Poltergeist (1982)

This week the sisters cover their first Coen Brothers film: Raising Arizona.Ex-con H.I. McDonough and police officer Ed want nothing more than to start a family, but when they learn they can’t have children of their own, adoption agencies turn them down too because of H.I.’s record. So they land on a different plan entirely. A local furniture tycoon’s wife just gave birth to quintuplets, and the couple decides the math works out in their favor: five babies, one missing, nobody would even notice.What follows involves escaped prison buddies crashing at their trailer and a wildly inappropriate proposition from H.I.’s boss. Then there’s Leonard Smalls, a motorcycle-riding bounty hunter who looks like he escaped from the final level of a video game. Nicolas Cage leads as H.I., not long after his small role in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and his turn in Valley Girl. Holly Hunter plays Ed in a role the Coens wrote specifically with her in mind. And John Goodman, fresh off last week’s Revenge of the Nerds, shows up as one of the escaped convicts causing most of the chaos.They also get into some of the production trivia. Around 400 babies auditioned to play the quintuplets. One of them got fired mid-shoot, for learning to walk. And composer Carter Burwell built part of the score out of vacuum cleaner hoses and hubcaps.Did Raising Arizona age well? Listen and find out. Thanks for joining us at the Shermer High Alumni Association. If you’re enjoying the show, a quick rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify is the biggest thing that helps new listeners find us. Follow along for next week’s episode, and share this one with your fellow ’80s movie lovers.

Revenge of the Nerds 🤓 follows a group of college freshmen who arrive at Adams College hoping to get a fresh start, only to find themselves dealing with the same kind of bullying they thought they left behind in high school. When the jocks take over their dorm and the nerds are forced to find somewhere else to live, they end up forming their own fraternity with a bunch of other campus misfits. Of course, the jocks aren't exactly thrilled about that, and things turn into a full-blown rivalry between the two groups. Between fraternity parties, ridiculous pranks, and the Greek Games, the nerds set out to prove they deserve a place on campus just as much as everyone else. And let's just say, these guys aren't going to win any popularity contests, but they're definitely not going down without a fight!Thanks for joining us at the Shermer High Alumni Association. If you're enjoying the show, a quick rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify really helps people find us. Follow us so you don't miss next week's movie, and tell a fellow 80s movie lover about us! Until next time, be kind, and don’t forget to rewind!

In Wes Craven's classic slasher film, several Midwestern teenagers fall prey to Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), a disfigured midnight mangler who preys on the teenagers in their dreams -- which, in turn, kills them in reality. After investigating the phenomenon, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) begins to suspect that a dark secret kept by her and her friends' parents may be the key to unraveling the mystery, but can Nancy and her boyfriend Glen (Johnny Depp) solve the puzzle before it's too late?Thanks for joining us at The Shermer High Alumni Association. If you had as much fun as we did, hit follow, leave a review, and share this episode with your fellow 80s movie lovers.

Welcome to Cuesta Verde, where every house looks the same and one of them is about to get very different.Five-year-old Carol Anne starts chatting with the TV static. Chairs slide across the kitchen by themselves. Then a storm rolls in, a tree eats her brother through his bedroom window, and the spirits drag Carol Anne into the closet. Into another dimension. Her voice keeps coming through the TV. Fun!Enter Tangina, a pint-sized medium with zero patience. Her diagnosis: lost souls are drawn to Carol Anne's light, and something much nastier, "the Beast," wants her for itself. Mom dives through the portal, hauls her daughter back, and Tangina calls the house clean.Plot twist: it is not clean. Dad's company built the whole neighborhood on a cemetery. They moved the headstones. Not the bodies. Cue skeletons, a house-eating void, and one very done family fleeing to a motel, where Dad launches the TV out the door.Thanks for joining us at The Shermer High Alumni Association. If you had as much fun as we did, hit follow, leave a 5-star review, and share this episode with your fellow '80s movie lovers. Until next time, be kind… and don't forget to rewind. Bye!

Killer Klowns from Outer Space is what happens when someone asks, “What if aliens came to Earth… but instead of being terrifying, they were fucking creepy clowns?” A small town in California is minding its own business when a mysterious circus tent suddenly appears in the woods. And, because apparently nobody in this town has ever seen a horror movie, people start wandering toward it. Inside is an entire race of murderous extraterrestrial clowns who have come to Earth looking for dinner—and humans are apparently what’s on the menu. Armed with cotton-candy guns, balloon animals, killer shadow puppets, and giant clown mallets, the Klowns proceed to turn the town into their personal circus. Meanwhile, a couple of teenagers try to convince everyone that the clowns are actually aliens and that maybe—just maybe—they should stop going anywhere near them.Thanks for joining us at The Shermer High Alumni Association. If you had as much fun as we did, hit follow, leave a 5-star review, and share this episode with your fellow '80s movie lovers. Until next time, be kind… and don't forget to rewind.

