My Top 1. 0 Obscure But Awesome Teen Movies of the ’8. Yesterday I took a big step forward for my nerdy little corner of the web here–I joined The League of Extraordinary Bloggers. You could call them the Super Friends of pop culture bloggers. This week’s assignment (my first!) was to come up with a Top 1. ![]() Yesterday I took a big step forward for my nerdy little corner of the web here–I joined The League of Extraordinary Bloggers. You could call them the Super Friends. 14 '80s Movies You NEED to Show Your Kids Today (and Not a Disney Movie in Sight). Zero Logging. We do not log traffic or session data of any kind, period. We have worked very hard to craft the specialized technology we use to safeguard your privacy. Our 10 favorite underappreciated horror movies of the 1970s–80s and campy persuasion. Movies list using any of our own themes or qualifiers. I jumped right on it because I’ve been dying–DYING–to have an excuse to mention some of the obscure but awesome ’8. I’m about to show you. But first, let’s talk about what it is that makes these films “obscure.” When most people hear “8. John Hughes (The Breakfast Club, Ferris Beuller’s Day Off), popcorn flicks that star Michael J. Fox (Teen Wolf, Back to the Future) or raunchy sex comedies like Porky’s and Fast Times at Ridgemont High–all awesome films, by the way. But for this teen movies list I wanted to focus on those little known (and consequently underrated) hidden gems that I think deserve more attention. ![]()
So here they are, in no particular order. It’s exactly the right amount of obscure, if you will. In case it’s not glaringly obvious from the poster, it’s about a high school geek taking on a high school bully. In other words, it’s a film we’ve all seen many times before. The film takes place over a single day in the life of Jerry Mitchell (Casey Siemaszko), who offends transfer student and rumored psychopath Buddy Revell (played by douchebag extraordinaire Richard Tyson, whom you’ll probably recognize as the bad guy from Kindergarten Cop) when he accidentally touches him. Buddy tells Jerry he’s going to beat the shit out of him in the parking lot at–you guessed it–three o’clock. What follows is a series of desperate acts where Jerry tries to do everything and anything in his power to avoid the confrontation. Why It’s Awesome: In short, the way it’s filmed. There’s all kinds of unusual camera angles, odd close- ups, slow- motion sequences, and other zany camera effects you wouldn’t expect but which are all used to great effect to magnify the sense of dread that Jerry Mitchell feels. The Tangerine Dream soundtrack helps, too. Just One of the Guys stars the beautiful if androgynous Joyce Hyser as Terry Griffith, a popular high school student who wants more than anything to be a journalist. When her article for the school’s contest to win a summer internship at the local newspaper is rejected, she believes the school’s sexist teachers–who don’t take “pretty girls” seriously as writers–are to blame. Her solution? Transfer schools and dress up like a guy! With the coaching of her sex- obsessed younger brother (played by the adorable Billy Jayne) and a wad of rolled- up socks, Terry (who conveniently has a unisex name) gives herself a transsexual makeover that could give Hilary Swank’s Oscar- winning role in Boys Don’t Cry a run for its money. Hilarity ensues as Terry ventures into forbidden places like the men’s bathroom, gets bullied by the local jocks, hit on by other girls, and befriends–and eventually falls in love–with shy music nerd Rick Morehouse (Clayton Rohner). Why It’s Awesome: The big reveal scene at the prom. It’s the best “TITS OR GTFO” moment ever in a movie, and Rick’s reactionary quote is one of my all- time favorites. Plus, for you Karate Kid fans, there’s William Zabka (Johnny of the Cobra Kai!) doing his trademark tough- guy douchebag thing. Sarah Boyd stars as the wealthy but naive Lonnie who meets scrappy but streetwise Karen (Rainbow Harvest, whose parents I suspect must have been hippies) one summer day on the streets near her home in New York City. There’s an almost immediate infatuation between the two girls, who quickly become unlikely friends. Lonnie ditches summer camp to hang out with Karen, who teaches her about things like boys, make- up and shoplifting, and in return Lonnie tries to impress her own morals and upbringing. The whole film only takes place over a couple of days, but in that time each girl does quite a bit of growing up and the experience feels genuine. Along the way they have a few misadventures, disagreements, awkward social situations, and laughs. Nothing really earth- shattering ever happens; the film is simply a chronicle of a few days in these two young girl’s lives. Have you ever gone away somewhere and met someone you felt you really connected with only to never hear from them again–but you’ll always look back and remember them fondly? That’s kind of what Old Enough is like. If you don’t like slowly- paced character studies, steer clear of this one. But if you give it a chance, you just might find yourself becoming mesmerized by the acting and scenery as I did. Why It’s Awesome: Old Enough is filmed entirely on location in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, so you’re treated to a great summertime walking tour of this part of the city. I love, love, love movies that take place in New York City, especially movies that take place in the eighties in New York City (blame my Ninja Turtles obsession if you must). Also, you get to see Alyssa Milano in her first movie as an adorable eight year old. She plays Lonnie’s little sister and lends some much- needed cuteness and light comic relief, as some of the scenes get pretty angsty. