It’s official. The Cult Film Club podcast has gone live. Check out our very first episode here.
In this first episode Shawn, Jaime and I discuss the 1986 Charlie Sheen car-tacular classic, The Wraith. We cover nearly every aspect of the movie including the pedigree of the actors, the rockin’ soundtrack and, of course, the kick ass car.
So hop in your prototype inter-dimensional vehicle and steer your way to iTunes or listen online.
We are moving closer and closer to episode 75. For this episode we are joined by Claymation Werewolf who writes for his own humor blog as well as The Retroist. This week we tackle the very daunting subject of 80s sitcoms.
(Via The Domestic Fringe)
We talk about some of our favorites, we talk about some of our not-so-favorites. We talk about sitcom crushes and theme songs. We cover all our bases in this very broad and general discussion about sitcoms from the 1980s. It’s a lot of fun, so download it and reminisce with us.
Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner.
Or stream it online right HERE.
I love video arcades. I always have. I also loved it when arcades popped up in movies. It was fun trying to pick out what games I could see and identify. So, I thought it would be a fun exercise to pick some of my favorite movies that have an arcade scene and do a “walk through” to see what games we could see. This should be interesting because video arcades during the the late 70s to mid 80s are ancient history. There’s nothing really like them anymore. These walk throughs should be nice snapshots of a moment in time at a video arcade during their hey day. So let’s begin.
One of my favorite movies from childhood is the 1980 screwball road race comedy Midnight Madness.
The movie stars David Naughton, Stephen Furst, Eddie Deezen, Debra Clinger and a very young Michael J Fox as a group of college students split up into colored teams (yellow, blue, green, red and white) who go out on an all night long clue hunt.
One of my favorite scenes in the movie is the arcade scene at a place called Pinball City. It’s here the characters play a game that I thought was fake, called Star Fire. I’ve talked about this scene before. You can watch that full scene here. Well, there’s a wealth of other awesomely vintage video games in that scene, so let’s start off this first walking tour with Pinball City from the movie Midnight Madness.
This movie was released in early 1980, which means it was probably filmed in mid-to-late 1979.
This is the clue the players receive for the arcade. It essentially is a word game that tells them to go to PIN + BALL + SIT + E, or Pinball City.
Here’s the entrance to Pinball City.
Here’s the adorable Debra Clinger checking out an Atari Football game which was produced in 1979. Behind her is a carnival shooter game called Shark Bait. However, I could find no information on that game anywhere. I can’t believe that this was created specifically for the movie to be used in a background shot when they didn’t even bother to do that for the Star Fire game.
In the background of this scene is a giant game called Indy 800. It was manufactured by Kee Games in 1975. The game cabinet was huge and took up 16 feet of space.
Here’s a very young Michael J Fox leaning up against a Death Race game. It was manufactured by Exidy in 1976. This game is based on and inspired by the movie Death Race 2000. There were only 500 or so made. When it came out it was banned in many cities due to its violent content.
In 1987, Universal commissioned a 2 hour television movie called Bates Motel as a spin-off of Psycho.
The TV movie was also a “backdoor pilot” for a possible television series. However, the ratings were so low that Universal scrapped the idea of the ongoing TV series.
The plot of the movie was about a mentally disturbed youth, Alex West, who is committed to an asylum for murdering his step father. While inside, Alex befriends a rehabilitated Norman Bates. They remain friends for 20 years and after Bates’ death, Alex discovers that he has inherited Bates Motel, which has been vacant since Bates’ arrest many, many years ago. With the help of a teenage runaway, Willie, Alex attempts to reopen the Motel. Shortly before opening, the occupants experience several strange occurances which leads Alex to wonder if the hotel is haunted by Norma Bates.
The show starred Bud Cort as the adult Alex West. It also starred Lori Petty as the teen runaway, Willie. Other stars include Jason Bateman and Robert Picardo. Anthony Perkins did not return to play Norman Bates for this movie. Bates was instead played by Kurt Paul who was Perkins’ stunt double in Psycho II, Psycho III and Psycho IV.
Perkins was upset with this series as it interferred with the timeline of Perkins’ Psycho III movie from the previous year. Psycho III was about Bates after he was released from the asylum while the TV series said Bates died while still inside.
(Via ETOnline.com)
Like I said, the show received dismal ratings and was scrapped. However, Universal recently announced that they have changed their minds. There will be a brand new TV series called Bates Motel. It will star Vera Farmiga as Norma Bates and feature the formative years of a young Norman Bates and how his mother shaped and molded Norman into the man he would become in Hitchcock’s classic movie. This TV series is coming due to Universal’s happiness with the big screen movie Hitchcock starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as the titular director. The movie is about all the behind the scenes machinations in getting Psycho made back in 1960. I personally am looking forward to both of these projects.
The 1987 Bates Motel movie was never officially released on DVD in the US. But you can watch the show in it’s entirety on YouTube.
Here are the first three parts (of ten) of Bates Motel:
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.
Back in April, over on Nerd Lunch, CT wrote an extremely honest review of that Garbage Pail Kids retrospective book that was released earlier this year. He admitted that he didn’t have the nostalgia tied in with the cards to make him really love that book.
I, on the other hand, do have that nostalgia and CT had me write a counterpoint to his book review. That review was just posted today over on Nerd Lunch.
As a previous collector of the cards when they were originally released, click on over and see what I thought of the book.
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