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Archive for the '’80s Movies/TV' Category
The Coolest Movie Posters of the ’80s?
Published July 12, 2013 '80s Movies/TV , Movie Posters , UnderScoopFire! 1 CommentThe Great Space Coaster (1981 – 1986)
Published July 11, 2013 '80s Movies/TV , Children's/Teen Programming 6 CommentsMy mind is blown. It’s been more than 30 years since I’ve heard this song, and I still remember the melody and most of the lyrics. The show itself is coming back to me as I write this: three young musicians take off on a roller coaster rocket ship to hang out with their alien friends on a giant asteroid. There’s lots of singing, animated sequences, life lessons learned.
The Great Space Coaster is not available on DVD, and won’t be any time soon, if it ever is. According to Tanslin Media, owner of the master tapes: “The problem is that the show used a lot of great music that would need to be re-licensed if the show were ever released. This is extremely expensive, so a DVD release would probably cost more to make than it would ever earn.” Tragically, the tapes are already deteriorating.
In 2012, GSC co-creator Jim Martin, who also played a number of characters (including Gary “no gnews is good gnews” Gnu), launched a campaign to preserve at least one half-hour show. His goal was $2000. He raised $3500. Follow The Great Space Coaster Facebook page for updates.
The video below is from the 1981 one-hour special, The Great Space Coaster Supershow. Check in at 11:00 to see Goriddle Gorilla (Kevin Clash) with special guest Mark Hamill. The possibility of losing something this priceless makes me sick to my stomach.
(Video via FuzzyMemoriesTV; image via eBay)
Beware: spoilers ahead.
The U.S. divorce rate peaked in 1981, as no-fault divorce became available in nearly all 50 states. A number of successful kid and teen dramas at the time reflected the new single-parent reality, including E.T., Footloose, Pretty in Pink, The Manhattan Project, The Karate Kid, The Lost Boys, Vision Quest, and The Bad News Bears.
For exactly one hour, Firstborn seriously addresses the breakdown of the nuclear family from the perspective of those it hit hardest: the kids. The last 45 minutes go up in a puff of action movie clichés and moral hysteria.
Jake (Christopher Collet, The Manhattan Project) and Brian (Corey Haim in his film debut) live with their mom (Terri Garr) in an affluent suburb on the East Coast. They go to a nice school. Jake has a nice girlfriend (Sarah Jessica Parker). He’s got typically rascally friends (Robert Downey Jr. plays one of them). He’s a star on the lacrosse team.
Things start to unravel when his boring, blue blood dad announces his plans to remarry, and his mom starts going out with working class Sam (played brilliantly by Peter Weller), who installs security systems and drives a big truck.
Sam tries to charm the kids into liking him. When that doesn’t work, he bribes them. Eventually, he moves in. One night, as music blares from a party downstairs, Jake comes out of his room and catches his mom and Sam snorting cocaine off the pinball machine (Sam’s one contribution to the household). Soon afterwards we learn that Sam is a drug dealer.
Mom starts to smoke and drink beer. Dishes and trash pile up around the house. Sam starts pushing the kids around. Jake begs his mother to kick him out, but she “can’t.” She tells a neighbor: “So he does not have a law degree, so what? He’s a very nice guy. He’s solid, he’s full of life, and he needs me… And right now, that’s very important to me.”
Jake, as the older brother and “man of the house,” has to take care of business himself. He steals Sam’s score, there’s a fight, Sam tries to run down Jake in his big truck, and there’s a final, unconvincing showdown back at the house.
The second half of the movie hinges on the premise that Garr’s character, Wendy, up to this point a good mother who has raised two smart boys and handled a marital separation with dignity, would suddenly turn into the worst person in the world. I enjoyed seeing all the actors in Firstborn, and the ’80s repartee and atmosphere is fun, but I found Garr’s transformation totally unbelievable and offensive.
The subtext is there—it’s implicit in the tagline, actually. First, women are fickle and weak-kneed by nature, so there’s always an underlying justification for men to leave them. Second, if you’re a divorced upper middle class woman and you absolutely must get remarried, hook up with a guy who has money. Working class men know how to barbecue, but they’re probably lazy, violent drug dealers who will at some point try to kill you and your children.
While it lasts, you can watch Firstborn here.
(Movie poster via www.joblo.com; stills via Cineplex)
‘The 3:00 Movie’ Commercial Break, 1982
Published June 26, 2013 '80s Movies/TV , Atari , Commercials , Promotions/Contests/Sweepstakes 3 CommentsWhy was there a 3:00 movie? Because that’s when we got home from school, or that’s when we huddled around the little TV in after-school daycare. I said somewhere else that my dad picked me up early a few times so I could catch assorted creature features: Frogs, Empire of the Ants, Night of the Lepus, The Swarm. Even if we did have a VCR at the time, nobody knew how to record on the damn thing.
First commercial: “Taste the Thrill of Atari at McDonald’s.” Atari worked promotions with almost every big name in the business, and I never won jack. Watch for the Atari 800 and the Atari 825 dot matrix printer. I found some of the game cards on eBay.
And here’s one of the tray liners, courtesy of Peter Hirschberg, who has lots of other awesome stuff on display.
