Mary Ellen Trainor: Queen Of The '80s

Are you making a big, exciting Hollywood movie? Is it the 1980s? In the unlikely event that you answered "Yes" to both questions, then you know what you need? A lucky charm; a talisperson of success; that one elusive ingredient to ensure your film turns out to be a classic for the ages. You need the Queen of the Eighties. You need...

Mary's place in the movie world cannot be underestimated. She blessed so many 1980s films with her apparently incidental but inestimably important characters, either imparting crucial exposition, acting as a pivotal plot device or just being someone who gave birth to Josh Brolin. Let's take a closer look, shall we? No? Your loss.

Romancing The Stone (1984)

Mary's first movie role is as Elaine, kidnapped sister of Kathleen Turner and catalyst for the entire plot. She might be a useless fainting damsel but without her Jack Colton and Joan Wilder would never have met, and for that, the world owes her big. Of course there would also have been no The Jewel Of The Nile, but let's gloss over that for now.

The Goonies (1985)

Without Mrs Walsh there would be no Mikey and no Brand, ergo no Goonies. There would also have been no opportunity for Mouth to warn Rosalita about Mr Walsh's SEXUAL TORTURE DEVICES.

Lethal Weapon (1987)

Is Riggs as mad as a phone box full of badgers? Dr Stephanie Woods certainly thinks so. "I think he's on the edge. I think Riggs has a death wish", she tells Roger Murtaugh on his side-splittingly massive mobile phone. And zingbamboom, now we know he's A COP ON THE EDGE and we JUST DON'T KNOW HOW FAR HE'LL GO to GET RESULTS. Cheers Doc!

Die Hard (1988)

Before introducing Dr Hasseldorf, author of "Hostage Terrorist, Terrorist Hostage: A Study In Duality", newsreader Gail Wallens helpfully fills in the identity of the smooth maniac with the John Phillips suits as none other than Hans Gruber, a terrorist recently expelled from the radical West German Volksfrei movement, whatever that is. I bet she also knows where Helsinki is, unlike that idiot hole Harvey.
Fact! Mary reprised her role as Gail Wallens in Denzel Washington's unmemorable Ricochet. That's the kind of character crossover excitement Marvel can only dream of.

Scrooged (1988)

As unlikely monikered member of the IBC board 'Ted', Mary's job essentially extends to giving Bill Murray a newspaper and telling him he might be overstepping the line with his death-inducing commercials, just in case we didn't realise he was a complete bastard. Hardly vintage Trainor, it has to be said.

Ghostbusters II (1989)

It's five years later. Are the Ghostbusters still in business? Doesn't look like it, as Mell-Tray appears to be hiring them to entertain a party of ten-year-old shits. Five years explained in one scene thanks to one woman. God Mary we love you.

Back To The Future Part II (1989)

A cheeky cameo for Mary as Officer Reese, whose job is to make sure we know the McFlys (McFlies?) have buggered up their future by living in Hilldale, "nothing but a breeding ground for tranks, lobos and zipheads".
More fact! The reason Mary bookended her 1980s with two great Robert Zemeckis films may be because she was none other than Mrs Robert Zemeckis. Which is surprising because I thought she must have been having it off with Richard Donner what with being in six of his films and all. Shows what I know.

Mary also performed almost-certainly-essential roles in Monster Squad and Action Jackson, but I haven't seen either of them. I'm not a machine you know.

Al Leong: A Life In Henching

Following his brief appearance as Bob Genghis Kahn in this post, I thought it was time to give ass-kicking deliverer and generic Asian henchman Al Leong his very own post to hang on his wall and show to his grandchildren.

Al was born a while ago somewhere or other, and immediately became the go-to-guy for lazy casting directors looking for shifty oriental types. However, his ability to forget more about dispensing pain than you and I will ever know soon earned him roles in all manner of '80s and '90s actiongasms at both ends of the quality spectrum. A glance at some of his character names gives you some idea of the kind of range he could play:

I'm not sure what happened with that last one. It was in a 1983 film called Off The Wall, which was headlined by the box office gold double-whammy of Paul Sorvino and Patrick Cassidy. I haven't seen it but I'm reasonably sure that Al Leong as a cheerleader is the best thing in it.

While Al henched his way through timeless classics like Lethal Weapon, Big Trouble In Little China and Action Jackson, the zenith of his career came in 1988 when he played Die Hard's shifty Asian henchman Uli, described with admiration on the IMDb as a "quiet but efficient terrorist". Like so many of Al's characters, Uli was brutally slain by a wisecracking cop, but not before he brought a touching new dimension of humanity to the oft-misunderstood role of the mindless killer-for-hire by filching a Nestlé Crunch Bar while waiting to kill more cops.

At 58 years old, Al is now a little wizened old shifty Asian henchman, but is still rocking the hair / moustache / beard combo that gave him his magical powers back in the day. He lives solely on a diet of Nestlé Crunch Bars, of which he received a lifetime's supply for his work in Die Hard, and is rumoured to be returning to our screens in 2012 in the no-doubt-Oscar-winning thriller Take Back, which will apparently see him team up with '80s ass-kicking, throat-ripping legends Dolph Lundgren, Mr T and Julie Andrews. And that is a film that cannot come soon enough.

This has been a completely random, poorly researched, occasionally incorrect biographical post from The Incredible Suit. Thank you for listening.