Here in 2018, movies and video games enjoy a very... well, maybe healthy isn't the correct word, but accepted and expected relationship. But in the 1980s, video games were still more or less brand new, and movies didn't quite know what to make of this burgeoning industry that would soon be in direct competition for the youth market's eyes and ears. Scott and Drew discuss the decade's first attempts at incorporating (or hijacking, really) the appeal of video games, what video games appealed to them, and why that relationship between the two artforms has never been all that stable.

Patreon Bonus #44 - Video Games, Movies, and the '80s

Scott Weinberg and Drew McWeeny are ready to review every major film of the '80s, one month at a time, helping erase the nostalgia that so often clouds any real conversation about the decade's movies.

TV & Film

Comedy

It’s a weird month, with a lot of little films you’ve never heard of up  front. Teen-sex comedies and weird War Games ripoffs and swords and  sandals and unfunny celebrity siblings abound. But we’ve also got a  Louis Malle film, some genuinely sweet and fun teen comedies, a couple  of crazy riffs on fairy tales, and adaptations of both Elmore Leonard  and Stephen King. That’s a lot of ground to cover, so let’s get to it  with April of 1985.

April 1985

March has become one of the coolest months of each season here on ‘80s  All Over, and this one’s no exception. Want some crummy TV children’s  animation on the bigscreen? We’ve got you covered. Want some terrible  sequels to films that shouldn’t have sequels? Yep. Plenty of that. Weird  tone-deaf kids films, exploitation films that make us squirm for the  wrong reasons, misbegotten star vehicles? Check, check, and check. But  we’ve also got a stone-cold teen classic, Eric Stoltz’s best work of the  decade, one of the weirdest side trips in John Landis’s career,  Madonna’s big screen debut, and Divine on horseback. What more could you  ask from March of 1985?

March 1985

Matt Gourley is a man of very specialized talents. He knows his James Bond (obviously—he co-hosts Earwolf's James Bonding podcast) and he knows his Jason Voorhees (he does the In Voorhees We Trust podcast, too). Scott calls him "a crown prince of podcasting," and he's not really exaggerating at all, what with co-founding SuperEgo, creating I Was There Too, producing Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, and appearing on some of the absolute funniest episodes of Comedy Bang Bang, Never Not Funny, Thrilling Adventure Hour, and more. But truly, his finest hour must be this one, where he shoots the breeze for about an hour about '80s films with Drew and Scott. Join us, won't you?

Patreon Bonus #54 - Matt Gourley

An Oscar-winning actor directs a bunch of dancers with a dream, Richard Harris hits the road with someone else's kid, and it's time for classy Porky's! We meet Kiefer Sutherland for the first time, Matthew Modine tries to make weight, and Kurt Russell does the serial-killer two-step. All that plus Harrison Ford's best performance, a Jeff Goldblum cult oddity, and the greatest high school movie ever made? Don't you forget about February of 1985.

February 1985

On this very, very special Patreon bonus episode, Drew and Scott get to sit for a spell with writer/cinematographer/producer/director Peter Hyams, a man responsible for making some of the flat-out ballsiest moves that '80s Hollywood ever saw, not least of which was "I think I'm going to make the follow up to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey." The stories of that film's making are absolute must-hears, but so are the tales of his breaking into the industry, and the rules he had to break to stay there, the time Sean Connery tried yanking his chain on the set of Outland, and the absolute joy both in front and behind the camera during the making of Running Scared with Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal.

Patreon Bonus #44 - Video Games, Movies, and the '80s

Download our free app to listen on your phone