Surveying the Gen X landscape and the origins of geek
I don’t collect toys. I collect good, clean, complete images of toys. It’s the closest I need or want to get to the prizes of my childhood. The goal, for me, is to reimagine—not relive.
The R2 unit above sold for $566 a couple of weeks ago on eBay. I’m not sure how much 3PO fetched.
This gentleman is Dennis McKinnon, and he’s posing in his video store for a press photo of some sort.
How many movies can we name? At first pass, from top to bottom and left to right (not counting the Star Trek single episodes, and not counting doubles), I’ve got Ordinary People, Sixteen Candles, The Lion in Winter, Raging Bull, Catch-22, Christine, High Plains Drifter, At Close Range, Little Shop of Horrors, 9½ Weeks, Cloak and Dagger, Peggy Sue Got Married, Topaz, Ruthless People, Horror of the Blood Monsters, The Hustler, On Golden Pond, Labyrinth, The Blues Brothers, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Missing, Rocky, Scarface, Revenge of the Nerds, Soul Man, Airplane, The Breakfast Club, Omen III: The Final Conflict, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Maltese Falcon, Dr. No, Children of a Lesser God, Purple Rain, Firewalker, Gotcha, The Howling, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, The Black Stallion, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Back to the Future, Wildcats, Village of the Damned (1960), Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Wisdom, Heartbreak Ridge, Crocodile Dundee.
I can make out a few more in the longer shot below: And Justice For All, Alien, Children of a Lesser God, The Killing Fields, Deathstalker, Jagged Edge, Return of the Living Dead, Buckaroo Banzai, All of Me, Dreamscape, Das Boot, Missing in Action, Logan’s Run.
How about some alphabetization, Dennis? Damn.
You’ll see a My Demon Lover poster just above his head. I vaguely recall the movie, starring Scott Valentine (Nick from Family Ties) as a dude who literally turns into a demon when sexually aroused. I fear I may have seen it in the theater.
(Images via Historic Images)
A little late to the game, aren’t we, Imperial?
The jet plane is named Wind-Cutter. Wind-Breaker and Cheese-Cutter were already taken, I guess.
UPDATE: Friend J. reminded me of a popular Galoob line called Micro Machines, so that’s got to be where Imperial got the first part of the name/idea. Here’s the commercial, which features the fastest talker in the world (according to the Guinness Book) at the time, John Moschitta, Jr.
(Images via eBay; video via SpacedCobraTV)
Kid’s like 10 years old and he’s still sucking on a bottle. The dad has got to be tripping.
I had a few of those airplanes. You just slid the wings into the fuselage and threw. I don’t remember them flying very well.
Third photo: God bless the stoners.
Those are empty egg cartons on the ceiling in the last shot.
(Photos via the Boston Archive, Glen.H, and Jeremy Jae)
Midnight Lace (premiered February 9, 1981): A remake of the 1960 film of the same name, Mary Crosby (Bing Crosby’s daughter) plays a TV reporter harassed and stalked by an unseen psycho. Is she going insane, or is her assailant for real? I found the Time review of the 1960 version interesting:
Another of those recurrent thrillers in which a dear, sweet, innocent girl is pursued by a shadowy figure of evil who threatens her with all sorts of insidious molestation… Like its predecessors, Midnight Lace is not very interesting in itself, but it is uncomfortably fascinating when considered as one of the persistent fantasies of a monogamous society…
The fantasies of an entrenched monogamous society in the early sixties give way to anxiety over the seeming breakdown of that monogamous society in the eighties.
Midnight Offerings (Premiered February 27, 1981): Melissa Sue Anderson, trying to shed her good girl image from Little House on the Prairie, plays a Satan-worshiping witch wreaking havoc on her ex and his new girlfriend (Mary McDonough), the good witch. Anderson, who appeared in a nifty horror movie called Happy Birthday to Me the same year, is a really good bad girl. Otherwise, the movie is rushed and bland. Marion Ross (Mrs. C.) has a short part as a psychic. Watch the movie (lower quality) here.
The Midnight Hour (Premiered November 1, 1985): This one is a fun horror-comedy. It’s Halloween, and some mischievous high school students unwittingly release an ancient curse upon their New England town. The dead climb out of their graves and wander into the big Halloween costume party, where the head witch-vampire starts biting the living. There’s an extended, somewhat arty vampire seduction scene set to the The Smiths’ “How Soon is Now?”, likely the first time anything by the band was introduced to a mainstream American audience.
