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Halloween, 1983: Tron

Published October 18, 2013 '80s Movies/TV , Halloween , Halloween Costumes , Tron 2 Comments

Halloween Tron 1983

The place is Charlotte, North Carolina. The kid with impeccable taste is Bryan Bowden, who very kindly gave me the background on the photo:

I had never seen the movie Tron, but I had all of those promotional read-along books that kids could get at Burger King or McDonald’s (I forget which). So my knowledge of the movie was based off of the abridged, kid-afied version of Tron. I just loved the idea of being a computer person who threw a frisbee weapon and rode cool laser motorcycles.

[…] ROTJ costumes cost money, and my mom never spent money on costumes because she was smart. Tron was my second choice. I found the mask first. It was at a dollar store and was just a simple shiny blue “robot” mask. I told my mom I wanted to be Tron. She had no idea what that was but used the pictures from the books to sew together a costume. The costume is a sleeveless vest she made and some Dallas Cowboys pants with reflective tape down the side. For good measure, she wrote “Tron” on the chest with the reflective tape, and put more reflective tape on the back in an angular pattern. She wanted me to be super reflective because 5-year-olds used to go trick or treating at night.

I was obsessed with sci-fi, robots, space, NASA, computers, etc. My family encouraged it, but they did not understand technology so we didn’t have a computer till the late ’80s and it was a used Apple IIe.

All of this tech love didn’t manifest itself in my future career. Currently, I’m a teacher and a comedian. I teach comedy at The Second City Training Center to ages 11 – adult. High School did an amazing job in killing my love of science. However, my demand for tech stuff in our luddite household encouraged my brother to explore and interact with newer technology. He’s now an engineer for HP (Hewlett Packard, not Lovecraft).

Ben Cooper did release a Tron costume in 1981, but I’ve never seen it outside of the box. It doesn’t matter. This one is better.

Thanks again, Bryan.

Halloween, 1984: Ghostbusters

Published October 14, 2013 '80s Movies/TV , Ghostbusters , Halloween , Halloween Costumes , Sci-Fi Movies/TV 1 Comment

Halloween Ghostbusters 1984

Very clever. I can’t tell what the backpacks are made of, but the proton guns are Uzis. The kids’ names are sewn on the uniforms.

UPDATE (10/23/13): Nick sent me details regarding the costumes:

The costumes were built with a pattern that had come out during that year for costumes. The backpacks were simply spray-painted cardboard boxes with shoulder straps. However, a special opening at the top allowed people to drop candy inside, so we could have theoretically mopped up some serious candy because the boxes could hold a lot. While we never got a photo of the rear of the backpacks, my brother designed the outside with all sorts of hoses and accouterments so it would have a “wow” factor that made it look very fancy and techie. The Uzis were just the standard toy gun from K-Mart that you could buy at the time. Through standard rubber hoses, they were then attached to the backpack.

(Photo via nick_cw1861/Flickr)

1984 Daisy Toys Catalog: The A-Team and Hardcastle and McCormick

Published September 10, 2013 '80s Movies/TV , A-Team, The , Catalogs , Toy Guns/Weapons 4 Comments

Daisy 1984

Daisy 1984-2

Daisy 1984-3

Daisy 1984-4

I talked about war toys. What about toy guns? We played guns a lot when I was a kid. We’d split up into teams and play in the hills, or we’d play in the house: the bad guy would hide upstairs and the good guys would try to sneak up and blast him before he blasted them. Identifying the “winner” was always problematic—“I got you, sucker. You’re toast.” “No way. I got you!”

The funniest thing about The A-Team, of course, was that tens of thousands of bullets were fired, but nobody ever died. Same with the G.I. Joe cartoon. Hardcastle and McCormick (1983 – 1986) was a small scale Mod Squad: A retired judge gets a car thief out of jail under the condition that the car thief helps the judge nail the criminals he was forced to free on technicalities.

Both shows represent a quintessential ’80s narrative: (1) the American legal system is irreparably broken, (2) traditional law enforcement is ineffective and/or corrupt, and (3) justice depends on reluctant-but-righteous vigilantes who live on the fringes of the society they are morally driven to protect.

After a number of fatal shootings, “realistic-looking” toy guns were banned in Los Angeles and New York in 1987. In 1988, Congress passed a law requiring that all toy guns “be identified with a `blaze orange’ tip over the gun’s nozzle.” The law is easily gotten around today.

More on this subject tomorrow.

(Images via eBay)

Video Store, 1987

Published August 29, 2013 '80s Movies/TV , Home Video , Video Stores 11 Comments

Video Store 1983-2

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.

Video Store 1983

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)

TV Guide Ads for TV Movies (1981 – 1985): Special ‘Midnight’ Edition

Published August 22, 2013 '80s Movies/TV , Ads , TV Guide 1 Comment

Midnight Lace 1981

Midnight Offerings 1981

midnight hour ad 1985

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.