Second commercial: “I need well trained people” is actually progressive phrasing for a secretarial staffing company in 1982. Five years earlier it would have been, “I need well trained, well groomed women.” Notice that there’s only one guy in the spot, and he’s in the only office.
Third commercial: You recognize her, right? She’s very awkward here.
Fourth commercial: That’s one giant meatball that splats on the floor, amigos. It ain’t organic, and it ain’t made of turkey. It’s red meat, and we were too busy shoving our faces to ask any questions.
The editorial rebuttal enters the realm of surreality. A union rep on TV? In a position of authority?
(Video via FuzzyMemoriesTV)
Fantastic Films Collectors Edition #20 (December, 1980): Interview with Tom Savini
Published June 20, 2013 '80s Movies/TV , Fantastic Films , George Romero , Horror Movies/TV , Magazines/Zines , Tom Savini 8 Comments
Tom Savini’s first makeup effects job, at the recommendation of George Romero, was Deathdream (a.k.a. Dead of Night), a brilliant 1972 film about a G.I. in Vietnam who dies in the war but returns to life—and comes home—as a vampire. After that, Savini did makeup for 1974’s Deranged (written by Alan Ormsby, who also wrote Deathdream), loosely based on the grisly career of Ed Gein. Martin (1976), another outstanding vampire film (kind of) written and directed by Romero, was next. Savini, already a theater veteran, wanted to play the lead. He did makeup and stunts instead.
After Martin, Savini returned to the theater, taking the part of King Philip in a production of The Lion in Winter. When that wrapped, Romero called him in to do effects for Dawn of the Dead (1978), the greatest zombie movie ever made, and easily in the all-time horror top 10. On to Friday the 13th (1980), whose realistic effects sent the American slasher film into the mainstream. (Bob Clark, who directed Deathdream, also directed the first true American slasher: 1974’s underrated Black Christmas. Clark is best know today as the director of A Christmas Story.)
No one in the makeup effects business did more to define the modern horror genre than Savini, not even Rick Baker or Stan Winston. His experience as a combat photographer in Vietnam gave him a unique (and terrible, I would think) insight into death.
Not at all the grisly brooder or the “deranged butcher” people expect, Savini emanates an easygoing affability in interviews. It’s clear that he loves life, and he’s giddily dedicated to his craft. All of that comes through when FF asks him if he had fun on Friday the 13th:
Oh, it was one of the greatest times I’ve ever had. The weeks in the Poconos, riding around without a helmet, taking my time and doing really elaborate things, and having a fortune to spend. Toward the end, I received a Dear John phone call from my girlfriend, which at the time seemed to destroy the whole experience. But as I look back on it, it didn’t at all. I just had a terrific time.
Despite his genius for illusion, Savini saw himself as an actor first. Romero finally gave him his chance in Knightriders (1981), a misunderstood movie about a jousting motorcycle troupe that’s also an elegy on the decline of the ’60s counterculture. Savini plays one of the leads, opposite a 30-year-old Ed Harris, and more than holds his own.
(The first and second installments of Fantastic Films #20 are here and here, respectively.)
Ertl’s Die-Cast Blade Runner Cars (1982)
Published June 13, 2013 '80s Movies/TV , Alien Trilogy , Blade Runner , Sci-Fi Movies/TV , Sci-Fi Production Design , What the Future Looked Like 5 Comments
My mom took me to see Blade Runner at the theater because I convinced her that it was a Star Wars sequel. I was 10. After Leon shot Holden in the first five minutes (“My mother? Let me tell you about my mother…“), she tried to forcibly remove me, but I wouldn’t budge. I was totally mesmerized by Ridley Scott’s haunting, desperate, Promethean vision of the future. I still am.
I’d forgotten about the toy cars, but they really did exist, and that makes me happy. Kids would have seen the “spinners” (designed by conceptual artist Syd Mead) prominently featured in the trailer, but most wouldn’t have been lucky enough (or duplicitous enough) to get a peek at the movie. It was a brilliant try by Ertl, anyway.
Toys and other kid-marketed merchandise were almost always designed to extend the experience of the production they were based on. (I’ve talked about this before.) In the case of Blade Runner and other R-rated features, that merchandise was meant to replace the experience of the film. Think of all the Alien stuff from ’79: Target Set, Movie Viewer, Board Game, Trading Cards, Kenner’s wicked 18″ action figure.
We’d seen the previews, we gleaned what we could from the adults willing to talk to us, but that’s it. Like Ridley Scott, we had to invent a world and a story for those spinners and that alien to inhabit.
UPDATE (5/8/15): David Augustyn spotted a mistake on the four-pack. Rachael’s Spinner is labeled as Bryant’s Police Spinner and vice versa. The Spinner second from right is clearly a cop car and even has “Police” written on the side.
(Images via eBay)
TV Guide Ads for TV Movies (1980 – 1982)
Published June 10, 2013 '70s Movies/TV , '80s Movies/TV , Ads , TV Guide 3 Comments
The Babysitter (November 28, 1980): Shatner being Shatner about sums this one up: “You know nothing about her. It’s kerAAAzy! Bringing a total stranger. Into your house.” Enter gorgeous, creepy Stephanie Zimbalist (Remington Steele) giving him the googly eyes. Enter the tawdry I-do-believe-I’ve-just-been-instantly-seduced music. Shatner’s face at the end of the clip is must-see bad TV.
