Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with 1980s

What is this sign, located in Venice Beach (I think?)

dubold — Mon, 20 May 2013 02:48:15 -0800

In Michael Palin's "Around the World in 80 Days", there's a shot of a building with an interesting sign. It says "EARTH SPACE SCIENCE ART FACT FICTION FANTASY". Originally I read it as "ARE FACT FICTION FANTASY" and was really intrigued. After looking again I realized it's actually "ART". Sign is visible at 4:10 here.

The only search results I found related to the movie. Someone else posted a screenshot here.

Anyone know what this place is? The show aired in 1989, and I think it was filmed in the fall of 1988.

Improve Your Vocabulary Tape From The 1980s

buriedpaul — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:55:00 -0800

When I was a kid, my grandfather bought me an audiotape meant to improve my vocabulary: 25 Power Words, or something. It was pitched, I think, as a way to get ahead in business -- and read in a very serious, very radio-y voice. We used to play it on long car rides, endlessly, when I was in elementary school (in the early 80s). I'd really like to find a copy of the tape, but I can't remember its title. Here are the words I remember being on it:

Cogent
Malevolent
Sycophant
Denizen
Excoriate
Abound
Exacerbate
Rancor

Cheerleaders don't always get what they want!

phytage — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 06:24:59 -0800

C-Budget "Horror" flick that may have been hosted by Elvira circa 1985 High school guy may have instigated an Indian curse and dead people from the local cemetery are awakened. A young cheerleader appears and teen guy falls in love with her but does not know she is dead. In fact, I do not believe that she is aware of her own death... She ends up taking him to her house and they discover that someone else now lives there...and it is 30 or so years since she has been alive. Culminating with a hard choice to save the town from the evil zombies but lose the girl. It seems that every one of the other reanimated grave yard inhabitants are flesh eating zombies???
Have you seen this movie?

Load Runner for modern Mac OS?

LizardOfDoom — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 07:44:52 -0800

Hi all, I have a project I'd like to do that involves the use of Broderbund's Load Runner game. I have a 4 year old Macbook Pro running Mountain Lion. I have found various sites to download the game, but so far none of the downloads work. I do have an older pre-unix Macbook that is still (barely) functional, but I'd rather use the MBP if at all possible.

I am open to a clone or other very similar game; graphics are less important than actual gameplay in similarity.

"N" is a superfun game, but will not work for this project.

The project is just for my own use playing around with physical computing and alternate control mechanisms.

Thanks!

Name that film! Post-apocalyptic 80s Sydney

goo — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 19:30:26 -0800

I am seeking the name of a film, set in post-apocalyptic Sydney (Australia). I could have sworn it had Cassandra Harris in it, but IMDB disagrees. It was filmed and was set in in the early- to mid-80s, and had a bunch of people running around trying to escape the nuclear fallout that hit the Opera House and ended up in the northern beaches. The film wasn't necessarily good, but it resonated. Can you name the film? Thanks!

Can anyone identify this indie, children's folk singer?

valkyryn — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 10:31:56 -0800

I've been wracking my brains trying to remember the identity of this female folk singer from the 1980s-1990s. She made at least a few albums targeted at kids, incorporating many environmental themes. And I can't for the life of me remember even enough to do a proper Google search. Gah! Some more information: We got these tapes from the nature center at Cape Henlopen State Park near Rehoboth, DE, where my family vacationed. We bought these sometime in the late 1980s--I think--and they were audio cassettes.

The songs were mostly just the singer playing her guitar, and maybe a piano. She'd occasionally make her own sound-effects, e.g., panting like a dog, etc., but that's about it. I can't remember whether there was ever a group of children singing along with her on some tracks.

The covers were drawn in crayon, as if by kids, in color, on a white background.

I think one of the albums was called "Kids' Stuff" or something like that. There may have also been a "Kids' Stuff Too," but I might be imagining that one.

I think the liner notes said the singer was from San Francisco.

Some songs I remember:
- A version of "Pollution," which I recently learned is by Tom Lehrer.
- A version of "I Wanna Be a Dog."
- A version of "Fifty, Nifty United States."

I'll post more if I remember them, for for now that's about all I got. Ring any bells, anyone?

What was the name of this ubiquitous performance art duo from the 1980s?

Ursula Hitler — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 05:20:08 -0800

Back in the late 1980s there was this weird performance art duo, a man and a woman, who seemed to turn up all over the place on TV. They were on MTV, I think they were on the Tonight Show, et al, but nobody seems to remember them and I can't find any record of them online. (No, they were not Shields and Yarnell.) They would do these mechanistic performances where they would both kind of move like robots and talk in these rapid, loud, staccato voices. Most of their bits seemed to be satirical stuff about yuppies and other 1980s types.