Kid Playing Atari 2600, 1982/1983

Published August 20, 2013 '80s Decor/Design/Fashion , '80s Movies/TV , Atari , Knight Rider , What Our Rooms Looked Like 8 Comments

Playing Atari 1982

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)

20/20 Special Report: ‘VCR Horrors’ (1987)

Published August 1, 2013 '80s Movies/TV , Home Video , Horror Movies/TV , Video Stores 3 Comments

Because “half of American households now have video cassette recorders,” goes the argument in this shameless scare piece, kids have increasingly easy access to R-rated horror films, many of them “graphic orgies of blood and violence.” My favorite bit: “The kids call them slasher or splatter movies, and they get together to watch them at gross-out parties.” (Gross-out parties?)

The result, as we all know, is rampant desensitization to violence! Kids stabbing other kids! Pornographers and the Mob backing the horror industry! The inevitable degeneration of America’s youth!

There is a point to be made about violence in horror films being directed disproportionately at women, especially during the ’80s, although I think it had more to do with mindless copycatting than anything else. Still, if the formula weren’t so successful with the disproportionately male audience, it wouldn’t have been copied as much as it was.

Watch the clip before it gets pulled. (20/20 is still on the air, embarrassingly enough.) There’s some good footage of video stores, clips from some now classic films of the era, mentions of the notorious (and largely faked) Faces of Death, hilarious interviews with valley kids (“I love blood and guts… it turns me on…”), and a short interview with B movie heroine Linnea Quigley, who was impaled on reindeer antlers in Silent Night, Deadly Night.

Bloody Disgusting posted the video last year. I found it on YouTube via Horrorflipped.

Toy Aisle Zen (1981): The Dukes of Hazzard

Published July 29, 2013 '80s Movies/TV , Dukes of Hazzard, The , HG Toys , Mego , Toy Stores/Toy Aisles/Toy Departments Leave a Comment
Toy Aisle 1981

November 13, 1981. (Photo: Joe Maher/Ledger-Enquirer)

Oh, Daisy. What we have here are HG’s Dukes of Hazzard Adventure Set, Coleco’s Dukes Power Cycle, Illco’s General Lee Dashboard “with lighted fuzz detector” (Illco also made a Dukes pinball game), Ertl’s General Lee die-cast car (I had the small one), and, on top of the cycle, Mego’s 8″ Bo Duke action figure.

Here’s a closer look at the adventure set.

Dukes Adventure Set

And here it is in the wild. “Breaker One, Breaker One, I might be crazy, but I ain’t dumb!”

Dukes 80s

Let’s throw in Bo and Luke as well.

Bo Duke Action Figure

See more toy aisles here. Plaid Stallions has a monster collection here.

(Images via eBay, The Dukes of Hazzard Museum, and Metallichicks)

The Renegades (1983) Was a Real Show on TV and I Can Prove It

Published July 23, 2013 '80s Movies/TV , Ads , TV Guide 7 Comments

Renegades Ad 2-26-1983

Renegades Ad 1983

Starring Patrick Swayze as Bandit!

Randy Brooks as Eagle!

Paul Mones as J.T.!

Tracy Scoggins as… uh… Tracy!

Robert Thaler as Dancer!

Brian Tochi as Dragon!

Fausto Bara as Gaucho!

And the dad from That ’70s Show (Kurtwood Smith) as Captain Scanlon!

The Renegades originally aired as a TV movie in August of  ’82. It was spun off as a series in March of 1983 and lasted for six episodes only. It’s a Mod Squad (1968 – 1973) reboot, but without the social conscience or hip vibe that made the first show so awesome. The premise was tweaked again, with better results, for 21 Jump Street (1987 – 1991).

Here’s the Renegades intro. Pay special attention to Scoggins’ dramatic head turn,  ‘Dancer’ running his hand through his feathered hair, and the uncomfortably long time the renegades stand staring at the cops. The music rules.

Fantastic Films #27 (January, 1982): Interview with Jim Steranko

Published July 18, 2013 '80s Movies/TV , Blade Runner , Comic Books , Fantastic Films , Jim Steranko , Magazines/Zines , Outland , Raiders of the Lost Ark , Sci-Fi Movies/TV 4 Comments

FF #27 FC

FF #27 TOC

FF #27 pg. 50

FF #27 pg. 51

FF #27 pg. 52

FF #27 pg. 53

FF #27 pg. 62

Comics and illustration genius Jim Steranko on his Raiders of the Lost Ark pre-production art:

The first Raiders painting I did established the character of Indiana Jones. There was really no actor discussed at this point, at least not with me […]

I got a note from George’s [Lucas] secretary describing Indiana Jones, which said that Indy should have a jacket like George wears. That was the only instruction. Fortunately, I knew what kind of jacket George wears. It all worked out very well. I perceived Indiana Jones as a cross between Doc Savage and Humphrey Bogart […]

The definitive image appears on Kenner’s 1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark Game.

Raiders Board Game

Steranko’s Outland adaptation was serialized in Heavy Metal from June, 1981 through January, 1982. You can read the first few pages here.

The movie it’s based on, written and directed by Peter Hyams (Capricorn One, 2010), is generally dismissed as a heavy-handed retelling of High Noon (1952). That’s a mistake. As Steranko says, “[Outland] struck me as being the first noir science fiction film, somewhat in the ‘Chandleresque’ vein.” The film also verges on cyberpunk, and it came out a year before Blade Runner.

It’s fitting that Steranko, deeply influenced by the pulps, also did the cover for the Marvel Super Special Blade Runner cover.

Marvel Blade Runner

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