The DAN ZONE

The 2003 film The Locals has a title that sounds like it’s going to be one of those grizzly backwoods torture films that are so popular today, but in reality, it ends up being more like an hour and a half episode of Amazing Stories: you know, a heartfelt tale veiled by some supernatural elements.

Two city boys, a dark haired cutie and his blond friend, hop in their car for a night of gallivanting through the countryside. As their journey gets underway, the film keeps cutting to some mysterious plaid-wearing dude digging a grave. But back to the boys. As night descends and they, of course, end up on a desolate dirt road in the mountains, they run into two females who are heading to a party—and look like they’re heading for a Madonna concert in 1985. The boys even ask if it’s some sort of 80s party, and one of the girls claims it’s going to be ‘rad’ and then expresses her interest in their car, which appears to be a make she’s never heard of. Hm….

Anyway, the boys start to follow the girls to the party, end up in a car accident, losing the girls they’re following in the process, and are soon trekking along the dark country road with just a flashlight. Gee, I think I recently reviewed another film with this same exact setup. Anyway, this begins a chain of events that has the boys being chased by ‘the locals,’ a bunch of ominous, ‘deathly’ white trash guys in a pickup truck.

The film is intriguing and keeps your attention, with some tame suspense, limited gore, and little in the way of actual ‘horror’, other than the supernatural premise that unfolds. Still, it’s definitely an entertaining viewing, and actually has a melancholy payoff, which is where the Spielberg-esque twist comes in. If only there were a swelling orchestral John Williams score, your eyes would probably well up a bit.

My only major complaint about the film is the extreme use of bright lighting in the all-outdoor location! That sure is some strong moonlight! As a result of the saturation, it looks ridiculous having the lead character running around with a flashlight. You can barely see the beam because the lighting is so bright! Ugh! I expect so much less Hollywood lighting when I watch a low-budget flick!

In the early 1970s, the zombie genre made famous by 1968’s Night of the Living Dead was in its infancy, with low-budget zombie flicks being churned out both in the U.S. and overseas. Having brushed up on most of them, I have to say that Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is perhaps one of my favorites, delivering zombie thrills without relying on the hoards of zombies present in other films. In fact, the majority of the film features one zombie…that’s right. ONE zombie.

A hip young couple have hooked up to travel the English countryside. When they stop for directions, the fun begins. The man goes off to talk to some agriculturists experimenting with a radiation machine that provokes insects into devouring one another instead of precious crops. Uh-oh! If I were the one asking these guys for directions, I’d be like, “Dudes! You’re just begging to make people start feasting on each other!”

Anyway, the woman, waiting back at the car, suddenly feels a pair of eyes on her. Excellent zombie viewpoint and raucous music/zombie ‘sounds’ accompany the appearance of the first of the living dead. A recently drowned man (it was in the local paper) turns out to be the only zombie hiding in the shadows of this desolate town for most of the movie. And yet, the tension remains high despite the seemingly limited threat. As the body count rises, the local detective begins to suspect that the couple is actually committing the murders—you know, the disemboweling and gutting. At one point, he even gets nasty with our male hero, criticizing his long hair and “faggot clothes.” Awesome. Why worry about zombies when there’s a guy with faggot clothes threatening the safety of your town?

A mandatory visit to the cemetery finds the couple trapped in a basement with the main zombie and his friends, who rise from nearby coffins to join him, including a FREAKY old lady zombie who looks like a witch. These zombies are no slouches. In fact, they’re pretty strong (they can unearth a tombstone and throw it) and they climb ladders! This scene delivers, and the director isn’t afraid to let darkness be darkness, a quality in horror films that has been lost in polished, sleek Hollywood films of the new millennium.

Quite a bit of the movie takes place in a dreary hospital, which is where the film reaches its climax and largest zombie count and human slaughter, including a totally ridiculous strip down of a nurse by the zombies. As the film nears its end, you think the director is copping out and stealing the twist right out of the original Night of the Living Dead. Think again.

