Tag Archives: 1980s Movies

The Evil Dead Remains Sam Raimi’s Scariest Bloodiest DIY Triumph

Posted on October 6, 2020 by Andrew Bloom


The most striking thing about The Evil Dead is that, after all this time, it’s still scary as hell. Maybe that should be no great achievement: Horror movies ought to, in theory at least, still manage a few scares even on repeat viewings. But the amount of fright-inducing spectacle that writer-director Sam Raimi and company pack into eighty-five blood-soaked minutes is still remarkable for so many reasons.

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Robocop: A Fable of Humanity Corrupted, Commoditized, and Restored

Posted on August 13, 2020 by Andrew Bloom

Robocop is a tale of corruption and dehumanization. The film examines what it means to suck the humanity out of something, replace it with a mix of technology and greed, and witness the grim results when what’s left takes hold. It is an action-packed polemic against prioritizing private profits above the public good, escalation above restraint, and lead and steel above flesh and blood.

But as I discussed on The Serial Fanaticist Podcast, it’s also a paean to the resilience of the human soul, unquenched and undeterred by whatever self-serving, nest-feathering malevolence may have been permeating corporate boardrooms in the 1980s. OCP, an evil company that wants to replace regular cops with robotic enforcers, tries to erase the identity of the man who has become its latest product, so that he‘ll be a better tool and a better soldier. And yet, the man’s connections, to his partner and his family, reawaken and sustain him despite the company’s concerted efforts to stamp both out.

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The Simplicity of Predator Is a Blessing and a Curse

Posted on August 8, 2019 by Andrew Bloom

There’s a refreshing simplicity to the plot of Predator. You can boil it down to “Alien hunter picks off mercenaries in the jungle.” Technically, there’s a little more to it than that, with the mildest of ruses and a minor mission misdirect to contend with, but the gist of the film fits into an eight-word description. That seems remarkable right now in an age where every blockbuster and explosion-fest needs to have some convoluted conspiracy, twist upon twist, and a grand mystery to keep the audience interested. Predator, by contrast, banks on the basics of its premise to carry the day.

That’s a good thing, because there ain’t much of a story otherwise. As I discussed on The Serial Fanaticist Podcast, Predator offers the wisp of a theme about the military-industrial complex seeing its soldiers as interchangeable parts, while the men themselves view one another as human beings. It gradually parcels out the inevitable deaths of everyone besides its major star (and its token female character) to fill the gaps between explosions and alien encounters. And it teases the appearance of the titular antagonist nigh-perfectly, letting the audience get glimpses of the creature and his work bit by bit before he fully emerges.

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Trading Places Exemplifies the Eighties Class Comedy, for Better and for Worse

Posted on April 11, 2019 by Andrew Bloom

There’s something about class conflicts that lend themselves well to comedy. The snobs vs. slobs dynamic has been a venerable strain of humor on the silver screen, especially in the eighties, and Trading Places aims to take advantage of that. It presents Dan Aykroyd as a snooty stuffed shirt named Louis Winthorpe and Eddie Murphy as a street-wise hustler named Billy Ray Valentine. As I discussed on the Serial Fanaticist Podcast, Having the otherwise disparate worlds of these two men collide is a sound, time-tested recipe to wring some laughs out of the contrast between the well-heeled and the worn-heeled.

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Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Captures the Spirit of the Franchise as Captain Kirk Learns to Lose

Posted on March 4, 2019 by Andrew Bloom

Star Trek: The Motion Picture might represent the spirit of Star Trek, with its story of seeking out new life and new civilizations, and its heady science fiction rooted in the space between the personal and the unfathomable. But as I discussed on the We Love to Watch podcast, if The Motion Picture captures Star Trek’s spirit, then The Wrath of Khan captures the franchise’s character. The second theatrical Star Trek film conveys the way these friends and allies bounce off one another, the franchise’s Wagon Train to the Stars adventurism, and the larger-than-life personalities that give color to its futuristic world.

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Return to Oz Picks Mood and Metaphor over Plot and Progression on the Darker Side of the Rainbow

Posted on January 15, 2019 by Andrew Bloom


Conventional wisdom holds that stories should be held together by “but”s and “therefore”s instead of “and then”s. Each new scene, each beat in the narrative, should be motivated by what came before, either as cause and effect or as a change and reaction, rather than a random series of events. That approach is supposed to preserve the weight and momentum of your story, giving the actions taken and the choices made more meaning within a greater whole.

Return to Oz, however, is squarely an “and then” movie. As I discussed on the We Love to Watch Podcast, the nearly-half century late sequel to The Wizard of Oz brings back the iconic Dorothy Gale, and it shows her making a few key decisions here and there. But the film is mainly an accumulation of events that simply roll into one another, with minimal connective tissue between them. It roundly violates those dearly-held storytelling principles, which should consign it to the scrap heap of the languid or unsatisfying.

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