I remember a bit where they were supposed to be flirting in a bar, and the guy would holler something like, "I'm looking for a girl who's looking for a guy who has a bright future in TOY MANUFACTURING!" And then the girl would answer something like, "I'm looking for a guy who's looking for a girl who's looking for a guy who has a bright future in TOY MANUFACTURING!" I remember the bit leading up to a part where the guy said, "Uh-huh, Uh-huh, I like what you're about!" Then the girl said, "Uh-huh, Uh-huh, I like what YOU'RE about!" Then they both said in unison, ""Uh-huh, Uh-huh, we like what we're about!"

They were very art school and kind of Dresden Doll-ish, maybe they wore mime facepaint and had derby hats and stuff. I think their name had "clock" or "watch" in it. Maybe.

I was never a huge fan, but for about 10 years I've been trying to remember who the hell they were and nobody ever knows who I'm talking about. Help me please, my fellow aging Gen-X'ers!

What's that home video (VHS) introduction to home computers from the '80s?

dan_of_brainlog — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 14:07:46 -0800

What is the name of that 1980s home video introducing you to computers hosted by that famous TV personality husband and wife whose names I can't remember? The one whose background color changes depending on what section you're in? It's totally online somewhere (either YouTube or archive.org) and I've seen it before, but I'm spacing on the names of the (otherwise extremely famous at the time) host couple and the program, and it's a little hard to find from Google searches for "home video computers". I'm certain I've blogged about it, and it's been posted to MeFi, and I can't even find it searching my own archives.

Apologies for the trivial question, but not remembering this is actually preventing me from getting work done today. I bet someone knows exactly what I'm talking about and can conjure up the link. Thanks!

80s foreign movie about a clown or mime wandering in city

cmp4Meta — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 17:36:11 -0800

Looking for a movie I saw on TV in the 80s that was about a sad clown/mime who left his circus and was wandering around the city - a foreign city, probably Europe. It is NOT Children of Paradise, but maybe some remake inspired by it. I believe it was a foreign film and was probably shown on Nickelodeon - it was a color film. Very atmospheric and followed the clown wandering in the city. Any ideas?

NYC 1980s art scene

marginaliana — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 08:22:40 -0800

Art buffs of Mefi, please tell me about exciting things that were happening in the New York City art scene in the early 1980s. Preface: I know absolutely nothing about art history. I'm genuinely so hopeless I don't even know where to start. With that said, here are some vague questions that might give you a jumping off point:

--Were there any trends in different types of media at that time? Was it big for sculpture or textiles or collage, etc?
--What about styles or messages or schools of art philosophy?
--Who were the artists doing interesting things during this time period?
--What kinds of jobs were there for people with an artist background?

I'm primarily interested in NYC, but if there are bigger trends you think I should know about, feel free. Book/article recs would be good, too.

Does anyone remember "U Film"?

Dr. Wu — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 09:18:04 -0800

Does anyone remember U-Film? Back in middle school (mid-to-late 1980s; suburbs of New York City), whenever I had to give a presentation in class, I chose as my visual aid a device known as either "U Film," "U-Film," or "You Film." I am now looking for more information on it.

U Film was a do-it-yourself filmstrip: you took a short roll (perhaps 10-25 frames) of blank, white, frosted 35mm filmstrip film, and drew directly on it. You could use colored pencils or markers: the surface took multiple media and colors quite well.

Then, you'd load it into one of those old filmstrip projectors -- the kind that you advanced frame-by-frame -- and the images would be projected onto the screen. When I made U Films, I would have a semi-prepared "lecture" to accompany the images.

I'm a film professor now, and thought I might do a little research into this device, as it intersects with a number of interesting areas of film history.

The terms "U Film" and "You Film" are damnably hard to Google, and I'm having a hard time now researching this near-forgotten piece of educational a/v history.

Does anyone remember U Film? Does anyone know how or where I might find some more information about it? I'm interested in ANYTHING I can find: who manufactured it, where it was used/distributed, any alternate uses it might have had, its general history, even personal anecdotes about it. Anything.

Any MeFite A/V geeks from the 1980s out there?

Help me identify this movie?

Borborygmus — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 17:06:57 -0800

I've had this vague memory of a 1970s-80s crime movie in the back of my brain. Can you help identify it? It's a cop drama, and one of the characters that the movie follows is a male who is some kind of stalker. The one scene that shocked my young mind when I saw it is of this character somehow getting locked outside a car in an isolated spot at night. Inside the car is a woman, who is his victim and who owns the car. She somehow tricked him to go outside, and locked him out, and so he goes absolutely crazy, stomping on the windshield, trying to kick it in. The scene I remember is taken from the vantage point of the woman in the car. Scared me quite a bit. I think that's the climax of the film and the cops show up pretty soon thereafter.

