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. Well, the time has come. You've seen the map. We've looked at the figures and NBC news. Now makes its projection for the presidency. Reagan is our projected winner. Ronald Wilson Reagan of California, a sports announcer, a film actor, a governor of California is our projected winner at 815 Eastern Standard Time on this election night. Ronald Reagan defeated incumbent President Jimmy Carter in the general election by a landslide. Iraq President Saddam Hussein declared holy war against Iran. John Lennon's eagerly awaited double fantasy album arrived in stores and Dallas finally answered the question of who shot JR with 83 million people watching. It was you, Kristen. Who shot JR? You think you've got it all figured out. Get me the police. I wouldn't do that if I were you JR. Not unless you want your child born in prison. Now wouldn't that be a scandal? Joc Ewing's grandson. JR baby. And yet, some of them also found time to see some of the movies released in November of 1980 Hi everybody and welcome to 80s all over my name is Scott Weinberg. I'm the co-host along with dot dot dot So suspenseful it could be anybody it's Drew McQueenie Drew McQueenie holy that's me! From the internet! Hey, what's up, man? How are you, dude? It's very good to hear from you. Some months, we get a whole bunch of movies, and then some months by the law of just calendars. Our months are a little bit skimpy, and I hate to say it, but November of 1980 is a relatively skimpy month. And yet, having said that, a really interesting month. And this is one of those where we're just going to jump right in. I'm going to kick it off with the first film, which is the movie where I learned, I believe, the documentaries are awesome. I'm talking, of course, about Arrow Morris' landmark, originally made 1978 the Actory Released in 1980, Gates of Heaven. Sometimes the people like to come up and see the actual witness, the actual burial of the animal. Sometimes they don't and we pick out a date that's convenient for them and they come up and as far as preparation a hole has to be dug prepared. It has yet we have to make sure that that the hole is going to fit the size of the casket because you don't want to make it too large because you're going to waste space and you don't want to make it too small because you can't get the thing in there. Any subject in the right hands can be interesting. You could make a documentary about how paper or paper clips or anything is made. And if you haven't a filmmaker who is fascinated by that topic, that documentary will probably be good. And Gates of Heaven is about pet cemeteries. Infamous even before it came out because there was a bet, a long standing bet between Werner Herzog and Errol Morris, and Errol would never finish this movie and Werner Herzog promised to eat his shoe if Arrow Morse ever did it Not only did Arrow Morse finish the film not only did Werner Herzog eat his shoe But Arrow Morse actually filmed it and released that as a short film called Shockingly Werner Herzog eat his shoe. He boiled it. Yes, he did. Aside from, you know, the typical poignancy of just seeing people do something that they love passionately, even in the face of it being potentially a pointless act. Maybe the result isn't all that matters. Maybe just the act of doing certain things is what's important. One of the things that I love about Aaron Morris movies and especially the early ones, this Vernon Florida, there was a real sense that the people he was putting on camera in the hands of somebody who was cruel could have been made to look stupid or ridiculous or small or absolutely. I never feel like when I'm watching Vernon Florida, which I adore, I love, love, love that movie, or this one, I never feel like he's laughing in anybody. Even when they are people who are talking about things that might be considered fringe or ridiculous. I get from Aero Morris and Werner Herzog and people like that, I get fascinated. Doesn't matter how small the subject is, I get from these filmmakers they are Fascinated by this minutia that makes us human these these weird little foibles and strange little quirks that make us human Are what's fascinating to these people and that they are able to Impart that fascination to people through their films is why we remember films like gase of heaven so amazingly And with course we can't even talk about this film for a second without noting the late great roger ebert who champion this film endlessly that was the reason that when it finally came out i actually went inside was he had put it on his best of the year list the year that it was i think in festival circulation and had written about it endlessly and talked about it and listening it was on his top 10 list and it was a movie that he could not say enough good things

about.

