Underdog kids who just want to do their thing, the uptight authority figures who just don’t get it and want that thing to stop, and the triumphant but tragic finale where the kids get to speak truth to power. What if Pump Up The Volume meant talking hard against the Third Reich? That’s right, Swing … Read more
Growing up, I always gravitated towards the characters who didn’t quite know how to say what they meant. The ones who stood slightly outside every conversation, watching the room with a disconcerting intensity. When I spotted characters like that, I got glimpses of how I might render from the outside. I recognized them immediately, I … 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
Between the collapse of the ‘80s slasher craze in 1989 and the postmodern reset of Scream in 1996, horror movies were in a holding pattern. Major studios pulled back, theatrical releases shrank, and what dominated the genre was more in line with prestige psychological thrillers like Jacob’s Ladder, Misery, The Silence of the Lambs and … Read more
When Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cleaned up at the box office in 1990, Hollywood learned exactly one lesson: ninja kids were bankable. Sure animatronics are expensive and any big sci-fi elements would just complicate things. But kids doing martial arts? That’s just a bit of casting, some choreography and black pyjamas. Strip out the costly … Read more
Comic book artist Rob Liefeld couldn’t draw feet to save his life, so he made sure there was always something in the panel to mask them. If you can only draw two expressions, and one involves gritted teeth? Write stories where every beat requires gritted teeth. Play to your strengths, mask your weaknesses, deliver exactly … Read more
Pauly Shore was the early 90s. Not representative or symbolic of them – he was them. For several years, he went from MTV’s most chillin’ VJ to Hollywood’s own prophet of slack. If you needed someone to embody post-80s aimlessness dressed as radical self-expression, The Weasel was your guy. For the uninitiated, Son in Law … Read more
This one really scratches that itch. Seth Green, Alfonso Ribeiro, Ami Dolenz, Peter Scolari and Clint Howard fight off a horde of creepy crawlers that have grown to ginormous size thanks to a steroid-laced grow-op contaminating the yokel ecosystem in Tony (Hellraiser II) Randle’s goo fest: Ticks (1993). The practical effects are the real star … Read more
I’ve been on a Terminator kick, layely. Billy Blanks might be best known for inventing Tae-Bo – the late 90’s cardio craze that blended Tae Kwon Do and boxing – but rewind to the early 90s and you’ll find him roundhouse-kicking his way through a solid run of straight-to-video action flicks. TC 2000 isn’t the … Read more
I just love a good Stephen King baddie. And Max von Sydow’s Leland Gaunt is one of his best – he’s elegant, sinister, and having the time of his life watching Castle Rock burn. It’s a masterclass in restrained villainy. He’s the sort of evil that just nudges the door open and lets a person’s … Read more