There are a few decades in film history that have been as screwed nuts as the 1980s, but to really understand the decade and its movies, it's going to take a couple of someone's who were there for it the first time around. Drew McQueenie and Scott Weinberg are ready to review every major film of the decade, one month at a time. The look at what worked then, what endoers now, and how it felt to be there when it all went down. Turn back to calendar with us. It's the 80s all over. When Gretzky became the first person to score 50 goals in one season, well, still just a teenager. Posted notes were released, and as the hostage crisis reached ahead in Iran, the U.S. decided to boycott the summer Olympics in Moscow. And I have notified the Olympic Committee that we're Soviet invading forces in Afghanistan. Neither the American people nor I will support sending an Olympic team to Moscow. And in Detroit, a young broadcaster named Howard Stern went on the air for the first time. Hello. Howard? Yeah, baby. Um, got to ask you a few questions from the school newspaper. Ask me a few questions for your school newspaper? Yeah. Go ahead, shoot. Why are you different from other DJs? Why am I different from other DJs? Yeah. Because I fought on the air. What? I fought on the radio. Amidst these seismic events, here's what people could see in theaters in March of 1980. Hi everybody, this is Scott Weinberg and welcome to episode four of 80s all over in which holy crap, episode four, we're actually doing this thing man. How do you scare me? I thought I did something wrong. Yeah. Very right. We did four episodes. That's really awesome. Well, we've done three. We're about to do number four, Drew. And I believe you have one correction for our listeners, Drew. I do. In fact, I'd like to go ahead and just introduce this as a regular feature at the top of the podcast, Justin Case. And I'd like to call this segment, we pulled a boner. Oops, upside to head. Say oops, oops, oops. Because we did indeed. Scott, last week, you pulled a boner. And it's one that I listened to you say it. I 100% agreed with you and I thought you were correct. Last week, you had mentioned that Irwin Allen was a producer of Meteor, which you believe was a 1980 release as well. Actually, late 79 release and had nothing to do with Irwin Allen, it was simply somebody else doing the Irwin Allen formula very, very aggressively. Whoa, see there you at least now you know that we're not just reciting off of IMDB. That was completely from my own head. Yeah. If you're on jeopardy for a $10,000 daily double and said did Irwin Allen produce a meteor, I would have said yes. Yes, whoever corrected us. Thank you for that. It's so funny the way you do that in your head, man, when you have lived with something for as many years as we have with some of these films, you internalize something. Oh yeah. Since you have it right, and then you actually look at it again and you go, wow, no, I still find it hard to believe that Irwin Allen did not produce meteor. There's Lou Lorde grade and it was a total English production top to bottom.

All right. Well, it's also a terrible film.

So I wasn't wrong on that count. All right. So anyway, we pulled a boner and I'm sure we'll pull plenty more as we move on with the podcast. So we'll we'll be back for that. I'm sure in the meantime, let's get right into the list for this month, what do you call James Bond when he's not James Bond? I think

you could call him folksalks! Falks with two Fs. He's a master strategist. I am telling you how to save the lives of 600 men. Demolition's expert. Get onto the diving sections. I'll have my want to wetsuit and a berry gun. And he doesn't need a license to kill. Except for a slight squelch when entering the flesh, they do not make any noise. Roger Moore fights against time and terror as folks. Have I ever let you die? The American title, folks, is the last name of the main character. And in the movie, it is such an annoying, affected thing because the correct spelling of his last name, if done in the correct way, should be lowercase f at the beginning. And they make such a big deal out of it. They make such a big deal out of his hilarious, unusual name. And of course, folks is played by none other than as a child of the eighties that late seventies and eighties, is there anything more comforting than the sound of Roger Moore's voice? I love Roger Moore's voice. There's something about Roger Moore's accent and his voice that just takes me back to like 1982. Well, he is the Camo Meele T of action stars. That's for sure. The thing that's always blown me away about him is James Bond is you can't do a long shot of Roger Moore running. That that's terrible and horribly painful looking. But it's because he knows how to sell a line in a room and look, this movie was directed by Andrew V. McLoggan, who is one of these old time Hollywood pros. He made movies like McClendon with John Wayne and Chisholm with John Wayne. He worked with him repeatedly and John Wayne was one of those guys when he found a director. He liked to basically did things the way he enjoyed doing them. That guy worked a lot and this was one of those guys when he found a director he liked to basically did things the way he enjoyed doing them.

