80s Flick Flashback

“The Goonies”. “Stand By Me”. “Ghostbusters”. “The Little Rascals”. And “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein”. They all share some shred of creative DNA with this bonafide 80’s cult classic. So as we kick-start this year’s spooky Halloween season, sharpen those wooden stakes you made in shop class, hide the silver bullets in your half-empty pack of cigarettes, and prepare to “Bop Til You Drop” a...

Before “Friday Night Lights” there was this often forgotten 80’s flick. It’s not so much a film about the sport of high school football, but the effect of football on its characters. It features solid performances from its young actors, and became an important film in the career of its lead by showcasing the tremendous star power and acting skills of a man who would become a mega-movie-star. So gr...

No bikinis. No blankets. No bingo. This awkwardly titled 80’s flick is a bosom-buddy movie about a friendship that was destined to be -- like surf and turf, M&Ms, Laverne and Shirley, Lucy and Ethel, maybe even Cagney and Lacey. As most buddy movie rules require, it is a tale of enduring friendship between disparate souls, formed against the odds. There are ups and downs. Jealously and redempt...

John Carpenter  described this 80’s flick, which he co-wrote and directed, as an "action adventure comedy kung fu ghost story monster movie." And I can’t really add much more of an intro than that. So come aboard “The Pork Chop Express” as Tim Williams and guest co-host, Gerry D discuss “Big Trouble in Little China” from 1986 on this episode of the 80’s Flick Flashback Podcast! Here are some addit...

The western, which used to be as common in Hollywood as superhero movies are now, enjoyed a surprising revival in popularity in the late 1980s into the 90s. The genre, of course, fizzled out again and faded from memory. Film financiers didn’t see a profit in it and audiences lost their appetite for it. However, for a good 6 years westerns were cool again. They won Oscars, starred some of the bigge...

When hit movie producer, Jerry Bruckheimer was casually flipping through  California  magazine in 1983, he was suddenly struck by an image. It was a picture of fighter pilot’s helmet with a plane reflected in the visor. Staring at the page, Bruckheimer couldn’t escape one thought: “It looked like  Star Wars  on Earth.” That magazine picture - and its accompanying article - set into motion the crea...

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…a highly anticipated superhero sequel flick has a profound falling out due to creative differences between the movie studio producers and the original film’s director, resulting in that director being fired and a new director being brought in to reshoot scenes, re-edit the new and old footage, and generally lighten the tone with more humor. No, I’m not talki...

Cute. Clever. Mischievous. Intelligent. Dangerous. What more is there to say about this 1984 sleeper hit that somehow morphed the well-worn snowy small town Christmas tales with little monsters your older siblings whispered about around Summer campfires or bonfires at Halloween. So turn off your Zenith television, put away your left over fried chicken, and head to Kingston Falls as Tim Williams an...

If you were a child of the 1980’s then there are just some things you’ll never forget about those lazy days of Summer. Short shorts. Tube socks. Neon colored friendship bracelets. Oakley sunglasses that you either had or wished you had. Walking around with your Sony walkman or boom box with your best cassette mixed tape with all the new pop hits you recorded off of the radio. Songs from artists li...

If you have seen this heart-warming 80’s baseball fantasy flick, you likely have a strong opinion on it. While some are moved by its fantastical and heartfelt story of personal redemption, others dismiss it as over sentimental and even silly. Or as Richard Corliss of TIME Magazine once infamously put it, a "male weepie at its wussiest,". Either way you look at it, the Oscar-nominated movie still t...

For about 95% of its runtime, this 80’s slasher flick operates as an oddly bloodless, weirdly sexless, and overall kind of annoying ripoff of "Friday the 13th". Writer and director Robert Hiltzik mines little tension from his story of a youth summer camp besieged by a killer dumping boiling water on pervy camp cooks and stabbing counselors in the shower, "Psycho"-style. It's all very rote and by-t...

Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once a while you could miss this quintessential 80’s Flick. It has been called one of the classic movies about the teenage experience, as relevant to today’s Snapchatting pre-adults as it was to those coming of age in the Pac Man Mania era. This enduring popularity is thanks to its simple story – teenage boy fakes a sickness to embark on a...

