When I was a kid, we didn’t have cable TV, because we lived out in the country. My aunt and uncle, who lived on the same farmstead, had a satellite dish (which I could never convince my parents to get for our house), so they would sometimes record movies off HBO for me. I had a fairly small collection of Betamax tapes that were on constant rotation, including Animalympics, Time Bandits, Watership Down, and, the 1984 film, Cloak & Dagger.
If you’re not familiar, Cloak & Dagger is about Davey, played by Henry Thomas from E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, who is handed an Atari game cartridge by a man that has just been shot. That’s right, we’re already starting out in pretty dark territory for a kids’ movie. The man says that Davey needs to get the cartridge to the FBI. Almost immediately afterwards, Davey is pursued by gun-toting bad guys who really don’t let up for the rest of the film. Davey and his friend Kim take the cartridge to a nerdy friend, Morris, at a computer software store (remember those!?) at the mall. Morris is unimpressed with Davey’s seemingly-regular Atari cartridge for Cloak & Dagger, a video game based on a tabletop role-playing game that follows the adventures of spy extraordinaire, Jack Flack. But Davey insists that this cartridge is different. Morris winds up playing the game and, upon reaching a certain score, the game reveals plans for a Top Secret spy plane; the cartridge is just a vehicle to get the plans out of the country undetected. Needless to say, Davey and Kim find themselves embroiled in a high risk game of espionage across the streets of San Antonio.
My Adventures with Jack Flack
I honestly couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve seen Cloak & Dagger. This film was instrumental in making me the film fan I am today. One of the things I loved most about it was how much I could identify with Davey. He was smart, he was resourceful, he played video games, he read comics – I wasn’t playing RPGs at 10, but that would come along a year or two later. I’m not sure if I actually was smart and resourceful, but I wanted to believe I was at that age (don’t we all?). I could absolutely see myself in Davey’s shoes. And that’s why the rest of the film was so harrowing and exciting for me.
Much of the film is Davey running away from bad guys with guns. They didn’t actually shoot those guns very often, but the fact that they were pointing them at a kid my age, was pretty scary. There’s one scene that has really stuck with me, though.
Davey is cornered at a dead end on the San Antonio Riverwalk. It’s late at night, there’s no one else around. One of the villains approaches Davey, pulls out an Uzi, and levels it at the kid. I don’t remember the exact quote, but he basically says that he’s going to blow Davey’s kneecaps off! The specificity of that line was really messed up, even as a kid. So there are real stakes in this film, unlike so many other kids’ movies. I know as a 10-year old, I definitely wanted to keep my kneecaps. I still do, if we’re being completely honest.
Another thing that made me identify with Davey was his imaginary friend, Jack Flack, the star of the Cloak & Dagger games. In the movie, Jack is almost like a guardian angel watching over Davey, giving him advice, and helping him navigate the dangerous circumstances he suddenly finds himself in. But, to be clear, he is entirely in Davey’s head. Jack and Davey talk to one another frequently, with Davey asking Jack what to do, but Jack isn’t real, he can’t interact with the real world, he’s acts a lot like Hobbes in relation to Calvin.
As I said, I grew up on a farm, so I didn’t really have a neighborhood full of kids to play with. I had my older sister, but she was eight years my senior. So, for most of my life, she had her own life to live as a teenager. She and I would do things together, but she was mostly on the phone or out with friends. Besides, she never really had much interest in my nerdy passions – Star Wars, Transformers, He-Man, and rewatching movies over and over again – so we grew apart by the time I was five or six. My parents were supportive of my interests, but they were very rarely participatory. By the time I was 13 or so, my Mom had gotten more involved in helping me collect comic books, but she didn’t sit down and read them with me; she just drove me to comic shops and bought me the issues I needed. The closest my Dad ever really got was watching Doctor Who with me when I was little, but even his interest in that eventually faded away.
So, I wound up spending a lot of time alone in my room, playing on the computer, or playing outside on the homestead. I didn’t necessarily have an imaginary friend to keep me company, but I definitely voiced more than one Star Wars character while acting out adventures in the old barn and shot lasers at plenty of pretend Stormtroopers hiding behind the grain bins.
Davey uses Jack as a source of comfort in a world where he felt alone – his mother has died and his dad, played beautifully by Dabney Coleman, is preoccupied with his job to spend a lot of time with him. In addition, Davey’s father doesn’t like that his son has immersed himself in worlds of fantasy so much, clearly not understanding what Davey gets out of those imaginary adventures. Of course to really sell the point that all Davey really wanted was a connection with his father, Dabney Coleman also plays Jack Flack.
I remember hearing a lot that I was wasting my time watching “those dumb movies” over and over again by a father who said you only ever needed to see a movie once. I, too, felt distant from my Dad, who was constantly working in the field, and rarely made the time to experience my nerdy pursuits with me. My Mom was busy as a farm wife, plus dealing with undiagnosed depression, so she was just happy I kept myself occupied.
Don’t get me wrong – my parents were great and I had a lot of fun with them both separately and together. Dad bought model rockets that we launched from the concrete slab that surrounded our well. He gave me my first BB gun and we used to plink away at cans. Mom and I would draw sketches from Ed Emberley books for hours. She was always there to read a book to me or just snuggle when I really needed it. But they were late Silent Generation adults who only knew how to raise a kid like they’d been raised – one who didn’t need constant supervision and should be able to entertain himself when needed. Which, I was able to do both of these things, but, in hindsight, it would have been nice to have my own Jack Flack who really understood me. I think we could all use that kind of friend, even if he is imaginary.
The Cartridge
Needless to say, when frequent name drop on this site, Shawn Robare, posted a photo of his Cloak & Dagger Atari cartridge on Twitter, I had to get my own. The website he sent me – which I can’t recall at all and a Google search is doing me no good anymore – didn’t actually sell a Cloak & Dagger cartridge, but sold a C&D sticker that would fit on an Atari 5200 cartridge. You also got a really cool C&D patch to go along with it. It was an instant buy for me. The funny thing is, after I had the sticker, it took me about two weeks to track down a 5200 cartridge! I thought it would be as easy as going my local used CD/DVD/Game store at the mall, but all they had were 2600 cartridges, which look completely different. Eventually, I found the right cartridge, nervously placed the sticker over the existing sticker (I think it was a Pac-Man game or something; I honestly can’t remember now) hoping not to screw it up, and, voila, I had my very own Cloak & Dagger game. I’m not sure if this one holds any Top Secret plans for a new stealth plane, but I like to believe it does.
The patch is based on the cover of the box of the Atari game from the film…
But can more clearly be seen on the box for the Cloak & Dagger board game based on the movie. This is a Grail item for me, by the way…
I can’t say enough about how important this film was to me when I was 10 years old. It was exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it, and it will always have a special place in my heart for that. I’m very happy to have a small piece of it in my collection.
