Memorial Day Movie Mega-Marathon 2023!

Taking a look back at six random-ass movies from the eighties for no discernible reason whatsoever!

By: Toxicka Shock

ToxickaShock@gmail.com

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I don’t know why, but Memorial Day weekend always seems to convey this weird aura of 1980s nostalgia.

Maybe it’s all that lounging around, or maybe it’s the simple joys of basking in relatively Luddite recreational activities like swimming, grilling out, getting piss drunk and trying to make it with the 4/10 girl in your U.S. History class at least once before the summer break begins. That the next door neighbor is blaring Eddie Money and Journey at ear-splitting decibel levels for three days straight probably enhances the Reaganite charm, too.

Yeah, I get it, Memorial Day is supposed to be about dead troops and all, but let’s face it, nowadays it’s just an excuse to eat a buncha’ hot dogs and get white girl wasted — which is the way of life our brave men and women in uniform were trying to preserve, so I guess that shit just went full circle.

My best jab at it is that Memorial Day, for better or for worse, signifies the unofficial transition of seasons, marking the end of spring and the beginning of summertime. So it’s kind of a spiritual death/rebirth thing going on, and what decade better exemplifies the phrase “uneasy transitions” quite like the ‘80s?

1980s movies are pretty much the cinematic equivalent of pizza or oral sex, in the sense that even when they’re bad, they’re still moderately pleasurable. There’s this refreshing and endearing sense of carelessness to so many of them, this complete and utter absence of pretense. The filmmakers knew their movies had no redeeming social message, so they didn’t even try to mask their nonsense with self-serving, self-congratulatory artistic expression.

If I had to use one word to describe the intrinsic appeal of “bad” 1980s cinema, the term I would use is “aimless.” These were movies made by people who really didn’t seem to care if the final product was polished to perfection. They just wanted to get their stuff out there, make a couple of bucks and move on to the next tax write-off. It’s capitalism and commercialism at its worst, but at least those assholes were honest about their intentions. 

And with that in mind, it’s always interesting to back to the eighties and revisit some of the lesser-known or lesser-celebrated cinematic works of the time. With the benefit of 40 years of hindsight, the flicks can certainly be interpreted now in a different light. Which begs the question: all these decades later, to the movies still stand up — if they even stood up back then in the first place?

Let’s revisit six random-ass movies from the heyday of Mr. T and the Rubik’s Cube and find out for ourselves, why don’t we?

Look, the obvious shadow of the camera on the back of the truck just adds to the charm, oK?

City Limits

Aaron Lipstadt | 1985

City Limits is a mid-80s offering that melds several subgenres together. On one hand it’s a post-apocalyptic thriller a’la Mad Max, but it’s also a kitschy teenager melodrama/coming of age flick reminiscent of any number of classic “kids on bikes” movies from the era.

There’s no denying that there’s a star-studded cast on display here. John Stockwell, Kim Cattrall, Rae Dawn Chong, James Earl Jones … and they’re all wasted on a painfully boring script that moves at a glacial pace. 

Leading man Stockwell plays a wide-eyed wanderer who decides to leave the bucolic wastelands of agrarian California behind for the more cosmopolitan wastelands of Los Angeles. Going against the prevailing nuclear paranoia trend of the epoch, this time around mankind has been doomed by a mysterious virus that, for whatever reason, only killed people over the age of 30 or something (so, basically, it’s Logan’s Run by way of The Andromeda Strain.) 

Don’t ask me to get too deep into the nuances here, but the long and short of it is that there are two warring youth motorbike gangs — named the Clippers and DAs, for reasons I still really can’t comprehend — who have something of a truce going on, so instead of smoking each other en masse they just challenge each other to gladiator fights and shit. Then a shadowy cabal claiming to be representatives of the federal government show up and try to convince the gang leaders that they can play a pivotal rule in rebuilding civilization and … come on, can’t you see where this is headed? You and I both know it’s only a matter of time until the rivals form a unified front and take down the truly evil interlopers so they can rebuild L.A. in their own image.