From Peter Jackson to Edgar Wright, this 80’s flick has influenced many of today’s biggest Hollywood directors. As it should. Famous for its practical effects and then-unprecedented amount of gore, this low-budget 1981 horror flick—about a group of friends who travel to a cabin in the woods and unleash killer demons—showed the world the power of guerilla-style indie filmmaking before it was cool....

Since its release over three decades ago, this 80’s flick has been hailed as a  celebration of women . In his original review of the film, Roger Ebert raved about the dialogue and camaraderie of the dynamic ensemble cast. “There may be no movie that better epitomizes the bond of female friendship,”  HuffPost  declared in 2014. “Mothers share the film with their daughters, teen girls turn to it as...

Praised as a quintessential piece of '80s cinema and highly regarded among the greatest high school movies of all time, the legacy of this 80’s flick had endured due to the film's eclectic cast of teenage archetypes. Writer-director John Hughes' characters weren't just derivative personalities found in the everyday, run-of-the-mill teen comedy of the day, the characters were actually rooted in gen...

It’s hard to imagine that in 1980 when audiences first crowded into theaters to watch the sequel to George Lucas’ unexpected blockbuster movie Star Wars, they would the first to ever see such iconic characters as Jedi Master Yoda, smuggler turned businessman Lando Calrissian, and Mandalorian turned bounty hunter Boba Fett. Fans would leave the theaters with three long years to wait for the next in...

It has been called the “Wizard of Oz” of our generation. Meaning that although it was not a blockbuster film at the time of its release, over the years it has become a rare family film that has been enjoyed by children, their parents, and even their grandparents as it has been “handed down”, in a sense, from generation to generation. It has also been known as one of the most quoted films of all ti...

Renown film critic, Roger Ebert called this well-beloved 80’s flick a good-hearted, simple-minded comedy that will win a place in film history. He suspected that it was primarily because it contained the movie debut of Dolly Parton . He stated “There have been other debuts this unmistakable; you could name Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and even John Travolta . And what you'd be talking about in each...

In the eighties , the high-concept movie was in vogue. Thanks largely to 70’s blockbusters Jaws and Star Wars , the eighties saw the repackaging of formula for audiences wanting to rekindle the thrills. If the roller coaster ride ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  The amount of sequels that appeared in the 1980s was unheard of before. Many, unfortunately, were poor imitations, and few did better box offi...

The 1980s was a golden era for blockbuster hits, and countless films released during this decade have gone on to become cult-classic films. One '80s movie that has certainly stood the test of time and continues to wax on in cinematic glory is The Karate Kid , which-- more than 30 years later-- is still adored by audiences of all ages. Not only did The Karate Kid provide an arsenal of catchphrases...

There’s no denying that this film has become a holiday tradition for many families around the world. Since the film’s release, it’s become regarded as a Christmas classic, and the original house shown in the movie has even been transformed into a tourist-attracting museum. Many families watch it every year around the holiday season, while cable-TV staple, TBS,  plays it continuously for 24 hours a...

John McTiernan‘s 1988 action tour de force is often called one of the greatest action films ever made. It’s a masterclass on every level: building entertaining characters, crafting escalating action, establishing and navigating geography, and putting an empathetic hero through the ringer in the face of extraordinary odds. McTiernan and his collaborators made this all look easy, but as the rash of...

A road trip movie, a buddy comedy and teen-angst director du jour, John Hughes’ first attempt at a holiday movie. It’s a classic double-act farce that might not fit that well in the decade it came out in. There are no guns or bad guys like 48 Hours or Lethal Weapon ; no winks at Cold War anxiety a la Spies Like Us ; and no time machine like Bill and Ted used in their excellent adventure. What it d...

Legendary filmmaker Georges Méliès is often credited with making the first ever horror movie, which was called was The Haunted Castle.  Horror movies have no doubt evolved since the early days with many filmmakers now relying on cheap scares and gore to horrify audiences. The ‘80s, however, were a great time for horror fans, with iconic franchises like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, and Fri...

Most long-running horror franchises have that one installment which was legitimately supposed to, but ultimately, did not end the franchise. Some have several of them. In Hollywood, producers (and sometimes audiences) will quickly voice their disgust if you ever dare leave money on the table. Not that anyone knew that in 1981. Instead, all Moustapha Akkad, Irwin Yablans, John Carpenter and Debra H...