After my mom saw The Exorcist in ’73, she swore off horror films for good. That movie traumatised her, and she spent the next decade telling me how terrible horror movies were, and that she hated everything about them. Which probably explains why she side-eyed me when my head spun 360 degrees as a toddler … Read more
Sometimes timing is everything. Chevy Chase plays an air traffic controller at JFK who gains telekinetic powers after being doused in nuclear waste. That must have been the pitch meeting opener, but… The film opened on Christmas Day 1981, which ironically – if that’s what irony meant, was just four months after Reagan had fired … Read more
Two blue-collar guys from Detroit pack up and move to Aspen to become ski instructors. Like the VHS box read, it’s pretty much Top Gun on Skis. A really good Top Gun on Skis. Writer-director Patrick Hasburgh had been one of those Aspen ski instructors himself. He moved there in 1971, spent years on the … Read more
It was originally going to be a thing called Disco High because Saturday Night Fever and Grease were pulling in money, and that was reason enough for Roger Corman. But the legendary Paul Bartel, who was already cast in the film, suggested the Ramones instead, and thank ye gads he did. Allan Arkush put the … Read more
You’ve probably seen this one mentioned on nostalgia sites, right? It often gets dropped in the same breath as Pretty in Pink, like it was always right there in the conversation, another beloved Jon Cryer joint from the golden age of teen comedies. A film we all rented one Saturday afternoon and fell in love … Read more
In the mid-90s, Hollywood decided that video games were the new comic books, which was ironic considering they hadn’t figured out comic books yet. And while Super Mario Bros. face-planted in 1993 probably because they kept a 10 foot pole’s distance from any of the familiar iconography, later movies tried a little harder to at … Read more
I’ve written about Pet Sematary before. The original cracked open something in me back in ’89 that I’ve never quite been able to close, and it remains one of my favourite horror films. So when a sequel was finally announced, I was very excited. But the scathing reviews lowered my expectations well below the threshold … Read more
In 1985, hip-hop was still a curiosity to Hollywood. We were about a year away from Run-D.M.C.’s Raising Hell and Walk This Way crossing it over for good, and Krush Groove caught the culture right before that explosion. Run-D.M.C., Kurtis Blow, The Fat Boys, Sheila E., New Edition, the Beastie Boys, and a seventeen-year-old LL … Read more
The single most recognizable thing about the Punisher, the thing that makes Frank Castle Frank Castle, is the skull. A big white skull on black spandex. That’s it. That’s his brand. Every kid who ever flipped through a Marvel comic in the 80s knew that skull and how it blended into his ammo belt. So … Read more
What… Never heard of it? The Road to Wellville? Starring Anthony Hopkins, Bridget Fonda, Matthew Broderick, John Cusack, Dana Carvey, Colm Meaney, Lara Flynn Boyle and John Neville? Still No? Directed by Alan Parker, it tells the fictionalised story of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg’s (the inventor of Corn Flakes) bizarro health club from the turn … Read more