EricJ

Wait, isn't that the one with Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to buy the Power Rangers figure?--Oh, wait, that's "Jingle All the Way". I always get my 90's Christmas Trepak-Comedies* mixed up...Does this have Tim Allen in it? * - (So named for movies whose near-entire reason to be made is to air the TV ads at Christmas, and show just the pratfalls of the characters getting bonked, violently pranking or bumping into each other, or slipping on the ice, to the "Russian Trepak" tune from the Nutcracker. Of which the Home Alone movies, of course, invented the practice.)

"'Omitted the body of the letter', huh?"

Yes. And "Gremlins" isn't, no matter what it might think.

Since they're only uploading what's already been released on video, they're airing THE first five episodes--And, interestingly enough, the original hour-long 50's episodes, not the syndicated best-of half hours some of us grew upon watching in the 70's. (I still remember the park commercials for "Coming soon...Space Mountain.") There were two DT disk collections with one week each before they gave up, but think only the first one made it to D+. Vault aired one of the 60's-70's movies ("Charley & the Angel" isn't on D+ yet?), followed a "best-of" handful of the Disneyland/World of Color episodes--Back when "prime time" Disney Channel meant 8-9pm, before they were banished to 2am by the need to air more "Sister, Sister". And that's just as someone who only remembers "Free weekends", before the channel was forced to go commercial. Followed by one of the defining shark-jumps in TV history, when the "Will they?" romance became "Yes", relationship regret set in, they dramatically broke up, and spent the last season trying to win each other back, while comedy-reliefs Curtis Armstrong and Allyce Beasley occasionally solved the mysteries, when the show remembered to. That's probably what left a bad taste in 80's viewers mouths thirty years later, although it was cathartic when the finale did a fourth-wall where ABC shut down the show and started striking sets mid-episode, and Curtis tells Bruce, "You spent so much time on your stupid relationship, you drove the viewers away!" But, to play along: 50's: This is Your Life (forget the endless variety-show parodies, dang, this show is addictive) Maverick Have Gun, Will Travel (the "intellectual Western" even before Gene Roddenberry wrote for it, and Richard Boone was the Original Badass before Eastwood was) Jack Benny Show Our Miss Brooks Amos & Andy 60's - way too many to name: Star Trek:TOS The Dick Van Dyke Show Mission: Impossible (forget Tom Cruise, forget all you think you know...) Twilight Zone The Addams Family The Monkees (the real Hippie invasion, that Laugh-In only thought it was) The Odd Couple Lost in Space (either you go with Irwin Allen's goofy 10-yo. naivety or you don't, but Dick Tufeld as Robot owned this series, and Will was a role model for all us smart-kids at that age) 70's The Mary Tyler Moore Show The Bob Newhart Show The Carol Burnett Show (notice a pattern?) Columbo Ellery Queen (thanks for the memory-jog) Fantasy Island (incredibly corny, yes, but I SO wanted to grow up to be Mr. Roarke 😎 ) 80's Cheers (I rub this show, with sandpaper, in the face of OK-Millennials who want to demonize all 80's sitcoms, and 20th-century TV in general, as soppy laughtracked Full House reruns--Like Mary & Bob, live-audience sitcoms were the theater of their day.) Star Trek: TNG (there was a progressive feel of "building" the 90's from scratch with this series, starting from rough fan beginnings) Our World (don't remember this one? You were probably watching Bill Cosby on Thursday 8pm, where ABC had placed this show to die) Beauty & the Beast (a gorgeous-looking fantasy-geek series, until the show decided to jump Moonlighting's shark when Linda Hamilton went off to shoot robots) Not Necessarily the News (HBO Original Series in the 80's meant something different, as "Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock" fans knew, and NNtN WAS the gleefully silly Dennis Miller and Jon Stewart of its day) It's Gary Shandling's Show (another example of why 10's cable will never be 80's cable) Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre (ditto, x10) 90's Twin Peaks (the first "art-film" season, not the psychotic second-season self-indulgence) NewsRadio (I would have put SNL on the 80's list for the Phil Hartman years, but this is a good substitute...And remember when we thought Dave Foley was funny and NOT a mean a-hole?) Third Rock From the Sun (saw "30 Rock" on somebody's list and thought they remembered this one) Okay: 60's The Flintstones (would have put this on the Best Shows list for its writing, but we've got our own list now) Jonny Quest Rocky & Bullwinkle 80's Danger Mouse: Classic (or "Rocky & Bullwinkle meet Douglas Adams and go Britcom" The followup, Count Duckula, is only mentioned here as spinoff.) Thundercats (an incredibly silly attempt for Rankin-Bass to break out of Christmas specials and into He-Man's territory, but the new Japanese outsourcing gave the show more gravitas and velocity) ALFTales (the head-writer later took his fractured-fairytales to the first Shrek movie, and I can pick out gags in the movie that have his fingerprints all over them) Wind in the Willows (there was one reason you wanted Disney Channel in the 80's, and it wasn't Mickey) 90's X-Men:TAS (the show that was designed to TEACH new converts about the then still-unknown mysteries of Marvel Comics 101, long before the MCU. It's on Disney+, go and watch it. Right now. Stop typing.) The Tick (no, not the Patrick Warburton sitcom, and not the Amazon thing. The original Fox-toon version of the cult-comic, with hip deadpan and jokes only comic-geeks would get...The last bastion of Coolness on Sat. morning.) Aladdin: TAS (I know I'm supposed to put DuckTales or Chip & Dale as symbols of the Disney Afternoon, but I always found them too smugsy and rib-nudging--Their big movie-cash-in, though, brought the adventure plots, and Dan "Homer" Castallaneta's unsettlingly dead-on Robin Williams imitation) You'll notice I don't list anything in either category from 00's or 10's. If so, you catch on quick. 😀

