C.H.U.D.’s had a rough life. Somewhere between The Simpsons and a Criterion Collection April Fools prank, it became cultural shorthand for B.M.M. Bad monster movie. The sequel, C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud, went full-tilt camp and after that, any chance of the original being taken at face value was pretty much flushed. Which is a … Read more
Dino De Laurentiis changed the title from Red Dragon because he was convinced that audiences would mistake it for a martial arts film. Which, ok I can see it. But DEG was already bleeding money and lurching toward the bankruptcy, so nobody with the power to override Dino was inclined to fight him on branding. … Read more
For better and for worse, Robert Carradine gave screen nerds their most recognizable icon in the 1980s, and while Revenge of the Nerds (1984) handed the geeks a win, it also cemented every visual stereotype in the book, complete with taped-up glasses and a nasally snort-laugh that took another twenty years to fully shake off. … Read more
National Lampoon’s European Vacation arrived on Home Video this week in 1986, after a July 26th, 1985 theatrical release. The French are snooty. The English are incomprehensible. The Germans are, well, very German. Every country is boiled down to its most recognisable clichés, and the Griswolds barrel through all of it with the cheerful obliviousness … Read more
Loose Cannons is another oddity in the buddy cop genre (I’ve been on a kick lately), a film that feels like a jigsaw puzzle made from a collage of old TV Guide movie plot blurbs. The kind of thing you’d find left behind by an insane asylum inmate escapee. That’s my exceedingly sloppy way of … Read more
Wacky Packages were hard currency in my schoolyard in 1985. Every recess turned into a stock exchange where kids traded cards with the urgency of Wall Street brokers. A full set wrapped in a rubber band made you a playground legend. But then something happened that toppled our carefully built card empires: those Garbage Pail … Read more
The sleeper hit that nobody saw coming, and the movie that catapulted its star from cult curiosity to 80s pop culture icon, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure is the stuff of nostalgic royalty. It’s tour-de-force of Dada-esque absurdist whimsy dreamed up by Paul Reubens, Phil Hartman, and a then-no-name director with a twisted, cartoonish imagination named Tim … Read more
It scraped together 16 million on a 12.5 million budget, but it just couldn’t defend itself against Aliens, Top Gun, and The Fly that summer. So it settled into video store retirement where it spent the next couple decades generating dust and rental fees in roughly equal measure. The story of how it got there, … Read more
Widely regarded as Jean-Claude Van Damme’s most successful solo film, the Sam Raimi-produced Dark Horse comic adaptation is a Split Hook Kick of ultra-90’s sci-fi. The movie’s always been a personal fave, but let’s talk hair. It was especially awe-inspiring to see Jean Claude’s fresh-from-the-salon Hard Target mullet still ready for action. I never understood … Read more
An Orlacian tale worthy of E.C. Comics, Body Parts is the story of a criminal psychologist who loses his arm in a brutal car accident and gets a transplant… from an executed serial killer. So naturally, the arm develops a mind of its own, leading him down a dark, twisted path. You’ve got to hand … Read more