Just finished watching the campy slasher comedy Drive Thru (2007), featuring a killer clown mascot of a popular fast food restaurant. The name of the mascot is Horny the Clown and the name of the restaurant is Hella Burger, so you pretty much know what to expect going into this one. Our killer Horny is awesome, goofy yet freaky like the clowns in Killer Clowns from Outer Space. In fact, Horny’s clown mask is modeled after the fast food drive thru intercom, so his mouth looks like a speaker you’d talk into to place your order. It’s all cheesy fun plus some pretty good gore. The actors and director don’t bother to take themselves seriously, just going with it, which really works. There’s some good Styx/AC/DC references for 80s lovers and a slight obsession with ‘wiggers’ and black street talk (even though all the main characters are white). Also, there are also extraneous political jabs at Orange County, Republicans, and George Bush. It’s oddly out of place and feels somewhat forced, even if it’s not as excessive as the political satire of David Arquette’s liberal horror film The Tripper. I know both films were released when Bush was still in office, but that’s simply not the kind of  ‘clown’ horror I want to relive again and again!

Back in the 1970s, this little movie called Let’s Scare Jessica to Death was one of many scary films I’d watch on television with my mother and brothers. Although I hadn’t seen it since the 70s, I remembered two things very clearly about it. First, it is one of those films that leaves you scratching your head because the film is purposely vague in its conclusion. The other is that there is ONE scene involving a chick in a white dress rising out of the water that used to freak me out as a kid.

Last year, this 1971 film was finally released on DVD, allowing me the chance to experience it once again as an adult. The first thing I realize about this film is that kids back then must have been a lot more attentive, because this movie stuck with me, and yet, it’s a typical 70s slow burner where nothing major really happens until the last half hour, including that scene that scarred me for life. However, attentive kid or not, it’s still easier to understand the plot as an adult.

It seems Jessica was in a loony bin for a while, and now she, her husband, and their good friend are going to live in an old house in a quiet town so she can ‘rest.’ In usual 70s fashion, this film is kind of trippy. It begins at the end, with Jessica sitting in a boat on a lake, narrating in her mind. The scene seems like definite inspiration for the final scene in the original Friday the 13^th. Next, we’re taken back to when the weirdness begins, with the trio mentioned above driving to their new home town—in a hearse, their only means of transportation. On their way, they stop at a cemetery so Jessica can capture tombstone art on pieces of tracing paper. Apparently, it’s a hobby for this nut job who is grieving the loss of her father about a year ago: a hobby her husband allows her to pursue. Jessica sees a mysterious girl in white in the cemetery, but the girl disappears and Jessica (whose head we are usually in as she talks to herself to assure herself she’s not crazy) is afraid she’s still having whatever kind of episodes got her committed in the first place.

When the trio gets to the new house, they discover some free-spirited, homeless flower child hippie chick has been camping out in the abandoned house that the trio now owns. She seems nice, so they ask her to stay—and she soon suggests having a séance! Once again, Jessica’s husband lets his crazy, grieving wife participate! And so the creepy fun begins. Is Jessica seeing things and hearing voices? Is their new female houseguest evil, or perhaps even a ghost? Why are the only people in town elderly men, all of whom have mysterious bandages on one part of their body or another? Is Jessica’s husband part of some cultish plan to ‘scare Jessica to death’? Don’t expect to have any of those questions answered if you watch this atmospheric chiller.

Finally saw the reimagining of the 1983 classic The House on Sorority Row. In the original film, a bunch of sorority sisters unintentionally (sort of) kill their mean house mother and dump her body in a muck-filled pool in the backyard. Of course, you can’t keep a good killing down, and soon, the girls pay for their sin as they are picked off one by one.

The remake also has a prank gone wrong, a house mother (awesomely played by Carrie Fisher) and sorority chicks getting killed off one by one, but this film seems to be more of a ‘sister’ to I Know What You Did Last Summer than the original film from which it gets its name (there’s not even a pool!). This film is actually more a throwback to those late 90s slashers that followed in the footsteps of Scream (can you believe the 90s are like 20 years ago now?).

The film isn’t particularly scary or suspenseful, but it is enjoyable. There are plenty of cute frat boys, sometimes shirtless, a lot of slutty chicks for straight guys, also sometimes shirtless, there are some fun and unique kills, and there’s an awesome lead character. With her rough mannerisms and husky voice, she reminds me of Jersey Shore’s J-Woww (minus the boobieliciousness and the hair) and is very likeable, even if her character makes some decisions later in the film that are contradictory to how the characters is presented in the earlier part of the film.

The real show stealer is the stereotypical hot blonde bitch (doesn’t every teen film need one?), who has some of the best one-liners. But for some reason, most of them are delivered within the last half hour of the film. It felt like it took that long for the film to find its voice as a witty, campy slasher. But it’s all good, because the last half hour of the film really needs that dose of camp because that’s pretty much when the film falls apart. It suffers from one of those ridiculous ‘twists’ in which the writers select the most irrelevant character in the film to be the killer just so that viewers will never guess who it is—and, um, still find it hard to buy even after the lame motive is revealed.

