Tag Archives: 1981

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Throwback Thursday: “Omen III: The Final Conflict” (1981)

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Sam Neill passed away on Monday at the age of 78. I think most of my friends would associate him the most closely with the various “Jurassic Park” films in which he appeared (1993 – 2022), or maybe the classic 1990 film adaptation of Tom Clancy’s “The Hunt for Red October.”

But, being an older Gen X’er, my first memory of this fine actor wasn’t for his roles as a nice-guy paleontologist or an affable would-be Soviet defector. It was the goddam anti-Christ.

“Omen III: The Final Conflict” arrived in 1981. (I would have discovered it on VHS a few years later at my local mom-and-pop video store.) It never became a part of the zeitgeist the ways its predecessors did in the prior decade, but it was definitely my favorite. (I am linking below to MDB Trailers for the trailer.)

It had a “cool” factor that the other movies lacked — thanks to Neill’s performance as a charismatic devil incarnate. He was smooth and charming and persuasive, and was a hell of a lot more fun to watch than a bratty kid who screamed when he was brought to church. He could even psychically control dogs, for some reason.

The assassin-priest protagonists were also really cool. (I was an apostate even then, so it took a lot to make me root for the clergy.) I think I was also really impressed with the broad canvas over which the film’s plot was placed. I’d grown up on scary movies that were mostly standalone monster movies (or maybe slasher films). Seeing an epic battle with lots of combatants in a larger theological context really entertained me as an adolescent horror fan.

Neill made the movie. It just wouldn’t have been the same without his perfect blend of charm and menace. I think he always got too little credit as a fantastic bad guy. Think about it. If you took his Damien Thorne and inserted him into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, would’t he be a contender for its best villain?

A few of my fellow horror fans have opined on social media that the film has not aged well. Maybe I was just easily impressed as a kid. I’m going to have to check it out again to decide where I stand today.

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Cover to Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight” Single, 1981

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Atlantic Records.

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Throwback Thursday: World’s Finest Chocolate!

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I haven’t thought about these candy bars in over 40 years.  Then my friend (and famed journalist) Jason Brooks shared this meme on Facebook.

These were sooooo good.  And they were such a pain in the ass when you were asked by your school to sell them.  (I was assigned the task along with all my classmates in Catholic grade school in … 1981? 1982?)  As an adult today (arguably), it strikes me as a little odd, because my parents were paying tuition for me to go there.  I also question the prudence of sending a young child to sell candy door-to-door.

I even remember that weird white box that they came in.  I also seem to remember there being a contest or something if you sold a high number of these.   And there were a couple of kids who sold like a dozen boxes or so.  The scuttlebutt around school was that their parents worked in large offices and sold them on their kids’ behalf.

Anyway, World’s Finest Chocolate is still around.  (And my astute fellow comic book fans will know that they should not be confused with {World’s Finest Comics. )

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Throwback Thursday: Opryland USA (1972-1997)!

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My parents took me and my siblings to the “Opryland” amusement park in Nashville, TN around … 1981 or so;  I would have been about nine years old.  It was part of a family vacation that took us from Long Island, New York through two mountain ranges — I saw the Blue Ridge Mountains for the first time (though certainly not the last), and the Great Smoky Mountains.  (That, by itself, seemed like traveling to fantastic new dimension to a young kid.)

But Opryland was a blast.  I’m surprised I’ve never heard it mentioned by anyone I knew since I saw it over 40 years ago.  (And I’ve been friends with quite a few Southerners.)  The shot below is one of the few public domain photos I could find of the park itself (and it dates from the mid-1970’s).

My parents were excited about a stage show called “The Grand Ole Opry;” the theme of the amusement park was …  historical country music, or something.  That wasn’t of much interest to a kid, but I had a blast with rides like The Log Flume, the Skyride and those Tin Lizzie antique cars on the safety track.  (Somewhere there’s a family photo of nine-year-old me happily “driving” one.)

