Culture Shock 04.23.15: Documentary digs up Atari's past

Before Xbox, PlayStation and Wii, there was Atari, once America's dominant video game maker.

Today, Atari is a logo on retro-styled T-shirts but little else, and Atari's rise and fall are the subjects of Zak Penn's documentary "Atari: Game Over," now streaming on Netflix.

Full disclosure: The only home video game console I've ever owned is the Atari 2600, released in 1977. My time as a gamer ended around 1983. But for a while, I was obsessed: playing video games, reading magazines about video games, calling telephone hot lines to get the latest news and release dates for video games — you name it.

Two of my favorite Atari 2600 games, "Yar's Revenge" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark," were designed by the same programmer, Howard Scott Warshaw. When I finally beat "Raiders," I chalked it up as a significant accomplishment. Warshaw's games were tough but fair. Little did I — or anyone else  — suspect that Warshaw and his next game were destined to become scapegoats for the collapse of not only Atari but the entire first wave of home video gaming.

Warshaw's next game was "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial," based on the movie, obviously. Rushed into stores for Christmas 1982, "E.T." sold roughly 1.5 million units, but it failed to meet Atari's stratospheric expectations. Millions more cartridges remained unsold.

In 1983, the home video game market crashed, doing in Atari and most of its rivals. "E.T.," which would go on to earn an unfair reputation as the "worst video game ever," took a lot of the blame. And from that, an urban legend arose: that Atari, in the dead of night, buried its millions of unsold "E.T." cartridges in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

The landfill legend is the hook for Penn's documentary. Penn introduces us to Joe Lewandowski, waste disposal expert and amateur archaeologist. Lewandowski believes the legend is true, and he has a good idea where in the landfill the lost "E.T." games are buried.

So the question is, is this "Raiders of the Lost Ark" with a prize waiting at the end, or is this Geraldo Rivera opening Al Capone's "vault" and finding only a couple of broken bottles?

While large earth movers excavate a trash heap in search of Atari's shame, Penn takes us back to the glory days of Atari, interviewing Warshaw and company executives. On the campus of what was once Atari's headquarters, Warshaw describes a high-tech Shangri-La. Ideas and pot smoke were heavy in the air, dress codes were lax and met sales quotas were rewarded with keggers. Atari was every Silicon Valley stereotype turned up to 11.

The business side of the story is the most interesting and deserves more time and attention than Penn devotes. He digs deep into the New Mexico desert, but he barely scratches the surface of the 1980s home console bust. Going by Penn's account, one would think Atari existed in a vacuum. He gives us no hint of the other consoles on the market at the time, such as ColecoVision, Intellivision and Atari's designated 2600 successor, the Atari 5200. The crash of 1983 left a dark age of video gaming, the scale of which Penn loses with his myopic focus on the 2600. For two years, it seemed as if home video games had been just a fad. Then the Nintendo Entertainment System arrived in the U.S., and America has been a nation of gamers ever since.

Penn is far more interested in the New Mexico dig, and that's no surprise. He previously directed a mockumentary about another legend, "Incident at Loch Ness," aided and abetted by — of all people — Werner Herzog. Unfortunately, the off-putting persona Penn showcased in "Incident" is still on display. He interrupts the workers digging in the landfill to ask stupid questions just so he can film their incredulous responses. Whether staged or real, it adds nothing but irritation.

Yet for all the missteps and wasted opportunities, "Atari: Game Over" has its moments. Warshaw is a fascinating figure who has never gotten his due, and we get to watch as he comes to terms with seeing his past unearthed in a landfill. It's a powerful scene, and one that deserves a better movie.

Culture Shock 09.11.14: 'Without Warning' pits alien against Oscar winners

Future Oscar winner Jack Palance and future Oscar winner Martin Landau probably weren't thinking Academy Awards when they agreed to appear in "Without Warning." But I'll take "Without Warning" over "Ordinary People" any day.

Released the same year that "Friday the 13th" kicked the slasher genre into high gear, "Without Warning" wastes no time putting a different spin on the soon-to-be-cliched formula of teenagers venturing into the woods where an unstoppable killer awaits to pick them off one by one.

This time, the killer is not of this Earth.

Greydon Clark directs this pre-"Predator" sci-fi movie about an eggplant-headed alien who comes to Earth to hunt "the most dangerous game." Only instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura and Carl Weathers, the alien targets Palance, Landau and a young David Caruso (in his first role, unless you count an uncredited bellboy in an episode of "Ryan's Hope," and who does?).

Cult movie label Shout! Factory brings this 1980 drive-in classic to home video with a shiny Blu-ray/DVD combo set that includes interviews with the crew and an audio commentary with the director.

The movie starts with two young couples (including Caruso) heading to the woods for a day of fun and relaxation, probably because it's 1980 and YouTube cat videos haven't been invented yet.

Surprisingly, they think this whole going-to-the-woods thing is a good idea despite the scary warning they get from the creepy taxidermy enthusiast who runs the gas station (Palance) and the foreboding graffiti scrawled on the station's restroom walls.

Technically, that makes the movie's title a lie. Clearly there is a warning. Just because you ignore the warning doesn't mean there isn't one. That's just logic, plain and simple.

Anyway, by the time our young victims get to the crystal-clear lake in the middle of the woods, our extraterrestrial Elmer Fudd has already declared hunting season on Golden Age TV actors.

Cameron Mitchell ("The High Chaparral") plays a hunter, Darby Hinton (Daniel Boone's son on "Daniel Boone") plays his son, and Larry Storch ("F Troop") plays the world's worst scoutmaster.

Maybe Clark has a fetish for typecasting actors based on their most famous roles.

Ralph Meeker, who portrayed Mike Hammer in Robert Aldrich's brilliant 1955 film noir "Kiss Me Deadly," has a small role as a bar patron.

Classic television informs more than just Clark's casting choices. The alien (Kevin Hall), looks like he just walked in from the set of "The Outer Limits." And speaking of typecasting, Hall went on to portray the extraterrestrial big game hunters in "Predator" and "Predator 2."