Eww. Please take that bad Photoshop picture away. 😓

Hint: Which one do people still remember fifty years later, as opposed to a year later on video?

Others, however, might harbor doubts.

And, thankfully, not that bizarre 90's feature-animated interloper that barged in, grabbed title rights to the song, and, for several years, banished THE Rudolph's marketing to the legally-required pseudonym of "Rudolph & the Island of Misfit Toys": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PViHfcFJbo If you don't remember it, well...it's gone now, and everyone can go back to using their proper names.

Thanksgiving and post-Thanksgiving edition: Mayflower: the Pilgrims' Adventure (1979) 👍 Rather than look up old Spencer Tracy movies or 90's Disney movies (no, "Squanto: a Warrior's Tale" isn't on Disney+ yet, although it's not bad either) in addition to Charlie Brown's popcorn and toast, a wealth of old public-domain 70's TV-movies on Amazon brought up this surprising gem from the late-70's Golden Age of network TV-movies. A historical docudrama recap of just the cross-Atlantic Mayflower voyage, with Richard Crenna as the fervent but clearly unprepared leader William Brewster, Michael Beck--yes, Sonny from "Xanadu"--as a young-farmer John Alden, caught up in that story, with Jenny Agutter (he's all yours, Priscilla), and an always elusively borderline-creepy/sociopathic early Anthony Hopkins as the hard-bitten experienced ship captain Christopher Jones, doing his job-for-hire with no open love for moralistic land-lubbers. Since they don't reach land until the end credits, it's a refreshingly straightforward Thanksgiving drama without the usual native-guilt revisionism, and emphasizes just how risky the voyage was to begin with. (I'd also watched a PBS American Experience special on Plymouth, which details the sad history of the colony after Thanksgiving, as by the time the insular Puritan outpost could finally generate trade and native alliances after ten years, members, including many of the original Mayflower voyagers, began drifting farther away in search of better land, with new commercial colonies springing up.) And, for kick-back snowed-in library-disk viewing, for someone who couldn't get out on Black Weekend, appropriately enough: Blacula (1972) - 👍 Seeing this disk at the library, yes, the temptation was there to watch this as 70's-blaxploitation kitsch, with the same wokka-chicha stereotyped expectations that Quentin Tarantino loves to indulge in. And yes, most of what we know of the movie either comes from the goofy 70's me-too title or images of the title character in his, frankly, goofy-looking B-budget vampire makeup. But the surprise of the movie is that the title character--an African prince, Mamuwalde, cursed by the Count Dracula after an argument over slavery (one of many "woke" attempts to put a "Black-power avenger" overlay on the tragic-antihero character for the audience)--is played by veteran Shakespearean actor William Marshall, who, despite B-movie and TV appearances, turns out to be a pretty darn GOOD actor. (Most would remember Marshall only as the mad scientist who tried to install a computer on the Enterprise, or, in another generation, for "Let the cartoon begin!") The movie may disappoint those looking for low-camp, being produced more on a straightforward TV-style B-budget, with the usual race-appeasing scenes of our antihero knocking stake-wielding modern-day white LA cops across the room. But Marshall, with his deep stage-trained voice, plays the character 100% without irony, or even the occasional stuffy resentful embarrassment Christopher Lee would show in the later Hammers--When out of makeup as the elegant caped Count Prince, he's pure charm and menace, and in the accompanying sequel, Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973 - and yes, the title's explained), where the character now has to command evil legions, he brings enough commanding menace to blow the other B-actors away. Definitely for the adventurous to seek out, as it just shows what spending a little extra money on a professional can do.

