Ten Reasons Why Eric Roberts Was My Rock in the Year of the Curse, 2020
Considering Eric Roberts’ late career tendency to seemingly say yes to anything, it can be easy to forget that he started off his acting career with real promise. The dude’s been nominated for awards for a reason. That said, it’s also easy to get lost in his filmography, which now spans somewhere around 300+ features. You might be thinking: “How do you even get started on that?” or “Is there even anything worth watching after Hollywood decided he wasn’t allowed to sit at the cool kids table anymore?” First off, it was 2020 so why not. And second, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that Hollywood is not the cool kids table–they’re the jocks and the cheerleaders. No one thinks those people are cool.
Eric Roberts on the other hand? Did you know the guy ended up in a three-day coma because he was trying to keep his dog from jumping out a driving car? And the fact he’s a vegan and an animal rights activist? That’s the cool kids table right there. Yeah, sure, sometimes he phones it in, like that time he literally phoned his lines in as the voice of the titular cat in David DeCoteau’s A Talking Cat?!?. But there are plenty of examples of him doing the absolute opposite by basically dropping the mic on this thing called acting. If there’s one guy who deserves some sort of Nic Cage-level renaissance, it’s Eric Roberts.
10. Saved By the Light (1995, dir. Lewis Teague)
Eric Roberts plays a jerk (nice) who gets hit by lightning while making a phone call in his bedroom (?) and gets smacked into his ceiling (nice), then visits Lawnmower Man heaven (sort of, even if it's a TV production it's still 1995) and becomes a tormented precog Jesus. This all sounds more exciting than the sum of its parts, but Saved By the Light is weird enough in those parts, and pretty well made in other thanks to Teague's direction and Roberts committing to the role.
9. Endangered Species (2002, dir. Kevin Tenney)
Basically just Kevin Tenney remaking his Robert Forster movie Peacemaker, which was already ripping off Dark Angel, which was in turn ripping off The Terminator, which is infamous for being an unoriginal story. New ideas never existed!!! Get over it!
I feel like Tenney only got better as movies got worse, and the 2000s aren't exactly gonna go down as the zenith of cinema. Thankfully trash was still being produced by people both past and in their prime. Endangered Species was shot in probably-Romania on a Video Toaster budget, and features the good alien (Arnold Vosloo) and the good cop (Eric Roberts) teaming up versus the bad alien (???) who goes around to health clubs where he uses his gun to shoot people's eyes and then uses said gun to slurp a lil blood out of their eye sockets as a treat. What I mean with that is he presses his gun against their bloody eyeholes and there's a lil slurp sound effect. I don't think it's ever explained why or what this is (which makes it better), but they nickname him "The Health Nut." Also he can't be destroyed because toward the end of the movie Arnold Vosloo explains that both him and The Health Nut are wearing special vests made from Stegosauruses. Stegosauri?
Edit (not an actual edit just feelin' cute): had to look up what the plural for Stegosaurus is and it's Stegosauruses.
Anyway.
One last thing I gotta note is that this has the worst cop banter I've ever heard. Like, it's pathological. They're just riffing on shit throughout the entire movie and the longer it goes the less it feels like they're still even enjoying it. Truly demonic.
I'll give you one example and just take it from me that there's far more where this came from:
Some cop: "Yo Sully my dog just had puppies, what do you say?"
Eric Roberts: "I say next time wear a condom!"
8. Raptor (2001, dir. Jim Wynorski)
Jim Wynorski (once again hiding under his Jay Andrews pseudonym for god knows whatever reason) took some Carnosaur footage, made it somehow not dull, but then inexplicably added in an actual TEN minute sex scene. I'm not being cute by saying it felt like ten minutes, the guy got it in his head it was a good idea to take a killer dinosaur movie and insert one ten-minute scene of full frontal fucking. The next time someone complains about David Lynch ending an episode of Twin Peaks on a guy sweeping a bar, I'm just gonna laugh and recall the time Jim Wynorski let me vicariously sit in on one of his jerk-off sessions.
Gross nonsense aside, Raptor is another example of Wynorski's ability to take a piece of crap and polish it until it resembles something you don't mind looking at for 80 minutes. Eric Roberts isn't at his most Eric Roberts, but if you ever wondered what the finale of Aliens would be like if instead it had Eric Roberts driving a Bobcat into a plastic dinosaur as he quips "Eat this, Barney", then wonder no more.
