Summer of Science Fiction: It’s Gonna Be In The 80’s…Again.

Last year…

My nephew, Nick said to me…

 

“Hey Unk…

What about Sci-Fi?”

 

So I created lists of some sick and twisted summertime sci-fi flicks…

 

And because his idea was so goddamn good…

I’m gonna do it again!

 

So…

Turn off the lights…

Turn on the A/C…

And get ready for another dose of…

 

The Summer of Science Fiction: It’s Gonna Be In The 80’s…

Again.

 

 Let’s take another chronological look at the scariest, most bizarre and maybe even unknown to you, Science Fiction Movies from the 80’s that you may not have seen…But like totally should.

 

Galaxy of Terror (1981) – This film has the standard Roger Corman recipe for B-Movie success…Spend some of the dough on some decent actors…Spend the rest on production value and special effects…And the rest will take care of itself…So in the acting category, we’ve got a couple of horror movie icons…Robert Englund and Sid Haig…In the production value category…James Cameron was the Production Designer, and the Second Unit Director on this one…Many consider this film his precursor to Aliens, rather than what it was labeled by critics…A rip-off of Alien…Not only did Cameron cut his science fiction teeth on this film, but the techniques he used are visible in both this film, and Aliens…This is a classic gross-out horror sci-fi flick…With one of the freakiest and most controversial sex scenes that I’ve ever witnessed…I saw this delightful freakshow at the drive-in along with another Corman classic, Humanoids from the Deep…That shit happened thirty-six years ago…And this film is still one of my faves.

 

Swamp Thing 1982) – Thirty years before comic book movies were box office record breakers…Wes Craven brought this incredible title to life for the first time…The original run of this comic, which is still one of my all time favorite runs…Was written by legendary comic creator Len Wein, with artwork by the king of creepy details, Bernie Wrightson…This film was a sort-of homage to those mad scientist monster movies of the 50’s…And became a B-Movie cult classic almost immediately…It brought forth a resurgence in the character’s popularity…DC Comics even created a new series called Saga of the Swamp Thing written by Alan Moore…No matter how hard I try, I cannot get my hands on the uncut version of this film which was released on DVD accidentally in the year 2000…An unsuspecting mom in Dallas, Texas…Put it on for her kids…And then promptly shit a brick when she saw Adrienne Barbeau’s tits…Maybe one day we will get an uncut blu-ray release…Yeah…Maybe one day when our country isn’t filled to the brim with puritanical pussies.

 

The Philadelphia Experiment (1984) – In this film, time and space get all twisted up in knots when the military perform an anti-radar experiment on board the U.S.S. Eldridge in the waters off the coast of Philadelphia…The whole thing goes terribly wrong (with some wicked sweet film effects)…And two of the sailors are tossed through a time tunnel and land in 1984…Michael Paré (Eddie from Eddie and the Cruisers) plays one of the sailors…And with the help of Nancy Allen (Robocop)…The pair tries to find a patch for the tear in the fabric of time…I love this flick…And it stands up…Like I mentioned…I still dig some of the film effects used during the accident…And the romance that stirs between the two lead actors is authentic enough to keep the audience invested…Although this is hands-down, the tamest entry on this list…If you dig time travel flicks…Then check this puppy out.

 

Runaway (1984) – The inherent danger in the blind trust, and inevitable reliance in technology has always been a running theme throughout the works of Michael Crichton…And this film which he wrote and directed is no different…In the not too distant future…We have become extremely reliant on the many robotic devices at our disposal…And just like any machine, they can malfunction…But when a robot malfunctions,  it can sometimes be deadly for nearby humans…These fucked-up robots are called runaways, and there is a special division of the police force that have been tasked with containing and deactivating the little buggers…Tom Selleck (You know…Magnum, P.I.), and Cynthia Rhodes (Dirty Dancing) are partners in the runaway squad…And they are going toe-to-toe with an evil terrorist who uses robots to kill…The terrorist is played with seethingly delicious evil by Gene Simmons…This is another one of those cool 80’s sci-fi flicks that I absolutely adore, because it never gets old.

