Movie's You Might've Missed

Descriptions Via IMDB.com (and some mega-witty comments from me!)

In the near future, a police officer specializes in malfunctioning robots. When a robot turns out to have been programmed to kill, he begins to uncover a homicidal plot to create killer robots... and his son becomes a target.
*Robots were one of those "things of the future" everybody talked about constantly. A bunch of movies filled screens with just about every kind of robot imaginable. Runaway had killer robots; the "evil" side of technology....or something. Good movie!*

Charlie Harrison dreams of being a rock star and, with the help of friends and a gang of local toughs, he arranges a concert in his house for a big time record producer, or at least that is what Charlie thought he was arranging.
*This is one of those movies I watched after my parents went to bed with the volume so low I had to keep my ear next to the speaker to hear anything.  Haven't seen it in years but I remember it being funny as hell back then.*

Jonathan plays a game called Gotcha in which he hunts and is hunted by other students with paint guns. After a big win, he goes off for a vacation in France where he meets the sexy Sasha who says she is only interested in him because he is a virgin. She takes him with her to East Germany where they are separated and he has to escape back to the west on his own, all the while being trailed by East German spies. He arrives home only to find the game is still going on, and a canister of film is in his backpack. Then Sasha re-appears.
*One of those "how did I end up in this mess?" movies that were everywhere in the 80's.  Cool movie with a post-Nerds/pre-Top Gun Anthony Edwards.*

When Joey's dad dies Joey is starting to act strange. He's got psychic powers. He can talk to him on the phone! His red toy telephone! But what he doesn't know is that he is not talking to his dad. He is talking to an evil dummy and the evil dummy is starting to make Joey's world a living nightmare.
*Me and some friends saw this in the theaters and laughed all the way through due to how goofy it was.  Some liked it, others hated it.*

Stroker Ace, a champion NASCAR driver, is standing at the top of his career, but is getting fed up with having to do as he's told. In between rebelling against his sponsor (a fried chicken chain)'s promotion gimmicks (like making him dress up in giant chicken suit) he spends the rest of the movie trying to bed the buxom Pembrook.
*Everyone was big on Burt Reynolds after Smokey And The Bandit, and Loni Anderson from WKRP in Cincinnati, but I think this one bombed hard.  I always thought it was pretty funny though.*

FOOD FIGHT!

The 80's were full of the most random varieties of foods I've ever seen!  Do you remember these?

I used to chug two of these before school cuz' I never got up in time to eat actual food...lol.  (I've been nocturnal since birth, according to my Mom.  I was always up all night watching horror movies.)  I remember them being really thick if you didn't stir them for a few minutes.  I used to use my Mom's old hand mixer on them to save some time. 

Unlike New Coke, people actually liked Pepsi Free.  I can't remember what it tasted like anymore but I remember drinking a ton of it.

I don't know what Kids they "tested" this on, but they were screwed!  This stuff tasted like cardboard flavored Crunch Berries!

It was supposed to make dinner easy, but usually ended up all over the place after the flimsy bag broke.  My Mom wasn't really stoked on making Shake 'N Bake...lol.

We used to have one of these at the Mall and we'd always grab something from there.  I always felt sorry for anybody who worked there.  Why, you ask?  This is why...

Hi-Tech!

Technology was coming out left and right in the 80's.  From video games to cell phones, it grew steadily into what we have today.

8-track players were still around when I was a kid.  We had a HUGE console stereo (those things that look like big cabinets) that had a radio, record player, and an 8-track player/recorder in it that I used the hell out of.  We had tons of 8-tracks my parents kept in a hallway closet that I'd dig through all the time.  We had one in the car too!

We've had ONE answering machine when I was growing up.  My Dad to this day HATES answering machines and refuses to own another one.  I guess he'd get pissed having to change out the tapes out or something.

When these replaced the Super-8 camera, people lost their damn minds.  I remember some of them being huge and heavy, but they slimmed down pretty quickly.  Then everybody wanted the one Marty McFly had in Back To The Future.

Whenever my Mom went out of town, my Dad would rent a Beta player and some movies (I swear I remember the movies were at least $10 each to rent!) to watch.  I always picked Purple Rain and The Pirate Movie...lol.  Since Mom was gone I could watch pretty much whatever I wanted so I got a bunch of horror movies and sat up all night watching them.  (Not really knowing what it was about, my Dad took me to see The Exorcist at a drive-in when I was a kid.  I laughed all the way through it and I've been hooked ever since.  Mom found out and about killed him though...lol.)

