You Are What You Were. Celebrate Retro Pop Culture At Retroland.
Humorist Jean Shepherd's memoirs of his youth in the early 1940's were compiled into a Christmastime feature in 1983, with Shepherd himself as the off-screen narrator. The result was a film that may have looked and sounded like a period piece, but A Christmas Story's nostalgic wit turned it into an undeniable, modern-day holiday classic. Let's take a look back at this beloved film.
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You awake from a horrific dream, gasping for air, your pulse pounding, as you try desperately to get your bearings on reality. Slowly you realize that it was nothing more than a nightmare, a figment of your overworked imagination. You’ve returned to the safety of reality – or maybe not. Such was the premise that a group of teenagers faced in the disturbing 1984 film, A Nightmare on Elm Street, where they first caught a glimpse of the weatherworn hat and sinister grin of one of the most popular movie villains ever conceived - Freddy Krueger. With his formidable glove, equipped with a set of razor sharp knife blades, he forever blurred the line between dreams and reality and made A Nightmare on Elm Street one of the most beloved and successful horror film franchises in history.
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David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams teamed up in 1980 to direct the spoof to end, or rather, start all spoofs. Airplane! took the disaster movie genre and wrung every hilarious contrivance from it, distilled the essence and presented audiences with pure comedy gold. With jokes and sight gags fired at a machine-gun pace, there is nary a minute of this film that isn't funny, even after years of multiple viewings. Let's take a look back.
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Not since the era of Ed Wood has a movie been so delightfully bad it was actually good. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! was so bad, in fact, that one might actually surmise that the filmmaker purposefully set out to make the worst movie possible…and they would be right. Producer John De Bello was determined to make a spoof of the horrifically bad 1950s-style horror films, and he succeeded so magnificently that the movie set the benchmark for bad movies for perhaps centuries to come. Let's take a look back at this unforgettable film, released in 1978.
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Nobody ever said it was easy to be dead. But, no matter how exasperating eternal life might be, a recently deceased couple learned the hard way that one should be careful of what they wish for – they just might get it. Such was the plight of the Maitland family in Tim Burton’s wonderfully quirky and decidedly dark 1988 comedy, Beetlejuice.
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Every young boy's fantasy came true for little Josh Baskin in 1988's Big. Thanks to a mystical carnival machine, little Josh became big Josh overnight, only to discover that the adult world wasn't all it was cracked up to be. With Tom Hanks in the "big Josh" role and former Laverne and Shirley star Penny Marshall directing, Big captured the innocence of childhood with humor, tenderness and insight.
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Ask someone what their favorite baseball movie is and they could give any number of responses. Switch the sport to golf, however, and the most likely response will be Caddyshack. Thanks to the unforgettable performances from the likes of Bill Murray, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight and Chevy Chase, Caddyshack has taken on a cult status over the years as one of the most beloved and funniest sports comedies ever produced.
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Inspired by a visit to New York that left him feeling like a true fish-out-of-water, Australian film star Paul Hogan sat down and helped pen a script that would go on to become one of the most successful films of 1986. The story of Crocodile Dundee enchanted moviegoers of all ages, and made Hogan a household name.
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Based on screenwriter Cameron Crowe’s novel of the same name, Fast Times at Ridgemont High told the story of several teens navigating the difficult waters of love during their time in the fictional community of Ridgemont. Thanks to a memorable cast, including a show-stealing performance by a young Sean Penn, this 1982 comedy remains one of the most fondly-remembered teen films of all time.
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Truancy is no laughing matter, unless it is presented through the eyes of director John Hughes, whose coming-of-age films in the 80s and 90s are some of the most beloved from the era. This time around, we were introduced to a high school student, too intelligent and devious for his own good, who decided to skip school with his friends and embark on a rather adventurous day in the 1986 comedy, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The film would become one of Hughes' most successful endeavors, and make Ferris a hero to millions.
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