So by the time it finally came out, it was on my radar. I was already a fiscal neighbor fan and I wanted to go see it and I'd never seen anything like it. I'd never seen a documentary. Really, I don't think theatrically, but I certainly never seen anything that offered up this look at people who I might otherwise never meet or talk to where have any reason

to even think about like, oh yeah, the people who spend their time, money, and effort to maintain pet cemeteries. Like, when do you even think about those kind of people? And yet, you have filmmakers who will center their entire feature around those people. And you know, it could be any activity. Whatever activity it is, someone else's might consider that activity silly or pointless. But if it makes you happy and you get something from it, then it's valuable. The movie sets up these two totally different pet cemeteries and you're watching success in failure in America. You're watching somebody who manages a business well that's that's thriving and somebody who doesn't, but who has a passion for it that they cannot translate into money. It's one thing when you fuck up your dream and you don't succeed at something. It's another thing when your dream involves the final disposal of something like 500 pets that when you go bankrupt, you have to do something with them. You are now responsible to the owners, the people who put their emotional security in your hands. You now are responsible for the final resting place of these animals and no longer able to pay for it. And the whole half of the film that deals with the idea of having to dig up and move the remains of these pets and what it does emotionally to a community of people. That's fascinating by itself. It's like a rich American novel. There is so much going on and there are so many levels to it and every character introduces you into this whole other world that kind of intersects. And oh my god, it's such a great movie. You could call it just if you want. You could call it a human interest story. But it's if it's a human interest story, it's written by like Hemingway. So great. Yep. So great. Our next film is not quite so wonderful. It is from the infamous Polish director Uli Lemel who has done several terrible films and I think it's safe to say that

his best film, relatively speaking, is 1980s The Boogie Man. It's funny because for me horror films, first of all, do they work? Are they scary? The answer is no, not scary. But then it's you remember it based on how does it, like what subgenre, what section of horror is it, and that's kind of how you group it. And this is part of that very, very small, but a genuine subsection of horror films about haunted mirrors. And it is one of those movies where I remember the hook and the idea More than any scare in the film. I've made the mistake of trying to rewatch it once and it is rough man However, if you remember Jane Pratt the editor of sassy She was a huge media figure in a lot of the the 90s. I spent most of the 90s really wasted. So she's in this as one of the the teenage victims. And it's just one of those things where somebody who has this whole other life has one film role. And okay, what a weird ass film role that is. A man is killed while having sex with a woman and her kids are watching and the murder is captured in a mirror And then 20 years later the daughter re-acquires the mirror and you know, it has its moments. It's very basic and It's completely forgettable. I wouldn't recommend it But you know if you're a a 1980s completist it was a VHS of some note And if you't seen the original Boogie Man, then you can't play the wonderful game of watching Boogie Man 2, which came out a few years later. And is I would say, charitably 65% footage from the first film. There again, you want to talk about some some genres of horror. That's like the hills have eyes to where every single character from the original film gets a flashback so that they can pad the movie out with footage, including the dog. Yeah, the dog has a flashback. Yeah, the best, the best. It is infamous. So yeah, the boogie man, not too hot. Let's move on Drew. You got something that is a psychosexual thriller, but something of a much more refined nature. Arguably. This is a movie that pretty much had no official release in the United States for home video until 2005. It's a film that was very, very hard to find for a long time. And yet when it finally came out, it came out through criterion. Like it was it immediately got launched into cult item status And Nicholas Rogue like like many art house directors and like many guys who who worked in the 60s in the 70s in the 80s Really uneven filmmaker. There's moments of Nicholas Rogue's work where I think he's great and there's moments of Nicholas Rogue's work where I I think he is in suffer I can't remember the time with any precision. But I'm not asking you for the precise time. So could there have been half past 12 perhaps? 10, 11 midnight. No. It's just that I can't stand to think of you with anyone else. Tell me! We're alone here. No witnesses. Well, I'm with you. I'm with you. I love being with you. What does that mean with me, not with me? Confess between us, tell me what you, they're not. It doesn't ever use that word again, and I promise I won't. Bad timing, a terrifying love story. First of all, let me just say about the title. That is one of the sickest punchlines to a joke. And the whole movie is the joke,

and that title is the punchline, and it's a really grim one. It is like if Eli Roth had actually called Knock Knock Free Pizza, which was one of the titles where that suddenly gets really sinister, and it's not ha ha funny. It's like, oh god, Jesus Christ. Last month we covered a film called One One trick pony in which Paul Simon was the star.