Definitely don’t go into this film expecting a high quality slasher or a horror comedy. It doesn’t succeed at either and is somewhat generic, yet it’s still somewhat endearing, mostly because of the unique kills and some extremely charismatic actresses. Also, it should have captured its more campy tone earlier on, because once it does, it really finds its stride.

A couple of years ago, I caught this movie called The Roost on cable, and it really struck a chord with me. It was a 2005 film, but it looked and felt like something out of the late 70s or early 80s. But that wasn’t the only reason I liked it. It was a creepy, tense, suspenseful film that delivered an atmosphere of isolation and dread. The story is simple and typical. A bunch of kids heading for a Halloween party in the middle of nowhere crash their car in a ditch after a bat dive bombs their windshield. Of course, they have to get out in the middle of the dirt road at night to try to find help. Other than a jack-o-lantern on the porch of the house they come across, there’s really no focus on the Halloween holiday in this film.

The Roost is a bats/zombie hybrid. A roost of bats lives in the creepy old barn at the seemingly abandoned house. If they bite you, you turn into a zombie. The film’s spookiness is due in part to the limited number of people and zombies crawling around the barn. In heavy retro style, the film uses some classic Argento lighting of red, green and blue at times, but mostly, it relies on just the drop lighting that illuminates the barn, which reminds me very much of the super dark and shadowy atmosphere at the isolated camp in the original Friday the 13^th. Director Ti West allows darkness to be as black as it truly is, immersing viewers in the location. Slow pans, far shots and sustained still shots are all reminiscent of the most effective camera work of films from the past, instead of the A.D.D. choppy editing used in modern films. Although one character has a cell phone, the film is almost timeless, with no noticeable current cultural references to date it. This seems to be something the director shies away from in his films as he celebrates films of the past. The quality of the film is even made to look grainy and flecked with white specs you used to see on old VHS tapes.

While The Roost is a subtle homage to films from the 80s, Ti West’s second film, the slow burning The House of the Devil, pretty much sets itself in the 80s without ever saying it. This creepfest has people smoking in a public pizza parlor, has the main character using a cassette walkman with spongy headphones, focuses on the use of a pay phone, features corded phones with rotary dials, and doesn’t once show a modern computer, not even in the main character’s dorm room.

The plot is, again, simple but perfect for setting up an atmosphere of isolation. A young college student, desperate for cash, takes a spur of the moment babysitting job at a big house way out in the woods…which leads her into some serious occult trouble. When her friend (who has high 80s hair and heavy mascara) drives her to the house, we get a rear view of the car’s taillights that looks like it was lifted right from the original John Carpenter Halloween when Annie and Laurie are arriving at their babysitting gigs. Later on, the main character looks up the stairwell of the house where she’s babysitting and again it’s straight out of Halloween, when Laurie looks up the stairwell while calling nervously for her friends.

Speaking of horror films that starred Jamie Lee Curtis, the eerie sustained string chords used as this film’s soundtrack are highly reminiscent of the score from the original Prom Night. There are even some classic 80s tracks used in the film. On the car radio can be heard Greg Kihn’s “The Breakup Song (They Don’t Write Me Like That Anymore)” and the song “One of Our Submarines” by Thomas Dolby. The main character at one point puts on her walkman and does a very 80s solo impromptu dance through the house to the sounds of The Fixx’s “One Thing Leads to Another.”

But as cheesy as her dance routine is, the main character in The House of the Devil does something that rarely happens in horror movies—when she gets totally freaked out from being alone in the creepy old house, she turns on EVERY light in it. Now THAT is realism and one of many reasons to see this film. As icing on the 80s horror cake, 80s scream queen Dee Wallace has a super short cameo.

