Category: awesome 80s in april

Awesome ’80s in April: RoboCop (1987)

robocop poster

I sometimes say that I grew up in the 1980s but came of age in the 1990s. What I mean is that I was 13 when the ’80s became the ’90s, so my teenage years were really spent in the early ’90s. The music, movies, books – the art – that really shaped me into the man that I would come are mostly from the early 1990s. That isn’t to say the movies from the ’80s aren’t important to me – they are, absolutely. It is just a different kind of important.

I remember laying on the floor in my bedroom with my stereo speakers pointed at my ears with The Smashing Pumpkins “Gish” surrounding me. That music had a hold on me, it touched something deep inside of myself. Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) might not be the most intellectual, or emotionally deep films, but they are great movies and they had a profound effect on the way I appreciate cinema.

Movies from the 1980s, or at least movies I watched during the 1980s affected me in much different ways. As a kid, as a young teenager, I mainly looked for thrill rides or things that made me laugh, things that excited me. The movies that did those things in abundance have stayed with me all of these years. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Gremlins (1984) still flood my memory banks with nostalgic joy. But they don’t necessarily inform my understanding of Art.

I’m getting way into the weeds for what should be a review of RoboCop. But I think this type of discussion is important for me to talk about as I’m delving back into the cinema of the 1980s.

RoboCop came out in 1987. I did not see it in the theaters. My parents would have never taken me to it. But I did watch it on VHS sometime later. I don’t remember when. My guess would be sometime around when the sequel came out in 1990, but I really don’t know. One of the things I love about the ’80s is how I did get to watch so many movies at home that my parents would never have allowed me to watch in the theater. Sometimes I’d watch these types of movies at a friend’s house, sometimes my father would rent them when mom was away for the weekend. Or sometimes I just wore them down with my asking (it helped if I could convince them that the movie was rated R over violence and maybe some cussing instead of sex and nudity.)

Whenever I watched RoboCop I loved it. I thought a supercop cyborg was the coolest thing ever. I loved his multiple-round firing pistol. I loved that he had such great aim he could shoot through a lady’s dress and hit the guy who was attacking her in the crotch. I loved the big robot villain that could shoot freaking missiles. I definitely loved the guns that could blow up cars and the explosive finale.

Watching it now, I’m less impressed with the bountiful action scenes and Robocop as a character. I am interested in the satire that director Paul Verhoeven fills the film with (stuff that flew straight over my head as a kid). The movie is clearly making fun of the militarization of our police forces and military. It mocks consumer culture (the inserted commercials are terrific – especially the goofy car commercial and the placement of said car into the hands of most of the film’s characters.) It ponders a future in which we privatize the forces that are supposed to protect us and how for-profit businesses might handle such things.

Truthfully, I don’t think it does these things particularly well. Verhoeven has never been particularly subtle with his messaging. So what I’m left with is an action flick with some big messages that doesn’t handle either aspect well. It is a fun watch, but not one I can say I’m interested in seeing again anytime soon.

Totally Awesome ’80s in April

mad max 2 poster

The 1970s saw the Studio System’s destruction and independent film’s rise. The production code died in the late 1960s and the new rating system allowed for more freedom in depicting previously censored items such as sex, nudity, language, and violence. Directors raised on classic Hollywood cinema such as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma, and Francis Ford Coppola, began making their own films and the New Hollywood era began.

The 1980s continued this trend, but even more so. Movies such as Jaws and Star Wars caused studios to realize movies could make more money than ever believed and the blockbuster era was created. The advent of the home video market created a boom in low-budget cinema that bypassed movie theaters altogether. Erotic Thrillers became all the rage. As did raunchy sex comedies, horror slashers, and sequels.

I grew up in the 1980s and so I have many nostalgic memories of watching movies like E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, The Goonies, and Back to the Future on the big screen. But also wandering through the video store and renting films like First Blood, and Beverly Hills Cop. It was a wonderful time to be growing up watching movies.

The decade wasn’t just for big blockbusters though, plenty of smaller, highly acclaimed films came out as well. And there were loads of movies made for adults that I missed back then. I felt all grown up watching Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenneger blow up bad guys whilst spitting out one-liners and curse words, but I had no interest in truly mature fare like Gandhi or Platoon.

I did have an interest in the low-budget films that were filling the shelves of my local video store. I ate up silly comedies, even sillier horror films, and dumb action movies that were filled with dumb jokes, bloody violence, and lots of naked boobs. Hey, I was a pubescent boy, what did you expect me to like at that age?

I thought it would be fun to spend some time this month revisiting the decade of my youth, and maybe watching some films that slipped through the cracks not only while I was living through it but that I’ve not gotten around to even as an adult.

My goal is to not watch the big blockbusters of the 1980s, but films that epitomize the decade in other ways. In the same way, I’m not really interested in watching art-house films or foreign language films from that decade either (at least not for the purposes of this month’s theme). I want movies that scream they were made in the 1980s but aren’t something I would have been interested in watching during the actual 1980s.

Sort-of. As always I’ll wind up watching things that break these rules. I already watched Robocop which was a big hit and in fact was watched by me on videocassette when it came out in 1987. But I hope to not make that type of film the main films I focus on this month.

I made a Letterboxd list full of the types of films I’d like to watch. Unlike previous lists, I didn’t stop at 30 films but allowed it to grow (and it will likely continue growing for a few more days) to a number that I’ll never be able to complete. Honestly, I never watch all the films I put onto these lists so I figured I might as well make it big and impossible so I’ll have more ideas of things to watch when I’m thinking about what I want to watch.