1988 - Fresh Horses

Fresh Horses
Release Date: 1988

Plot Summary from IMDB: A Cincinnati college student breaks off his engagement to his wealthy fiancée after he falls in love with a backwoods Kentucky girl he meets at a party. She claims to be 20 years old, but he learns that she's actually just 16 and already married.

SPOILERS

Characters

Green (Viggo Mortensen): Green is a back country red neck with far too many guns. Somehow he got himself a 16-year-old wife with obvious mental problems. Maybe he was dazzled by her bright orange hair. Green comes across as a mean-tempered, dangerous man who just might do anything. He appears twice in the film and steals the scene both times. He just may be the most interesting character in the film, for all his screen time is less than 5 minutes total.

Jewel (Molly Ringwald): Jewel is maybe 20 years old, or maybe 16 – she can’t get her story straight and there is no objective third party to trust. She has been abused from childhood on and is currently in a loveless marriage with a man who she only married to get away from her father. Now she’s met someone different – someone she likes – but it’s too late for her. She’s used up white trash from the wrong side of the tracks and she knows it.

Matt Larkin (Andrew McCarthy): This spoiled rich boy (by comparison only) has a promising future if he doesn’t screw it up. He has a fiancé with the kind of connections that will ensure him a successful career. But, much like a moth, he is drawn to the fiery temptress Jewel who he encounters at a notorious party house.

Story
To be honest, I’ve never once sat through this entire film front to back in a single setting, although I have watched large parts of it other than the Viggo bits and have managed finally to watch it all. This film was made at the tail-end of the brief brat-pack era. Andrew McCarthy and Molly Ringwald got together to make another of their formulaic teen/young adult romances. Only this wasn’t directed by John Huston or anyone else who was any good, and the script wasn’t even passable, and the story was not very believable. You can do without one of these elements but all three? Add in mediocre talent in the lead roles and you’ve got a bad movie whose only reason to exist is to provide promising new talent with a paycheck and possible future work.

There was an interesting supporting cast here, some of whom went on to better careers than those they were supporting. In addition to Viggo, we had Ben Stiller (Mystery Men, Zoolander, Meet the Parents, Dodge Ball, Starsky and Hutch, Night At the Museum I and II) and Doug Hutchison (Green Mile, Con Air, A Time to Kill, Batman & Robin).

Although Viggo’s time in this movie is very short, the character has sparked a lot of conversation in Viggo fan circles. A lot of it is because of the gaping plot holes left by a poorly written script.

Green is a big, mean, evil man reputed to have killed people. But he also married this abused girl to get her out of an incestuous household and since then has never had sex with her. Green is a gun-hoarding survivalist who lays out the whole plot in a few sentences in his brief scene. Green is a violent, unpredictable individual who comes home to find a strange man in his home and just sits back and calmly regards the Larkin character as he destroys a soap sculpture in a childish tantrum.

As Viggo fans, we are inclined to be sympathetic to his characters. Honestly, we even fall in love with a serial killer/stalker. But the inconsistencies in Fresh Horses leave us with unanswered questions that make it too easy to create our own back story, in which the endlessly patient Green becomes a hero and a victim.

Other

Reason to Exist
The best reason for this film to have been made was that Sean Penn watched it, with the sound turned off, while waiting for his girlfriend to get ready for their date. He saw Green on that screen and realized he was looking at the physical embodiment of the angry young man from the movie he wanted to make, Indian Runner.

Other Connections
Patti D’Arbanville, one of the minor characters in this movie, was also a 1985 guest on Miami Vice. I mention her more because of a memorable role she played in the movie Main Event (1979), where she threatened to cut off Barbara Streissand’s tits. Ben Stiller played the uncredited jerk running the nursing home in Happy Gilmore (1996), which is one of Viggo’s favorite movies. Stiller is also another Miami Vice alumnus (1987).

Viggonness Ratings

Viggo Screen Time (Quality/Quantity): 4 out of 10. Viggo has a short but vital role in this film, totalling maybe 5 minutes. Most of that time is dedicated to close-ups of his face, especially as he’s delivering the facts of life to Andrew McCarthy with barely concealed malicious glee. The video quality is okay, though it could be better.

Nekkid Viggo: 0 out of 10. Not even an inch.

Viggo Sex: 0 out of 10. Green gets nothing.

Fetish Factor: 3 out of 10. Viggo in plaid. Viggo with long hair. Viggo wearing a black knit cap. Not a lot to work with here.

Clothes: 2 out of 10. I don’t think anything made it out of this movie. He wears a plaid shirt and a green army jacket.

Viggo Sound Bytes: 4 out of 10. Viggo delivers the plot précis (such as it is) in a few short lines. “I’m not good enough for her and you’re too good.” “You gonna come riding up on your white horse and carry her out of here?”

Total Viggonness Rating: 2.2 out of 10
This is another of those films you can skip unless you want the complete Viggo collection.