Writer & Editor
There were plenty of cheesy movies made in the ’80s, but some of them still hold their charm. It seems strange today, when the likes of Twilight rule at the bookstores and in movie theatres, but back then the whole teen-monster meme was a long way off.
But two movies stand out, even if they don’t necessarily stand up today: Teen Wolf and The Lost Boys.
Ratt has never been “cool,” but if you were in junior high in the mid-1980s, you can probably remember when they were “awesome.” After a couple of decades in the musical wilderness, the band — original members Stephen Pearcy, Warren DeMartini and Bobby Blotzer, at least — returns with a new slab of glam metal that could have come right out of 1986.
I read Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt about a year or two after it came out and it is a flat-out great read, even for someone who, like me, followed the shenanigans of Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil, Tommy Lee and Mick Mars when they were high atop the metal heap in the 1980s. Back then I read Hit Parader, Circus, even Groove (I only bought a copy in the summer of ’87 because it had the Crüe on the cover and I wanted to read about Girls, Girls, Girls, which I hadn’t bought yet… the magazine was pretty terrible) and repeatedly watched an interview Nikki did with Paul McGrath of CBC’s The Journal, which I taped on Betamax. I even bought the VH1 Behind the Music feature on them in 199something. I thought I was well versed in what they were up to.
Boy, was I wrong.
It could be said I have an overabundance of t-shirts. This despite the fact I routinely purge them every five to ten years. All those heavy-metal concert shirts from the ’80s? Gone. All my theatre shirts from the ’90s? Gone. Well, hm, wait, a stash of them has been discovered in an old dresser at the lake. Do I toss them out? What a sartorial dilemma. I only have one torso…
A pack of wolves, a parliament of owls, a herd of bison… Should you need to refer to groups of paranormal things, though, what do you say? Traditionally, “coven” is used to refer to a group of witches or vampires, but someone has taken up the challenge to assign words for all groups of beasties.
This is a creative if specious list… I do love the “lunacy of werewolves.”
We never get tired of hearing about Beowulf.
No, I’m not talking about the actual Geatish hero or the eponymous poem in Anglo-Saxon, or even the attempts at movie versions in recent years (I haven’t seen the one with Angelina Jolie, though if that’s the only one you know, check out Sturla Gunnarsson‘s original take on the story in Beowulf & Grendel with Gerard Butler and Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson). I’m mainly interested in the basic trope of Specialist Warriors From Away Swoop in to Deal With Monster.
It’s the basis for most of the hunting-the-psycho cop shows out there, in particular Criminal Minds.
