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 the calendar with us. It's the 80s all over. the That's it. They stopped the fight at TKO. It'll be scored.

There's a technical knockout.

Larry Holmes made That's it! It's not the fight at TKO!

It'll be scored! Larry Holmes managed the TKO Muhammad Ali in the 11th round of a title fight. Thundar the Barbarian premiered on Saturday morning TV. The very first use of home banking by computer took place in Knoxville, Tennessee, and John lemon?

Released his terrific single just like starting over in the UK. Forget all of that though, because there was a crazy and diverse list of films released in October of 1980. Alright, welcome to 80s all over. As always, I'm Drew McQueenie and I'm joined by my co-host, the illustrious Scott Weinberg. What's up, sir? Hello Drew. Hello listeners. Happy new year to everybody out there. Happy 2017, exactly, yeah. Let's hope that 2017 has less bad news and more good news for everybody. Exactly. Some good news. We are going to be doing a best of 1980 episode in addition to our regular breakdown month by month. We're going to do that right after we do the December of 1980 I can't believe we're almost done with the first year, Scott. I know. It's so much fun working with me. Every single day is a joy because I know you're going to call me. So I feel like this back-to-back of October 1980 and November 1980 kind of points out the Feaster Famine that we had at that point where some months would be insane and you get tons and tons of movies and you wouldn't keep up with everything and stuff with Vanished. And then there'd be months where nothing came out. It felt like. Yeah. I was interesting is looking back as we do month by month and looking at the list of movies we do each month, I am vaguely reminded of how movies went in cycles, you know, like during the spring and summer, my friends and my family and I or sometimes occasionally by myself, I would see a movie every weekend. And then there were months now thinking back, there were months where I saw maybe one. That's how things were now. Then if you, if you have it in your head today in 2017, that I want to watch a relatively new movie, you can go home and pick between dozens and dozens of really good movies and they're streamed into your house for less than $5. Stranded into your house. There's always something in a theater. You're genuinely, whoever you are, you're probably pretty well served by movies at this point. We're going to start going through the films of October of 1980 and you're wanting to start a thought with. I'm super excited about this one. This is one of those films that I think if you know what it is you have a fondness for it. It is a movie that may have the best theme of any film that we've discussed so far in this podcast and I am including the Empire Strikes Back on that list. I'm talking of course about John Barry's theme for the lovely somewhere in time. A story was a kid, my mom and my sister liked it. And to me, it had Christopher Eave, Superman in the lead role in a time travel story. And I thought, wow, that would totally be up my alley. But it is a period piece. And as such, I had no interest in that at eight or nine years old. And therefore, it took me many, many years to appreciate somewhere in time, which is based on a novel by Richard Madison, who also adapted the screenplay. I saw it when I was in 2025 and I absolutely love it. I love every facet of it. I think it's sincere and beautiful to look at. I think the cast is great. It's a really clever time travel take. Look, this is adapted. Like you said,

it's from one of the books by Richard Mathis and he is in a lot of ways that the film feels like a very long leisurely sweet episode of the Twilight Zone. You know what though, Jeroquick, they squeeze a lot of story into this movie with the time travel and the romance and the two different periods. There's a lot of interesting fictional rigmarole in this movie and it's only like 105 minutes. The the basic idea is very simple. He is approached by an old woman at the beginning who is watching this student have his first moment of success He's like a playwright. He's still in college. It's his first produced play. And at the end of the play, as everybody's congratulating him and stuff, this really old woman in her 80s walks up and gives him a pocket watch and says, come back to me. Then she goes back to her hotel where she lives, goes into her room and dies. And that's a great setup. That hook by itself, it's such a great setup. And to me is that same thing that Mathison did so well, which was he knew exactly how to bait an audience into an idea.

And if you look it, if you look at his track record, he wrote, I am legend, the novel. He wrote what dreams may come. He wrote the incredible shrinking man. He wrote the trilogy of terror for TV. He wrote dual. He wrote tons of the original Twilight Zone episodes, including Nightmare 20 According nightmare at 20,000 people, you don't mind.

You stole my, as you were rattling them off, I'm like, and he was so good at that.

He was so good at the simple idea that he then ran a variation on and dual is a great

example of that where it's, it's literally he was on the freeway, a truck fucked with

him a little bit and he pulled off to the side of the road, shaky and dual popped into

his head. He had a way, a knack of finding the right hook for something. One of my, one of my favorite authors, anybody who loves sci-fi or horror or dark thrillers should pick up any collection by Rijamaas and his short stories and his novellas are fantastic. A lot of the movies based on his films are actually pretty decent. Pretty

great track record. It's seriously and if you look at the length of that track record,

the incredible shrinking man is one of the most influential films of the my face for

God's sake. I gave it sci-fi film ever more than Star Wars, more than E.T., more than

2001. I absolutely love Jack Arnold's incredible shrinking man. It was the first science fiction

film that ever made me like, whoa, what happened to him after the movie? Did he just keep getting smaller? Like as a kid, you don't know the words for subtext and theme and symbolism, but you can grasp that the themes of something, something large and impressive and thought-provoking. An incredible shrinking man is amazing. We could do an entire episode of of 80s movies based on Richard Madison, and that would take 10 episodes. One of the things that really makes the film work, and I would love to take this opportunity to be the first of many times that we're gonna talk about him over the course of the podcast, but Christopher Reeve, I know that we all remember him as Superman. I think we underrate him in general. Yes, I agree. an earnestness that he is able to tap into as an actor, which is part of what makes him so good at Superman. He is also uncomfortable in his skin in a way that I find fascinating because he's beautiful. Like I really think he was great at tapping into this discomfort and this, I don't fit and it has to work for this movie. He has to be a reason that we root for him to leave his time in his world behind. He was so striking in a physical way. It was super tall, game show host handsome, like ridiculous handsome, but it also kind of pigeonholes you into certain roles so that when he was trying to maybe be a wise ass or a tough guy or a sniveling this or that's tough to sell. I think he's great here. I think this is how you use him. You get the feeling there's something different going on inside than outside. And he has a couple of good moments here. I think one of the biggest is when he first sees the picture of her. One of the things that the film does so well that I think anybody likes to try and try to reach who her is, who it is. Oh, the ethereal beautiful doesn't cover it. Lots of most women are beautiful. Dig deeper for Jane Seymour. She's magical here. Part of the appeal in the film is the moment he first sees her, not realizing that she's the old woman, is when he sees a portrait of her, a photo that was taken. And that moment, 90% of Chris Reeves' work is in that moment

because he has to sell that it's a thunderbolt that hits him, that makes him obsessed with the idea of, I'm going to go back to that moment, I'm going to fall in love with her. This is all going to happen for real somehow. I'm going to make it happen now. Oddly well directed by Jean-O's work, who we know from Jaws too, of course. and who was a joke after jaws to even though that made money the reviews every review for that film and I felt for this

poor guy because every review was and he's not Steven Spielberg, which is a hard fucking

thing to have to shoulder.

Even if the even if the jaws to screenplay is pretty basic and simplistic, it's a fairly

well directed thriller.

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