While Ti West hasn’t scored himself a major theatrical release yet, he may be on his way, because his latest film was just released directly to DVD…Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever. Obviously it’s not his own creation this time, but more a film for hire. But it is a sequel to a major horror release (that I love), so it looks like Ti is on his way. I just hope he doesn’t get pigeonholed into making second rate direct to DVD sequels. Cabin Fever 2 is fun enough, but it can’t compare to Ti’s own films. It has a more polished, modern feel, although he does manage to through in some of his 80s references, including songs like the Ramones’ “Somebody Put Something in My Drink,” Sparks’ “The Willys,” and Sparks’ “Eaten by the Monster of Love,” a song that just happened to also have been featured in the 80s classic Valley Girl! But even better than that, Ti uses a song from the ultimate late 70s/early 80s horror cheese moment—the disco song Prom Night that was played during that ridiculous disco dance scene between Jamie Lee Curtis and her boyfriend in the original Prom Night. I could NOT believe my ears when it came on!

The plot of Cabin Fever 2 lends itself more to a title like High School Fever. In this far inferior sequel, the infection is spreading through a high school during prom, which eventually leads to the entire student body being locked inside, which adds a serious Quarantine element to the film. However, the high school gym dance setting is ripe for Carrie references, which it totally delivers. The eerie blue and red lighting is there, the viewpoint from the stage down at the crowd of students is there, and eventually, chaos erupts and everyone starts running for the gym doors JUST like in Carrie. But to add something new to the mix, there’s a very explicit scene involving the infection’s effects on a teenage boy’s genitals that might make you a lifelong spitter if you aren’t already….

I’m not sure if Cabin Fever 2: Spring Break is a good thing or bad thing for Ti West’s career. I just hope he still has time to make his own non-mainstream films. Because I’m highly anticipating more films like The Roost and The House of the Devil.

Just got my Zombieland Blu-Ray. Saw it in the theaters and liked it enough to add to my zombie movie collection, but really, it’s more of a lighthearted family comedy with a zombie-themed intro and outro. Remove some of the gore, edit the film to an hour from 88 minutes, and this could have been an episode of Spielberg’s Amazing Stories in the 80s. Zombieland is a ‘cute’ zombie film. Yes, cute. How can a movie starring Abigail Breslin not be cute??? How can a movie that celebrates and repeatedly references the film Ghostbusters not be cute? How can a movie that has the characters basically trekking across country to go to an amusement park not be cute? How can a movie that has two teenagers falling in love not be cute? And of course, Woody Harrelson is in it, and, well, he’s still cute. So ‘cute’ definitely fits—except for those, you know, zombie flesh eating portions. Now that I think of it, the beginning and end of the film should also have been edited together to create a very good zombie episode of Masters of Horror, because the little zombie action this film does feature is excellent.

Last weekend, I completed Resident Evil 5 with my video game partner in crime. In the past, I’ve manned the controls while she kept me on track with a walkthru as I got lost in the labyrinth-like corridors of ominous mansions, evacuated city streets, desolate laboratories, scummy sewers loaded with giant poison spitting spiders, and shadowy parks and gardens swarming with creepy crawlies and a variety of statue, medallion and jewel puzzles.

Of course, all the atmosphere and tension that made you sit on the edge of your seat when playing the original Resident Evil games was lost when they ‘revamped’ the series beginning with Resident Evil 4 to appease the action gamers who found the original game mechanics too hard. Gone were the moaning zombies, replaced by running, tool swinging villagers who would come at you in hoards, forcing you to fight instead of run when the going got tough. At one point, you even ended up in a castle with baddies wearing black hoods and shooting at you with guns! ‘Horror survival’ it wasn’t, even if it did have its moments, including a freaky baddie who was like a mashup of Leatherface and Jason in Friday the 13^th Part 2, wielding a chainsaw while wearing a hick getup complete with a potato sack over his head. He had us shrieking in terror quite a bit in Resident Evil 4, but that terror was counterbalanced by the dirty old gun dealing merchant who would appear in dark alleys, throwing his trench coat open to show you his goods.

Resident Evil 5 manages to pull us even farther away from the isolated, eerie situations and locations of the original series, with even more weapon-wielding angry villagers, as well as loads of baddies with guns, bombs, and bigger artillery. You could exchange these zombie-faced baddies for army soldiers or mobsters and the gaming experience and atmosphere wouldn’t be any different. Resident Evil is no longer a horror series. It’s an action series with occasional horror themes. Resident Evil 5 does throw in some Lickers to satiate longtime fans of the original game, and you encounter a couple of other ghastly beasts, but the majority of the game is spent exchanging gun fire and avoiding grenades.