Seymour Krelborn is a nerdy, downtrodden employee at a failing Skid Row flower shop who spends his days pining for his coworker Audrey, who is stuck in an abusive relationship with a sadistic dentist (Steve Martin). Everything changes when Seymour discovers a strange, unidentified plant during a total eclipse. He names it Audrey II, and it turns the struggling shop into a sensation. There's just one problem: the plant is a wisecracking, soul-singing carnivore that needs human blood to survive, and its appetite keeps growing. As Seymour gets sucked into the fame, the fortune, and a few increasingly bad decisions, he has to figure out how far he'll go for a shot at success and the girl of his dreams, before Audrey II decides to take over the whole world.Thanks for joining us at The Shermer High Alumni Association. If you had as much fun as we did, follow, leave us a five star review, and share us with your fellow '80s movie lovers. Until next time — be kind, and don't forget to rewind.

Summer camp, counselors, mysterious killingsThanks for joining us at The Shermer High Alumni Association. If you had as much fun as we did, hit follow, leave a review, and share this episode with your fellow 80s movie lovers. Until next time, be kind… and don’t forget to rewind.

 Hoosiers follows Norman Dale, a former college basketball coach with a troubled past, who takes a job coaching the high school team in the tiny Indiana town of Hickory. The team is struggling, the town has very strong opinions about basketball, and Norman's unconventional coaching style isn't exactly winning him any popularity contests. But with the help of a talented young player, a troubled former basketball star, and a team that slowly learns to trust one another, Hickory begins to find its rhythm. As the boys make an unlikely run towards the state championship, Norman has to confront his own past while the team learns that being the smallest school in the tournament doesn't mean that they can't play with the biggest. Set against the backdrop of the 1950s Indiana basketball, Hoosiers is ultimately a story about second chances, teamwork, small town pride, and believing in yourself when pretty much everyone else thinks you're already v- Set against the backdrop of 1950s Indiana basketball, Hoosiers is ultimately a story about second chances, teamwork, small town pride, and believing in yourself when pretty much everyone else thinks you've already lost.

Kristin and Carole are off this week, so Jeannine is joined by a returning favorite: Tommy, back in the co-host chair for a movie he specifically requested and clearly knows inside and out.Flight of the Navigator follows 12-year-old David Freeman, who vanishes in the woods in 1978 and wakes up eight years later without having aged a single day. His little brother is now older than he is. His parents have moved on without him. And NASA wants very badly to know exactly where he's been. Then David finds Max, a wildly sarcastic alien spacecraft, and the two of them end up on a journey that's part sci-fi adventure and part heartbreaking meditation on what it means to lose everyone you love to time itself.They get into the cast too. Long before Sex and the City, a young Sarah Jessica Parker appears in this film, and by her own account, she barely remembers making it. Veronica Cartwright, who plays David's mom, brings a resume that includes Alien and The Birds. And they spend real time on lead actor Joey Cramer's story, since his life after the movie took a much harder turn than anyone watching in 1986 could have guessed.There's also a great bit of movie trivia: director Randal Kleiser and George Lucas were college roommates, and the special effects company behind the film's groundbreaking CGI spaceship folded not long after the movie came out.Did Flight of the Navigator age well? Listen and find out. Thanks for joining us at the Shermer High Alumni Association. If you're enjoying the show, a quick rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify is the biggest thing that helps new listeners find us. Follow along for next week's episode, and share this one with your fellow '80s movie lovers.

Dirty Dancing takes us to a Catskills resort in the summer of 1963, where 17-year-old Baby Houseman falls in with the staff after hours and ends up covering for dance instructor Penny by stepping in as Johnny Castle's new partner. We can't get past the age gap between Baby and Johnny, something nobody in 1987 seemed to blink at. We also dig into the abortion subplot that almost cost the movie its Clearasil sponsorship, since the company backed out once they found out and the writer refused to cut it anyway.Turns out the shoot was just as dramatic as the movie itself. Filming ran 43 brutal days in 105-degree heat, and Patrick Swayze blew out his knee doing his own stunt on the log scene. By the time they got to the lake scene in October, the water was almost 40 degrees, and Jennifer Grey only did it because she was young and broke. The final lift was never rehearsed; they went for it live on camera and it worked. Vestron's own producer reportedly told the team to burn the negative and collect the insurance after seeing the rough cut. The movie then made $214 million and became the top video rental the following year.Did Dirty Dancing age well? Listen and find out. Thanks for joining us at the Shermer High Alumni Association. If you're enjoying the show, a quick rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify is the best way to help new listeners find us. Follow along for next week's episode, and share this one with your fellow '80s movie lovers.