The alien's preferred method of attack it to throw small, star-shaped aliens — blood-sucking little critters that vaguely resemble the face-huggers from "Alien" — at his intended victims. This makes for some pretty cool and squishy kill scenes.

But the real stars of the show are Landau and Palance. Both still more than a decade away from their Oscar triumphs, these old pros can chew scenery with the best of them, and they do.

Landau plays a Vietnam vet who came back from the war a little funny in the head. He's been convinced aliens are invading for years, so when they actually are, no one believes him. Not that they would have believed him anyway, what with him being funny in the head.

Meanwhile, Palance's trophy-hunter character naturally is the first to realize what the alien's game is and think up a way to fight back. Palance delivers the gasping, wheezing, snarling performance that always made him a terrifying bad guy and, on rare occasions, an even more terrifying hero.

Clark helmed two movies that ended up targets of a good-natured "Mystery Science Theater 3000" ribbing: "Angels Revenge" (aka "Angels' Brigade") and the Joe Don Baker vehicle "Final Justice." But "Without Warning" — like some other Clark movies, such as "Satan's Cheerleaders" and the arcade-culture sex comedy "Joysticks" — is plenty of fun without anyone talking over it.

Culture Shock 07.17.14: 'Death Spa' membership costs an arm and a leg

Some of you younger folks may have a difficult time believing this, but there once was a time when gyms and health clubs weren't all over town making you feel guilty about not going to them.

Then the 1980s came along, and before any of us realized what had happened, we were wearing spandex and sweatbands, Jane Fonda had a second act selling workout tapes, and "jazzercise" became a normal word normal people used in normal conversation. It was terrifying.

Ironically, we were all thinner then, too, which leads me to wonder if science really has worked out the causal relationship between exercise and being fat. But I digress.

If ever there were a craze ripe for treatment in a horror movie, the '80s aerobics craze is it. David A. Prior's 1987 slasher flick "Killer Workout" got to theaters first, but Michael Fischa's "Death Spa" (1989) is the first to stage a comeback on Blu-ray.

Gorgon Video, best known for releasing the infamous "Faces of Death" series back in VHS's heyday, has resurrected "Death Spa" in glorious high definition. Gorgon's Blu-ray/DVD combo set  presents "Death Spa" with all the eye-popping color that made the '80s either gnarly or nightmarish, depending on your point of view. It comes topped with bonus features that include the director's audio commentary, a making-of featurette and trailers. (Amazon offers a movie-only "Death Spa" for purchase or rental on video on demand.)

Fischa knows his stuff. He kicks things off with a tracking shot that might remind horror aficionados of the one that opens John Carpenter's "Halloween." But that's where the similarities end. "Halloween" seems pretty tame in retrospect, but "Death Spa" comes across just as splattery and excessive as ever.

The premise is too much to pass up. Take a bunch of narcissistic, body-obsessed yuppie types (the forerunners of today's dude-bros and woo-girls) and put them in a haunted health spa where the equipment tries to kill them in increasingly gruesome ways. It's body horror for people who listen to Huey Lewis and the News' "Hip to Be Square" unironically. Imagine Patrick Bateman of "American Psycho" torn apart by a possessed elliptical machine, and you'll get the idea.

But to get to all of this death and dismemberment, we have to have a plot of some sort.

Our hero is Michael, played by William Bumiller, who's probably best known for a late-'90s stint on "Guiding Light." Michael is the spa's manager and part-owner. He's also dating one of his employees, the lovely Laura (the underrated Brenda Bakke of "Hot Shots! Part Deux"). And that doesn't sit well with his ex-brother-in-law, David, played by the late Merritt Butrick of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" in his final role. It's "ex-brother-in-law" because David's sister, Catherine, committed suicide.

David blames Michael for Catherine's death. Yet despite that simmering hostility, David sticks around the spa because he is the only person who can run its state-of-the-art computer system, which controls everything from the temperature in the steam rooms to the resistance of the weight machines.

You know, it would be a catastrophe if Catherine (Shari Shattuck, who was the replacement Ashley Abbott on "The Young and the Restless" in the '90s) returned as a vengeful spirit, possessed David's computer and then proceeded to maim and kill Michael's customers left and right.

If only Michael could close the spa until he figures out what's up. But the spa's other owners insist on keeping it open for a big Mardi Gras celebration, because that's something health clubs do.

Everyone plays it straight, except for well-traveled character actor Frank McCarthy in the time-honored role of Comic Relief Police Officer. But Fischa cranks up the gore — fake blood, rubber body parts and what looks like ground chuck — to absurdist levels. It's as ridiculous as it is grotesque, but it never fails to be entertaining.

Fischa is having a joke at the expense of every overly macho mullet-head who ever pumped iron. When Michael feeds Laura — temporarily blinded by a spa mishap — a limp stalk of asparagus during a "romantic" dinner, it says it all so obviously you don't even need Sigmund Freud to explain it.

Culture Shock 10.24.13: 'I Come In Peace' is 'Lethal Weapon' meets 'Predator'

"I Come in Peace," also known as "Dark Angel," is far more entertaining than it has a right to be.

It's a star vehicle for Dolph Lundgren, but this 1990 action flick is probably best remembered for its trailer. It features the film's bad guy, a 7-foot extraterrestrial with a raspy voice, milky-white eyes and long white hair, slashing people left and right while repeating his ironic catchphrase, "I come in peace." To which Lundgren quips, "And you go in pieces."

It's a simple idea, coming at the tail end of the 1980s action movie cycle: "Lethal Weapon" meets "Predator." Mismatched cops must come to terms with each other while tracking down the bad guy, who in this case just happens to be an unstoppable drug dealer from outer space.

The sci-fi twist keeps this from being a generic buddy-cop movie, and with the talent behind the camera, it's more than enough to keep things interesting. "I Come in Peace" is fun and surprisingly well made, with action scenes and cinematography well served by Shout! Factory's new Blu-ray release, issued under the film's boring alternate title, "Dark Angel."