The saving grace of this installment is indeed that Capcom has made Resident Evil co-op for the first time ever. So my friend put down the walkthru and accompanied me on this not so horror-intense journey. It was definitely a blast. You really feel like you’re in a movie. The game is split screen, one character’s screen on top, the other’s on the bottom, which makes the visuals tough to see at times unless, perhaps, you have a 60” screen to make each smaller screen seem bigger than on my 34”. Trying to read files and notes in the game was brutal because the print was so small on the not-so accommodating backgrounds. Also, unlike the original series, which had plot-explaining files spread throughout the game, Resident Evil 5 tends to have you experience non-stop action for a couple of hours straight. Then suddenly you get a breather when you enter a room loaded with exposition on extremely long files and computer documents, which really spoils the pacing.

As for the co-op play, more often than not, we’d make the mistake of separating when we reached a new area instead of sticking really close. For instance, when we entered a seemingly abandoned African village of huts loaded with ammo and health, we did just what you’d do in real life—we totally ran amok and looted the place. Unfortunately, by doing so, we ended up triggering two separate villager onslaughts that should have been taken in waves if we’d stuck together and entered the two trigger spots one at a time. I’d be screaming that I was trapped in some ramshackle arena with two giant natives while my friend would be screaming that she couldn’t help me because she was trapped at the dead end of a river with villagers surrounding her. We learned our lesson after that and began sticking together, but even then the game would sometimes force us to separate. I’d assist my friend by catapulting her over a wall or gap so she could go pull a lever to lower a bridge for me to join her, but before she’d get to it, she would be swarmed by enemies! This was fun, not only because she’d be screaming in terror while I laughed so hard tears were streaming down my eyes, but because I could give her backup by pulling out my sniper rifle (you know, after wiping the sight-blurring tears from my eyes).

Co-op added some other interesting aspects to the gaming mechanics. As you gather treasures during the game, you can sell them to buy upgrades for your weapons. Unfortunately, you can either spend the money on fully upgrading one person’s weapon to create one powerhouse baddie destroyer, or only slightly upgrade each person’s weapon, leading to two weaker guns instead of one super weapon. It’s something two players have to decide together—will we both have to fight harder with slightly upgraded guns, or will one of us be a vulnerable backup with a wimpy weapon as the other stays up front with one heavy fire power weapon? Sharing health is another catch to the experience. What’s cool is, if the two of you stand near each other when you administer health, you’ll each get a bit of health (instead of either of you healing fully). Also, if one character is near dying, the other character can run over to you and ‘resuscitate you’ with the press of a button (looking onscreen as if she’s jabbing a needle in your heart like something straight out of Pulp Fiction). This little additional rejuvenation can conveniently draw out your near death experience until you can get to safety and heal more plentifully.

Another complication is that everything is done in real time. No more escaping the gaming chaos by hitting the inventory button to heal or reload ammo or, as this game lets you do, exchanging items with a partner in relative ‘pause’ safety. This makes for some difficult and challenging moments during major boss battles, when your friend has picked up ammo you most desperately need for your gun, but you’re both being bombarded by some fire-breathing, slime-throwing, tentacles-swinging monster relentlessly.

And speaking of difficult, we opted for the ‘easy’ mode when we played, which promises to let you enjoy the story and journey…and it was frickin’ HARD. Then, to insult our confidence in our gaming abilities, we read a review about the game in which the critic claims that hard mode is too easy! Whatever!

Resident Evil 5 is a fun game. A really fun game. If you play it with another person (which you can also do online with a complete stranger). But I can’t see myself ever playing the game alone (in which case, your partner is AI). I’ve replayed Resident Evil Zero through Code Veronica numerous times because the chilling atmosphere gets you every time when you’re going it alone, immersing you in your own interactive horror film. But without any moments of sheer terror to be found in this game (the sensation has been replaced by panic and button mashing when being bombarded by baddies), it would be nothing more than a tedious task to get through this game alone.

It just so happens that I have two films in my horror DVD collection that revolve around a group of 20-somethings gathering in a house for some sort of “reality” show (not counting Halloween: Resurrection). They are Kolobos (1999) and My Little Eye (2002). Even though I’m watching my horror films alphabetically, I thought I’d watch these two back to back because of the similar premise, and because people on the message boards like to compare them. The general consensus is that My Little Eye is way better. But me being me, I much prefer the more simplistic yet effective and highly rewatchable Kolobos.

