Popcorn (1991)

Directed by Mark Herrier.

Starring Jill Schoelen and Dee Wallace.

IMDB

The Stuff (1985)

Directed by Larry Cohen.

Starring Michael Moriarty and Garrett Morris.

IMDB

A product of its time, the 80's, when mass advertising and the tide of junk food began to take over. This is a truly fun and subversive dig at the plastic Reagan 80's by Larry Cohen, who was also responsible for a similarly themed It's Alive in 1974 (although the Stuff turns out to be an all-natural substance from the core of the earth!!).

One of the first "consumer culture gone wrong" horror films (besides the original Dawn of the Dead), The Stuff pays homage to classic films like The Blob and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers while still packing in all sorts of 80's strangeness that makes this a nice piece of memorabilia.

Among my group of friends when I was a young kid, this movie was a video store favourite because it was harmless enough that the parents didn't really care and gross enough to get us our kicks.

The Pink Panther (1963)

Directed by Blake Edwards.

Starring Peter Sellers, David Niven, Robert Wagner, Capucine and Claudia Cardinale.

IMDB

This is not the type of film usually featured on this site but I wanted to show it simply because you never see trailers like this anymore.

Animation and quirky title sequences were abandoned in the early 90's with few exceptions so watching something like this is an obscure experience in the post-ironic age of modern comedy.

It also doesn't hurt that the Pink Panther is a near perfect comedy that never gets old.

The Funhouse (1981)

Watch the entire movie here!


Directed by Tobe Hooper.

Starring Elizabeth Berridge and Shawn Carson.

IMDB

I've seen this film many times over the years and am always struck by its Saturday afternoon throwback style. Despite its rather gruesome poster, The Funhouse was fairly tame for the period that it came out in and is filled with old-fashioned scares.

Hooper would hit it big with Poltergeist the next year, further removing him from his counter-culture past as the helmer of the iconic Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 1974.

Reform School Girls (1986)

Directed by Tom DeSimone.

Starring Linda Carol, Wendy O. Williams and Sybil Danning.

IMDB

This film could very well be held up as the definition of trash cinema. Yet this had major studio backing and grossed a respectable 2 million at the box office.

Just as the trailer indicates, this film is totally over the top and it's hard not to have a good time watching the likes of Williams and Pat Ast snarl their way through ridiculously campy performances.

80's Metal Movie Tie-Ins

Dated?

Uh, a little. But horror movies and bad hair metal had a thing going on in the 80's and here's a few samples of some of those glorious train wrecks.

First up, Dokken does the main theme song for 1987's Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. This brings me back to my youth when I took stuff like this quite seriously. I wonder what's more scary to main star Patricia Arquette - Freddy Krueger and his minion of creepy girls skipping rope or Don Dokken's poodle haircut?





Somehow, this one is worse. Alice Cooper continues his embarrasing 80's slide by penning this keyboard driven drivel for 1986's Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.

Yet the video itself is entertaining as hell. The theatre setting is great and there are some truly bad special effects, such as Jason ripping through the screen and Alice inexplicably trying to scare the patrons by breaking a glass bottle over his forehead. Oooohh scary!





I have to include this one even though it's not really a music video. It's one of the climactic scenes of 1986's Trick or Treat, one of the best heavy metal themed films from that era.

That's actor Tony Fields as rock demon Sammi Curr but the music is really by Fastway, a second-tier act that included a former member of Motorhead and a guy from U.F.O.

This film also had Ozzy Osbourne in a great cameo as a preacher who railed against heavy metal lyrics and musicians, lampooning the PMRC and Tipper Gore who were in the midst of their metal witch hunts at the time.

The best part of this is when the guitar goes flying through the air and someone randomly yells "Rock and Roll!!".

If you can't stand the Fastway stuff, fast foward because there is some hilarious shenanigans towards the end and a ripping guitar solo straight from hell that could have been the inspiration for Will Ferrel's classic Satan and Garth Brooks sketch from SNL.




And while we're going there, I might as well bring this one out. A scene from 1988's Black Roses.

The context of this scene is that a metal band called Black Roses is playing a small town and the local parents and authorities are concerned about the effects on their kids. They sit in on the first song to make sure that nothing is going on and the band do their best to fool everyone with a vanilla sounding soft rock song. Soon the parents leave and the real metal begins!





Now, the best for last. This is a clip from 1985's Hard Rock Zombies. It's not a metal song, but there's a bunch of long hair bangers doing choreographed dance moves in the film's big montage scene and even some miming. Completely retarded and great.



Had enough yet? This is another clip from Hard Rock Zombies. This is quite possibly the most ridiculous scene ever put on 35 mm film. The band have been killed earlier in the day and then rose from the dead, making sure they still turn up to do their soundcheck for that night's show! This is some kind of love song for the main girl Cassie in the movie. Oh unrequited love!

Sssssss (1973)

Directed by Bernard L. Kowalski.

Starring Strother Martin.

IMDB

Brought to you by the Universal producing team of Zanuck and Brown, the two who would bring us Jaws just two summers later.

Sssss is a bit of a warm-up for that movie which would take drive-in B-movie fare mainstream and make millions of dollars with it.

This trailer has some great voice-over work with lines like "Don't say it, hiss it!" and "Touch your skin. It's scaled. Look for your legs. They're gone. Feel your body. It's cold."

Or how about this classic, "King Cobra versus Mongoose! Or is it man against man?"

Amazing.