Needless to say, there’s a reason why this one was so mercilessly mocked on Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

BEST LINE: “I don’t remember lights. It was before my time.” — John Stockwell, getting all poetic and shit.

NOSTALGIA FACTOR: 2/10 — despite the all-star roster of eighties ephemera titans in the cast, the film’s overall vibe and atmosphere doesn’t really capture the zeitgeist of the times, aesthetically or culturally, at all. 

OBJECTIVE RATING: ⭐️ out of ⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️

It's basically the same thing as He-Man, only with way more jiggling ass animation.

Fire and Ice

Ralph Bakshi | 1983

Underground animator idol Ralph Bashki is one of those guys whose oeuvre is very uneven and inconsistent. Most of his hardcore fans tend to believe that he’s made two bona fide magnum opi over his career — Fritz the Cat and Wizards — while pretty much everything else in his filmography is just various shades of so-so.

Well, Fire and Ice isn’t what I would consider an impressive movie. At all. It’s clearly meant to be a sword and sorcery epic a’la Conan the Barbarian, only way more grandiose and melodramatic in tone and scale. I guess the best apple-to-apple comparison point might be The Black Cauldron, but I’ve got a feeling that even Baskshi himself would consider this to be the weaker of the two cartoons.

From the outset, the animation in this thing leaves a lot to be desired. The overall quality is pretty much on par with any episode of Masters of the Universe, and a lot of times it looks even crappier. The story itself is pretty bland and formulaic, too, with a standard plot about a big, buff nigh invincible warrior trying to save a damsel in distress from the clutches of this evil sorcerer guy with an ice fetish (as well as a curious misogynistic streak, which leads to some of the movie’s most memorable/lamentable morsels of dialogue.)

Look, I’ve never been the type to immediately assail and condemn a work for problematic themes, but in the case of Fire and Ice, the shit is practically textual. Not only is there a huge anti-feminist motif streaking through the entirety of the film, I have a hard time imagining that nobody involved with the production of the film didn’t realize that the primitive, ape-like, would-be-rapist cave-monsters of the movie ALL had darker skin tones then everyone else in the cast. Even WITHOUT those unsettling undercurrents, though, Fire and Ice is still a difficult movie to sit through; offensive or not, this thing is just boring as all fuck.

BEST LINE: “I need no brides and no sons!”  — the nefarious Nekron, espousing the MGTOW ethos decades before it was mainstream.

NOSTALGIA FACTOR: 3/10 — the crummy, washed-out animation might make you long for some late stage Hanna-Barbera cartoons, but I’m afraid that’s where the sentimentality associated with this one ends.

OBJECTIVE RATING: ⭐️ 1/2 out of ⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Continuing the struggle for truth, justice and unsweet tea.

Supergirl

Jeannot Szwarc | 1984

The first two Superman movies were pretty damn great, and I’ve long been one of the few apologists for the much-maligned Supes III. Unfortunately, Supergirl is a spinoff that just doesn’t work to any degree — either as a straight superhero offering or a tongue-in-cheek parody of the subgenre.

First of all, Helen Slater deserved so much better. She proved she could be a charismatic big screen heroine in The Legend of Billie Jean, but here she just seems lost and aimless — which isn’t her fault, the script itself is just all over the place. About halfway through the movie the screenwriters decided it would be just peachy if Supergirl assumed a ridiculous alter ego and try to live life as a “normal” teenager at a prep school. It’s apparent that the people who made this movie wanted to make literally ANYTHING besides a superhero flick — to the point it feels like they were trying to piss the audience off on purpose just out of spite.

You KNOW this thing is going to be cornball ne plus ultra the moment Faye Dunnaway rears her head as the villainess of the picture. Rather than dip their buckets into the actual D.C. canon, the filmmakers simply invented a generic sorceress character — basically, the same character from Mommie Dearest, albeit with so-so mind control powers. She lives in an abandoned amusement park and somehow has access to the Phantom Zone; and for whatever reason, she seems to have a live-in butch lesbian lover residing with her, even though the movie (obviously) never has the guts to come out and call it what it actually is.

