond, and the other is when she lost faith in her father. She tells a story in which her image of her father was shattered. He always says he’s this pious guy, but when a cashier gave him too much change back on a shopping outing, he knew she gave too much, said nothing, and just pocketed the money. He also mentioned that in August, he began talking to her more in a short period of time than he did the previous decade and a half prior to that. That leads me to believe Peter and Erica didn’t know each other all that well, outside of both of them knowing each other from living across the street for so long. He seemingly rarely had real conversations with her. She says they are just friends when he professes his love for her.

But are they really friends?

With this being a male fantasy coming-of-age story, made by a relatively young and fresh director, and the era in which it was released, okay, fine… This is a movie about a boy finally getting/scoring with the girl he “loved” all his life. Fine. Don’t think too much about it, punchy. However, I think there’s a better movie here, and it almost played out the way I wanted it to.

Here’s my version of the story. Everything for the first half of the movie plays out the same. Peter is inspired by a story told to him by Nonno about an ancestor who stood outside the balcony of the prettiest girl in the village until he won her heart. He does the same thing. He deals with Nick. He deals with Erica mostly ignoring him. He watches the neighborhood and the various characters within. I would maybe add a couple more characters. Like maybe Matt has a sister who comes home from college for the summer, or the old sad couple has a college-aged daughter or something.

The reason why I would add a couple of characters is that the version of the movie I want doesn’t end with Erica and Peter getting together. They actually become very close friends. He finds the value of being friends with the girl he lusted after all his life. A lot of guys have to deal with that to be truly mature, fully-formed people. I have. Maybe a tragedy takes place in her family, and Peter realizes he can’t take advantage of the situation to worm his way into her bed. Instead, he learns through being there for her that there are some things about her that are incompatible with him and vice versa. In the end, they find a different love for one another. Meanwhile, that’s not heartbreak for Peter. No, instead, he has found a lusty love or experience through one of those extra characters (or possibly even Ms. Lewis, but I like that she is sex starved and Matt is sex curious).

What Peter gets in the end is a fuller understanding of what’s around him. Maybe Erica already has that, or she’s likable but shallow compared to what Peter always thought of her being. What he learns from the others around him actually pays off in various ways. He learns about being himself and how not everything is always what it seems, or some sort of deficit to someone’s personality or sanity. He learns about the value of a long-term relationship and being truly selfless to someone else, and not acting solely in your own interests all the time. He learns that sometimes you just need to use a battery-powered stroker to get off. All of these things culminate in Peter coming to a bittersweet conclusion. He lost his summer, but he learned what Erica’s true place in his life is, while he also has something real to prepare him for emotional maturity.

Anyway, that’s my pitch. I did feel sad for Peter in the movie. Okay, sure, he gets balls deep into Erica in the end, but this whole summer was a waste of life. I already mentioned what he missed out on. He learned a little bit, but he didn’t learn the most important lesson. He threw everything away for a hot piece of ass. That is absolutely not something anyone should do. That’s not how love works. That’s not how life works.

Speaking of life, let’s talk about death. Next week, a group of young adults gets into an accident and gets chased by a pair of Grim Reapers. It’s the first of two straight weeks of movies starring and written by Vivian Schilling. Join me for 1990’s Soultaker!

Until then, allow me to do some more navel gazing… or… whatever you wanna call this.