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the seriously synth- tastic score! It stars Kevin Bacon as Vic, a rather creepy wilderness guide hired by the wealthy parents of a young, introverted city boy named Alan (Goonies- era Sean Astin!) to accompany him and and three other boys on their first wilderness experience. Vic is a skilled “survivor man” who’s good at what he does, but has something of a pushy camp counselor/big brother complex that he takes to extremes. He wants to make men out of his sheltered, socially awkward recruits but his ego and over- abuse of authority turns what should be a fun hiking trip into their worst nightmare. Why It’s Awesome: It’s Kevin Fucking Bacon. It also has a great soundtrack featuring music from Cutting Crew, Bruce Hornsby, The Cult and Journey that evokes exactly the right feeling of “Hey, look at us young, virile bunch of guys hiking around in the woods and doing cool outdoorsy stuff in the summer of ’8. If you’re a nature enthusiast you’ll also appreciate the rugged scenery, as much of it was actually filmed in New Zealand (surprise!).? I’m going to go out on a limb and estimate that at least 9. Nice Girls Don’t Explode. I know you’re already thinking “Holy crap that’s an awesome movie title!” and you’re right. The premise is even more awesome: April Flowers (great name, huh?) is a teenage girl with a very “special problem.” That is, when April gets intimate with men she explodes! Except not really. You see, April’s mother, who loves her little girl more than anything and doesn’t want her to be swept away by some man, has convinced April from the time she was a child that her hormones are all out of whack. She tells April she’s a “fire girl,” whose hormones can ignite fires when aroused and therefore she’ll never be able to get too close to men. How does she manage to convince April of something so ridiculous? By igniting the fires herself, of course. April’s mom isn’t exactly what you’d call normal, either. She has abandonment issues and something of a June Cleaver complex, spending her days meticulously keeping house and baking oatmeal cookies. Oh yeah, and crafting bombs in her kitchen! She stalks April on her dates and uses a remote control to set off fires whenever things get too steamy, usually to the effect of April never hearing from her dates again. But things begin to change when Andy, April’s childhood sweetheart, comes back into her life. Why It’s Awesome: To really appreciate this movie, you’ll need to keep your expectations in check because I must warn you that it is extremely low budget. That being said, there is still plenty of awesome here. For one thing it stars Michelle Meyrink (whom you might remember having a nerd crush on in Real Genius) as April; she’s an actress I always wished did more things. But the best part has to be Wallace Shawn (“Inconceivable!”), the quirky, socially awkward pyromaniac whom I guess you could describe as April’s mom’s bomb dealer. His scenes are hilarious and completely steal the movie. I also think it’s worth mentioning that the set design and decoration for this movie (if you’re the type who appreciates such things) is fantastic. I love the little details like the cookie magnets on Mom’s fridge, her mid- 8. Tupperware, and the ballerina dolls in April’s bedroom. What sets TLAV apart, though, is that it has a completely unexpected “WTF!?” ending that will ruin your day. It’s like the filmmakers were all, “Oh, you were expecting a happy ending? Well fuck you.”Why It’s Awesome: Didn’t I just tell you? Like I alluded to in my Last American Virgin synopsis above, Jimmy Reardon is a film that suffers from being marketed as something different than what it actually is. I mean, just look how stupid happy everyone appears to be on this poster: The actual movie is kind of a downer in the same way that What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? It’s a mature coming of age film, not the shiny, happy but mindless teen film the packaging leads you to believe. There’s quirky characters and funny dialogue but everyone’s kind of an asshole with depressing life problems. Jimmy is a rather jaded young man who’s trying to figure his life out while he smokes and sexes his way through it. He’s actually kind of a jerk, but he writes poetry (see? The movie chronicles a night (and unfortunate accident) that will become a major turning point in his life as he tries to find love and make peace with his father. Why It’s Awesome: How many directors do you know who wrote a semi- autobiographical novel and then directed a movie version? William Reichert did. Plus, you get to see