As it turns out, there actually are a  lot of people who remember Opryland if you look for them online.  There’s an official Facebook page, with tons of photos and links, along with this documentary from Nashville Public Television.

The “Grand Ole Opry” lives on as a live stage performance series and a radio show, but Opryland closed in 1997.  It really is missed by a lot of people.  Take a look at some of the comments on the Facebook page — this place had a hell of a loyal fanbase.

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Photo credit: Chris Faulkner, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

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LET THIS BE AN EDIFICE TO STRUGGLING WRITERS EVERYWHERE.

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Look at it. It’s beautiful. It’s glorious. I covet it despite the fact that it’s mine.

It is so precious to me that I’m going to booby-trap my home like an ancient South American temple — lest that sneaky Indiana Jones try and abscond with it. It also explains why I’m running around my home in only a loincloth, shouting a strange language and shooting poison darts at any newcomers.

I’m glad we had this talk.

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Throwback Thursday: the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” comic adaptation (1982)!

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When I was in the third grade, Marvel’s 1982 adaptation of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981) might have been the most beloved comic book in my collection.  And that’s saying a lot — there were a couple of issues of “Sgt. Rock” that I probably would have killed to protect.

“Raiders of the Lost Ark” was a quite decent adaptation of what I still revere as my favorite movie of all time (though it’s probably tied for that distinction with a certain unpopular film that I will not name here).  It makes sense that the book was so well crafted — this Internet thingamajig tells me that it was scripted by none other than comics great Walter Simonson.

I’m a little confused by some of what I’m reading online … yes, this was originally published as a three-issue arc.  (I had a couple of those.)  But it was also released as a complete book (with the cover art that you see below).

Postscript — I learned a couple of years ago that Marvel also released a two-issue adaptation of “Blade Runner” (1982) the same year.  The artwork looks pitch perfect.  Sooner or later, I need to get my hands on that.

 

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Cover to “Heavy Metal” #5, Esteban Maroto, 1981

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HM Communications.

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Throwback Thursday: “The Lone Ranger” (1949 -1957)!

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No, I obviously don’t remember “The Lone Ranger” during its initial run between 1949 and 1957.  (At least I hope that’s obvious — I’m a couple of full decades younger than that.)  But I absolutely do remember this show’s reruns from when I was a baby … maybe around 1976, if I had to guess?  I would have been about four years old.   (I was five when my family moved out of that house in Queens, New York, to rural Long Island.)

I know that people who claim early childhood memories are often viewed with skepticism — I get it.  (And I think many of us are more prone to confabulation than we’d like to admit.)  But I’ve actually got a few memories from when I was a toddler — and this is one of them.

I can remember my Dad putting “The Lone Ranger” on in the tiny … den or living room or whatever, to the left of our house’s front door and hallway.  You see the part in the intro below where the horse rears up at the .31 mark — and again at the 1:53 mark?  That was a verrrrrry big deal to me as a tot.

Go ahead, tell me I’m nuts.  I can take it.  You and I live in an age in which conspiracy theories have gone completely mainstream.  If I share something online that seems implausible to others, I figure I’m in a lot of company.

Anyway, I pretty much forgot about The Lone Ranger after that.  There was a 1981 television movie, “The Legend of the Lone Ranger,” that was remarkably well done — especially for a TV movie at the time.  I remember being pretty impressed with that — its plot-driving scene where the good guys get fatally ambushed was unexpectedly dour.

But I never bothered with the infamous 2013 film.  I occasionally enjoy movies that everybody else hates — something that earns me a lot of ribbing on Facebook — so maybe I should give it a shot.  Hell, the trailer makes it look decent.  And HBO’s “Westworld” has really whetted my appetite for westerns … which is weird, because “Westworld” is decidedly NOT a western — that’s sort of the point of its central plot device.  But still.

 

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Cover to “House of Mystery” #289, Joe Kubert, 1981

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DC Comics.

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Cover to “House of Mystery” #288, Michael Kaluta, 1981

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DC Comics.

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