Surveying the Gen X landscape and the origins of geek
These exquisite shots are via Frederick Barr’s Flickr (modern_fred). The last two are particularly spacy and enigmatic. Barr also has a number of absolutely killer sci-fi photosets, including toys in space, kaiju eiga, anderson is go (images from the shows of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson), fantasy worlds of irwin allen (I’m a huge fan of Allen’s stuff, especially Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea), to boldly go—you get the picture. Now go check them out.
I thought Masters of the Universe would be lame enough to be kind of fun, and I was almost right. It has a distinctly Howard the Duck flavor, meaning that it was doomed from the beginning to be an epic flop.
First of all, the cartoon ran from ’83 to ’85, and the movie didn’t come out until ’87, so most of the kids who liked the cartoon had moved on to something that wasn’t about a pink-shirted prince who, when thrusting his “power sword” in the air and chanting “I have the power,” turned into a half naked he-man who rode a tiger. Second, the movie has almost nothing to do with the cartoon. Third, despite a relatively big budget ($22,000,000; Aliens was made for $18,500,000) that went primarily towards some cool sets by Moebius and some passable effects, Masters of the Universe is unwaveringly asinine.
Frank Langella as Skeletor is really the only high point, although Dolph Lundgren’s hair is pretty awesome. Courteney Cox has zero charisma (sinus supremus!) in her first feature film role, and it took me the entire movie to figure out that her love interest, played by Robert Duncan McNeill, was Tom Paris in Star Trek: Voyager.
(Poster images via movieposter.com and Sci-Fi Movie Posters)
Bibliop/Flickr
The Puente Hills Mall opened in 1974. This photo is from ’75. You can just see a Bob’s Big Boy on the upper right. The mall parking lot was used for the exterior shots of Twin Pines Mall in Back to the Future (1985).
Metro Transportation Library and Archive/Flickr
Bus token promotion, February 25, 1984.
Metro Transportation Library and Archive/Flickr
A wider shot of the same scene. I count 3 shoe stores (Florsheim is behind the tree).
retenir-/Flickr
The Puente Hills Theater AMC 6, 1992. The 6 (and the 4, not shown) was a mecca for ’80s kids and teenagers. The colors of the marquees are burned into my memory.
videocrab/Flickr
starberryshyne/Flickr
starberryshyne/Flickr
starberryshyne/Flickr
videocrab/Flickr
2 Warps to Neptune 