I remember TBS (back when it was still WTBS and every show came on at five minutes after) showed the everliving shit out of this movie when I was growing up. Essentially, the story is about finding honest to God gargoyles in the New Mexico or Arizona desert. They're getting ready to rise up against humans and take over the world or somesuch shit. I just really remember being more frightened by the gargoyle skeleton that some old guy had put together to show the scientist protagonist than I was the actual flesh and blood gargoyles that were the bad guys of the film.
This isn't in my own personal collection. It is also a continuation of a series of posts I did a couple of years ago where I randomly bring up old movies, TV shows, etc. that I remembered from my youth that I happened to think about recently to see if anyone else remembers them. So, if you'll excuse me, Pro, some of us have some real posting to do. Thank you.
It was like the 50's met the 80's. It's a blow-everything-the-fuck-up action flick with Willem Dafoe as a greaser/biker who kidnaps this chick because.......... well, he kidnaps her. Her ex-military, ex-boyfriend (Michael Pare) comes to save her. Fast cars, lotsa guns, shit blowing up.
Streets of fire and Gargoyles are both great movies. I remeber as you do watching it on TBS a million times, it would are right before WCW Main Event like every other month.
The character Michael Pare played in streets of fire was a lot like his portrayal of Eddie in Eddie and The Cruisers which was another favorite of mine.
I think Eddie and the Cruisers was why he was hired for the role. I remember Dafoe specifically because he's a guy you just can't miss. He always stands out in his roles. I was maybe six or seven when I first saw 'Streets of Fire' on HBO or somesuch at my aunt's house. Every time I see Dafoe in a movie, I just keep thinking of his role in that one.
As for Gargoyles, I haven't seen it in ages. Probably since it was last on TBS. From what I found on YouTube, it doesn't date very well; but I'd never known that it was a made for TV movie. That in mind, it actually looks damn good for early 70's.
As I said, the gargoyle skeleton always freaked me out more than the 'actual' gargoyles of the film. I guess my imagination was a little bit above the movie's budget.
And old judge, as his last act on the bench, keeps a race car driver/thief from going to jail if he agrees to help the judge but behind bars the guys he had to let off on technicalities. Somehow, the guy got to keep the car he was stealing.
A typical 80's guy fights crime while driving a cool car a la Knight Rider and Magnum PI.
And old judge, as his last act on the bench, keeps a race car driver/thief from going to jail if he agrees to help the judge but behind bars the guys he had to let off on technicalities. Somehow, the guy got to keep the car he was stealing.
A typical 80's guy fights crime while driving a cool car a la Knight Rider and Magnum PI.
My mom loves that show. She taped every episode in the 80s.
I always thought that dude was better in 100 Lives of Black Jack Savage though. It's a shame that one didn't pick up beyond the first season. It was fun.
Three psychos escape the nuthouse and kill/dress as clowns. They wind up terrorizing three kids who are alone in a rural house. The youngest kid is afraid of, you guessed it, Frank Stallone... and clowns. Turns out Sam Rockwell is the oldest brother. The rest of kids went on to do nothing. Written and directed by a pedophile.
And old judge, as his last act on the bench, keeps a race car driver/thief from going to jail if he agrees to help the judge but behind bars the guys he had to let off on technicalities. Somehow, the guy got to keep the car he was stealing.
A typical 80's guy fights crime while driving a cool car a la Knight Rider and Magnum PI.
One of the things that always sticks in my mind about this show is that in one episode the Coyote (which was sposed to be a one of a kind car) pulls up outside a builing, and in the window of the building he pulls up outside, you can see a reflection of a flatbed truck on the other side of the road, with another Coyote on the back.
A bunch of punks (or goon, street toughs, whatever your preferred nomenclature) force people into races for pinks (that's car titles, you pervs) and are all around general douchebags. Well, a dude who the main bad guy had killed so that he could take his girlfriend returns as Charlie Sheen with a strange, one of a kind car. The car challenges the group one at a time to races. Races that none of the bad guys will finish (Halloween organ music here).
i remember it as a WPIX staple (local affiliate, now the CW) airing at least once a week. not unlike the times in which it appeared, it was both scary and confusing.
