There are a few decades in film history that have been as scrutinized 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. I'm gonna have to go back to the hotel.

I'm gonna have to go back to the hotel.

I'm gonna have to go back to the hotel. It's the 80s all over. The Metal Lands Arena opened in New Jersey, which technically counts as the founding of the first church of Springsteen. Aspartame, artificial sweetener, was approved for usage by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The U.S. debt hit $1 trillion for the first time, and in Oakland, California, cheerleader Crazy George Henderson led the crowd in what is reported to have been the very first crowd wave of all time. Now join us as we do a wave ourselves for the tsunami of movies that came out in October of 1981. I'm joined as always by my co-host Scott Weinberg. Hi, I'm doing the wave right now by myself. There I just sat down. The sad thing is I heard you also have a kiss cam in your room. I do. Drew, I know we say this a lot, but I think that when we were doing our prep, October 81 may have been the most daunting, massive month to date. It's crazy. And we're gonna get into that real quick. I want to ask people. And I think this is, okay, I think we're among friends here, the listeners, the readers, as we call them. I'd like to ask them to give us money. Why should you do that? Well, you should do it because if you're a fan of the show, it's not a cheap show to produce. We actually, we would like to be able to keep this thing going and do all five years. and I find that the best episodes come when we do all of our homework like this month. You know, we considered almost 35 movies for inclusion. Patreon is your chance to support the show and help us pay for all the rentals and the purchases and set aside the time it takes to do this right. Plus bonuses, right Scott? bonuses including interviews, commentaries. We have many more interesting ideas in the works. We also want

your ideas on what kind of bonus episodes you would like. If you like commentaries and

interviews, great. Say that. If you have a really fun idea for something that you want

me and Drew to perform like your personal clowns, we'll do that too, because we are. And

I have to make, uh, personally, Say oops, upside-hate, say oops, upside-hate. Say oops, upside-hate. I made two boners last time and I would like to own up to those. I was corrected on Twitter that I mistook Barbara Bach and Catherine Bach, uh, obviously not the same woman. And, uh, I also stated that the Buggins was a Canadian film when in fact it was shot in Utah. It just felt Canadian. It's a compliment. It has kind of a quaint old school Canadian horror vibe. So there, I pride myself on being meticulous with my facts and my notes and I hate getting stuff wrong but I would much rather and I speak for Drew as well. We would much rather be corrected than than let something erroneous out into the ether forever.

You should also look at the 80s all over store, where you can find the films that we talk about here. Now, we basically turned it into a visual catalog of everything that we've talked about month by month. And we've got almost everything there now. If you're even if you're not shopping for some old movies, and you just kind of want to get a refresher on every film we covered per episode.

The 80s All Over Store is a fantastic depository for that information and hey if you decide while you're there that you just have to own a DVD of student bodies or dead and buried or whatever then great. In the opening of the show we often promise to review every major release of the decade and there is this sort of ongoing behind the scenes conversation that we have about what a major release is. And this month is a really good example of that to show you how dense the lineup of films that we're talking about is going to be this month. Here are the titles that we are not discussing. Bo Pore, the woman next door, quartet, the fine guillotine, tulips, body and soul, silence of the North, Chanel's solitaire, man of iron, and priest of love.

There are so many of these films came and went, they played wood play in like a

New York theater for a week. A lot of these were foreign films that came and went

really quickly. And while we do want to be exceedingly thorough and drew a

get into that in a second, we're trying to keep the show moving and entertaining. And we also want to cover films that are readily available. That you all have a chance to lay hands on, yeah, exactly. We will end up doing an entry for every one of those films in 1980 the book when we publish that. And we want to make sure that we've seen everything that we're discussing again and that we've kind of like reintroduced ourselves to it. And that means that you're really,