You want F'ed up childhood 80's Disney trauma? Only one name is legend: Return to Oz (1985), now unearthed from studio shame, is now free for viewing on Disney+ (as is every other obscure 80's-90's title that got a Disney Movie Club exclusive Blu-ray master). I am NOT being ironic in calling it "Pure distilled childhood nightmare-fuel"--You can sense that there was a good book-friendly script (and a fantastic score), which was then handed to a deranged, incoherent madman of a director with some deep inexplicable issues.

Okay, anyone else who thought this would be a discussion of Erin Moran in "Galaxy of Terror", raise guilty hands...

Weren't the Lord of the Rings: Extended credits longer, as they not only had to list all the CGI technicians from the Theatrical cut, but also add every single supportive member of the Tolkien Fan Club? Or do those not count for not being theatrical? (And this, before Kickstarted indie movies that had to recognize every single one of their backers, as well...)

"Mother Maguire's Meatballs Don't Bounce....And ladies and gentlemen: (splat!) THEY DON'T." (Although, yes, I suppose the Iconic Favorite Quote clip works better when it's at the end punchline of the clip, viz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6cfJfcl6Y0 )

Okay, if we're spending a while on classic Flintstones lines: Apart from little Rosalie Gypsum and her stage-mother, from the episode where Fred gets a job as school-bus driver, the other popular Flintstones quote in our house was from the time Wilma and Betty won a meatball-slogan contest:

While The Simpsons is just arrogant, self-satisfied satirical sarcasm, like a mean-and-snarky version of The Flintstones, Family Guy is a disturbing peek at Life With ADHD: Allthecharacters...talkinquick...staccatoburstsofdialogue.... Characters are constantly suddenly brained, mutilated, or immediately fall over plotz with heart attacks. Most of the comedy involve just one character piling another with abuse...and more of it...and more of it...and then going off in to a deliberately "random" (ie. you don't have to think about it) subconsciously free-associated 80's pop-culture reference for no apparent reason known to man. That's more than just "stoner" humor, that's the humor of a generation that can't pay attention to other human beings for more than 10 seconds, wish they'd just freakin' shut up with the talking already, dream about punching them in the face, and going back to their easier-to-understand comfort of movie and TV food. That's probably how it got such a loyal cult following, as a "safe haven" support group for people who can't handle the outside world. (When it first came on, I thought FG was supposed to be a deliberate polyglot parody on the overmined genre of Edgy Prime-Time Animation, eg. "The Last Prime-Time Cartoon Show": Look, there's the dumb Homer dad! There's the talking dog, from "Family Dog"! There's the evil baby, with Pinky & the Brain's voice! There's the cynical teen daughter from "Wait Till Your Father Gets Home"!...And then, a few seasons later, realized it wasn't, and that they actually meant the whole darn thing.)

Gunnite's cool-jazz-theme walk always cracked me up as a kid. 😁 That, and: PG: "So you think there's another man?" Fred: "I'm sure of it--He's been sending her icky stuff, like this: (shows poem)" PG: (reads) "It's a shame...A dirty shame." Fred: "You bet!" PG: "A shame I never learned to read." (Try hearing that in the combination Craig Stevens/Cary Grant voice...)

Star Trek (the TOS, and bits of TNG after the horrid first season) knew what it was doing. That's why it never won't be cool. While the Simpsons had ONE season of Matt Groening trying to expand the "dysfunctional-childhood" humor of the Tracey Ullman shorts, before letting his own narcissistic ego, and desire to Protect Our Moronic Suburban Society From Itself take over...And then, of course, spent several seasons making schoolyard snipes at anyone who said the show was no longer as funny, like Mad Magazine and the Internet, went on its South Park-like atheist-warrior "Homer tries to understand his comically-religious neighbor and pastor" campaign, and then left the show in the hands of other comic writers who just made up the whole thing as they went along. If you have to watch the proverbial One Episode of the post-Groening Simpsons apart from the first season, that would probably be Conan O'Brien's immortal "Marge vs. the Monorail" episode--After which Conan left the series, and the show went downhill like most series that Conan O'Brien stopped writing for. (80's SNL, HBO's "Not Necessarily the News"...)