In the mid to late 80's as the USA network was gaining its cable footing, they decided to come up with their own schlock movie host. That host was retired superhero Commander USA and his sidekick Lefty (a face drawn on the Commander's right hand with ashes from his cigar). For the whole Saturday afternoon, the Commander would host a mix of B movies and occasionally some old Saturday serials from his secret fortress under a suburban New Jersey mall.
This also reminded me of USA's other B-movie haunt, Night Flight. Before Up All Night took over Friday and Saturday late nights on USA, Night Flight was a block of weird cult films, serials, shorts, comedians, and music videos. I remember seeing Fantastic Planet and the 'Warhol' Dracula and Frankenstein films (chill out, Joe. I know they're not really Warhol films) as well as some crazy, risque (for the 50's at least) serials. Not to mention versions of Frankie Goes to Hollywood videos that I don't remember seeing on MTV. They really did push the boundaries of what was allowed on TV for the time.
Night Flight was a cool show. Definitely had better videos than the stuff on MTV most days.
I seem to also recall them running Japanese "Power Rangers" footage, redubbed with comedic dialogue, ala "Whats Up Tiger Lilly" long before the footage was repackaged for the kids' show over here.
Of COURSE I remember Commander USA! I watched his show almost every Saturday. He's one of the reasons I love horror. Without him, The Devil's Nightmare wouldn't be one of my favorite guilty pleasure films. Damn, I miss the days of Elvira, Commander USA, Night Flight/USA Up All Night, and Saturday Night Dead (TV-38's Saturday night horror offering).
Originally Posted By: thedoctor
(chill out, Joe. I know they're not really Warhol films)
Um, why would I bitch that you called those films by the titles that most people know? Maybe YOU need to chill! (...bitch...)
It's 1938 and we gots espionage, Nazis, Japs, Chevy Chase, Carrie Fisher in her undies before we ever got the bronze bikini, and a shitload of drunk midgets trying out for the Wizard of Oz. I remember HBO playing this on a seemingly endless loop for a while. What I don't remember is it actually being any good.
Every year around Halloween the school librarian would read this too us. I liked checking it out for the really weird artwork (turns out the guy did a lot of jazz album covers for RCA and Columbia back in the 40's and 50's). I remember it being pretty fucked up for a kids book, which is probably why I liked it. Essentially, this kid is being a pussy when a thunderstorm rolls in, so his grandpa starts telling him truly fucked up horror stories about crazy shit that was supposed to happen to him as a kid. Each story was kind of like it's own chapter in the book.
And by 'school librarian' I was of course referring to my high school years. We were the accelerated class that could handle the adult stuff like this.
It was like the 50's met the 80's. It's a blow-everything-the-fuck-up action flick with Willem Dafoe as a greaser/biker who kidnaps this chick because.......... well, he kidnaps her. Her ex-military, ex-boyfriend (Michael Pare) comes to save her. Fast cars, lotsa guns, shit blowing up.
Liquid Television. One of the few passes I give to MTV for playing something other than videos. A lot of underground animation, puppetry, and even some live action. This is where Aeon Flux and Beavis and Butthead got their start. Also the first place I saw a Bill Plympton cartoon. I remember Grimm talking about how much he liked the 'Dog Boy' serial.
I wish I had gotten the chance to watch that while it was still around. MTV was off limits for me at that point. Not totally sure I would have understood it though.
After the success of Conan, a shitload of sword and sorcery movies hit the big screen. This one had a dude with a sword with three blades because that is not at all unwieldy. Also, the two extra blades somehow shot off as projectiles. Not sure how they explain that without compressed CO2 bottles, but whatever.
The king's flunkie turning into a demon is the scene I'll always remember.
I loved all these sword-and-sorcery movies coming out in the early/mid 1980's.
Sword and the Sorcerer was one (for all the beloved nudity, the guy with his head splitting open down the middle was one of the most memorable scenes for me (at 2:10 in the above clip).