One of the two other scenes from this movie (I think) are of the guy starting to tail a victim by striding up to her station wagon on some isolated road during the day, and plopping himself on her bumper and hitching a ride. I remember thinking that was a really weird thing to do.

And the final scene is of two cop-like characters walking through a busy night-market, bazaar type scene, chatting. (I realize almost every cop movie has a scene like this.)

Do these scenes ring a bell for anyone? Was I just imagining this movie, or has my memory pieced together scenes from different films? Just idly curious. Thanks!

Help me identify this videogame

snarfois — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 16:45:26 -0800

Help me identify an old videogame. ~1990, combat between different spaceship types, with gravity, momentum and orbital physics. I played this game on a VGA PC, probably around 1989 or 1990. It had 6 or 7 different spacecraft models to choose from, each with completely different shapes, weaponry, defense and movement. Two players could play against each other, or you could play against the computer. The combat took place in the gravity well of a sun or planet, so while you were maneuvering, you were also orbiting and having to avoid crashing into the planet. The name was something quite generic -- "Starcraft" is what pops into my head, but that's of course an entirely different, later game.

Has the world changed much since the 1980s?

suburbanbeatnik — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 14:16:43 -0800

A friend and I had a friendly disagreement about whether society as a whole has changed significantly since the 1980s. Can you help me bolster my side? This morning, me and a friend-- a German blogger/writer-- were discussing my new book which is coming out at the end of the year, a time travel story about a woman who goes back to 1989. He said it sounded interesting, but the problem he had with it was the same problem he had with all time travel stories set in the '80s and '90s-- he doesn't see that much difference in terms of culture. He said, "It's why Back to the Future worked so well, there was a wide chasm between 1955 and 1985, more so than 1985 to 2015. Know what I mean?"

When I said that I felt the differences from the 1980s to the 2010s were huge, he replied that we might have new tech, like cell phones and computers and the internet, but culturally we're not that different from twenty-five years ago. I can see what he's getting at, but I still think there are huge differences. These are mainly caused by the tech, but I think there are also big cultural shifts in how we view women, gay people, black people, etc. For example, it's hard to imagine a new Leisure Suit Larry type franchise being invented in today's climate, or how in 1987 no one thought to question why no women authors were interviewed by the L. Ron Hubbard writers of the future contest. And then there's the fact we live in a somewhat dystopian present, something of a proto-Minority Report type society with "Homeland Security" and swat teams in every town.

Anyway, what do you guys think? Do you think there has or hasn't been a huge cultural shift from the 1980s? And why? Super detailed and nerdy answers are especially welcome!

Help me find this science book aimed at kids.

PussKillian — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 12:38:50 -0800

What was that book? 1970s or early 1980s science book for kids, illustrated with black and white photographs. A question turned up on another "what was that book" forum that I was sure was about a book I owned, except the cover got torn off my copy early on and I never really registered a title or author. So now I'm ransacking my memory!

The cover had, as I recall, rows of smaller "iconic" images arranged in a larger square: a frog, a rainbow, etc. It was softbound. It was a general science book, explaining everything from tastebuds to light to sex (one of the best, most straightforward explanations of sex I've ever seen) and included experiments like training a beansprout to grow through a maze. It was illustrated with black and white photos of kids and simple black and white line drawings. I think the author may have been female.

Not that I don't love LaVar...

lodie6 — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 08:55:01 -0800

Everyone remembers Reading Rainbow, but what about other reading TV shows in the 1980s? I know there were other shows in which adults read books to kids. One of my favorites involved a white man who possibly had a Burt Reynolds-ish mustache, who read books as he drew chalk illustrations of the stories. Does anyone remember the name of this show? Other 80's reading and/or drawing shows also welcome - but this one is bugging me the most.

Thanks, all!

Early 1980s sitcom about a TV station in a house

smoothvirus — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:57:56 -0800

Trying to remember a sitcom from the early 1980s about the "world's smallest television station." Was it real or did I just dream it up? I swear I remember this show being on TV, but it must have flopped because Google can tell me nothing about it. This would have been broadcast in the USA. If I am remembering it right it was about some family living in a suburban home that had a television station in their house. In fact I think the station was in a booth in their living room.

I seem to recall that there were a lot of jokes about how amateurish the operation of the TV station was and the father grumbling about how hard it was to compete with the other stations in town.

Other than that I don't remember any other details of the show, other than I think it would have been on somewhere around 1980-1981 because I think I was 10 or 11 at the time. It may have been syndicated but I'm not sure.

I've been able to look up pretty much every single obscure movie or TV show I can remember but this one has always eluded me.