And now in bad timing Drew, who do we have in this one? Well, we got our Garfunkel. And it's our Garfunkel. It's Teresa Russell, Tarvi Kytel. And the movie is about a doctor who's living in Vienna. And he has an affair with a patient who's a married woman. She tries to kill herself and she ends up in the hospital with an overdose, the police aren't sure that the overdose was her. And so it becomes an investigation into their relationship to try to untangle what went on. And it is, I'm not kidding, a brutally ugly ending to a movie. When the ending of this gets here and they untangle everything, because Nick Rugg breaks the the chronology of the film so you're getting bits and pieces and you're not giving all the information until the right moment it's an ugly ugly breath takingly nasty place that it ends up and it's hard to watch legitimately hard to watch. I don't think it's in I don't need it's a totally successful film. The distributor, the UK distributor when the film was initially shown to them, not only bucked it releasing it, they took their name off of it. And the head of the distribution company called it a sick film made by sick people for sick people, which then became an advertising linchpin for them. Like they decided great. Well, the head of the company that made it call that that we're gonna call it that on the poster

and it's one of the reasons the film has always been controversial is because i think genuinely it's unsettling and there's stuff in it that will upset you and was designed to do i think it earns all of that not necessarily but i think it is rogue and Teresa Russell And art garfunkel giving it a hundred percent and trying to make something that's going to push and challenge you and be

difficult It is rogue and Teresa Russell and Art Garfunkel giving it a hundred percent and trying to make something that's going to push and challenge you and be difficult to shake at the end of it. Bad timing of which I'm low to say I am not seen and now it seems like I don't really care to. You might like it but it's rough. It is not an easy film to make it through. Speaking of films that nobody has seen, our next one shares a title with a Gregory Heinz Billy Crystal comedy that will get to in a few years. And it also shares a title with a over the top Paul Walker action adventure movie called Running Scared. Now for those who've never heard of this blockbuster classic stars Ken wall and Judge Ryanhold as Service men in the 60s who are mistaken for spies Talking about a movie that is built around a black hole of charisma. Have you seen running scared a K.A. Desperate men that's what I saw it as and I saw it Way back it must have been late 80s when I saw it I saw it as. And I saw it way back. It must have been late 80s when

I saw it. I saw it one time and I saw it because of Judge Reinhold. You know, it's a throwback movie. It's at the early 60s. And this is right at that moment where the baby boomers were starting to canonize themselves. And one of the things that you'll learn about me is this decade wears on is is that I have very little patience at this point

with 60s nostalgia.