Lundgren ("Rocky IV") is Houston police Detective Jack Caine, a loose-cannon cop who goes with his gut and delivers a mean roundhouse kick. After a drug bust goes wrong, leaving his partner dead and a briefcase full of heroin missing, Caine partners with FBI Special Agent Smith, portrayed by Brian Benben ("Private Practice"). Smith is officious, irritating and strictly by-the-book. So we all know how this is going to play out: The odd couple will eventually become best buddies.

Their quarry is an alien — "not from Mexico" — played by 6-foot-5 German track-and-field athlete Matthias Hues. As the "Bad Alien" — there's also a Good Alien pursuing him — Hues attacks drug dealers and steals their heroin, which he injects into random victims, who then produce a mother load of endorphins, which the Bad Alien extracts, with fatal consequences.

Where the Bad Alien hails from, endorphins are the drug of choice.

By 1990, the drug war was just about played out as far as the movies and TV were concerned. "Miami Vice" had been canceled, "Just Say No" was a punchline, and not even James Bond could make the drug war interesting. Drug pushers from space was about the only card yet to be played.

It turns out to be an ace in the hole. Hues' Bad Alien steals the show, mercilessly killing drug dealers with what is essentially a razor-sharp compact disc, which flies around like a heat-seeking missile. Sure, it sounds silly, but it looks cool onscreen, with a camera's eye view following the spinning disc on its murderous flight.

The Bad Alien is usually one step ahead of the Good Alien (Jay Bilas) and two steps ahead of Caine and Smith. But when they do cross paths, mayhem and explosions ensue.

Director Craig R. Baxley knows a thing or two about mayhem and explosions, having served as stunt coordinator on "Predator" and TV's "The A-Team," and the showdown between the Bad Alien and the Good Alien in a parking garage is one of the film's highlights. The scene requires Hues to hurdle over one car after another as each blows up behind him — no stunt double and no CGI.

These are real stunts, with real explosions going off just a few yards away from the actors, and cinematographer Mark Irwin (David Cronenberg's "The Fly") captures it beautifully. I'm sure actors today appreciate green screens and CGI, but explosions put together in a computer are still no substitute for the real thing captured live in camera.

Shout! Factory's "Dark Angel" Blu-ray ($19.97) includes a trailer and a documentary featurette with Lundgren, Benben and Baxley. "I Come in Peace" is even more impressive when you know Baxley had a budget of less than $7 million to work with. Michael Bay can't blow up a go-cart for that little money.

Whether you call it "Dark Angel" or "I Come In Peace," it's a job well done.

Culture Shock 09.26.13: 'Hangar 18' puts all the pieces of UFO mania together

The 1970s were a high point of UFO sightings, alternative history, New Age mysticism and paranoid conspiracies, as well as a few not-so-paranoid conspiracies. As the decade ended, one movie in particular weaved all of those threads together.

"Hangar 18" betrays its low-budget pedigree from the opening shot: a spaceship filling the screen above a planet. It's a shot that explicitly recalls the opening of "Star Wars," except in this case the spaceship is a NASA space shuttle, the planet is Earth and the special effects look more suited to a TV movie than to anything playing on a big screen. But any movie that would so eagerly invite an unfavorable "Star Wars" comparison deserves our attention.

Released in 1980 and quickly forgotten, "Hangar 18" is back, issued on DVD and Blu-ray by Olive Films (olivefilms.com) and looking better than it probably did during its theatrical run.

The film wastes no time getting started. The shuttle we see in the opening is on a mission to launch a top-secret military satellite. But before the launch can occur, the shuttle astronauts spot what looks like an alien spacecraft hovering above them. When the satellite launches as scheduled, it slams right into the UFO, sending the alien craft crashing to Earth and killing one of the astronauts.

From there, the film branches off into three overlapping story lines.

The first follows the team of NASA scientists assigned to study the UFO, which the government has secreted away at the titular Hangar 18. The second involves the politicians trying to keep the UFO crash secret until after the presidential election. And the third follows the two surviving shuttle astronauts trying to prove they saw what they saw and clear their names after they're blamed for their fellow astronaut's death.

If "Hangar 18" were a modern TV show, that would be enough plot for a season-long story arc, but as it is, "Hangar 18" breezes along and clocks in at a bit more than 90 minutes.

"Hangar 18" seems a bit low-rent for a theatrical release, but it would have made for a pretty impressive TV movie of the week. Director James L. Conway ("The Boogens"), who would go on to direct episodes of the various "Star Trek" spin-offs, makes the most of what he has, which includes a solid cast of television veterans, led by Darren McGavin ("Kolchak: The Night Stalker") as the NASA director tasked with leading the investigation.

McGavin's Harry Forbes is a lot like his Carl Kolchak, only Forbes gets to investigate the paranormal with the assistance of the best minds NASA has to offer, while Kolchak has only his trusty tape recorder. Forbes is the most entertaining part of the movie.

Heading up all the president's men are Robert Vaughn ("The Man from UNCLE") as Chief of Staff Gordon Cain and ubiquitous character actor Joseph Campanella as Cain's right-hand man.

The last of the heavy lifting falls to the two astronauts, played by wisecracking James Hampton ("Sling Blade") opposite wooden straight man and future "Hour Magazine" host Gary Collins.

Other recognizable faces include Pamela Bellwood ("Dynasty"), Stuart Pankin ("Not Necessarily the News") and William Schallert ("The Patty Duke Show").

Everything about the movie seems perfunctory. "Hangar 18" covers a lot of ground, so everything is plot, plot, plot with little time for anything else.

As for the plot, it's a crash course in UFO lore, drawing on ideas that became popular in the '70s: alien abductions, government cover-ups and the idea popularized in Erich Von Daniken's book "Chariots of the Gods?" that extraterrestrials visited Earth long ago and influenced humanity's development. There are even "men in black," long before MIBs became a big deal.

"Hangar 18" is entertaining enough in a disposable, Saturday matinee way, but it's truly fascinating as an artifact of UFO mania. This is where all the pieces first came together.

