The Vals

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.

"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.

I've been a fan of the whole early 80's Valley Girl concept; the cute fashions, the carefree attitudes, and the mall roaming. The Nic Cage movie "Valley Girl" has been a favorite of mine for years, but the wardrobe of the Valley Girls in that movie seemed a little lacking in a sort of je ne sais quoi (I thought, anyway)... a sort of cuteness or spunkiness was missing.

Enter "The Vals," a low-budget movie about Valley Girls who wonder if there's more to life than partying with college boys, battling with Beverly Hills girls that seem to have invaded Val turf, shopping for new clothes, and riding down the street perched on the drop top of a white Mercedes. One day at the mall, they overhear a couple of drug dealers putting demands on one of their pushers, a young boy. Out of curiosity, they observe the boy as he pushes drugs on other kids, then they follow him home. His home is a house on the other side of town, an orphanage run by a kind old man who's been running the place for many years. The old man and his charges are in danger of losing their home unless they can come up with $25,000 of back rent, which is why the one boy had started selling drugs. Suddenly, the Vals "know" that they have to save the orphanage. How, though, is ridiculously farfetched and made you wonder if the Vals themselves weren't on something when they came up with their plan. Suffice it to say that everything turns out okay in the end, in typical early 80's movie style.

One of the few redeeming qualities about "The Vals" is the Valley Girls' wardrobe. The clothes were much more, well, Valley Girl than those from "Valley Girl." The Vals' clothes were fun, frilly, and funky. It's really hard to explain, but I'm more partial to that sort of cutesy Valley Girl look over the polished preppy Valley Girl look favored by the ladies of "Valley Girl."

Call me crazy, but I kind of dig the song "Girls In The Valley," which seems to be the featured track on the "The Vals" soundtrack. The end credits say "Soundtrack Available On Unicorn World Records," but that seems to be about as real as an actual unicorn (DID a soundtrack really exist in some form for "The Vals"?). The rest of the soundtrack is a take-it-or-leave-it thing, but I'd love to be able to get "Girls In The Valley" in a more portable version someday.

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.