Our school had exactly TWO of these to share with every class so each room got it for, like, a day or so.  I think each student was allowed on it for 20 minutes or something.  And these only games we had were lame "learning" games.  And Oregon Trail.

Saturday Morning & After School Classics!

All Descriptions Via IMDB.com

This series focuses on 5 lion robots and their pilots as they defend the galaxy and planet Arus vs. the forces of King Zarkon and Prince Lotor from planet Doom.

Zoltar and his evil minions constantly attempt to either destroy or conquer the planet Earth. His efforts in this regard are constantly battled by G-Force, a group of 5 teenagers with high-tech vehicles, weapons, and a thing for bird-like costumes.

Princess Adora raises her magic sword and becomes She-Ra, the most powerful woman in the universe, to aid her friends in defeating the Evil Horde so their planet Etheria can be free.

When the outer space gangster known as Mon Star escapes from the Penal Planet, the Limbo section of the galaxy is in great peril. In response, an elite team of cyborgs called the Silverhawks are assembled as a counter force that is Limbo's best hope against Mon Star's gang.

The Smurfs are little blue creatures that live in mushroom houses in a forest inhabited mainly by their own kind. The smurfs average daily routine is attempting to avoid Gargomel, an evil man who wants to kill our little blue friends. A long running and popular cartoon show.

TV Flashbacks

All Descriptions Via IMDB.com

Three vietnam veterans (Nick Ryder, Cody Allen and Murray Bozinsky) now work as private eyes in sunny southern California. Nick and Cody are the muscles and Murray is a computer wizard of the trio and together they solve even the hardest cases.

In this series, we follow the explorations of kids as they explore science in its various fields with experiments, films, cartoons and demonstrations. To highlight these principles application in an entertaining way, we also watch the cases of the Bloodhound Gang, a group of kids who are junior detectives for a private detective agency who use simple scientific knowledge, research and deduction to solve the crimes they encounter.

When Jessie Mach is crippled after an assault by an old enemy, his position as motorcycle cop seems finished. That was before a computer technician named Norman Tuttle recruits him for a special government project. He is to be the test pilot for the Street Hawk, an advanced motorcycle that carried tremendous firepower and capable of speeds of over 300 MPH while in a city with little risk of collisions with Tuttle staying at the command center seeing everything Jessie through the camera in the helmet. This deal includes special surgery to repair his legs while keeping him the facade that he is still handicapped. Unfortunately for Tuttle, Jessie insists to get involved in stopping crime rather than the simple tests Tuttle wants. So now the city has the additional protection of the mysterious superhero known as Street Hawk.

Prepare yourself for crime stories that pack more punch than Sledge Hammer's trusty Magnum. And loaded with more misadventure than there is air between Sledge's ears. Our hero finds himself up against the likes of the infamous Elvis impersonator serial killer, a powerful Mafioso Don, the sex-starved Elizabeth, and a violent revolutionary. Armed only with a Magnum, grenades, several Uzi machine-guns, and a bazooka, our hero singlehandedly makes the streets safe again for law-abiding citizens.

Following in the footsteps of "Real People" (1979), this show took a look at the more unusual sides of nature, medicine and human endeavor. Segments ranged from the uplifting (young people overcoming severe handicaps to lead normal lives) to the unexplainable (a park ranger who had been hit by lightning over 7 times) to the simply stupid (a stuntman jumping a motorcycle over the spinning rotors of 3 helicopters). Popularized the phrase "don't try this at home."

The Classic Movies

All Descriptions Via IMDB.com

When a bumbling pair of employees at a medical supply warehouse accidentally release a deadly gas into the air, the vapors cause the dead to re-animate as they go on a rampage through Louisville, Kentucky seeking their favorite food, brains.

Mikey Walsh and Brandon Walsh are brothers whose family is preparing to move because developers want to build a golf course in the place of their neighborhood -- unless enough money is raised to stop the construction of the golf course, and that's quite doubtful. But when Mikey stumbles upon a treasure map of the famed "One-Eyed" Willy's hidden fortune, Mikey, Brandon, and their friends Lawrence "Chunk" Cohen, Clark "Mouth" Devereaux, Andrea "Andy" Carmichael, Stefanie "Stef" Steinbrenner, and Richard "Data" Wang, calling themselves The Goonies, set out on a quest to find the treasure in hopes of saving their neighborhood. The treasure is in a cavern, but the entrance to the cavern is under the house of evil thief Mama Fratelli and her sons Jake Fratelli, Francis Fratelli, and the severely disfigured Lotney "Sloth" Fratelli. Sloth befriends the Goonies and decides to help them.

