The Vals

"The Vals" has very little going for it but the charm here is that bottom row rental store feel. The acting is bad, the plot is easily the weakest part of the whole movie. HOWEVER! The 1980s valley girl slang makes up for all of that within the first few minutes of the film.

The house on San Joaquin St and Magnolia belonged to my mothers aunt Connie. House next door was radio station KWG and we sat on grass and watched them film when i was a kid. The parlour where the scene was filmed was only place we went when visiting her. It wasnt until early 90s when I got to go upstairs to help my dad fix one of the pipes in bathroom.

The house scene in Morada was not filmed in the Michael Blatt house as it was stated in a earlier post. It was filmed at the Stagi family house on Hildreth Lane. I lived about 500 feet away from the house. Michael Blatt built and lived in his Morada home which was really close to the Stagi home around 1987 until his legal problems forced him to sell and relocate. Little did I know they were filming in the area which I was in total disbelief when I watched the film and saw the Morada home and Weberstown mall. It brings back memories watching it today thinking I use to hang out at the mall at the time it was being filmed.

I remember watching this on a tape I managed to pick up years ago and I wish I still had that tape, maybe I do somewhere! My recollection of the film is a fairly low budget production but one where the mostly unknown cast gave their all and made a good job of the script. I always will remember the gorgeous actress, Gina Calabrese, who sashayed across the screen and was a perfect example of womanhood to a very young and lusty lad. Hopefully one day someone will see fit to buy the rights to this movie and release it on DVD as it was one of the better low budget movies I ever saw in my youth. A shame that Gina never went much further in movies beyond 1987, I wonder what became of her!

Not only have I seen this movie, I was also an extra in it. "The Vals" was filmed here in Stockton, California in September and October of 1982. For trivia buffs out there the school sequence in the beginning of the movie was filmed at "A.A. Stagg High School" located at 1621 Brookside Road. The Ranch home sequence was filmed at the Michael Blatt Estate in the Morada section of Stockton. The Mall sequence was filmed at "Weberstown Mall" located at 4950 Pacific Avenue. Today Weberstown Mall has changed considerably since 1982 with the interior remodeled. Most of the stores there then are gone today with the exception of See's Candies.Even the Orange Julius restaurant (where the on-screen drug deal goes down) is no longer there.The Orphan House scene with John Carradine is located on 1130 North San Joaquin Street near Downtown Stockton. "The Vals" had a sneak preview here in Stockton at the historic "Stockton Royal Theatre" the following year but to the best of my knowledge it wasn't released anywhere else until it hit video and pay tv in 1986. It was originally filmed as "Valley Girls" but because of the Nicholas Cage film of a similar title the same year they changed the title to "THE VALS". For someone like me who grew up in Stockton and had an extra part on the movie, It was a good movie but for someone else, it might be just mediocre.