It’s a bad movie, but you don’t need me to tell you that — it’s evident by the five-minute mark of the film. Probably the nadir/zenith of the movie is the scene where Supergirl thwarts a runaway piece of heavy machinery from bulldozing an innocent Popeye’s Chicken restaurant. Whatever the opposite of tactful is, surely, that fuckin’ scene would be it.

BEST LINE: “Without me, you would still be reading tea leaves at Lake Tahoe!” — the prim and proper Nigel, after being spurred by the sinister Selena.

NOSTALGIA FACTOR: 8/10 — the movie might suck as a whole, but there’s no denying that it brings the retro kitsch en masse. There’s old school cereal boxes on the walls, fast food ephemera out of the ass and so much idiosyncratically eighties hair going on here that you can almost smell the ozone depleting from so much Aquanet. 

OBJECTIVE RATING: ⭐️ 1/2 out of ⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️

"Jack Kirby? Nah, NeVEr HEARD OF HIM ..."

Comic Book Confidential

Ron Mann | 1988

Sure, some of you might think I’m cheating by including a documentary film on the viewing itinerary. And to a certain degree, I guess I am. But hey, this way, we’re guaranteed at least ONE genuinely good movie in the line-up; and if you ain’t down with that, you can go jump in the creek.

Comic Book Confidential is a very interesting movie, primarily because of its timing. Had this movie been made just one year later amidst Bat-mania 1989, the entire vibe of the film would be totally different. Instead, we get a very heartfelt and impressively comprehensive look at just how much the comic book medium had changed from the censorship-heavy 1950s to the late, late 1980s Bronze Age, complete with a ton of insightful interviews with legendary cartoonists and publishers who have been dead for eons now.

Give director Mann some credit, because he covers a pretty damn wide territory in just 90 minutes. He manages to fit in a little bit of everything, running the gamut from the old E.C. Comics to the ascension of Mad Magazine to Robert Crumb to, eventually, cornerstones of the contemporary graphic novel movement such as Maus and The Dark Knight Returns. Of course, you could argue that some talking heads are given a bit more time/leeway with the facts than they probably should — the segment featuring Stan Lee, in particular — but those are certainly minor complaints about an otherwise thorough and well-balanced doc.

It’s an intriguing little love letter to pulp art, particularly before it went mainstream and became the multi-billion multimedia juggernaut it is today. That, and it does shine a little light on how the sociopolitical dynamics of the 1980s led top the reinvention of the comic book as we know it. Which means, in a VERY indirect way, Margaret Thatcher is responsible for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 — like, literally and shit. 

BEST LINE: “Whatever stories I write have to do with my reactions to what’s going around me and the world I live in right now with 1980s America — which is a very frightening, silly place and it’s often silly and frightening at the same time.” — Frank Miller, summing up the Reagan Years about as well as anybody.

NOSTALGIA FACTOR: 8 /10 — quite high, obviously. Not only do you get to wallow in ‘80s comic book goodness, you also get to immerse yourself in a virtual smorgasbord of awful middle aged male fashion and haircuts that exemplified the era. 

OBJECTIVE RATING:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of ⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Wait a Minute ... it's not hockey season!

The Blob

Chuck Russell | 1988

Out of all of the 1950s sci-fi horror cheese that got the eighties re-do treatment — think, The Fly and The Thing — The Blob seems like one of the hardest to repurpose for the era of excess. Thankfully, Dream Warriors helmer Russell doesn’t really try to imbue the titular glob monster with superfluous “social commentary” — although I suppose you could argue the whole thing is a metaphor for out of control military spending, but that’s really stretching it.

The ‘88 iteration follows the general plot and structure of the original, with the big draw being the (then) state of the art special effects. The gruesome amoebic murders in this one are pretty damn fantastic; this time around, the sentient space jelly doesn’t just envelope people, it fucking melts motherfuckers in embryonic sac acid. And if you think Chucky doesn’t have the guts to show middle schoolers getting dissolved on-camera … think again.