That guy worked a lot and this was one of those guys. He made Mitchell, which is infamous for fans of mystery science theater and Joe Duffaker. Try that in a room full of movie gigs. Ask somebody in a loud voice if they've seen Mitchell and listen to how many people chuckle in your immediate vicinity. I'm I'm I'm Mitchell.

You know what I love about North Sea hijack?

I prefer not to call it folks because I'm a grown man. Is the cast. That's what this guy did. That's what Glogin did so well was he loved, he loved movie stars in the client. He loved guys who had reached a certain point and they were just tipping over into I'm too old to do this now. And like he made movies with Jimmy Stewart and Dean Martin and Bill Holden and Cliff Robertson and Vince Edwards and he did a lot of them with the English guys. He did the wild geese, which was Richard Burton, Richard Harris and Roger Moore. George Kennedy. And here you've got Roger Moore, Anthony Perkins and James Mason and Michael Parks. Oh, and I love that Michael Parks is Tony Perkins henchman in this like sidekick because Michael Parks is one of our great character actors and a guy who really has enjoyed a resurgence thanks to Quentin Tarantino almost single handedly. Like he reminded people that Michael Parks is great. Not almost. No, I mean, I'm that's not a slight on Michael parks. I mean, no,

no, it's just it's great. Literally, you know, would have faded into here. Anthony Perkins takes over the oil rig and he's going to blow it up unless they do a certain something. And they go get folks because he is like he's actually shot simulations of how he's going to take this oil rig back specifically. Like he had it already planned out. And that's what these movies used to be like the action film would be this setup you'd have something

happen you go get the expert and then the expert goes and takes care of it. I think one of the reasons die hard was so heavily imitated was it broke that formula and had just a regular person who wasn't brought in to do it, but who just had to do it because they were caught in the situation. He plays like, I mean, if you watch the trailer, it says numerous times he doesn't need a license to kill.

You know, they're really cheeky about who's playing folks with two Fs. And what I like about it is that it's less than a hundred minutes. It has some pretty decent action scenes. It's got some actors chewing up the scenery. I mean, it's a fun little action movie. I don't know if you just heard my cat come over and get in the middle of everything, but it's appropriate because in the movie, Raj Mord's character loves cats, not just hates women, but is a fairly rabid misogynist throughout the entire movie. And seems to really enjoy it. The one thing that they changed, because my dad read any spy book that was published. I remember reading this book and in the book, the prime minister's a man and it's just regular, you know, he gives folks the job and there's no tension or anything between them. This was made right after Margaret Thatcher became prime minister and that was a huge shake up in English politics, obviously. So I think it's very intentional that they cast a female prime minister and really tweaked his massage and all the way up to 11 opposite her. So it's a direct comment on a specific moment in British culture wrapped in the middle of this terrorist spy movie that is very old school Hollywood in a lot of ways. This next one is a movie that I for a little

while considered showing the kids and then I sought again and I don't think I'm going

to bother. This is a collaboration between longtime comedy partners Tim Conway and Don knots no ordinary detectives. Oh my gosh. This is no ordinary killer. All right, hold right there. God, give me your gun. Will the murder of the found before the suspects become victims? Team Conway is the beam-witted doctor. And our nice is the inevitable spectrum. Oh, no. Gripings, step by step. Who's the number one who does the private eyes? I think it's a pretty fun movie for kids. These two guys work together a lot. A lot of television. They were also in both the Apple Dumbling gang movies. They were in a film in 75 called The Prize Fighter. And they seem to have, you know, certainly not a avid and Castello level of chemistry, but Don Nott's being the broadly gawky jittery one and Tim Conway being the slightly more sedate and dry buffoon. As a kid, I really enjoyed this movie. I haven't seen it since I was a kid. They're both legendary comedic actors. So if it's only to appreciate their chemistry together, it might be worth checking out. Just put on ghost and Mr. Checking and skip this. I was shocked by how creaky this thing is. And it's got whiskers on it. Clearly it is just a lift of bits from a million other places. There's not an original joke in it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,ife is one of the five great television characters of all time and why Don Nott and the performance he gave on that show, legendary. Next level perfect.

