Tag Archives: 1984

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Winding Convention: The Clockwork Precision of Brian De Palma’s Body Double

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Brian De Palma has been accused of a great many crimes during his rich and varied career.

The first and most futile of those accusations is that the legendary filmmaker aped much of his style from the works of Alfred Hitchcock. This is true for the most part, but Hitchcock practically wrote the book on suspense. Would it not be wise, then, to borrow from the master? Or would it be wiser to create anti-Hitchcock films and flounder at the feet of proven convention? […]

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Darkest Before Dawn: The Best Horror Trailers of the 80’s

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Question: What do you miss most about those halcyon home video days?

Cover art is something that stands out – it made that oh so joyous experience of choosing your rental all the more joyous. Choice is the second thing that springs to mind. Sometimes you would arrive home on a Saturday evening and be thoroughly disappointed with a movie that promised so much and delivered so little. But that was part of the fun, particularly when you unearthed the kind of gem that you couldn’t wait to rent again […]

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Retro Gaming Archives – Winter/Spring 1984

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1984 was a tough year for video gaming releases.

For many of us it was just another year and the words “video”, “game” and “crash” were never uttered consecutively. There was still a plethora of Atari, Intellivision and Colecovision consoles and games available in toy stores across the United States, Europe and other parts of the world. The advent of home computer gaming was as mainstream as it had ever been […]

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This Month in . . . 1984 (January)

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Traditionally, January is a slow month at the Box Office, and 1984 was no different following a busy festive period which included Clint Eastwood’s fourth outing as Dirty Harry and Brian De Palma’s seething gangster epic Scarface. January 13th would see the release of Hot Dog . . . The Movie,  a racy, teenage comedy lost in the overabundance of Porky’s clones which saturated the mid-1980’s.

The movie would star An American Werewolf in London’s David Naughton […]

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Killing Kris Kringle: Silent Night, Deadly Night and Censorship Hysteria

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Some movies are a victim of their time.

Whatever one may think of Charles E. Sellier’s exploitative festive slasher Silent Night Deadly Night, one thing is for certain: it has found a rather prominent place in horror movie history.

Back in the winter of 1984, the movie was pulled from theatres a week after its release due to widespread protests regarding an advertising campaign which depicted jolly old Saint Nick as a bloodthirsty killer. Incredulously, those ads ran on prime time television, which led to an almost medieval outrage from PTA members who had left their children watching Little House on the Prairie, only to […]

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Rise of the Machine: The Genesis of James Cameron’s The Terminator

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Conan the Barbarian may have catapulted Arnold Schwarzenegger onto the Hollywood mainstream, but it was James Cameron’s sci-fi classic The Terminator that would make him a household name.

Ironically, Arnie initially read for the part of Kyle Reese, and it took some persuasion from James Cameron to convince him that the role of the T-800 was better suited. Arnie was still riding high after box office success as the heroic Conan, so it was something of a risk for Cameron to challenge his […]

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