you're piling movies on, and that can be a real trick. Like there's a movie that was released in October 19, and even one that I'm almost convinced now doesn't exist at this point, called Black and Blue, which was a concert film that was half blue oyster called, and half black Sabbath. Yes, and hatred to mankind it, there is no sign of it commercially available, I can't even find it in grey market stuff. It really feels like it existed for whatever that theatrical run was, and then… gone just doesn't exist now and look there's there's a famous martial arts film here There's a friend's watch through faux film these are not Impossible movies to lay hands on but just they're we're not gonna make it to these all right So while we are we are completists on one hand We are also realists and when you hear the rest of the episode you're probably start to gather why we have to compartmentalize just a little. So with that in mind, I say we just jump in and we start with a movie that right now especially, I'm curious of people go back and look at this, how they're going to compare it to a TV show that has become a sensation almost overnight, glow on Netflix. The movie we're going to talk about here is a Peter Falk comedy called All the Marbles. Harry Sears loves only three things in life. Iris? Rallyosy Lumber, Rallyosy Manager, Rallyosy Human Be. I am not a lousy manit. Molly? My stars! And the world wrestling championship. The best looking girl in the ring today! The California Doll! To not, he just might get all free. All the models, let it all. Now play at a theater near you. Growing up, I know this movie just probably from the molten guide and maybe partially from Sisko Niebert. I just knew that this movie had a rancid reputation. And it's just kind of on the road story following these three people around as their trials and tribulations on the wrestling circuit. Yeah, and it doesn't really back up to show you like the beginning of any of it. It just starts there already on the road. You get a feeling for what that relationship is right away, which is that Falk is constantly kind of lying sort of, but not really just kind of keeping their morale up. Both Vicki Frederick and Lorraine Landon, I gotta give it to him. This is a really physical movie, and they are both 100% up for everything that the movie throws at them. It's directed by Robert Aldrich. If you know Aldrich's work, kind of the last dude you would ever expect to end up here. The director of the dirty dozen and the emperor of the north and the longest yard and the choir boys known for genuinely being one of the hardest of hard dude movie directors who also directed whatever happened to baby Jane. Yeah, it was a very good director who like a lot of good directors kind of became more of a carpet bagger later in his career. This movie is dry, it's not very funny. It's not terrible though. It kind of helped my interest. I was partial like, is he gonna screw them over? Are they going, I wasn't all that into it as a sports movie, but it is like the guy and two women dynamic. You don't see too often in sports movies. So that novelty kind of helped my interest. I'm not really a big wrestling fan, but it's an underdog story. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. But, you know, if you said you're a fan of this movie, I wouldn't laugh at it. I wouldn't cringe. Yeah, and this was the beginning of Mel Fromans career. Like Robert Aldrich, this is the very end of his career. They were actually talking about making a sequel because it did well enough overseas when he passed away. So he might have made another one of these. Well, the interesting part in that enact one of all the marbles is that the folk and the ladies run into a Japanese gentleman early in the film and he invites them to participate in a contest contest overseas. And for a minute, I thought that's what the movie was going to be about. And it's not. And I'm wondering if maybe they shot that scene late because they thought they might do a sequel in Japan. I don't know. It's in the Easter egg. They were building the larger Aldermarble cinematic universe. And so, come on, it's the marble verse. It is interesting when you look at this because it was made in 1981. And then you go and you check out glow on Netflix, which is set in the early 80s as they're trying to set up the women's wrestling league. This is the real thing. This is not period detail. This is not them doing an 80s movie. This is just a movie that happened to be made right then. So it is fascinating to look at how real it looks and how low rent everything is. If you love that show, go track this down because it is, you're going to get this weird time travel thing going on when you see how it really looked. It's something else. No, Drew, does Netflix happen to have a very popular show right now about a lunatic tattoo artist because that's what our next movie is about. They do not and thank God. It's Bruce Dern in tattoo. Down through the ages, it has been worn by men and women, scholars and superstars, courtesans and kings. It is the mystic symbol of fascination and fear, seduction, sensuality, passion and power. It is art, it is flesh, it is the mark. 20th century Fox and Joseph Ilaveen present a story of obsession, possession, love and terror. Every great love leaves its mark. Tattoo. For mature audiences only, Ray D'Aurre. When I was 12 and 13, Cable served many functions for me. One of them was to watch whole movies and enjoy them as movies. But it served other functions too. And Tattoo was one of those movies that had a reputation as you've got to see it because it's got nudity tattoo is gross and I remember seeing part of it and being Put off just no thanks. I don't know what that was. I'm not into that and have not seen it since and now seeing it as a 47 year old nope gross not into that It might have seen a lot more envelope pushing back in 1981, but it is essentially what you've already grasped. Bruce Dern is an unhinged man who for literally no discernible reason goes from odd to completely unhinged. There is no inciting incident. There is no sense that he was crazy in Act 1. He just literally somebody flips a switch and a beautiful model played by mod atoms. He ends up kidnapping her and because he is obsessed with skin art, he of course starts putting crazy tattoos all over her body. So it's like the collector boxing Elena, keeping a woman captive is your play thing. Unfortunately, I think this movie kind of hurt Bruce Stern's career as far as leading man roles go. This movie didn't do him any favors. Well, neither did the interviews where he kept saying over and over that he actually had sex with mod atoms in the final sequence. And she kept saying, uh, no, he didn't. The pre-abduction stuff is the more interesting. Well, they have their first date is seriously Obviously the most awkward since Robert De Niro takes Cibblish Eppel Shepherd to a porn theater. It starts off, he's fine, but then almost immediately he is way too intense, wound, way too tightly, and clearly not well. And by the time he drops her off, she's like, I'm really sorry you know my address. Is there any way you could just forget where I live? Her early moments in the film are pretty good, more than Adams. Obviously known as Octopus. You know, it's just basically a very perfunctory dull thriller. You know exactly where it's going and it gets there. Act 3 is predictably unsavory and it's the director's only feature. Never made another film. He was a huge, huge ad man though. This guy was like a legend evidently in advertising, which is so weird because you would think a guy who came from that world would be able to make a movie about how surface is attractor, and how they're used. I didn't even buy the stuff early on, the modeling stuff where she's doing an ad campaign and it's what they hire him to do the original tattoo. I don't like even buy any of that,