Peter DeLuise and Levar Burton play two of the students. Both of them would land the shows that made their careers two years later: 21 Jump Street and Star Trek: TNG, respectively. Kevin McCarthy (from the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers) plays a drunk dad who gets what’s coming to him. Watch the movie (good quality) here. Here’s the dance scene. The gorgeous young witch is played by Shari Belafonte, Harry Belafonte’s daughter.
(Images via Nostalgic Collections and Randy Rodman)
(Video via bmoviereviews)
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I’m on a short break. No new posts until next Tuesday. If there’s anything you’d like to see more of on 2W2N, let me know here or on my Facebook page.
From Michael at Progress City, U.S.A., who got it from a presentation by Disney Imagineer Dave Fisher in 2010:
Expecting the movie to become a big hit, WED [Walt Disney Imagineering] designed this ride-through shooting gallery based on the robots from the film. When The Black Hole flopped, the idea was adapted for another upcoming sci-fi film, TRON. When that didn’t become a hit either, the concept lay dormant until it was revived as Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin.
I guess WED didn’t have any art to refer to, because the robots don’t look anything like the robots in the movie. It doesn’t matter. I’ll still be twice as upset every time I get on the crappy Buzz Lightyear ride that my wife always beats me at. Tron did get a piece of a ride that I loved, the PeopleMover, in 1982. The PeopleMover closed in 1995 and was eventually replaced by the short-lived Rocket Rods.
Check out Michael’s full post for many more ride concepts, including a Uranium mine attraction, with visitors using Geiger counters to locate the radioactive stuff.
(All images vie Progress City, U.S.A.)
I didn’t think I’d win it with my paltry bid, but I sure as hell didn’t expect the son of a bitch to go for over $100. I was going to wear the thing. Now it’s “appreciating” in a special collector’s bag somewhere. What a waste.
The kid is Dan Amrich, and he still has his carts. He didn’t keep the Knight Rider shirt and the KangaROOS. That would have been weird.
ROOS are still around as part of the bullshit “retro” craze. They’re referred to as “lifestyle” shoes, and here’s a choice quote from Wikipedia: “They were notable for having a small zippered pocket on the side of the shoe, large enough for a small amount of loose change, keys, or more recently, condoms.”
Hipsters bother me.
(Photo via Dan’s Flickr)
The ad, showing Vancouver’s The Comic Shop, is from The First Vancouver Catalogue. The pic on top shows rows and rows of fantasy paperbacks in the glorious heyday of fantasy paperbacks. Several editions of Conan appeared between 1966 (Lancer Books) and the early ’80s. They included Howard’s original stories and new works by contemporary authors, notably L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter.
The Marvel titles in the bigger photo are mostly obscured, but what a great look at all the magazines. Will Eisner’s Spirit, 1984, The Hulk! (formerly The Rampaging Hulk) #10 (Val Mayerik cover art), and The Savage Sword of Conan #33 (killer Earl Norem cover). On the second row, you’ll see a `Jaws vs Ape’ headline. That’s Famous Monsters of Filmland #146.
Not cover specialist Bob Larkin’s best work, and why the hell is the ape beating on Jaws, anyway? Here’s my best guess.
1976’s A*P*E (no shit, it stands for Attacking Primate MonstEr) is compellingly awful, and introduces a young Joanna Kerns (the mom in Growing Pains). RKO sued the production company for its blatant attempt to rip off Dino De Laurentiis’s 1976 King Kong remake, hence the hilarious disclaimer at the end of the trailer.
Also, listen for the very poorly edited “See giant ape defy jaw-shark!” I’m sure the narrator originally used ‘jaws’, but was forced to change it due to legal pressure from Universal Pictures. So, in true exploitation fashion, they replaced the ‘s’ by dubbing ‘shark’ over it.
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I’m happy to report that The Comic Shop is still there. On the website’s history page, I found a bonus photo of co-founder and owner Ron Norton in 1975. You can spot several more comic magazines behind him, including Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction #1, and more fantasy and sci-fi paperbacks (Zelazny, Silverberg) in the foreground.
(First image via Sequential: Canadian Comics News and Culture)
(Video via TrashTrailers/YouTube)
2 Warps to Neptune 