The 80s Movie Podcast

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens falls down a research rabbit hole and uncovers one of the strangest forgotten films of the 1980s: Oklahoma Smugglers, a little-seen 1987 action-comedy that seemingly vanished from existence after a limited Southern theatrical release and a lone VHS release in 1988. What happened to this lost movie — and why couldn’t anyone see it for decades?...

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens continues his look at Miramax Films by exploring the company’s releases from 1984 through 1986, a period when the distributor began refining its identity within the growing independent film market. Although Miramax still operated far outside the studio system, the company increasingly sought films that could distinguish it from competitors and...

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens begins a multi-part exploration of Miramax Films and its rise during the 1980s. Starting with the company’s earliest years between 1979 and 1983, Edward traces how a small independent distributor entered a marketplace dominated by major studios by acquiring, promoting, and releasing films that larger companies often ignored. Before Miramax bec...

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens wraps up his miniseries on director Martha Coolidge with a look back at her overlooked 1988 comedy Plain Clothes. Starring Arliss Howard as an undercover police officer posing as a high school student to investigate the suspicious death of his younger brother, Plain Clothes blends teen comedy, murder mystery, and fish-out-of-water humor into o...

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens continues his informal miniseries on director Martha Coolidge with a look back at her 1985 cult favorite Real Genius. Starring Val Kilmer in one of his earliest iconic roles, this smart sci-fi comedy follows a teenage prodigy and his brilliant classmates as they unknowingly develop laser technology for a dangerous military project at a Caltech...

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens continues his unofficial Martha Coolidge miniseries with a look back at her 1984 comedy Joy of Sex, arguably the strangest and most troubled film of her career. Released by Paramount Pictures and loosely inspired by the bestselling sex manual by Alex Comfort, the movie attempted to turn a controversial cultural phenomenon into a mainstream tee...

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens looks back at Valley Girl (1983), the beloved teen romance that helped launch the career of Nicolas Cage and established director Martha Coolidge as one of the most exciting filmmakers of the early 1980s. Loosely inspired by Romeo and Juliet and fueled by the Southern California “Valley Girl” phenomenon, the film follows rebellious...

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens takes a deep dive into the filmography of John Landis with a look back at his strange, stylish, and often overlooked 1985 thriller-comedy Into the Night. Starring Jeff Goldblum as an insomniac aerospace engineer and Michelle Pfeiffer as a mysterious smuggler on the run, the film turns one sleepless night in Los Angeles into a surreal odyssey o...

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens looks back at the bizarre history of Up the Academy (1980), the only major Hollywood studio comedy directed by cult independent filmmaker Robert Downey Sr. and a forgotten attempt by Mad Magazine to create its own version of National Lampoon’s Animal House. Featuring an early role from Ralph Macchio years before The Karate Kid, the film...

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens dives into one of the strangest entries in the career of legendary filmmaker Robert Altman: O.C. and Stiggs (1987), a chaotic teen satire adapted from the pages of National Lampoon. Originally filmed in 1983 but shelved for years by MGM, the movie follows two suburban pranksters waging war against consumerism, authority, and one deeply unfortu...

The 80s Movie Podcast concludes its Vestron Pictures series with Part Three, covering the company's final releases from 1989 through its bankruptcy filing in 1991. Host Edward Havens traces how a studio that needed one more hit instead got a string of commercial disappointments, including Bob Balaban's cult horror comedy Parents, Bernard Rose's Paperhouse, the Corey Feldman and Corey Haim vehicle...

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens continues a three-part series on Vestron Pictures, focusing on the company’s rapid expansion in the 1980s home video era. However, success brings new pressure as Vestron moves beyond its early distribution model. As a result, the company begins operating on a larger and more complex scale. The VHS market continues to grow, but competition incr...

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens begins a three-part series on Vestron Pictures, a company that helped define the 1980s home video boom. However, its story begins with instability rather than certainty. Vestron entered a rapidly shifting entertainment landscape as video rental stores changed how audiences discovered films. As a result, demand for home video content expanded q...

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens revisits The Marvel Cinematic Universe of the 1980s, an exploration of the early and often chaotic attempts to bring Marvel Comics characters to the big screen long before the modern MCU existed. During the 1980s, studios and independent companies experimented with adapting properties like Spider-Man, Captain America, The Fantastic Four, and I...

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens revisits The Abyss (1989), James Cameron’s underwater science fiction thriller starring Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Michael Biehn. Set against the backdrop of a sinking nuclear submarine and escalating Cold War tensions, the film follows a civilian diving team pulled into a deep-sea rescue operation that quickly turns into firs...

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens revisits Escape to Victory (1981), the unusual World War II sports drama directed by John Huston and starring Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone, Max von Sydow, and international football icon Pelé in his only major acting role. Inspired in part by the real-life “Death Match” of World War II, the film blends wartime suspense with underdog sport...

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens revisits The Jazz Singer (1980), the musical drama starring Neil Diamond in his only leading film role alongside Laurence Olivier and Lucie Arnaz. A remake of the groundbreaking 1927 film, the story follows a young singer struggling to balance family expectations and religious tradition with his ambitions for a career in popular music. Backed...

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens revisits The War of the Roses (1989), Danny DeVito’s sharply observed black comedy about a marriage unraveling in spectacular fashion. Reuniting Romancing the Stone stars Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, the film follows Oliver and Barbara Rose, a wealthy couple whose seemingly perfect life collapses into an increasingly vicious battle ove...

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens revisits Thriller (1982), the landmark short film directed by John Landis and created by Michael Jackson during the height of his crossover into global superstardom. Released in 1983 as part of the Thriller album era, the 14-minute music video blends horror cinema, pop music, and narrative storytelling into a single production that redefined w...

This episode looks at the 1984 debut novel by Bret Easton Ellis, and its 1987 film adaptation. ----more---- Hello, and welcome to The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today. On this episode, we’re going to talk about 80s author Bret Easton Ellis and his 1985 novel Less Than Zero, the literal polar opposite of last week’s subjects, Jay McInerney and his 198...

This week on The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens revisits Bright Lights, Big City (1988), director James Bridges’ adaptation of Jay McInerney’s bestselling novel about grief, addiction, and ambition in late 1980s Manhattan. While audiences largely knew Michael J. Fox for the optimism and charm of Back to the Future and Family Ties, this film gave him the opportunity to take on far darker mat...

In this episode of The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens revisits Round Midnight (1986), Bertrand Tavernier's acclaimed drama about music, friendship, and redemption. The film stars jazz legend Dexter Gordon as an aging saxophonist living in Paris. However, declining health and alcoholism threaten both his career and his future. The story follows an unexpected friendship that offers hope durin...

In this episode of The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens continues the Produced and Abandoned series with Positive I.D. (1987), a neo-noir thriller that briefly caught Hollywood's attention before disappearing from theaters. The film follows Julie Kenner, a woman who survives a brutal assault and reinvents herself after her attacker leaves prison. However, her search for justice soon turns int...

In this episode of The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens welcomes Jeff Townsend for a unique discussion about the A Nightmare on Elm Street series. Together, they explore the franchise from two different generational perspectives. Edward experienced Freddy Krueger's rise in real time during the 1980s. Jeff discovered the films years later as part of a different horror landscape. Along the way,...

In this episode of The 80s Movie Podcast, host Edward Havens begins a two-part exploration of the A Nightmare on Elm Street series. Before Freddy Krueger became a pop culture icon, Wes Craven created one of horror's most original villains. We trace the origins of the franchise, examine Craven's early career, and explore how a low-budget independent production transformed the horror genre. Along th...