The spin that Kolobos takes is that a bunch of 20-somethings are brought together in a house for an ‘experimental movie’. There are cameras all over the house and the cast is expected to interact in a Real World scenario, so, yeah, it’s basically a reality show. And it’s also a creepy little movie. It has everything. Argento-esque lighting in reds, greens and blues screw with your mind as they strobe on and off, causing you to hallucinate monsters in the shadows as much as the lead character, a young woman with some serious mental issues. Is she imagining the horrors, or are her visions real? There are faceless people wielding knives, creepy mannequins, gruesome deaths via brutal booby traps set up around the house, disembodied voices, and a nasty looking deformed killer. Once this film gets going, it’s the perfect balance of gore, tension, and tight camera work that keeps you on the edge of your seat, all handled very well in the confined setting of the house (after the kids get locked in). And best of all, the handful of characters may seem generically stereotypical of all slasher films at first, but they quickly break those personality restraints and prove to be very likable. And it gets some bonus points for featuring an odd cameo by none other than Linnea Quigley that seems more like an afterthought than part of a  master plan. Especially considering she doesn’t take off her top, and when has that ever happened in a horror film featuring Linnea Quigley???

The loftier My Little Eye goes for a much more complex approach, with loads of character development (aka: tons of drawn out dialogue!). It also much more of a whodunit than a horror movie. Our group of victims in this movie have gathered at a large isolated house in the snowy woods for a webcast reality show. The goal is, whoever can stay the longest wins a load of money (inspired by the original House on Haunted Hill I assume). So why should the ‘contestants’ believe that anything suspicious is up when freaky things begin happening? It has to be a part of the ‘game’ just to scare them off. I personally find that this film follows a much more mainstream template. There are loads of stereotypes: The prudish lead girl, a ‘sweet’ wimpy dude, the greedy self-involved bastard, a slut who immediately hops into bed with the stranger who appears at the door, oh, and the mysterious stranger, played by hot hot hot Bradley Cooper. We are treated to a long sex montage, with everyone in the house hearing it from different rooms as a raucous song with lyrics like “suck my titties” blares. The film also relies heavily on typical hard orchestral stabs to create its atmosphere and faux scares. There is also some Argento-esque lighting, but it’s worked into the concept of the film, with the green saturation moments being the result of night vision on the reality show cameras and the red light being the result of, well, a red lamp hanging in one of the rooms! The film doesn’t particularly sustain its suspense, and the excessive dialog is delivered too dramatically and even melodramatically. Unlike the realistic panic that ensues after all hell breaks lose in Kolobos, in this movie, once the bodies pop up and the still living figure out they’re part of a vile reality show, they still decide it will be okay to go to sleep in their own rooms as long as one of them stays up and keeps watch. The movie mostly fails to deliver on death scenes, but it does have an interesting ‘twist’ ending, so you get some payoff that way.

But the bottom line is, once you’ve seen My Little Eye, there really isn’t much reason to see it again because it’s just not very captivating. Kobolos, on the other hand, might be a considered a lowbrow production by most viewers, but that’s why it gives you a bunch of cheap thrills you can experience again and again.

Remember when the 80s seemed so fresh, so new, so cutting edge? Video games (a yellow blob eating lines of white pixels), movies (Matthew Broderick conversing with a computer!), television (K.I.T.T. the talking car) and the music scene (icy synthesizers, a drum machine, and cold, robotic vocals). Somehow, what was once so futuristic has become ‘retro’ and ‘old skool’! So how can those of us who loved the unique experiences and technologies waiting around every corner in the 80s get that virginal feeling back again? Because there’s no denying that “Don’t You Want Me” by the Human League just doesn’t pack the electronic punch it once did now that you can hear it on lite radio about ten times a day.

I’ve managed to relive the spirit of the past in a handful of ways. Let’s start with the video games. Naturally, if you still have an old Atari or Colecovision collecting dust somewhere in your house, blow off the cobwebs, plug it into a TV (you know, one of the HDMI-less clunkers that accepts a videogame switchbox), and start playing. If those classic gaming systems were sold in a garage sale years ago when you’d decided you were too ‘adult’ for them, then you have another option. Most gaming systems from the past decade have numerous compilations of classic home system and arcade video games. There are awesome Atari, Intellivision and Activision console game collections, plus arcade compilations from video game companies like Namco, Sega, Konami, Data East, and Midway. You can also download many Nintendo Entertainment System games onto your Wii. There are even a variety of joystick controllers you can buy for some of the game systems to get a more genuine arcade experience. Your best bet is to tell your friends to forget the kids, forget work, forget all adult obligations, and to just come over for a night of classic gaming—Galaxian, Pac Man, Frogger, Asteroids, Space Invaders, Dig Dug, Ms. Pac Man, Defender, Mario Bros. Then crank up a good mix of 80s music, preferably on that old boom box you still have that most likely has a wire hanger jammed into the place where an antenna used to be, and remember the past.