 

Lifeforce (1985) – In one of my first blogs…Under The Radar Monster Movies: Vampire Edition…I shined a light on a handful of my favorite, not your typical vampire movies…This film was on that list, because it features space vampires that suck the lifeforce out of their victims…Two of my favorite creative minds in horror work together in this one to create one of my desert island movies…Tobe Hooper directed, and Dan O’Bannon wrote the screenplay…And together they created some seriously messed up sci-fi horror that has stayed with me for decades…Was it the cool practical effects?…Was it the twisted symbiotic relationship between the astronaut and one of the space vampires?…Was it the killer cast full of talented British actors?…Was it all of that fluffy alien bush on the screen?…Who knows…But whatever it was…It worked…Hell…Who am I kidding…It still works.

 

Critters (1986) – Ahhh the 80’s…We had Gremlins…We had Ghoulies…We had Trolls…We had Munchies…Hell, we even had Hobgoblins…But of them all…My favorite little creature from hell, or in this case, outer space, was hands down the rolling furry nightmares known as The Krites…A rolling herd of insatiable intergalactic carnivores descends on a rural Kansas town…Like they were paying a visit to the Old Country Buffet…These toothy freaks are being pursued by a couple of shapeshifting alien bounty hunters led by Ug, played by Terrence Mann who played Bob in the short-lived but amazing Dresden Files…Ug takes the form of an 80’s rocker named Johnny Steele, but his partner is increasingly undecisive about which form to choose…The bounty hunters are almost as destructive as the little furry bastards, as they blast their way through the small town…The kick-ass creature effects were done by The Chiodo Brothers who gave us Killer Klowns From Outer Space…I loved the hell out of this film…Hell, I even dug the second one…The next two after that, were stretched a wee bit thin for me…But the first two are a bonafide barrel of fucking monkeys.

 

Chopping Mall (1986) – This is one of those quintessential 80’s movies…Like one of my faves, Night of the Comet…Which has a great scene that takes place in a mall…This film expands the obligatory 80’s mall scene, and spends the entire runtime there…The mall is a lot like arcades and video stores…They were all staples of our youth culture in the 80’s and now have their place on an endangered species list…Snif…Snif…Sorry…I miss them…Anyway…The kids in this one decide to stick around after hours at the mall’s furniture store where they work…While they commence the partying and rounding of many bases…The mall’s new security system of robots that use tasers and tranquilizers to incapacitate criminals is on the fritz…And that’s when things get really cooking…The teens are getting picked off one by one by these robotic killing machines…And are forced to fight back using whatever the mall has to offer…Keep your eyes peeled for scream queens, Kelli Maroney (Night of the Comet) and Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator) in this one…Tons of fun here, folks…Tons…Of…Fun.

 

The Blob (1988) – This remake of a 1950’s monster movie was directed by Chuck Russell on the heels of his well received horror sequel, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors…And like he did with that film, he once again wrote the script with Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist) who, for shits and giggles, threw in a handful of Stephen King references…As if his résumé didn’t already prove his love for the author…Those of you familiar with King’s novel, The Stand, will remember the character of The Trashcan Man…The hobo above who went poking at the meteor was listed in the credits as “Can Man”…Not to mention the fact that the main character played by Kevin Dillon shared the same last name as the big bad in that novel, Randall Flagg…There’s not only some fun King references…But you’ve got the great 80’s horror movie archetypes in place here…There’s The Outcast…It’s usually a stoner…Or a nerd…Or sometimes like in this case…An all-around bad boy…Then you’ve got The Cheerleader…And of course…What horror film from the 80’s would be complete without…The Date-Rapey Jocks…It’s got all the ingredients you need to make an 80’s sci-fi horror classic…If you haven’t seen it…Better do it quick…There’s a remake on the way…And like ninety-three percent of all films made these days…It stars Samuel L. Jackson.

Leviathan (1989) – The recipe that made James Cameron’s 1986 classic Aliens, work so well, was three cups of claustrophobia, and a cup and a half of cast chemistry…His colorful cast of charaters all trapped in a life or death situation drove the story forward, towards an intense climax…Director George P. Cosmatos followed the same recipe for this film…Instead of the dark reaches of space…We follow a team of geologists and miners who, while on a deep sea mission, discover a shipwrecked Russian vessel named Leviathan…What they discover within carries the same level of destruction and paranoia that the creature in John Carpenter’s The Thing did…In this film…The creature effects are done by none other than Stan Winston…And his handywork means that the effects actually survive the nearly thirty year passage of time…And although the criticism that this film received always came down to comparing it to other films…In my opinion…It still stands out…On its own…As an 80’s sci-fi horror classic.