I also loved The Beastmaster (with Marc Singer, and Tanya Roberts showing her wonderful attributes well in a loincloth bikini. )
Some other movies (though mostly not sword and sorcery) of the era I really enjoyed for their stories as well as their unexpected nudity were Excalibur (1981) Outland (1981), The Emerald Forest(1982), and Greystoke (1984).
Liquid Television. One of the few passes I give to MTV for playing something other than videos. A lot of underground animation, puppetry, and even some live action. This is where Aeon Flux and Beavis and Butthead got their start. Also the first place I saw a Bill Plympton cartoon. I remember Grimm talking about how much he liked the 'Dog Boy' serial.
yep. based on the Charles Burns comics, although I didn't know it at the time. also had cool stuff by Richard Sala and several other underground comic artists.
they also ran some other Mike Judge shorts, including Inbred Jed and the Milton shorts that led to Office Space.
I've recently befriended former Cracked and Marvel editor/writer/artist Mort Todd, who was close to the guy who did the Brad Dharma short on LTV. guy's name escapes me but he's dead now.
in cheerier news Liquid TV is coming back with new stuff for the hulu site.
This also reminded me of USA's other B-movie haunt, Night Flight. Before Up All Night took over Friday and Saturday late nights on USA, Night Flight was a block of weird cult films, serials, shorts, comedians, and music videos.
It's rather uncanny. Years ago, I wrote a narrative essay on the effects of obligatory social interaction on the ego: the main character ended up losing his sense of self as he was pressured to be concerned with getting compliments and recognition from others. Except, I used Batman.
Bruce was spot on. I'm gonna look up more of his material now.
Ah, the classic cartoon violence of my youth…exploding slingshot pellets, bad guys and misters bursting into flaming debris from laser eye blasts. None of the pansy ass "Cobra parachutes out of the jet at the last minute" stuff for the kids of my generation. Good times.
The cartoons of my kid's generation features enemies that bleed buckets of blood from a simple paper cut. It's also full of long haired boys who are more beautiful than the females, who are all depicted as 11 year old girls with neon colored hair and heaving bosoms.
I swear to god that, until today, I never knew the name of this toy. We had this bastard for years. It might still be boxed up back at my mom's house. They apparently came in a variety of colors, but the one up top was the one we had as it glowed in the dark. It was made of vinyl and was at least a foot tall with suction cups on the front an back. We'd throw it at anything to get it to stick. Bastard hurt if you ever got hit by it. Plus, it was just so damned freaky looking. Like Nosferatu raped a lizard and the offspring stayed up late one night drinking a lot of coffee.
An anime from the 80's set in the 16th century during the Spanish conquest of South America. They're searching for the fabled Lost Cities of Gold. Three kids (an Incan princess, a young boy from an ancient Atlantis like culture, and a boy who can magically make 'the sun come out') and three men (a kinda Han Solo like Mendoza and his two buffoon sidekicks) find clues in the New World to the ancient cities as well as advanced, solar powered technology like the flying condor and boat.
Spend the months before Christmas looking through all the shit your parents will never buy you. I remember seeing some toys that confused me. Like a Superman figure that came with a jet. What the fuck did superman need with a jet? Or a car?
Contrary to what most people will tell you, two hours is more than enough time to see what's on the internet. 48% porn. 48% cat videos. The other 4% are people being angry at stupid shit or being happy about stupid shit.
This also reminded me of USA's other B-movie haunt, Night Flight. Before Up All Night took over Friday and Saturday late nights on USA, Night Flight was a block of weird cult films, serials, shorts, comedians, and music videos. I remember seeing Fantastic Planet and the 'Warhol' Dracula and Frankenstein films (chill out, Joe. I know they're not really Warhol films) as well as some crazy, risque (for the 50's at least) serials. Not to mention versions of Frankie Goes to Hollywood videos that I don't remember seeing on MTV. They really did push the boundaries of what was allowed on TV for the time.
