Category Archives: Movies

Movie Night: The Burbs

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The wife and I recently watched The Burbs, a 1989 dark comedy cult classic starring Tom Hanks.

The plot summary is that a group of suburbanites are suspect of their new neighbors (The Klopeks), a reclusive family of weirdos, so this sets in motion a series of comical events centered around spying on the new family.

Character Summary:
Tom Hanks – the lead as a reluctant neighbor that gets reluctantly drawn into the conspiracy theories.
Carrie Fisher – his wife who just want him to spend his week vacation at the lake.
Rick Ducommun – the chubby loud funny instigator of a neighbor (so basically me) who helps to draw in Tom Hanks.
Bruce Dern – the ex-military neighbor who still thinks he’s in the service, ready for duty, and has an unexplainable attractive wife.
Corey Feldman – the somewhat obnoxious teenish / early twenties neighbor who still live at home and uses the shenanigans for his entertainment.
Henry Gibson – the patriarch of the weirdo neighbors.

Now, I am not going to give any spoilers, because I found myself not remembering all of the film. I hadn’t watched in since, guessing, the early ’90s. However, I will say it has held up. It was well cast, funny, and is great dark humor for the late ’80s. The trailer is given below.

If you’ve never seen it, or haven’t watched in in years, give it a go! Hilarious!

Movie Nights

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Lately, in the evening, the wife and I have been revisiting old movies from our youth. Hence, you’ll see a few movie night posts along the way. So let’s get a must out of the way.

Popcorn: I believe we have perfected the art of making it at home through these essentials:
1. Waring Pro Popcorn Maker: Wife purchased this years ago. Not even sure it is made anymore, but there are other brands that are a similar style.
2. Movie Theatre Coconut Popcorn Oil & Flavoring Salt: These work great in the popper and give a great movie theatre popcorn flavor.

Now here is where I go a little rogue. I like to microwave a little bit of Kerry Gold Salted Butter – not that much, a tablespoon or less. Now I dump the popcorn in an older paper grocery bag and drizzle this liquid gold all over the popcorn, then close the bag and shake the hell out of it for 5 seconds or so. That little bit of extra butter flavor just kicks up an already great popcorn a notch. That how my grandmother used to butter popcorn, so it also tastes a little bit like I remember from my childhood. Top notch.

If we are not snacking on popcorn, we are having frozen pizza. More on that later.

The Eeriness of the Early ’80s

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If you think back to the early ’80s there was a series of films and songs that all focused on global thermonuclear war. The two superpowers, USA and USSR, were always at odds and the film and music industries capitalized on this.

First, I am sure everyone remembers War Games – the fictitious story of what could happen if a, then, supercomputer, was tasked with the United States’ nuclear response. If not, let me jog your memory.

War Games was released in June, 1983. It did $126 million at the box office… in 1983.

Later in 1983 The Day After would appear as a primetime TV film. It demonstrated what could actually occur post nuclear attack.

Per Wikipedia, more than 100 million people, in nearly 39 million households, watched The Day After during its initial broadcast. It was also rebroadcast in Russia several years later during nuclear proliferation treaty talks.

One final example is the UK TV film Threads. It also gave insight to a before and after scenario; wherein the after is an extended time period after.

Per Wikipedia, the initial broadcast of Threads on BBC was viewed by 6.9 million people.

As for music, several prominent pop songs were also written. The first example, Alphaville – Forever Young (1984). Here is a fantastic version I found that was re-recorded many years later.

Another example is Modern English – Melt With You (1982). This is kind of a peppy song for being about a nuclear holocaust, no?

And finally, perhaps the most in-your-face example regarding the subject matter, Nena – 99 Red Balloons (1984), which is funny, because this is an English version of the original German version 99 Luftballoons which deals with slightly different subject matter. You can read about that HERE. Enjoy the translated version below.

The films are considered classics / cult classics, and the songs are still bangers. But goddamn… The early ’80s was an eerie time to be alive.