New rules enforced by the Lady Mayoress mean that sex, weight, height and intelligence need no longer be a factor for joining the Police Force. This opens the floodgates for all and sundry to enter the Police Academy, much to the chagrin of the instructors. Not everyone is there through choice, though. Social misfit Mahoney has been forced to sign up as the only alternative to a jail sentence and it doesn't take long before he falls foul of the boorish Lieutenant Harris. But before long, Mahoney realises that he is enjoying being a police cadet and decides he wants to stay... while Harris decides he wants Mahoney out!

While kung fu warriors and otherworldly spirits battle over the fate of two women, Russell's swaggering idiot manages to knock himself out or underestimate the forces he's dealing with. Jack Burton, a tough-talking, wisecracking truck driver whose hum-drum life on the road takes a sudden supernatural tailspin when his best friend's fiancee is kidnapped. Speeding to the rescue, Jack finds himself deep beneath San Francisco's Chinatown, in a murky, creature-filled world ruled by Lo Pan, a 2000-year-old magician who mercilessly presides over an empire of spirits. Dodging demons and facing baffling terrors, Jack battles his way through Lo Pan's dark domain in a full-throttle, action-riddled ride to rescue the girl.

Ben Crandall, an alien-obsessed kid, dreams one night of a circuit board. Drawing out the circuit, he and his friends Wolfgang and Darren set it up, and discover they have been given the basis for a starship. Setting off in the ThunderRoad, as they name their ship, they find the aliens Ben hopes they would find... but are they what they seem?

Movies You Might've Missed

All Descriptions via IMDB.com



Clifford Skridlow teaches at a small Chicago college run by his father. Conned into managing four prostitutes by their pimp, who skips town to escape the mob boss known as Mom, Clifford draws on his course in medieval literature in his quest to save the women from Mom.

11-year-old Davey, whose mother is dead and whose father doesn't spend nearly enough time with him. So the boy loses himself in video games--and even has an imaginary friend, a super-resourceful secret agent. When he accidentally comes into possession of a spy group's secret plans, and winds up on the run from them, he must learn to rely on himself and his imaginary pal to save his skin. But, in the end, Dad proves to be his real hero.

Molly, Val and Gina are graduating college, but on their final night, frustrations are aired. Molly is still looking for real love and Val is beginning to doubt if that is what she's found. Gina is too busy videotaping everything to really notice. When the final party at Pacifica College kicks off, things don't go exactly as planned.

Alex Rogan lives in a trailer court where his mother is manager and everyone is like a big extended family. He beats the Starfighter Video Game to the applause of everyone in the court and later that day finds he has been turned down for a student loan for college. Depressed, he meets Centauri, who introduces himself as a person from the company that made the Game, before Alex really knows what is going on he is on the ride of his life in a "car" flying thru space. Chosen to take the skills he showed on the video game into real combat to protect the galaxy from an invasion. Alex gets as far as the Starfighter base before he really realized that he was conscripted and requests to be taken back home. When he gets back home, he finds a Zan-Do-Zan (Alien Bounty Hunter) is stalking him. Unable to go home and live, Alex returns to the Starfighter base to find all the pilots have been killed and he is the galaxy's only chance to be saved from invasion.

Two pretty high school girls (one a cheerleader!) don't like their mother or her new boyfriend ("Daddy would have gotten us Uzis!"). One morning, they wake up to find that everybody in Los Angeles has been turned to dust by a Comet except them, a guy who looks like Erik Estrada, some zombies and the occupants of a secret underground government installation.

Notes From The Past

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Keep It Awesome!

Threads Of The 80's

There's almost nothing more 80's than parachute pants!  I remember having black, white, and red ones.  A few were baggier than the others, but they had plenty of zippers...lol.

A rule of thumb: Jocks had them just sleeveless; skaters, surfers, and metalheads normally slit them down the sides; girls wore them either way.

I remember these being everywhere at school.  They seem to be coming back in popularity.

Another item that was everywhere.  Various colors, studded and not, were worn by all.

Skinny ties from plain black to obnoxious color combinations were popular with just about every type of person.  I knew a guy who had at least 40 of them at one time.



Random Laughs

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