I have had it jammed down my throat

by the baby boomers for as long as I've been alive to the point where I feel like I was alive in the sixth kind of unfair considering that you and I host a podcast that is a celebration of 80s films and 80s nostalgia. But we're being clear right about it. The 60s nostalgia was all designed to sell us the idea that the baby boomers and the hippies Were the greatest people who had ever lived and that they stopped everything bad and everything good was the way the world was gonna Be from now. Oh, no, no, no, I never know our generation of shit bags. I know that yeah But there was clearly the idea that hey, we stood up in the 60s We fought the bad guys we won the world's better's better now. And I think that was this blindness-talleged that looked back and really had the opinion, not only did we change the world, but we fixed it, and it's all good now. And this is one of those early examples of somebody trying to pedal sort of this look back at the Bay of Pigs era and guys in the army living in Florida in the early 60s. It's not memorable, it's not good, and I don't think it does a pretty good decent job of evoking the era, which is, if you're gonna do a movie like that, you better make me feel like there's something that you're offering me about that era that is honest and clear-eyed and real. I have nothing to add. Why don't we move on from an obscure film that we both that I assume is terrible to a slightly less obscure film that I know is terrible. Nacham golems, we know manacham golems is half of canon films. Golems and globes were responsible for dozens and dozens of 80s junk piles, some of which we absolutely love. But this was my, I'm going to direct, or you'll debut, I believe. Oh, no. Nope. He had been directing for a while. I, you know, I'm glad we're doing this finally because we are now going to start to get into golden and globus. A couple of people have said to us that they were surprised. We had not said those names yet on this podcast that we had not brought up goal in Globus yet. Well, it's still too early. Like the 1980s about when Golden and Globus started to break on the international scene and even so, it's not like the Apple was a hit. This is not a film that suddenly broke them through and made them giant, established hits around the world. But yes, Yes, we are talking about the apple. Make it harder and harder and faster and faster And when you think you can keep it up I'll take you deeper and deeper I'm tighter and tighter I'm praying every drop of your love Ooh, what come in Well what's great about it is it's clearly a biblical allegory But it's like they've never read the Bible Like somebody just told them the story of the Bible and got a lot of the shit wrong It's an adaptation of a book they've never read but heard told about wow and as a metaphor as an allegory Nope doesn't connect sorry It is really weirdly built what must be fascinating to our younger listeners and young and younger movie geeks in general is like Okay, you see a lot of dramas and dramas and comedies and thrillers from the 80s and as a smart young person you think all right That those clothes are a little dated and they didn't they don't really shoot the way they shoot now And you can accept all those things as like products of the era But what must an 18 year old movie geek think when they see Zardas or the Apple or Zanadoo? Like what must they think? Manakim Gullin, he had directed movies through the 60s and the 70s. And when you look at those movies, they are imitating Hollywood shapes. They are imitating Hollywood form. But they are very clearly local movies. They are Israeli films and Egyptian films. and they are made in a certain time and a place. And you can tell that he's watching from a distance. He's watching this stuff and he's thinking, I could do that. I want to do that. I want to make my country feel the way I feel about Hollywood movies. I want to make that for me. And then the jump that they made was, okay, we got to make international movies that everyone will go see.

So that's what the Apple feels like is we're going to make this movie. The Bible is, you know, it's a story everybody knows we're going to do this allegory. Rock music is huge. Isn't it weird that so many of these movie rock musicals are an indictment of the music industry? Clearly, this is personal. Like I don't think this is phoned in. I don't and that's one of the reasons that you know there's an entire industry of people

that talk about movies and terrible movies and clearly this is personal like I don't think this is phoned in I don't and that's one of the reasons that

you know there's an entire industry of people that talk about movies and terrible movies and I think there are good and bad examples of that I love mystery science theater 3000 I love how did this get made agreed on both because they're both a stu observers of film that respect the efforts of even those who made bad films, Mr. Science Theatre,

and how did this get made still respect the creators?

There might be... observers of film that respect the efforts of even those who made bad films.

Mystery Science Theater and how did this get made still respect the creators. They might laugh at the end product and would point out mistakes that we can all plainly see, but there's still respect. Right. And I think with the Apple, because I know how did this get made, did a big episode about it. And I think with the Apple, what you're seeing is a really personal film. Somebody who is trying very hard to communicate the idea that I think the world is valuing the wrong things. And I think that we are sold gloss and I think that we buy the garbage. And I think if you slap the corporate name on garbage, we all buy it and we're giving ourselves over to it. And we're not paying attention to honesty and sincerity and art and that's what's most important. In my eyes child of love, help me see child of love. Help me see child of love. A lot of this movie is overwrought and sloppy made and corn ball, but I would agree. I think that it was made from a place of sincerity.

So all of that is in there.

Having said that, holy shit.

There is a song in this.

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