Never Too Young To Die

John Stamos IS Stargrove.

Before he became Uncle Jesse on "Full House" (and in my heart), John Stamos tried to become a sort of James Bond Jr. as Lance Stargrove in 1986's "Never Too Young To Die" - or "N2Y2D," as I'll be calling it from here on out. He was a gymnast in the movie:


The writers and director didn't do much of anything I was familiar with beyond "The Double-O Kid," which I've been dying to see and believe has the same basic plot as "N2Y2D." It DOES feature some familiar faces, though, like Lorenzo Lamas's buddy from "Renegade" as a biker tough, a James Bond as Stargrove's super-spy dad, Freddy Krueger as a dweeby assistant to the main villain, and Peter Kwong, the dude who plays Rain in "Big Trouble in Little China," as Stargrove's nerdy inventor roommate at school. Serial, check it out:


Otherwise, Prince's protege Vanity appears pre-"Action Jackson" and post-"Tanya's Island" as a love interest for Stargrove. The big mindboggler in the cast is Gene Simmons as Ragner, the hermaphrodite terrorist who, with his army of "Mad Max"-esque punker followers, plans to poison the city's water supply if he can get back a disc with codes on it, which Lance has in his possession following Lance's dad's death. Guh.

Check out the trailer:



I first heard about this movie while flipping through Starlog #96, which I bought at a comic shop sometime in the last couple years.


Simmons's Ragner is inexplicably undercover on the side of the good guys for most of the movie while also running her/his bad guy operation. I spotted the likeness right away, so all his spy enemies in the movie should've been fired, cause they're awful. I mean, LOOK at how similar they looked:


But he/she finally reveals themself on a helicopter in the most radical display of goofball acting ever:



Ragner also performs a transvestite rock opera song at a biker bar where shitheads ride around inside on their motorcycles (motorcycles are for outside, dudes) and order beers and cans of oil, and you have to stop what you're doing right now and watch this clip between 2:50 and 5:35:



The outfit Ragner wears is the same outfit Lynda Carter wore during a performance with KISS back in the '70s. Bonkers.



By the end, some stuff blows up and dozens of punkers get shot in the chest and Stamos and Vanity flirt so hard during one scene that I went through puberty again and Iren Koster made a dope song for the credits and everybody has a great time. That includes this one burly monster of a punker who shows up throughout the movie -- I call him Tron, and here he is:

(CLICK FOR LARGER)

Here are some more fun pictures, which you should click to see larger:

Gene tries kissing John in one scene.

Ragner kept laughing so hard his eyes went back in his head. This happened three times.

At one point, Lance is kidnapped by two punkers and one of them squishes a tomato into the side of Lance's mouth for no reason at all.

Gene and Robert Englund in their lair

Stamos Buttfest '86

Some of the punkers

The movie isn't available on DVD, but you can find it on VHS in places, and I'm certain you can get a bootleg SOMEWHERE.