Blinded by the Light (December 16, 1980): Girl (Kristy McNichol) tries to rescue brother (Jimmy McNichol) from religious cult, but in the process begins to swallow the Kool-Aid herself. The terrible art makes Kristy look 40, but she was only 18 at the time. I can’t find a clip, and you don’t want to see it anyway, so check her out with Matt Dillon in my favorite scene from Little Darlings (also from 1980).
Honeyboy (October 17, 1982): One of the more important steps to becoming a responsible adult is accepting the fact that CHiPs made everyone dumber on a weekly basis, largely because Eric Estrada had no business being in front of a camera. As for Morgan Fairchild, I can’t even say the name without disintegrating into a puddle of adolescent sexual desire. Watch the trailer for Honeyboy, if you must.
Hotline (October 16, 1982): That dark, shiny, curvy hair. Those eyes. Those lips. That voice. God, I had such a crush on Steve Forrest from S.W.A.T. (Sorry, I can’t find anything on Hotline. I talk about the psycho-stalking-young-women genre here.)
(Images via Nostalgic Collections/eBay)
Dr. Joyce Brothers (1927 – 2013): Psychologist, Media Personality, Defender of Dungeons & Dragons
Published May 21, 2013 '70s Movies/TV , '80s Movies/TV , D&D , In Memoriam , TSR 3 Comments
I remember Dr. Brothers mostly for her witty cameos on various TV shows of the day, including The Love Boat, WKRP, and Happy Days, as well as her many appearances on The Tonight Show and several game shows.
But she was a real psychologist (with a Ph.D. from Columbia)—the first to use mass media to tackle everything from sex to suicide—and hosted several advice/discussion shows from the late 1950s through the ’70s. She died, at age 85, on May 13. (Read her obituary at the New York Times.)
The photo above, courtesy of Jon Peterson, shows Brothers in a 1980 TV appearance promoting the TSR board game Fantasy Forest.
At a time when D&D and role-playing were decried as tools of Satan, Brothers defended the practice and D&D in particular. In a 1984 radio interview with Neil McKenty, Brothers describes herself as a “consultant for TSR” and applauds D&D for being a “cooperative game” in which “everybody works together to overcome obstacles.”
Playing the game, she says, is a mentally healthy activity that demands intelligence, expands the imagination, and promotes joy. She even mentions Gary Gygax by name!
Brothers gave serious advice about touchy subjects and was a brilliant woman (an expert on boxing, among other things) who realized that taking herself too seriously would put off the people who needed help the most.
Lawful good human clerics can’t do much better than that.
Wizards and Warriors (1983) Was a Real Show on TV and I Can Prove It
Published May 21, 2013 '80s Movies/TV , Ads , Fantasy Movies/TV , TV Guide 3 Comments
Real, yes. Good? No. Wizards and Warriors was developed and produced by Don Reo, a comedy veteran who had previously worked on M*A*S*H and Private Benjamin. He describes the origin of the show in a 1983 issue of Cinefantastique:
“I think the problem that most people have with fantasy is that so much of it is very grim,” said Reo, who got the idea for the show when his kids introduced him to Dungeons and Dragons. “I’ve gone to see films like EXCALIBUR, CONAN and CLASH OF THE TITANS, and those pictures were really somber. There just were not any lead characters that had a sense of humor, and when they tried it on NBC with FUGITIVE FROM THE EMPIRE, the show was so grim and boring that I was lost after the first five minutes.”
Actually, that grimness is precisely what drew us to fantasy. There was enough fluff and meandering optimism in the ’80s. Surely Reo knew how hugely successful John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian had been. Was he unfamiliar with the popularity of Robert E. Howard and Frank Frazetta, the godfathers of the grim, bloody, Romantic fantasy hero? Even The Lord of the Rings, the cornerstone of the fantasy genre, is an epic adventure as well as a sobering work about the nature of evil and the horror of war. The good-hearted humor in the series was not comedy but comic relief. Tolkien, Howard, and Frazetta were and are the main inspiration for D&D.
It takes a stroke of genius to make the fantasy-comedy combination work. The only screen example I can think of is The Princess Bride. Yes, Monty Python and the Holy Grail gets more brilliant each time I see it, but it’s pure satire. Maybe satire is what Reo was shooting for on Wizards and Warriors. He missed. (Today, he’s a writer and producer on Two and a Half Men.)
Reo mentions a show called Fugitive from the Empire, a pilot that premiered in April of 1981. The full title was The Archer: Fugitive from the Empire, a.k.a. The Archer and the Sorceress. From what I can tell, this was the first attempt at a feature length, live-action sword and sorcery movie produced for TV. The first post-D&D feature film in the same genre was Hawk the Slayer (1980).
As of now, you can watch the first episode of Wizards and Warriors here. Fugitive from the Empire is here.
(TV Guide images via eBay)
2 Warps to Neptune 