80’s Cinema | The Bedlam Files

Blood Letters and Trashy Movies in the South Sea

On December 19, 1978 the so-called “Blood Letter from Nanhai” made its bow in the Taiwanese Central Daily News

An engaging memoir, and certainly one of most interesting and underrated film books of the 2010s

If this year proves anything it’s that the rosy view of the eighties that has taken hold is complete bullcrap

I’m very sorry to bid farewell to Sir Alan Parker, who passed on July 31

Speaking as one who quite literally grew up watching his films, I couldn’t help but gravitate toward this, Oliver Stone’s long-in-coming memoir

Continuing with my Year in Bedlam year-end overviews, we arrive at 1984

This hefty 527 page book is either a standout example of gonzo scholarship or an extended manifestation of unfiltered insanity

For those of us who came of age in the 1980s, the name Joel Schumacher, a film director who died on June 22 at age 80, has great meaning

That title is somewhat misleading, as this is not the “definitive” history of ROBOCOP (1987) and its offshoots

This, the second of Kenneth George Godwin’s DAVID LYNCH FILES, focuses on Lynch’s 1984 filming of Frank Herbert’s science fiction classic DUNE