Warner Bros.
Tag Archives: Blade Runner
Album cover for “Blade Runner” Soundtrack by The New American Orchestra, 1982
The full title is “Blade Runner (Orchestral Adaptation Of Music Composed For The Motion Picture By Vangelis).”
Throwback Thursday: “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981)!
This is it, folks. This is the greatest movie of all time. It’s better than “Blade Runner” (1982), better than John Carpenter’s “The Thing” (1982), better than “Aliens” (1986). And those movies were all … perfect. (Man the 1980’s really were a golden age for pop culture, weren’t they?)
I was eight years old when I saw this in the theater, and I thereafter was a bit of an Indiana Jones cultist. It wasn’t just the action figures and board games and comic book and posters and role-playing games. I actually resolved to become an archeologist (or a paleontologist), and I thought the best way that I could prepare for that as a third grader was to gain experience “in the field.”
So I would lead my friends on “digs” or “expeditions” in the forests around my neighborhood. We would often arbitrarily pick a spot in the middle of nowhere and then just dig there, with a shovels we borrowed from my family’s garage. We were hoping to find … anything of interest, I guess :buried treasure, dinosaur bones, Indian arrowheads, whatever. (We never did. About the only thing we “discovered” was that tree roots are a real bitch when you’re trying to dig a hole.) I even kept maps and journals of our “adventures.” These are the kinds of things that boys do before they discover girls.
I tried to look the part, too. I had a brown cowboy hat that I hoped could pass for a fedora, an (empty) binocular case and a prop bullwhip snagged from a Levi’s jeans display at the local mall. My older brother called me “Idaho Bones” because I essentially was a cheap, skinny knockoff of the character I wanted to emulate. I hated it at the time, but as an adult, I kinda can’t dispute his assessment.
Oh, well. We all had fun. Every other boy in the neighborhood who spotted that bullwhip wanted to try it, so there’s that.
To this day, “Raiders” is still my favorite movie ever.
By the way, I am linking below to the Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers Youtube channel.
I don’t see the ****ing tractors in these pictures!!!!
I SWEAR to you, I keep stumbling over these “I am not a robot” tests.
I know I’m not a replicant because I don’t have any superhuman powers. (I keep checking.)
It’s a replicant Christmas!
Hot damn, my best friend gave me the coolest presents for a writer! What you see are “Poe-ka Dots” socks, sculpted raven bookends from the New York Public Library and the piece de resistance …
… a lapel pin fashioned after the origami unicorn from “Blade Runner” (1982). I didn’t even know such a thing existed, so I wouldn’t have even known to ask for it. I can’t believe she found it!
“‘MORE HUMAN THAN HUMAN’ IS OUR MOTTO.”
Italian Poster for “Blade Runner” (1982)
Warner Bros.
“Where did I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got?”
“I don’t know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life – anybody’s life; my life. All he’d wanted were the same answers the rest of us want. Where did I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got?”
Throwback Thursday: the original trailer for “Blade Runner” (1982)!
I sent this trailer to a pal of mine after he told me he couldn’t remember if he’d seen 1982’s “Blade Runner.” (The poor, benighted soul!) As you can see … the trailer is a bit crude by today’s standards. It’s just a loose montage of key scenes in chronological order — with narration that is obviously performed by a store-brand knockoff of Harrison Ford. (I am linking here to the Movieclips Classic Trailers Youtube channel, by the way.)
You can kind of tell how Warner Bros. wanted to market the film as a standard action-thriller, instead of the moody, stygian sci-fi meditation that it is. And you can kind of understand why general audiences didn’t turn out for the movie while its cult following gained so much steam later.
Throwback Thursday: the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” comic adaptation (1982)!
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.
Throwback Thursday: “The Beastmaster” (1982)!
“The Beastmaster” (1982) was THE movie that captured the imaginations of grade-school boys in the 1980’s. There were summer afternoons when this was the single biggest topic of conversation.
I almost wrote here that the movie was an obvious knockoff of the far-better-remembered “Conan the Barbarian;” that is how I’ve always remembered it. But the Internet informs me that they hit theaters only months apart. Wikipedia also informs me that “The Beastmaster” was actually a commercial failure, and that its two sequels and its television adaptation (all in the 1990’s) were aimed at a subsequent cult following spawned by the original movie’s appearance on 80’s TV. (I’m pretty sure that’s how my friends and I saw it.) What the hell was wrong with 1982 audiences, anyway? Was it something in the water? “Blade Runner” and John Carpenter’s “The Thing” were also flops that year — and those were some the best science fiction movies of all time. Talk about pearls before swine.
Anyway, please understand — “Conan the Barbarian” was inarguably the better film. No matter how much it polarized critics and audiences, that dour, violent, R-rated movie was intended as a serious adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s literary source material.
“The Beastmaster,” on the other hand, was campier stuff that was firmly aimed at kids. (I was surprised to learn that it had its own literary source material, but its B-movie wackiness only followed those books very loosely.) It had a PG rating and was jam-packed with garishly grotesque monsters that would thrill a fourth grade boy — the animalistic berzkers were what really got under my skin; my friends were more unnerved by the … bat-people. (There is a simple but quite effective 80’s-era practical effect that show how these baddies digest a victim alive. You kinda have to see the movie to know what I mean.) Hell, even the witches were a little creepy, and witches were not high on our list of things that were scary. I honestly think the film’s success owes a lot to its successful incorporation of horror movie elements designed to impress the younger set.
“The Beastmaster” starred Marc Singer, who went on to star in another 80’s phenomenon, television’s “V” series. (I might have loved “V” even more than “The Beastmaster.”) The movie also starred Tanya Roberts, who was another quite popular topic among gradeschool boys in the 80’s. John Amos starred in a supporting role, and he did a really good job of it. A lot of my older friends will remember him as the grouchy Dad in the “Good Times” (1974-1979); 80’s kids might point him out as the owner of “McDowell’s” in 1988’s “Coming to America.”
I really am curious to find out how well “The Beastmaster” has held up over time. I was surprised to discover that there is a great copy of it here on Youtube. (Thanks, VHS Drive-In.) You can bet that I’m watching it this weekend.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 