Goth Chick News – Unwrapping the 80’s…again
“The 25th
anniversary edition of The Last Star
Fighter.”
This is the
response I got when I asked a friend about the holiday gift he was most excited
about. Frankly, I wasn’t sure I heard
him right the first time so I asked for a repeat and sure enough, I had heard
correctly.
This
confusing bit of trivia caused several questions to spring up in my
holiday-addled brain. First, was The Last Starfighter really twenty-five
years old? Not possible. Was there really a marketing department
somewhere in the world that actually believed there was an audience desperately
waiting for a twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this movie? Apparently.
Was THIS the gift that a friend of MINE was actually the most thrilled to
unwrap on Christmas morning? Who
knew? Obviously not me because it
actually took some time before I could conjure up the movie plot line and a few
vague faces of the actors who starred in it.
If a twenty-fifth anniversary tribute was actually on the market, then The Last Starfighter hit the mall movie
theaters right smack in the middle of gravity-defying AquaNet hairdos and
skinny, neon leather ties worn with white linen blazers.
In other
words, the 80’s.
Yes, it had
finally happened. Enough time and space
had come between the present day and the 1980’s that people of a certain age are
obviously feeling nostalgic about those ten years. I’ve seen it coming for awhile when running
an eye over the magazine rack at the local bookstore. Earrings are getting bigger, guys’ hair is
starting to get longer and if that wasn’t proof enough, I actually heard
someone quote Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good” speech while standing in line at
the coffee shop.
Just to
confirm whether getting jacked up about watching The Last Starfighter was only one person’s folly or an honest to
goodness trend, I did a little informal survey on New Year’s Eve. In a small, age-mixed crowd of reasonably
cool kids, I brought up the story of my friend’s favorite Christmas gift just
to see the reaction. The responses I got
back were not only surprising and entertaining, but caused me to fill up my
Netflix queue to the breaking point the next day. Apparently everyone has a geeked-out,
80’s-mall-theater favorite and here are the five that were most mentioned in no
particular order:
Labyrinth (1986): David Bowie wearing jodhpurs and
wielding a riding crop was the image that came roaring to mind when this title
was mentioned. After I had a sit down
and the wooziness passed, I remember it also starred a sixteen-year-old
Jennifer Connelly in her first major movie roll along side an entire cast of
Jim Henson’s muppets. Believe it or not,
Monty Python alum Terry Jones penned the early version of the script which
explains the borderline nightmarish feel to the story and this very moment
there’s a petition on Facebook to get Tim Burton to remake it.
Swamp Thing (1982): It wasn’t until I looked it up that
I realized Wes Craven was responsible for writing and directing this
early-entry into the comic-book-to-big-screen genre. Adrienne Barbeau, somewhat of an 80’s “scream
queen,” stars as the damsel in distress and was fresh off her role a “Maggie”
in Escape from
The Thing (1982):
And speaking of Ms. Barbeau, she had a very busy 1982 doing an
un-credited voice over as the chess-playing computer in the doomed Antarctic
outpost of her hubby John Carpenter’s nightmare. If you haven’t rented this one in awhile
allow me to remind you of what I still consider the most disturbing horror
movie scene to date; a disembodied head sprouting legs and flipping over to
scurry across the floor while Kurt Russell looks on and deadpans, “You’ve got
to be f***ing kidding me.” Believe it
or not, a remake of The Thing is slated for release in October of this year.
Night of the Comet (1984): I’m in complete agreement with this
one as it’s a personal favorite of mine.
A comet strikes earth killing 95% of all humans, turning 4% into zombies
while the remaining healthy 1% head to the mall. With no special effects beyond the gross,
oatmeal-y look to the zombies, Night of
the Comet is pure 1980’s comfort food staring Days of Our Lives and college common room favorite Catherine Mary
Stewart. And standing right there beside
Catherine as her plucky, cheerleader, younger sister is Kelli Marone wearing
pretty much the same outfit she wore as a “Spirit Twin” in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
With the original title of the film being Teenage Mutant Horror Comet Zombies, how much more 80’s can you
possibly get?
American Werewolf in London (1981):
Hot on the heels of what was the eye-popping special effects of The Howling released in April of this
same year, AWiL hit theaters in
August and struck the perfect chord between humor and horror while adding one
of the best man-into-beast transformation scenes ever. Described to me as the “perfect 80’s date
movie” it has a love story between Jenny Agutter (Logan’s Run) and doomed caninus horrilibus David Naughton for the
girls, and the gross-out, back from the dead victims for the guys. The heinous and hilarious combo will meet
many more times in the 80’s in movies like Creepshow,
Fright Night and Vamp but AWiL was the original; that is until last year when word leaked
that John Landis had sold the remake rights to Dimension Films.
So what have
we learned?
Scary movies
from the 1980’s have transcended into such a cult following in the 2010’s that
nearly every one of them is in some stage of being remade. And yet, nearly everyone I talked to while
exploring this topic looked positively horrified at the very idea. Not one person thought CGI or other nifty
modern day effects would improve these “classics” one single bit; right down to
a teenager who said he’d flat out refuse to see a remake of his “favorite movie
ever,” The Thing. I wonder if he realizes the 1982 version is a
remake of a 1951 version?
You just can’t stop progress I guess.
And yes, a
twenty-fifth anniversary edition of The Last Star Fighter IS apparently a good
idea so much so that…
Wait for it…
Music
composer Craig Safan, who scored the movie, let slip in an interview in 2009 that:
“There are plans for a sequel. There has been a
script written, it's been storyboarded. I think they're just sort of waiting
for the final go.”
Heavy sigh…
Do you have
a favorite 80’s horror flick? If so, did
you see it in the theater originally or did you discover it later, which is a
sneaky way of find out how old Blackgate readers really are. Post your comments here or keep your birthday
to yourself and drop me a line at Sue@blackgate.com
Labyrinth
Swamp Thing
Night of the Comet
American Werewolf