two incredibly attractive young people, Ione Skye and River Phoenix, getting it on. So there’s that. Her good friend Jeff (Byron Thames), who’s kind of a dork, talks her into letting him move in because his home life sucks. Free Classic Horror Movies - Old Horror Films. Ten Secretly Excellent Cheesy Horror Movies of the 7. The platonic ideal of a cheesy horror movie from the 1. IMDB and an intermittently active message board. It received no critical acclaim of which to speak, though maybe Roger Ebert proclaimed it a solid bet “for genre obsessives only.” It contains no A- list actors, but maybe there’s someone who later wound up with a supporting role on The O. C. It does not contain a cameo from Vincent Price, but it desperately wishes it did. It is goofy and dated in the best possible ways, and full of killers or people- eaters or demons who lurk somewhere between Poltergeist and Troll 2 on the believability spectrum. Its title is not a household name, but its poster is imminently recognizable to anyone who spent a little too much in high school browsing the aisles of a suburban video store. On this Halloween, we humbly submit this by- no- means- exhaustive list of our 1. They are not, ostensibly, good films by any respectable critical measure, but they are great films within the sphere of horror. Of course, almost none of them are available on Netflix instant watch. You can probably find battered VHS copies for 5. Bad Taste (1. 98. Subscribe to Newsweek from $1 per week Image Entertainment Peter Jackson made Bad Taste in 1. The Fellowship of the Ring. Once you watch Bad Taste, you will be as shocked as I am that they ever let Peter Jackson near a movie camera again, much less something with the budget of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And when I wrote Peter Jackson made this movie, I mean it: He wrote it, he directed it, he co- starred, he co- edited it, he filmed it, he did the special effects and makeup. It was, from start to finish, his vision, which means he couldn't even claim plausible deniability when it came time to direct The Lord of the Rings. The plot of the move is this: A group of big- headed space aliens land in an isolated New Zealand village, where they plan to harvest local humans and turn them into ground meat for an intergalactic burger chain. The humans fight back, and things get messy. Like, this messy: Bad Taste THEY LET THIS GUY DIRECT THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Blood for Dracula (1. Bryanston Distributing Blood for Dracula (1. Romanian vampire (Count Dracula, portrayed by seminal vampire- portrayer Udo Kier) and his quest to find the blood of a virgin to keep his ailing sister, also a vampire, from falling into a torpor. To find the blood of a virgin, Drac travels to Italy, because, as his utterly serious yet mincing manservant Anton informs him, Italian women, living in roughly the same geographic area as the pope, are sexually pure. Rather than explaining all the reasons you should watch this Andy Warhol- produced camp masterpiece, I’ll just describe its best scene, because I think it encapsulates the film’s aesthetic quite well: Dracula draws back his fangs from the neck of Saphiria Di Fiore, the second of three daughters of a shabby Italian aristo at whose manse Dracula has ostensibly arrived to find a virgin bride. Dracula leans back, gasping and panting, his bloodlust/regular lust (the whole film is an allegory for sex, or possibly capitalism) sated after months of searching for the blood of a virgin. But—uh- oh!—Saphiria wasn’t a virgin after all. Anton has whiffed it, yet again. Dracula’s eyes go wide, his face turns practically neon green, and then he stumbles over to a bathtub and projectile voms blood everywhere. Don't Be Afraid of the Dark(1. ABC Broadcasting/USA Home Video Not to be confused with Nickelodeon’s Are You Afraid of the Dark?, this terse, made- for- TV goblin tale might best be remembered as the film that terrified Guillermo del Toro as a child. The Mexican director went on to produce a 2. Victorian eeriness of the original. Favoring slow, creeping fear over big- budget scares, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark tells the story of Sally, who comes to find that a terrifying band of whispering goblin creatures are occupying the sub- basement of the mansion she recently inherited from her grandmother. Like most of the films on this list, Don’t Be Afraid has built up a substantial cult following over the years. It has also attracted some degree of feminist analysis, thanks to the blowhard husband character who dismisses Sally's fears until it's much too late. The Gate(1. 98. 7) New Century Vista Film Company Ah, The Gate—how to explain the seemingly limitless campy delights of this film? The Gate is the hyperspeed throw- in- every- special- effect- that- we- can- afford glorious mess of 1. It is what happens when an inexperienced Canadian punk- producer- turned- director tries to reimagine Poltergeist with a cast of teenage unknowns, a $2. The film stars Stephen Dorff in his first role as a teenager whose group of friends discovers that a hole in his backyard is a gateway to hellish demons somehow summoned by heavy metal lyrics and the sacrifice of a dog corpse. All hell breaks loose, literally, in an irresistibly flashy swarm of biblical overtones and underworld tormentors literally played by actors in rubber suits. The result is jam- packed and visually imaginative enough to scare and stick with kids who, like me, were allowed to pick it up at Blockbuster because of the PG- 1. The film is apparently slated to get a 3. D remake, as per an announcement in 2. Gremlins (1. 