Does anyone know this arcade game?

Lucien Dark — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 05:59:03 -0800

Can anyone help me identify a vertical-scrolling arcade game from the 80s? A friend of mine recently asked me for help in identifying an arcade game that he played as a child, and I'm having a hard time rounding up any likely candidates.
He played it in the late 80s (1987 is his best guess) in a pub in the UK, and the game was a vertical-scrolling shooter based in a desert environment; you controlled a vehicle driving along the ground, shooting at tanks and other enemies. The key game mechanic was that the vehicle itself could be loaded onto other vehicles, which you would then also control with your vehicle on the back; if the bigger vehicle was shot enough times you'd then drive off in your original vehicle. He also thinks that if your original vehicle took enough damage you'd carry on on-foot as a soldier with a rifle, although he's not sure about that last bit (given how much time has elapsed since he played it).
Does this game sound familar to anyone? The only game I could find where you drive around in the desert is Jackal, but that doesn't have the vehicle-changing mechanic that my friend described. Thanks for your time!

No Retreat! No Surrender!

Cat Pie Hurts — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 07:40:41 -0800

What is this mid-80's martial arts movie with two kids and terrible editing? It's not "No Retreat, No Surrender". Two teens. They may have idolized Jean-Claude VanDamme. Before going into action, one would look at the other and yell, "No retreat!" and the other would respond, "no surrender!" The action scenes were rife with awful cuts.

Back in 10th grade, this was mine and my then best friend's favorite movie. We would do the whole "no retreat, no surrender" thing right before jumping into extreme dork action. It was yelled a lot during our D&D sessions.

I've been trying to remember the name of this movie for years. Help!

Rockists who tried synth-pop?

meech — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 05:20:41 -0800

Which artists had an uncharacteristic attempt at synthpop/electronica in the 70s/80s? I know of Cat Stevens, Neil Young and Paul McCartney. Did any other big names throw a synth track deep into their late 70s/early 80s albums? I'm not worried if it wasn't a successful experiment but definitely don't want artists that specialized in synth music.

Long Distance Rates For the Late Seventies and Early Eighties?

jason's_planet — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 11:58:41 -0800

How much did long distance telephone calls cost in the late 1970s and early 1980s? I'm mainly interested in hearing about rates for the USA but data from other countries would be welcome as well. I grew up in the seventies and eighties and I have this vague memory of long-distance telephone calls -- even to a number in a neighboring state less than ten miles away -- being ridiculously expensive and a VERY BIG DEAL.

I don't remember the exact details, both because it was so damned long ago and because I wasn't very money-conscious at the time.

So how much did long distance telephone calls actually cost back then?

Many thanks in advance.

what did movies think of tv in the eighties?

parmanparman — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:40:27 -0800

I just watched Poltergeist, which I am now thinking seems right-wing, almost Catholic. at the end of the movie, the husband kicks the tv out of the room and serene music plays. is this a common feature of the movies of the time? did people kick the tv out of the room a lot in the movies of the 80s?

tv program predicted rise of electronic books in 1980s

cmp4Meta — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 16:55:38 -0800

Trying to remember the name of a TV series program that I watched in the late 1980s that in one episode on digital information predicted the rise of the electronic book. There was a male host who led the show, which was an examination of new technologies. In the particular episode I am looking for, he recounted an idea that books in the future would be distributed from something like an ATM machine where you would insert a card onto which the book would be downloaded. If it helps, I remember he stood at some kind of podium during the broadcasts that had like an acrylic/lucite egg-shaped glowing top--random detail, but these are often what jog people's memory.

Getting rid of 1980s trading cards

entropicamericana — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:43:18 -0800

I have trading cards from the early to mid 80s that I would like to get rid of. I have miscellaneous trading cards from the early to mid 80s that I have schlepped around for far too long and have little sentimental value to me. No complete sets, but the series include: Empire Strikes Back, baseball, football, Return of the Jedi, and Garbage Pail Kids. (Also, some of the first Star Wars Galaxy series circa 1993.)

Would any of this stuff be worth more than pennies per pound? If so, what would be the easiest way to get money for it? (I really cannot be bothered to buy price guides and look this stuff up unless there is decent money to be had.)

If not, is there some sort of charitable way to donate them to someone who might find some enjoyment out of them?

(I saw similar posts but they dealt with 1990s-era cards.)

Designer who wore mickey mouse ears?

missmerrymack — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 09:50:17 -0800

Who was the French accessories designer or other sort of fashion insider known for sporting mickey mouse ears back in the 80s or 90s? She was a rather kooky character and I believe she was a muse or friend of Karl Lagerfeld. I've googled and googled and have been stumped. Bonus points if you can find a vintage photo.