LIFE GOALS

 

Between 1983 and 1986, Idaho resident Al Fry ran a company called Incredible Inquiries, which produced instructional videos and self-help manuals.

Usually little more than slide-shows with a quite banal narration, they are, nevertheless, fascinating artefacts. Other titles include Hidden Bible Knowledge, Triple Your Intellect and Memory, and Lock Up Dangers & Freedom Techniques. In an incredible act of benevolence, someone calling themselves Mentaltapes has uploaded them all onto Youtube.  Cheers, MT, thank you for your service.

BAZOOKA FOR DUMMIES

 

In Italian crime thriller Killer Versus Killers (1985), hard-bitten hired assassin Henry Silva's weapon of choice is a rocket propelled grenade launcher. No hastily substituted mannequin is safe, no matter how nattily dressed.

HUM GENTLY AND HIDE COOL MIND IN MY BACK

 

From Big Magnum, Kuroiwa Sensei, d. Kazuhiko Yamaguchi (1985)

Big Magnum, Kuroiwa Sensei has all of the subtlety of a big budget episode of Rentaghost starring Cannon and Ball. A big talking teacher in a cowboy hat tries to bring order to an unruly school with a 44 Magnum, although he turns out to be a snivelling coward who wears a nappy. Later on, the mantle is taken up by a weedy bespectacled guy who, after extreme provocation, becomes a leather clad vigilante super hero. After triumphing in a big Western type fight that has elements of Mad Max, he flies off in a private plane to tame another school. It's all based on a very popular Manga series, so it must make sense to someone.

Anyway, when the insufferable 'kids' of the school aren't causing mayhem in class, they are at a local nightclub, body popping and breakdancing to a bland and boring new wave J-pop disco band where most of the members wear WW2 German uniforms. 

THE FUTURE, 1985

 I like everything about this video, apart from the fact that it isn't two hours long.

AFTER ALL

The Quiet Earth, d. Geoff Murphy (1983)

When suicidal scientist Zack wakes up and finds the world utterly deserted, he soon resorts to exactly the sort of thing we'd all do if we believed we were the last human beings on earth: walking down the high street in torrential rain, wearing a policeman's hat and playing a saxophone, for instance, or cross dressing and giving a rousing speech to an audience of celebrity cardboard cut outs, that sort of thing. 

Solitude can do strange things to the lonely mind, and so does absolute freedom.

What happened is only hinted at, but the reason that Zack (and some others, as it turns out) survived is cleverly done and almost plausible. An intelligent, understated film with some mind-bending bits and an uncertain ending, The Quiet Earth is essential viewing, if only as research for the imminent apocalypse.

HAPPY PILL

Here's a clip from a 1985 Tamil film called Chinna Vedu. It's wonderfully inventive and full of love and joy. If it doesn't make you smile, see a Doctor.