Culture Shock 06.20.13: Enter the ninja — in leg warmers

When you think about it, the 1980s were all about two things: dancing and ninjas.

The decade was defined by dance movies, from "Flashdance" to "Footloose" to "Dirty Dancing." And despite their reputation for stealth, you couldn't turn anywhere without glimpsing a ninja. Italian tough guy Franco Nero ("Django") portrayed one in "Enter the Ninja," and American tough guy Lee Van Cleef ("The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly") played one in the forgotten TV series "The Master." G.I. Joe faced off against toy ninjas, and comic book auteur Frank Miller ("Sin City") pitted Daredevil against a magical ninja army called The Hand.

If you could somehow combine dancing and ninjas, you'd have the most '80s movie ever.

As it happens, someone already did, and it's called "Ninja III: The Domination," now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Shout! Factory.

To find a more bonkers movie, you'd have to go to '80s or '90s Hong Kong, and even then the madness of Hong Kong's most insane films is largely a matter of cultural differences and dodgy subtitles. "Ninja III: The Domination," however, even with its partly Japanese cast and Israeli producers — the infamous Cannon Films duo of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus — is possessed of a uniquely American madness, which makes it a fine way to spend a late night with friends and whatever intoxicants are legal in your jurisdiction. (You crazy kids in Colorado and Washington have fun.)

The action starts when a ninja (David Chung) kills a yuppie businessman on a sunny, Arizona golf course, because that's what assassins known for their stealth do. The murder attracts the police who, being police officers of the '80s, are just itching to shoot someone, which they do — repeatedly — after a prolonged chase, during which the ninja performs such feats as stabbing a cop through the roof of his squad car.

The ninja, filled with more lead than ancient Roman pottery, collapses near where a young technician named Christie is repairing telephone lines. The next thing you know, his soul had jumped into her body, where it awaits the right moment to strike.

Christie, played by Lucinda Dickey, star of "Breakin'" and its punch line of a sequel, "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo," is the dance-movie part of the equation. When she's not working for the phone company, Christie is dancercising at the local gym. With her blue-collar, stereotypically male job and her fondness for spandex and leg warmers, she's the reincarnation of Jennifer Beals' Alex in "Flashdance."

The ninja asserts himself slowly, and at first it just seems like Christie has become more aggressive, along with picking up some mad skills. But when she embarrasses some local street toughs, she catches the interest of the cops, one of whom — unfortunately for us — is determined to become the movie's love interest. Before long, the ninja is taking Christie's body out for a test drive, using it to assassinate random guys playing pool in their underwear.

To illustrate just how perfectly '80s "Ninja III" is, you could probably duplicate all of its special effects with one trip to the nearest mall's Spencer Gifts. To recreate a ninja possessing someone, all you need are a strobe light, dry ice, smoke machine and miniature laser show.

Shô Kosugi ("Enter the Ninja," "The Master") co-stars as the "good ninja" and choreographs the fights, which are more like Capt. Kirk vs. the Gorn than what you'd see in contemporaneous martial arts flicks from China and Japan.

Apart from an intentionally funny scene where a mystic played by the reliable James Hong ("Big Trouble in Little China") tries to exorcise the ninja, nothing in "Ninja III" quite works. But most of it at least fails in the spectacularly entertaining fashion for which the 1980s were known.

If you're going to fail, fail big. Go full savings and loan.

Culture Shock 05.30.13: 'The Burning' is a forgotten slasher gem

In a classic "Seinfeld" episode, "The Opposite," George Costanza, realizing his instincts are always wrong, decides to do the opposite of what they tell him. When his instincts say lie, he tells the truth. When his gut reaction is do nothing, he does something. The strategy works miracles.

Now apply it to slasher movies, where kids, campers and promiscuous teenagers have been doing the wrong thing for roughly 35 years. When your instinct says wander away from everyone for a skinny dip, don't. When your gut says make out with your boyfriend in the woods, don't. When you think you should go down to the basement alone, don't.

That would make for a slasher movie with a very low body count. Fortunately for us, kids in slasher movies always go with their guts, even if that means their guts end up on the floor, and especially when one of those kids is "George Costanza."

Long before he was George, Jason Alexander was Dave, one of the unlucky campers in the 1981 horror flick "The Burning," slickly promoted with a trailer in which the announcer gravely intones lines like, "If you're looking forward to midnight swims, don't."

Without an endless stream of sequels and remakes to keep its name alive, "The Burning" has fallen into obscurity. That's a shame because it's not only one of the best slasher movies to come out of the '80s, it has a pedigree that's pretty remarkable. It's the first film produced by the now powerhouse team of Bob and Harvey Weinstein, it features makeup effects by Tom Savini and a creepy electronic score by Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman, and it's the first screen credit for not only the future George Costanza but also Fisher Stevens ("Short Circuit") and future Oscar winner Holly Hunter.

It's now been rescued from the vault by Shout! Factory, which has released "The Burning" in a DVD/Blu-ray combo "collector's edition" that looks great without bleaching away the film's lo-fi roots.

The story, which the Weinsteins co-wrote, draws from campfire tales counselors told to scare young New Yorkers at Hudson Valley summer camps in the 1960s and '70s. When a prank goes awry, Camp Blackfoot's creepy handyman, Cropsy (Lou David), is burned alive. He survives, barely, but returns as a horribly disfigured boogeyman to have his revenge.

It's not exactly a plot-heavy movie. Even "Friday the 13th" has it beat on that count. But it is character-heavy for a slasher flick, taking its time to let us care about some of these stock characters (the good girl, the bad girl, the jock, the dweeb) before they are gruesomely dispatched.

Unlike the "pure evil" Michael Myers but like the childlike Jason Voorhees, Cropsy flirts with being a sympathetic figure. Even if it's largely misdirected, his rage is born of mistreatment. He's the teased and humiliated outsider who is ignored, except as a subject of ridicule, and treated as something less than human even before his transformation into an unstoppable killer.

