Viewmasters

Did you know that Growing Pains and Mr. Belvedere both had holiday episodes titled "A Christmas Story"? We pit them against each other in the ultimate battle for 80s sitcom supremacy!! This is a truly epic episode we think you'll all enjoy, even if you're too young to remember these trash shows, and if you're too young to remember our 30 minutes or less episodes!!

In this episode two ancient critics believed dead discuss two other ancient critics believed dead! We're back to update you on our sad lives and talk about some standout episodes of Siskel & Ebert. Is this the beginning of a new renaissance?!

And now for something completely different! This Christmas we're discussing the classic Top of the Pops Christmas special from 1984! We've got Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Duran Duran, Band-Aid with "Do They Know It's Christmas" and many more! Will Ed find the treasure in his backyard? Will Rusty appreciate art made after the year 1992? The special is on youtube if you want to have the ultimate expe...

We return with our most shocking episode EVER! News will be revealed, bank accounts will be destroyed, Sam Raimi's SPIDER-MAN 2 will be occasionally mentioned! If you've been listening all along you won't wanna miss this episode! 

We're back with the cult favorite 1987 fight film THREE O'CLOCK HIGH. Director Phil Joanou, all but forgotten today, was the hottest name of the mid-80s, he was supposed to be the next Spielberg! We talk about how that all went wrong when he defied Spielberg with the (great!) direction he took this film. We also talk about classic topics like Ed's humiliating interactions with contractors, Rusty's...

We're doing a deep dive into this obscure 80s comedy, recently restored by Vinegar Syndrome. Can a film with Eddie Deezen getting top billing ever disappoint?! Is this the secret classic Rusty's been looking for? Has Ed pissed his pants since our last recording, whenever that was?! As always please rate and review and follow @80stimeportal on instagram

School's out for the weekend, and for summer, and FOREVER! We disagree heartily on the greatness of the Carl Reiner cable classic SUMMER SCHOOL. How does Rusty's 27 pages of notes stack up against Ed's similarly volumnious research?! Why did they spend so much time researching this dreck?! Is there any details about the actors' lives they DIDN'T mention!? We go deep this week in our desperate ques...

We return with a discussion of the 1985 Kiwi sci-fi classic, THE QUIET EARTH. What would you do in this situation? How quickly until you devolved into complete madness? How many stories about plumbers will Rusty tell this week? All this and more on episode 62 of Viewmasters!

Wow! Do you remember this podcast? Well, it's back, and we are talking about NEW YORK NINJA (1984/2021). What did we think of Vinegar Syndrome's unique experiment? Why are the streets so full of rage? Do we still remember how to podcast?! All this and more as Rusty returns to tell us where he's been and what's happened to us so far in 2022. 

RUSTY IS MISSING! We are joined by our childhood friend and author Daniel Maunz (Questions of Perspective) to ponder the mystery of where Rusty has been. The long delay in episodes is due to the very, very real and not a joke disappearance of Rusty (who is feared DEAD!) Speaking of death, it's time to delve into the only Mortal Kombat movie that matters, the 1995 masterpiece by not THAT Paul Ander...

Do you remember when Megatron boarded that shuttle and wasted all that autobot slime? Or when Unicron ate that planet of annoying looking robots? Today we are talking about the only Transformers movie that matters -- the animated film from 1986! Featuring a cast with more stars than in the skies above Cybertron and more deaths than we have here on Earth, this film served as the dividing line of th...

Film writer/historian Lee Gambin returns to tell us all about the history of the very special sitcom episode! We count down 5 of the wildest episodes as Lee explains the social and historical history behind these educational, wild, and controversial departures from the typical television sitcom plot. His new two volume book "Tonight, on a Very Special Episode" features essays from Lee and a group...

For our first episode of the new year, we talk for over 3 hours about the classic film THE KARATE KID. Not only is this our longest episode ever-- it is also our cleanest! This episode was requested by Ed's nieces, who recently discovered the film and loved it. As a result, all curses have been bleeped. Yep this is fun for the whole family. Yet it somehow ends up much weirder than any other episod...

It's Christmas at the Playhouse and Pee Wee's newest friends, Ed and Rusty, drop by and share their thoughts on all things Chairry, Conky, Pterri and the Del Rubio Triplets?  On this episode, we share our own Christmas memories, Ed tells the story of when his dad went toe-to-toe with the New York Jets in a game of no holds barred charity basketball and we get a very special visit from our old pal...

Ed had an ALLIGATOR poster as a child, but does he still love the film? Join us in our 56th episode for an exploration of the Lewis Teague-John Sayles classic, as well as a lot of xmas talk (even though this couldn't be less of a xmas movie). We talk the animal attacks genre and speculate a lot about if our friend Lee Gambin likes this film. We also weigh the plusses and minuses of having an allig...

Why travel this Thanksgiving, endangering yourself and others, when you could instead safely implant the memories of dry turkey, tense political conversations, and struggling to turn off the motion flow setting on your relative's TV?! On this epic episode we revisit one of our favorite films, the peak of peak Arnold: TOTAL RECALL! Do we have 5 kids to feed?! Will we get our ass to Mars?! Find out...

The box art for DEMON WIND (1990) is iconic. We have fond memories of admiring it in the video stores of our youth. But is the movie any good? We wanted to choose a less obvious title for right before Halloween, and we wanted something sort of corny, like HELLGATE or DOOM ASYLUM. Did we choose correctly, or will we regret this film for the rest of our lives? Also, Ed says a lot of insane stuff on...

Could a movie as recent as 2015 be considered iconic? We argue that IT FOLLOWS can, as we break down the sex follower masterpiece during our October horror month. We ask all the annoying logistical questions everyone does, while Ed comes up with the ultimate loophole. David Robert Mitchell is just one of the many people who should never listen to this episode. But YOU should! Please rate and revie...

After a summer spent watching Buffy/Angel and frequently mentioning it on this podcast, it's time to revisit the film that started it all: the movie version with actress turned political scientist Kristy Swanson! This early 90s gem plunges us into all kinds of despair about getting older as we contemplate why Joss Whedon hates this likable film so much and gush about Luke Perry's charm (RIP) and R...

Let's do time warp again -- for the first time! Once again Ed is seeing a classic for the first time, as we dive into the 1975 cult classic that's one of Rusty's favorite films. He'll guide Ed through Transylvania, discussing along the way his strange confidence in facing athletes of the past, Ed's horrible dating life and impending misadventure of adopting 5 kittens, QAnon, California fires, rais...

For our historic 50th episode, what could we choose except the film which cleaved our lives in half? On one side, we were young. We were Star Wars fanatics, excited for whatever George cooked up. On the other side, we were the bitter, doomed individuals we are today. Of course Phantom Menace reviews have been done to death, so this isn't that at all-- it's an autobiographical journey through the h...

Well, it's finally here. Ed has seen Pee Wee for the first time in his life and he's here to explain all of the references he finally gets. We talk quarantine life, the production history behind this film, and of course so many far too revealing digressions about our life. Please rate and review the show and we'll get episode 50 in July we promise!! As always the cover of the BLOOD RAGE theme is b...

When we recorded this two weeks ago, the world was a much different place. This seems frivolous to post now, but maybe it can bring you some entertainment in a horrible time. In this epic episode, with a length I don't think we've hit since VAMP, we tackle the cursed film GHOULIES, which is NOT a GREMLINS rip-off! We talk about the making of the film, Rusty's new baby, Ed's imaginary entourage, ap...