98. 4) Amblin Entertainment/Warner Bros. Jealousy is a vicious green- eyed monster, but the little green terrors in Gremlins are sharp of hearing and idiotic- looking. The trouble starts when inventor Randall Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) buys a little creature, a mogwai, for his son Billy (Zach Gilligan) because apparently, monsters are available for purchase in Chinatown antique stores. Billy names his new weirdo pet Gizmo, who is dopey but affectionate. The fun basically stops there when he accidentally spills water on him—a no- no—and Gizmo then magically breeds five mogwai from his body. The resulting five offspring are jerks who turn cocoon and become evil monsters after they trick Billy into feeding them after midnight (another no- no), because Gremlins is quietly about food- shaming (midnight snacks forever!). The gremlins terrorize the Peltzer family and the town of Kingston Falls before being pulverized, chopped and microwaved in a memorable, green goo- covered kitchen scene, causing this writer to never look at a food processor the same way again. Beware of your kitchen this Halloween, readers. Invaders From Mars(1. Cannon Pictures/Cannon Film Distributers After having already made a name for himself with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist, Tobe Hooper turned his attention to resurrecting Invaders From Mars, a fondly remembered 1. Alas, another three decades has nearly passed, and Hooper’s reboot isn’t so fondly remembered. The bad news is that the remake replaces the subtle, Cold War- era dread of the original with flashy horror, cheesy dialogue and ghastly special effects. The great news is, yes, it’s full of flashy horror, cheesy dialogue and delightfully ghastly special effects—enough to frighten me as a child far more than the original ever could. Timothy Bottoms and Laraine Newman are effectively creepy as a pair of suburban parents whose bodies are subtly possessed by emotionless Martians, while Karen Black has a great turn as a school nurse who teams up with the innocent son to fight back, eventually teaming with the Marines, for some ungodly reason. The themes here are similar to Invasion of the Body Snatchers and 1. Strange Invaders, but it's campier and more kid- oriented than the former and more overtly scary than the latter. The result is an underrated gem. The New Kids (1. 98. Columbia Pictures After directing Friday the 1. Sean S. Cunningham went on to make teen slasher flick The New Kids, starring James Spader as a wild- eyed thug who says things like “You want crazy? Well, I’ll show you crazy!” The gory film centers on two new kids, Abby (Lori Loughlin) and Loren (Shannon Presby), who arrive as newcomers in small- town Florida after their parents die in an accident. Soon they’re terrorized by a gang of drug- addled miscreants led by Dutra (Spader) who eventually kidnap Abby. Of course, their aunt and uncle inexplicably own a Santa- themed amusement park where festive horror unfolds, and a terrible shower scene, a nod to Psycho, is one of the many eye- rollers in The New Kids certain to scar newcomers for life. Parents(1. 98. 9) Vestron Pictures Between The Exorcist and The Omen, the 1. The Creepy Child in a horror movie. Parents flips the script—in this odd horror–comedy hybrid of the late 1. Nice Suburban Parents who embody sinister, creeping terror. Their kid, a hapless 1. Michael, is suspicious of the eerie sounds that pass up from the den and the hulking, bloody slabs of “leftover” meat they feed him each night. It’s not much wonder this movie failed to find an initial audience: It’s too goofy for the slasher- flick crowd, yet far too bloody and dark for a family- friendly audience. Naturally, it did better in video store world. Recommended to any kid who has had the lingering misfortune of walking in on his parents having sex and/or hungrily consuming human flesh. Sleepaway Camp (1. American Eagle Films/United Film Distribution Company Wes Craven made A Nightmare on Elm Street on a measly budget of just $1. NYU- grad- turned- filmmaker- turned- law- student named Robert Hiltzik made Sleepaway Camp on a budget of $3. The story concerns Angela, a painfully shy girl who spends her summer at a frightful sleepaway camp where cooks are boiled alive and mean girls hacked to death in the shower. You can pick up the clues from there—though not all of them. If not the 1. 98. Sleepaway Camp is one of the oddest and most memorably twisted, combining amateurish student- film- ish dialogue with some thoroughly gruesome murder sequences and a plot twist that succeeds in being twice as disturbing as the one you expect.
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