As far as the campers who accidentally set Cropsy on fire are concerned, he's a monster even before he comes back seeking vengeance. But when we see their contorted faces watching through the window as Cropsy awakes screaming, we wonder who the real monster is. When it comes to monsters, kids can be the cruelest of all.

But apart from drive-in sociology, "The Burning" delivers where it really counts.

Cropsy's garden-shears killing spree serves up several great kills, which are the main reason we're watching, and the rules of the slasher genre were still in flux in 1981, so some of the attacks still can surprise. They're not all variations on the kill scenes we've seen in the "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th" sequels.

So maybe there is an upside to being virtually forgotten: No one spends the next three decades ripping off your best tricks.

Culture Shock 03.14.13: In search of 'In Search of...'

"This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture. The producer's purpose is to suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones to the mysteries we will examine."

From 1977 to 1982, that was your weekly warning to take the next half hour of television with a heaping spoonful of salt. It was the disclaimer that introduced each episode of "In Search of... ."

Hosted by Leonard Nimoy, "In Search of..." ran for six 24-episode seasons, and by the time it was done, it had become, in a bizarre way, a record of America's fears and obsessions in the years following Vietnam and Watergate. Before "The X-Files" spelled it out for us, here was a show that dealt in alleged conspiracies and cover-ups, while in search of a truth that was certainly "out there."

Now, for the first time, "In Search of..." is available on home video: a mammoth 21-disc DVD box set containing all six seasons of the original series, all eight episodes of the 2002 Sci-Fi Channel revival hosted by Mitch Pileggi of "The X-Files" and the two pilot episodes hosted by Rod Serling.

Before "Ghost Adventures" and "Ghost Hunters," "Ancient Aliens" and "Finding Bigfoot," even before Art Bell first took to the overnight airwaves with "Coast to Coast A.M.," "In Search of..." brought ghosts, UFOs, the Loch Ness Monster and other paranormal phenomena into homes across America. It caught the zeitgeist of the era, when interest in strange phenomena and the boundaries of science, pseudoscience and fantasy seemed to reach a peak, spurred on by the publication in 1968 of Erich von Däniken's best-selling hodgepodge of mythology and UFO lore, "Chariots of the Gods."

Casting Nimoy as host was a stroke of genius. Then as now associated with his role as the sober-minded and logical Mr. Spock, who better was there to get viewers to take seriously notions like "animal ESP" and the lost civilization of Atlantis?

Almost as important was the show's music, by disco producers Laurin Rinder and W. Michael Lewis, which gave the proceedings an appropriately creepy atmosphere. (That's a soundtrack, issued on vinyl in 1977, begging to be re-released.)

If you believe in the paranormal, this DVD set is like Christmas. Yet even if you are a skeptic — as I am — it is a fascinating, if frustrating, look at persistent myths in earlier stages of their evolution. While Mr. Nimoy's fashions are dated, most of the subjects the show investigates are still fodder for basic cable. They still haven't found bigfoot.

But some "In Search of..." topics are one with their time. If you were born after 1980, you probably don't remember when Americans were terrified of killer bees making their way to the U.S. from South America. Nor do you remember when looming climate change wasn't global warming but "The Coming Ice Age." "In Search of..." tackles both, and makes them seem truly terrifying.

Then there's the Bermuda Triangle. Almost no one talks about it anymore, but the area defined by Miami, the island of Bermuda and San Juan, Puerto Rico, was once known for strange goings on and vanished boats and aircraft. Now, with hindsight and better record keeping, we know this heavily traveled area of the Atlantic doesn't even have an unusually high number of disappearances.

Yet unlike most of the paranormal and conspiracy-theory shows now on the air, "In Search of..." can still surprise you. An episode about the disappearance of Amelia Earhart flirts with the outlandish before settling on a more prosaic explanation. And an episode about the Trojan War is actually too skeptical. The latest archaeological evidence indicates the conflict remembered in Homer's epic poem probably did happen, in some form.

In retrospect, "In Search of..." does give us important insights, just not the ones its producers imagined. It's a slice of life from America at its most paranoid and neurotic.

Culture Shock: 04.12.12: '80s cartoons strike back — again!

Netflix has a section of children's programming it brands "Just for Kids," but pretty soon, I bet, a lot of 30-somethings will be clicking entry to relive part of their bygone youth.

Come to Cobra. We have cookies.

Last week, the video-streaming and DVD-rental service announced a deal with Hasbro to bring new and vintage cartoons based on Hasbro's toy franchises to Netflix's library of "watch instantly" offerings.

At the heart of the deal are Hasbro's latest cartoons, some of which are already available on Netflix instant: "Transformers Prime," "G.I. Joe: Renegades" and new versions of "Pound Puppies" and "My Little Pony." New seasons will appear on Netflix after they air on Hasbro's cable channel, The Hub.

I bet all of those college-age fans of "My Little Pony" — known as "Bronies," or so I've heard — are planning celebratory keggers even now. (Who am I to judge? When I was in college, I watched Nickelodeon's Canadian-import soap opera "Fifteen" every week — despite the shame that comes with watching any Canadian TV show that isn't "Kids in the Hall.")

But for those of us who watched weekday-afternoon cartoons during the 1980s, the big news was that the Netflix/Hasbro pact also included the original "Transformers" (before Michael Bay got his grubby hands on it), "G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero" (before Stephen Sommers did the same) and "Jem and the Holograms" (which no one has yet turned into a terrible live-action movie).

All three '80s classics will join Netflix's lineup later this year.

These shows are the forbidden fruit of children's programming. All were very popular in their day and built followings that even now still support comic books, T-shirts, DVD collections and retro-'80s-style toys. And all were derided when they originally aired as "half-hour toy commercials" because they were all based on Hasbro's popular toy brands.

Those of us who actually rushed home after school each day to watch "Transformers" or "Jem" didn't care one way or the other about commercialism. We just wanted to watch what were, at the time, the best cartoons around. (This was before "Batman: The Animated Series" upped the ante for action/adventure cartoons.)