I assume you mean The Court Jester, and not falling into the easy, but not particularly funny, trap of Hans Christian Andersen, as too many do?...Darn.

I assumed the first twenty years was Fox stubbornly insisting that the show would remain on the air until they got that danged Movie finally hashed out. We haven't heard talk of a second one for quite a while, and with Disney, I suspect we now never will. Their work is done.

When Fox first announced the sequel arc, there were originally going to be four films, with the third being the link where teenage Damien gets his heart broken in high school and goes the full Anakin Skywalker, but DO2 had flopped in theaters, so they just cut to the chase. Well, there's that, the fox-hunt scene, and the ending where (SPOILERS) Damien loses, and Goldsmith heralds the Second Coming with a full orchestral Cecil B. DeMille 50's Biblical-epic theme, but...yeah, it's pretty much Goldsmith's movie, not Neill's. Still, Sam Neill can be pretty good even in trash, as Jurassic Park III proved.

I dunno...There's a lot of symbolic overpraise for Spielberg and Schindler's List (1993) (for a while, judges would sentence anyone with a racial misdemeanor to watch it, as a "cure" not a punishment) that makes one groan and steer clear of it, but he and the scriptwriter absolutely NAIL the German mentality that went into the era. Most narrative versions wring their hands and dwell on the events, but well-intentioned labor-of-duty Spielberg remembers to dwell on the Why it happened, and that's what first made Ralph Fiennes a scary household name. Ehh...The first Omen had stoic Gregory Peck's gravitas and the filtered elegance of Richard Donner's soft-focus 70's-horror vibe--and Patrick "Second Doctor" Troughton as the mad priest--but DO2 sort of proves the problem of why Damien is a lot scarier when he doesn't talk. And yeah, the "Who's 'in' on it?" gimmick gets more confusing than an average screening of The Last Jedi. The third Sam Neill one is a bit goofy--the ending may properly be called the Ultimate Anticlimax--but Jerry Goldsmith ends up being the true star of the movie, with the most orchestral and classical variation on his evil-Gothic theme. Which he puts to use in what's considered one of the better movie opening-title sequences in past years, as we find out what happened to the daggers that were buried with Leo McKern in the cave-in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVlJmqsir58 That was supposed to be a Fox TV-pilot, and didn't quite make it. (Two words: Singing zombies.) Also, the series doesn't quite work with a girl, either--Too many flashbacks of that now must-see Jodorowsky-esque cultural-oddity Italian Omen-knockoff The Visitor (1979), which is now everywhere on streaming but prized in cult-film circles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0vBRdplSps

(winces at cartoon pun) Yeah, Criterion's getting into the MGM/UA Orphans, so a Criterion Great Escape would be just fine, thank you. And I can't remember why we thought Diva was the big thing, although foreign films were just starting to mainstream in the 80's, and that subway chase was pretty good.

I'm guessing it's about five months too late to guess Betty Blue (1986)? Just wanted to keep the thread bumped in time for New Year's...Some people don't know what to do with New Year's Day, but Blu/DVD buffs always know where they'll be.

The animated series originally planned to write out George Takei and Nichelle Nichols--replacing them with Lt.'s Aryx and M'ress, in back--but it was Leonard Nimoy who pushed to have all the cast back again, since Uhura and Sulu were the two "inclusive" characters on the original series. (It's still as staticky as anything else that came out of the He-Man producers, though.) The first season was trying for 60's Batman camp, but by the second season, Chris Reeve Super-mania set in with the kid audience, they abandoned the WWII setting, and had Wonder Woman now doing straightforward 70's-show plots in the present (she's an immortal Amazon, you know). Which made the first season an anomaly best forgotten.

It's Gerry Anderson, so basically a big-budget Thunderbirds--It was originally supposed to be a spinoff of the 60's British-staticky "UFO" series, so this one is mid-70's where UFO was early-70's. As Lawrence says, Martin Landau is the American captain of the moonbase, and while his taking everything with deadly seriousness usually helps a movie (like Ed Wood or Crimes & Misdemeanors), it's often a bit embarrassing here. Still, TWO classic 70's TV-themes, that you only wish the show could have been as cool or exciting as: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SpX8bVEmJo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsmefY94E_0