7. Fatal Desire (2006, dir. Ralph Hemecker)
Twin Peaks the Return (2006, Your Mom). That's not a diss, it's just... what it is! Eric "JERSEYGUY" Roberts works at a casino, does a lil sex chat with Anne "SEXYKITTEN4ONLYYOU" Heche and shit gets melodramatic in the way only a true Lifetime gem can. Just about lost it when Heche makes a dirty tape for Roberts called "For JOE's eyes ONLY" and there's a scene of him, kinda confused or sleepy I don't know what, watching her spread her legs on his bigass 2006 LCD TV while the subs read [slot machines whirring]. Fatal Desire, everybody.
6. Stalked By My Doctor I-IV (2015-2019, dir. Doug Campbell and Jeff Hare)
There’s no way to talk about late career Eric Roberts without talking about his work for the Lifetime Channel. Lifetime (and made for TV movies by extension) gets kind of a bum rep to the point film bros use it as a slur, which is a shame because they’ve become a warm and embracing home to the kind of twisty trashy that lost its place in theaters post-90’s. Stalked By My Doctor is the pinnacle of Lifetime incrementally leaning into this reputation, with Eric Roberts front and center just having a downright ball–chewing up the scenery as the personification of the entitled male ego.
Exploitative any which way you look at it, but hard to not be entertained by a franchise where a mere flip of the tonal switch sees Roberts justifying himself to his Hawaiian shirt wearing alter ego, putting on an imaginary La La Land musical number with his stalking victim, or doing voices while he makes a soap dispenser and a glass pretend-fuck like he's Bob from Bob's Burgers.
5. Descending Angel (1990, dir. Jeremy Kagan)
Whaddyaknow, another made TV movie. Nothing too fancy or high concept about Descending Angel like all the other B-movie junk I’ve listed here. Sometimes I’m more than happy to watch what is a straight up good dramatic movie with a bangin' cast. It can happen! There’s a hook to this one, though. Eric Roberts is engaged to Diane Lane so he goes to Meet the Parents and turns out her dad is George C. Scott… who may or may not be a former nazi and war criminal?! Juicy!
4. Past Perfect (1996, dir. Jonathan Heap)
For some no name action sci-fi junk no one ever talks about, Past Perfect really took me by surprise. Not so much in that it's super great or anything, but it takes a lot of elements from other great movies and keeps a pace. You've got: Eric Roberts, RoboCop 2 level evil gun-toting children, a woman with a Tetsuo arm, Phantasm orbs, Eric Roberts, a Mortal Kombat-style Babality, Terminator 2 time-travelling executioners with a Minority Report-type of agenda but they just murder children before they can commit crimes, Eric Roberts. That's more boxes ticked than I expect from any movie.
3. Love Is A Gun (1994, dir. David Hartwell)
When I wonder how come the world isn't obsessed with Eric Roberts the way they are with Nicolas Cage, this is what I mean. A movie so bizarre in a way where I can't tell if it was intentional or not, which is a big compliment. Spontaneous weirdness should be treasured.
Explaining the plot of this one is just going to make me or the movie sound more unhinged, which is fine and challenging at the same time. Basically Eric Roberts plays a police photographer who gets involved with Kelly Preston’s model character and over the course of the movie Roberts gradually loses his grip on reality and it turns into a sizzle reel of deranged reaction shots. I don’t like to throw the term “Lynchian” around, but one-time director David Hartwell sure was going for somethin’. Love Is A Gun haunted my thoughts for weeks and it singlehandedly sent me down the Eric Roberts rabbit hole.
2. By The Sword (1991, dir. Jeremy Kagan)
Generational rivalry, codes of honor, a dark past, wrapped in an underdog sportsball type of plot that's trying to make a point about the toxicity of having to be the best to prove your worth. A little shocked to find out By The Sword wasn't just another HBO movie because it clearly doesn't have much of a budget, nor does it have a need for it. Built on a very strong foundation of small, effective character moments that get you invested, peppered with abstract little green screen flashbacks, Eric Roberts in his trademark sharp, shaaaarp v-neck, and F. Murray Abraham teaching dance-pop fencing–I was all-in on this live-action anime from start to finish.
1. Star 80 (1983, dir. Bob Fosse)
I know this isn’t a hot take, but who cares? Sometimes a movie is just as great as everyone says. I guess the most surprising thing about it being in my list is that I’d never seen it before. You should know Star 80. The biopic about Dorothy Stratten’s rise to fame as a Playboy centerfold, and her skeevy manager Paul Snider (Roberts). Intense, intriguing, insidious. The male ego portrayed as the horror movie it is. The movie that put Eric Roberts on the map, and a testimonial to his skill. Everything after has just been an encore.