Unfortunately, an unholy coalition of professional worriers, seeking to shield children from the twin bogeymen of commercialism and fantasy violence, agitated until Congress passed the Children's Television Act of 1990, which put restrictions on advertising during children's programming and mandated that broadcasters air more "educational" shows. The bottom line is the Children's Television Act made cartoons like "Transformers" and "G.I. Joe" less economically competitive in the brutally competitive world of TV syndication.

And that's partly why afternoon television is now wall-to-wall TV psychologists, TV doctors and TV judges — who just happen to be exactly the sort of professional scolds who demanded the federal government take action against cartoon commercialism in the first place.

If I didn't know better, I'd suspect that was the plan all along.

But revenge, as the Klingons say, is a dish best served cold. Today, Hasbro has its own cable channel, which is exempt from the rules that plague over-the-air broadcasters. So, Hasbro can produce new "My Little Pony" cartoons and sell My Little Pony ponies to the Bronies, and there's not much the killjoys at the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood can do except mutter to themselves as they hand wash their Chairman Mao T-shirts — brand loyalty for commies.

And for those of us who refuse to pay another $50 a month to upgrade to the channel tier that includes The Hub, there's now Netflix, where the childhood Congress stole from us lives again.

Yo, Joe.

Culture Shock 05.12.11: Charlie Sheen is a violent 'Wraith' of truth

Let's go back to a simpler time — long before "Two and a Half Men," before the "goddesses" and before the "Violent Torpedo of Truth" tour — a time when Charlie Sheen was just an actor.

No, keep going. Before "Hot Shots!" and "Major League." Before "Navy SEALs" and "Wall Street."

I'm taking about going back to one of Sheen's earliest starring roles, the vengeful spirit in 1986's "The Wraith."

Re-released last year as a "special edition" DVD and currently available free online at Hulu.com, "The Wraith" is one of those movies that really takes you back — assuming you grew up in the 1980s and once thought mullets were kinda cool.

Sheen plays Jake, a stranger who rides into town on his bike and, with a sly grin, quickly earns the affection of Keri, played by Sherilyn Fenn before she hit it big with "Twin Peaks" and "Two Moon Junction."

She's the pretty girl who works at the local burger joint, which, as far as I can tell, is this sleepy Arizona town's major employer.

But there's just one problem: Keri is seeing — dating isn't the right word — the local tough guy, Packard, played by multitalented actor/writer/director Nick Cassavetes.

Packard has a thing for switchblades and wild mood swings. He also has a thing for Keri, although she's not particularly interested in his thing.

Otherwise, Packard and his gang have a good thing going — street racing, grand theft auto and a profitable chop shop — until the "Wraith" comes along and starts picking off Packard's crew one by one.

Driving his all-black "Turbo Interceptor" (actually a customized Dodge M4S prototype) and wearing a black costume topped-off with a huge helmet, the Wraith looks like a cross between a Power Ranger and a member of Daft Punk. But he also carries a big gun, which counts for something.

You know, Jake and the Wraith showed up at the same time. Could they be the same guy? Hmm.

Yeah, I'm not giving anything away by saying Jake is actually a ghost who has come back in a different body to take revenge on the guys who killed him. Basically, it's the same plot as "High Plains Drifter," only without the cowardly townsfolk. That means Sheen and Clint Eastwood have something in common besides "The Rookie."

Rounding out the cast are Clint Howard as Rughead, the gang's nerdy tech genius, and Randy Quaid — the only man in Hollywood with a more bizarre personal life than Sheen's — as Sheriff Loomis.

Most of the fun of "The Wraith" comes from its nostalgia value and the comic relief provided by Packard's dimwitted gang, particularly the unfortunately named Skank and Gutterboy. Charlie doesn't really have a lot to do, apart from riding around looking cool and making out with Fenn, which is nice work if you can get it.

The Scotti Brothers Records soundtrack (unfortunately out of print) is like an Ultimate '80s playlist, featuring Ozzy Osbourne, Robert Palmer, Bonnie Tyler and Billy Idol, as well as Scotti Brothers regulars Lion and Stan Bush, who also show up on the 1986 "Transformers: The Movie" soundtrack.

So, if you're old enough to have ever worn a Members Only jacket unironically, "The Wraith" is a good way to relive your glory days.

Or if you only know Charlie Sheen as a "high priest Vatican assassin warlock," you might think a movie where he spends 90 minutes killing douchebags is a pretty neat idea. In any case, it's better than "Two and a Half Men."

Culture Shock 10.07.10: 'Thundarr the Barbarian' survives apocalypse

If you grew up watching Saturday-morning cartoons during the 1980s, chances are you're familiar with Ruby-Spears Productions, even if you don't recall the name.

Ruby-Spears produced some of that decade's most memorable cartoons, and one of them has finally made its long-overdue debut on home video.

Warner Bros., which owns most of the Ruby-Spears library, has just released "Thundarr the Barbarian" on DVD-R through its Warner Archive label, online at www.wbshop.com. The Warner Archive is a burn-on-demand service, so the DVDs aren't manufactured until you order them, and they're not available in stores.

But don't let the hassle of ordering direct from Warner Bros. deter you. "Thundarr" holds up surprisingly well for a 30-year-old cartoon constrained by the draconian standards-and-practices rules of early-'80s Saturday-morning broadcast television. If you now have children of your own, "Thundarr" is something you can enjoy together. It goes best with a bowl of Sugar Pops, or Corn Pops, or whatever Kellogg's is calling them now.

"Thundarr" is Conan the Barbarian meets He-Man, even though the show actually pre-dates "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" by a couple of years.

Two thousand years in the future, the Earth is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, littered with the ruins of the 20th century civilization. (The apocalypse in question is said to have occurred in 1994, when a "runaway planet" passed between the Earth and the moon with catastrophic results. So we really dodged a bullet.) But a new civilization has emerged, populated with human survivors, mutants, aliens and the occasional power-mad wizard who mixes science with sorcery.