which is weird because it's the actual world the director came from. So you would think if he knew anything, he would know that. But it feels to me really fetishy the beginning of it. Bruce Dern sees this tattoo ceremony in Japan and it's during the war and it's his origin story. Like he stands there, he makes this crazy face for a moment and then we cut to the rest of his life has been completely and utterly devoted to tattoos. That's it, that's his whole backstory. Let's move on from tattoo. Two, a Roger Korman Cheepy that probably made Triple It's budget. I had never seen it until a couple of days ago. Drew, why don't you tell our listeners about Smoky Bites the Dust?

Homecoming Queen Peggy Sue is about to be snatched. Roscoe, are you trying to abduct me? Be my daughter! And our daddy, the sheriff, is out for the catch-in. Smoky Bites the Dust! How long are you planning to hold me against my will? I tell you, like. the biggest comedy crack up for the year.

Jimmy McNichol takes out Lamar, he's at the

pizza path of destruction through

sub- I tell you, like it. Make way for the biggest comedy crack up of the year. Jimmy McNichol takes out the mountains and feeds a path of destruction through 17 counties. Smokey bites the pasta, or I mean dust. But first comedy made it stress-free for the insane. Is this a major release and the films that we bypassed aren't? You know what? I'm going to give this one a major release status because it's directed by Charles B Griffith. And Charles B Griffith deserves a little bit of our regard as we move through this decade. He was one of the last of the great driving guys working with Korman. As a writer, this guy wrote Little Shop of Hors, Bucket of Blood, Rock All Night, Not of this Earth,

It conquered the world, gunslinger, death race 2000, The Wild Angels, like he was the shit, and he was a major part of that Korman explosion of stuff. Eat My Dust was his, this is a guy who I did not, I don't think is a director ever match the output he did as a writer, He had great energy as a writer and his movies as a director there was

E my dust there was up from the depths. There was this one and then I think he made one of the fantasy ones in the 80s But in the later 80s, but this one to me is him all over because it's totally unpretentious It is a direct theft of about nine other things. It is dukes of hazard and smokey in the bandit, just nakedly stolen. And then it's delivered with complete mayhem, uh, ladle on top. And as a car crash movie, if what you want is a goofy car crash comedy, the red necks have never been more red neckied than they are in this. And the cars are fucking destroyed. Yeah, it's mindless and very cheap, but it's not boring. I mean, it's far from my favorite car crash, mindless car crash movie, but it has it's very kitschy charms in the grand pantheon of Roger Corman productions where you put it in the middle, upper echelon, upper third. Yeah, I would say middle. I would say this is the kind of stuff that when they,

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