Well, the private eyes is about two detectives from Scotland yard. They go to a very fantastic location. The mansion that it shot in is just amazing. And they're looking into a murder investigation. And it turns out that the mansion may or may not be haunted, but it is certainly populated by a cookie collection

of characters.

But as a kid, I like silly stuff. And these guys, I remember them from the reruns of Carablanet show. And of course, Threes Company. So I love the guys. The seven year old me loved it. How about that? Leave it at that. Okay. Seven year old you probably did. I think very young me really enjoyed it. I really want to warn people before they go back and pick this one up.

If you're looking at it with fresh eyes, it's kind of embarrassing.

It's really. I think very young me really enjoyed it. I really want to warn people before they go back and pick this one up

If you're looking at it with fresh eyes, it's kind of embarrassing

It's really the the bottom of the barrel for these guys and I say that as a fan. So The next movie we're gonna do is a movie called Heartbeat It's a film by G John Byram, who is probably best known if he's known it all as the director of the razor's edge, starring Bill Murray. Byram was a guy that kind of he was working really hard to make it happen at this particular point, starting in the 70s. He was a writer and he wrote some movies that you would recognize, like Harry and Walter go to New York or he wrote Mahogany. He was breaking through and he was making movies. He made a movie called Inserts, which is an interesting picture. The follow up to that was Heartbeat and it was designed to be a sort of love letter to the friendship at the heart of the beat generation. Neil Cassidy, Jack Kerouac, and Neil's wife Carolyn. It is drunk in love with that era and with those people. There's an Allen Ginsburg character in it, but they did change the name because Allen Ginsburg wasn't comfortable with the way they portrayed him. And there have been films since that I think have done a better job at maybe nailing down some of the details of the era. But this was one of the first films where they were trying to capture sort of the beat generation heroes and who they were. And it's got a great cast. That's the thing. It's Nick Nulti, Sissy Spacek and John Hurd. And the three of them together with And Ray Sharky basically playing Ginsburg, terrific. They're really interesting, they're charismatic.

There's a real charm to it. And this is such a different performance for Nick Nolte from North Dallas, 40, which we've already talked about really dazzling when you look at the two of them side by side. Nolte was really exciting. I think at this point and I was trying different different things. And Spasic is a grown up here.

It's so different than her coal miner's daughter performance. This one you can actually rent on Voodoo and find on, I believe, YouTube to rent. And it's worthwhile. If you're interested in these characters or in the historical figures, then it's definitely worth a look. And if you like the actors, it's a really nice picture for all of them. I would like to pick your brain real quick on John Hurd's performance because I'll tell you ever since I saw After Hours, which will get to many, many episodes from now. I've been a huge fan of John Hurd. I had never seen this film and doing my research for the show. I went, what? John Hurd playing Jack Kerouac. That fits. Perfect right young macho charisma because it hurts a big guy and I like that like Nolte. There's a real physicality to him. And especially when he was young, there was this really loose kind of energy about him. They they're great together. And you really buy the friendship between the two of them as a friendship between men who are conquering the world at that point. Oh, there you go. If you're a, if you're into Jack Kerouac and or the beat generation,

you should consider dropping three before bucks to rent heartbeat. Yeah, definitely. Now we're moving to something that if you thought heartbeat was an obscure title, Poo-ah. I'm surprised this is not a TV movie. As I understand it, it got a very brief theatrical window but was largely released in most markets only on cable

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