The wizards are the ones who menace Thundarr and his friends during most of their weekly adventures.

"Thundarr" clearly owes a debt to the original "Star Wars" saga, which was in full swing when the show debuted in 1980. Thundarr's weapon of choice is his "sun sword," which works a lot like a lightsaber, except, this being a children's show, he never cuts anyone's arm off. Thundarr's best friend is Ookla the Mok, who is a bit like a Wookie, except with a lion's head. Like Chewbacca, Ookla speaks only in grunts and snarls.

Joining Thundarr and Ookla in their adventures is Princess Ariel, the one magic-user who uses her powers for good rather than evil.

The main reason "Thundarr the Barbarian" still entertains while most other cartoons of its era don't is the team of writers and animators behind it.

"Thundarr" was created by Steve Gerber, creator of Marvel Comics' Howard the Duck, which is not to be confused with the turkey of a movie that came later. One of the staff writers was Mark Evanier, writer of the comic "Groo the Wanderer" and a veteran of well-regarded cartoons like "Dungeons & Dragons" and "Garfield and Friends." The production design was the work of comics legend Jack Kirby, who co-created the Fantastic Four, the Hulk and other Marvel characters. And the character design came from Alex Toth, who also designed the characters for "Space Ghost" and "Superfriends."

Although it ran for only 21 episodes over two seasons, "Thundarr" has cemented its place among Saturday morning's most enduring TV shows and developed an enthusiastic cult following.

Most other Ruby-Spears shows, however, are products of their time.

The studio almost cornered the market for cartoons based on arcade games ("Dragon's Lair," "Space Ace" and "Donkey Kong"), produced animated versions of "Punky Brewster" and "Mork and Mindy," and even made cartoons based on the "Rambo" and "Police Academy" movies, as well as an animated Chuck Norris miniseries.

None of these shows hold up as well as "Thundarr." OK, most of them just don't hold up. But they're a window to the '80s.

Maybe, like "Thundarr," they'll resurface, too.

Culture Shock 08.12.10: The future finally arrives for ahead-of-its-time show 'Max Headroom'

The future has finally caught up with "Max Headroom."

When it aired on ABC in 1987, it was ahead of its time — and ahead of most viewers. It was a critical darling, but a ratings disaster after ABC shifted it to the Friday-night death slot opposite "Dallas" and "Miami Vice." So, after just 14 episodes, ABC canceled it.

Yet if "Max Headroom" aired today, it would probably be a huge hit. It would go on for five or six seasons, have a complex and increasingly convoluted story arc, and just end up disappointing everyone with an unsatisfying series finale that resolves none of its major mysteries.

You know, maybe it's a good thing "Max Headroom" aired when it did. There are worse things to be than brilliant but canceled.

So, for those of you too young to remember 1987, who don't know how brilliant "Max Headroom" truly is, there's good news. All 14 episodes are now on DVD as "Max Headroom: The Complete Series."

An ambitious mix of "Blade Runner," Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" and what would later be known as "cyberpunk," "Max Headroom" is science fiction that confronts — head on, shall we say — the impact of technology and the media on everything from privacy and politics to religion and medicine.

Canadian actor Matt Frewer ("Watchmen") stars as Edison Carter, an investigative journalist for Network 23, the most watched and most powerful media outlet in a dystopian world set "20 minutes into the future" — or about 2004, actually — where all real power rests with the media.

In its never-ending battle for ratings dominance, Network 23 has a secret weapon: an unpredictable, anarchistic, computer-generated talking head created from Carter's memories — Max Headroom.

While Carter uncovers political and corporate wrongdoing, often involving his employer or its main advertiser, the nefarious Zik Zak corporation, Max has free rein to pop up whenever and wherever he chooses, both on Network 23's airwaves and inside its computer network.

Occasionally, Max stumbles upon information that helps Carter's investigations. And sometimes he even remembers to share it. For Carter, dealing with Max is like dealing with his inner child — a spoiled-rotten inner child who could probably do with a good spanking.

The show's creators intended "Max Headroom," in part, as a warning about the direction in which they saw society and the media moving.

For better or worse, some of their predictions have panned out, from e-mail to reality television.

Another purpose was to point out that the media often has an agenda of its own, which was always true, but not nearly so obvious before Fox News and MSNBC came along.

"Max Headroom" was subversive for its time, when three stodgy broadcast networks and PBS were the beginning, middle and end of the TV universe. But that doesn't mean it got everything right, and some of its predictions and warnings seem pretty silly today.

For example, Zik Zak is a Japanese-owned corporation run by stereotypical — and borderline offensive — Japanese bosses who speak loudly in broken English. Zik Zak represents 1980s paranoia about the Japanese "buying up" America, a non-threat at the time, and a ridiculous one in light of Japan's "lost decade" of economic stagnation.

On a larger level, "Max Headroom" overestimates the power of television, portraying it as an uncontrollable force that comes at you, whether you want it to or not. In "Max Headroom," TVs don't even have off switches; all you can do is change the channel. Television is top-down, authoritarian and inescapable.

In reality, in our world of 2010, we've never had more control over TV. We watch what we want, when we want, how we want. Between TiVo, Hulu, Netflix and on-demand, broadcasters have lost control. In effect, you can program your own network and, if you want, even avoid the commercials.

But even when it's wrong, "Max Headroom" is interesting. And science fiction always has more to do with its own time than any imagined future.

"Max Headroom" is a time capsule of a decade when we worried about all the wrong things.

Culture Shock 07.01.10: Forgotten movie sums up the gung-ho 1980s

It was the 1980s. Ronald Reagan was president. Sylvester Stallone was re-fighting — and winning — the Vietnam War. And high school students were fending off a Soviet invasion.

You didn't mess with America, and if you did, you were soon sorry. This was the era that spawned every Chuck Norris joke you've ever heard.