The acting is alright, but nothing special. Shawnee Smith plays the female lead and Kevin Dillon plays the bad buy juvenile delinquent who ultimately ends up saving his backwoods California town while all of the cops get eaten alive by the mutant gelatin mold. I don’t know, it might have something to do with the Iran Contra scandal or that whole savings and loan thing — you’d have to ask Chuck personally.

Some people tend to tout this as one of the best horror flicks of the 1980s. I think it’s good, but can’t help but feel like some folks out there tend to overrate it just a bit. The gooey, gory effects are fuckin’ great but the rest of the movie feels a little light and aimless — like they couldn’t decide whether the movie was meant to be a parody or a “straight” horror movie up until the actual filming began. As uneven and inconsistent as it is at times, it’s still a fun movie, though — and you should probably watch it, just so you can see that one dude get slurped down a kitchen sink again.

BEST LINE: "Your meteor brought something all right but if it's a germ, it's the biggest son of a bitch you've ever seen!" - Bad boy Kevin Dillon, telling the military-industrial complex like it is.

NOSTALGIA FACTOR: 5/10 — to a limited degree it does a pretty good job of painting the ambiance and atmosphere of the gloomy and droll late 1980s. Definitely keep an eye out for some nostalgic consumer brands on the store shelves during the drug store scene. 

OBJECTIVE RATING: ⭐️⭐️ 1/2 out of ⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️

YoU don't need a time machine to travel to 1985 as long as *thIs movie* exists.

Krush Groove

Michael Schultz | 1985

Last year, I made the rather presumptuous declaration that Rad — the 1986 BMX-ploitation flick that literally included a romantic dancing scene filmed entirely on dirt bike — was the most eighties fuckin’ movie ever made.

Well, allow me to unhinge my jaw and eat a plate of hot crow. I absolutely guarantee you that you will NEVER see a movie as fuckin’ ‘80s-tactic as Krush Groove. This movie is pretty much the entire decade distilled into its purest, most potent essence and ready to be freebased in celluloid form. But really, what did you expect from a roman a clef for the for the founding of Def Jam Records?

The thinly veiled plot revolves around a hotshot producer with an all-time roster of rap greats under contract. We’ve got Run-DMC, we’ve got the Beastie Boys, we’ve got LL Cool, we’ve got Sheila E., hell, we’ve even got the goddamn Gap Band showing up for some reason. This being helmed by the some criminally underrated auteur who gave us Cooley High, Car Wash and Greased Lightning, I suppose you shouldn’t be surprised that a mob/loan shark subplot gets mixed into the batter, too.  Yes, it’s campy, corny stuff, but if you can’t have fun watching the shenanigans unfurl, I don’t think anything on this planet will help you crack a smile.

Having all-time greats like Chaka Khan and Kurtis Blow on the soundtrack is an obvious benefit, but really, it’s the deeper cuts that make Krush Groove such tantalizing, throwback theater. For example, the performance of “Tender Love” by Force MD’s — an act you’ve almost certainly forgotten about (if you recall them at all) that instantly brings to mind so many long-repressed memories of yesteryear. Plus, this movie has what may very well be the greatest scene in film history, when THE FAT BOYS barge into a Times Square Sbarro and demolish a buffet to the tune of Razzy nominee “All You Can Eat.” I mean, Jesus Christ, what could be more idiosyncratically eighties than THAT?

BEST LINE: “You wouldn’t see Lionel Richie working at no car wash!” — Run, of Run-DMC fame, once again pointing out the inherent faults of living in a capitalistic society.

NOSTALGIA FACTOR: ♾️ /10 — the movie literally begins with members of novelty rap act The Fat Boys making poundcake while shameless product placement for New Coke is displayed prominently in the background. This movie IS the 1980s epitomized. 

OBJECTIVE RATING: ⭐️⭐️ 1//2 out of ⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️

XOXO, Toxicka