Next, we have the movies. You could go for the obvious, like E.T., The Breakfast Club, Fast Times, Better Off Dead, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller, Flashdance, Footloose, or Back to the Future. These films definitely capture the music and fashion of the decade, but they can also tend to be as ineffective at bringing memories flooding back as some of those overplayed tracks you hear on the radio every weekend on “Saturday at the 80s.” You need to go for the real cheesy movies you saw on cable a million times that are so 80s in style that they actually look like they are mocking the 80s rather than being genuine artifacts. I’ve got a great collection of them, including movies such as Breakin’, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, Real Genius, The Last Dragon, Just One of the Guys, Girls Just Want to Have Fun, The Pirate Movie, The Last American Virgin and Looker. You also can’t go wrong with any slasher movies that aren’t Halloween, Friday the 13^th, or A Nightmare on Elm Street. I’m talking about the kinds of slashers that feature actors who never made a second film, and elongated high school gym dance scenes focusing on some new wave/power pop band that never got signed to a label despite the blatant attempt at exposure. Some good 80s slasher titles include Graduation Day, Sleepaway Camp, The Prowler, Blood Song, The Initiation, and The Intruder. And just for an added dose of authenticity, most of these films, even on DVD, have that warm and fuzzy (aka: grainy) look that you thought only a VHS tape could offer.

And of course, there’s the television outlet. There are great television shows you should watch on DVD in a major marathon for hours and hours. Personally, the obvious, like The A-Team, Cheers, or The Cosby Show, don’t totally do it for me because they fail to focus on the true teen experience in the 80s. You need to get the lone season of the totally awesome Square Pegs and Fame Seasons 1 and 2 for the ultimate in capturing 80s fashions, trends, music, and hopes and fears of the Gen-X set. Also you might want to DVR the “Totally 80s” segments on VH-1 Classics, because watching cheesy 4 minute music clips seriously brings back the vibe of the 80s mind. Every time I watch them, I expect the rockin’ MTV guitar theme to start with the graphics of the man landing on the moon. Sadly, that beautiful clip was taken away from us forever in the mid-80s after the space shuttle exploded.

Finally, there’s the music. Listening to one of those compilations of the most obvious 80s songs that never went away doesn’t work much (Come on Eileen, Too Shy, She Blinded Me with Science, Who Can It Be now, Roseanna, etc.). But there is a way to revive your listening experience to totally bring you back while reawakening the emotions those songs evoked in you in the first place. As a huge music collector, I have the necessary resources at my disposal, which helps. I have a massive 80s folder on my iPod, and the playlist does indeed start with the hits. But here’s the trick. All the hits are placed in the order that they entered the Billboard charts. So, when you listen to the songs, you are hearing songs that all hit the airwaves at around the same time, which leads to some wicked drug-free trips down memory lane. You will literally be catapulted back to that particular summer, fall, winter or spring that you were hearing all these songs back to back on the radio and on MTV.

But the top hits of the 80s are just the beginning of my folder. What I’ve done is gone through all the albums I have from the 80s (which, I kid you not, consists of most albums released by most artists during that decade), and pulled songs that, even if they weren’t hits, just absolutely reek of 80s production, in all genres: mainstream pop, new wave, synthpop, arena rock, goth, hi-nrg dance, club, power pop, hip hop. And of course, there are a massive numbers of soundtracks that saturated the market back then, which really serve as the soundtrack to life in the 80s. Put it all together in a little piece of 21^st century technology (iPod killed the CD star), and you basically have my personal greatest hits of the decade and beyond. After I finish listening to the charted ‘best’ of the 80s in chronological order, I let the rest of the 80s takeover, and relish what feels like an all new 80s experience—hearing songs that I’ve rarely ever or never listened to, but which are the epitome of 80s sounds. It’s like I’m back in the 80s, sitting in front of the radio waiting for the debut of some great new single. As a result, when I start listening to my 80s folder on my iPod, I find myself constantly reaching for it because I simply have to know who is singing the amazing track I’m hearing—and unlike DJs on the radio, my iPod tells me the song title and artist every time.