In the gung-ho decade of "Red Dawn" and "Invasion USA," a mullet and guns — lots of guns — were all you needed to take on the Forces of Evil. It was "morning in America," every day was the Fourth of July and Hollywood got busy settling the U.S. of A.'s old scores.
Sometimes the plots were, to be charitable, a little silly. But even for anyone who thought "Red Dawn" was a documentary from the future, there was one movie that made all the others seem sane. That movie was 1987's "Nightforce."

If you've never heard of "Nightforce," that's understandable. This straight-to-video action flick received most of its airplay on late-night cable TV. The VHS tape is long out of print, and it isn't a likely candidate for reissue on DVD. And that's a shame because while "Nightforce" is in no sense a good movie, it is bizarre artifact from a decade that now exists only as a target for jokes on VH1.

Here's the plot: Central American terrorists kidnap a U.S. senator's daughter, and for reasons that don't make any sense, especially because we're talking about a senator's daughter, the government is powerless to act. Meanwhile, the senator refuses to give in to the captors' demands because "we don't negotiate with terrorists."

It falls to the daughter's mullet-headed, polo-wearing college friends to come to the rescue. They load a jeep with automatic weapons and ammunition, then head south of the border on a rescue mission you just know is going to end with half of them dead. But one way or the other, they'll rescue the girl and shoot a bunch of foreigners, especially that one guy who looks like a burly Fidel Castro. He's a dead man.

There's also a subplot about said senator's daughter, Christy, getting married to some rich guy even though she's in love with the rich guy's younger brother. But as far as I can tell, the subplot is there mainly to justify the sex scene that occurs in the first 10 minutes. That's reason enough, come to think of it.

Amazingly, Christy's friends drive all the way to Central America without getting their throats slit.

They also have the good fortune to meet a friendly mercenary played by 1980s B-movie mainstay Richard Lynch, who gives them even more guns, plus some tactical support.

Most of "Nightforce's" (unintentional) entertainment value comes from its absurd script, but you can't discount the cast. Apart from Lynch, there's Linda Blair — smack in the middle of her post-"Exorcist" career's action movie phase — playing Christy's best friend and leading the rescue operation.

Then there's James Van Patten, son of "Eight is Enough" patriarch Dick Van Patten, as Steve, the younger brother/love interest. (Or is he the older brother? I honestly forgot.)

Somehow, Lynch spent a fair chuck of the 1980s dealing with Dick Van Patten's children. In "Nightforce," he tries to keep James from getting killed, while in 1985's "Cut and Run," he tries to kill Dick's TV son Willie Ames.

Lastly, there's Christy, played by Claudia Udy, best known for her title role in the Cinemax After Dark favorite "Joy," due on DVD later this month.

It almost goes without saying, but Udy spends most of the movie in various states of undress.

Basically, "Nightforce" is the sort of untrained-Americans-kick-butt-against-skilled-adversaries movie that could only have come out of the '80s, with just enough exploitation elements to keep late-night viewers awake.

For all of its schlock value, "Nightforce" says something about the prevailing attitude in America during the decade it was made. America was finally over its post-Vietnam funk and looking to kick butt.

How quaint those pre-Iraq, pre-Afghanistan days seem now.

Culture Shock 03.18.10: Remembering the wild days of cable TV

Once the backwater of the entertainment world, cable TV is now where the action is. But I can't help but think cable has lost something on its long journey toward respectability.

When it comes time for Hollywood to hand out awards, shows like "Mad Men," "Breaking Bad" and "Dexter" — not to mention HBO's late, lamented "The Sopranos" — are always in the running for Emmys and Golden Globes.

That's a big change from just 20 years ago, when cable shows weren't even eligible for Emmy nominations. Instead, cable had its own, separate award, the ACE. And winning one was no big deal.

Flash forward in time, and many of the best shows on television are cable originals, from "Battlestar Galactica" and "Anthony Bourdain" to "Penn & Teller" and "The Venture Bros." Yet when I look back at old video clips on YouTube, I'm struck by what cable has given up.

As creative as cable is now, it's a different kind of creativity than 30 years ago.

Early cable depended on inventiveness born of desperation. And if one crazy idea failed, who cared? No one was watching, anyway.

For instance, search YouTube and you'll find old footage from TBS back when it was still known as WTBS, Atlanta's "Superstation."

The early days of Ted Turner's flagship channel remind me a lot of the 1989 movie "UHF," in which a down-on-his-luck dreamer played by "Weird Al" Yankovic takes over a failing local TV station and programs it with whatever nutty shows he can imagine.

Yes, I just compared Ted Turner with "Weird Al." I bet you didn't see that coming. But it's no stretch, really.

Before it went national, WTBS (originally WTCG) was just another struggling, independent UHF station trying to make a buck.

In the early '80s, WTBS was awash with local Atlanta professional wrestling, 1940s Bugs Bunny cartoons and Three Stooges shorts, and whatever movies Turner could get his hands on. But Turner had in-house talent, too.

Bill Tush had mostly worked behind the scenes before Turner made him the face of WTBS — doing commercials, hosting movies and, most importantly, anchoring a 3 a.m. news broadcast. Tush turned that news program into a screwball mix of news and comedy, and he did it some 20 years before Jon Stewart made Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" a hit with college students.

Tush's newscast gained a cult following, and Turner gave him his own comedy/variety show, which lasted two years and helped give Jan Hooks ("Saturday Night Live") her start in showbiz. Afterward, Tush became CNN's go-to entertainment reporter, a position he held until 2003.

The '80s were wild days for cable TV. WTBS invited in local schoolchildren to read and report the news for a weekday afternoon segment called "Kids Beat," and it aired "Starcade," a game show in which contestants played arcade games like "Donkey Kong" and "Pac-Man."

TBS wasn't alone. Although it's now known for critical favorites like "Monk" and "Burn Notice," USA Network had similar beginnings.

Its early lineup included wrestling, game shows and B-grade horror movies hosted by "retired superhero" Commander USA (aka Jim Hendricks).

It was inexpensive, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants programming, and there was a kind of freedom to it that went beyond just being free of broadcast television's standards and practices.

It was the sort of freedom that comes, to paraphrase the song, with having nothing to lose.