Saturday morning  kids animation series from the 80s. The story of a magical Rubik's Cube called... Wait for it... Rubik! The premise being that Rubik had fallen off the back of an evil magician's stagecoach, and was found by the three Rodriguez kids. Rubik could only be brought to life, if he was solved. Luckily the Rodriguez kids were among the few people able to solve the puzzle cube. Once solved, Rubik possessed magical powers and had the ability of flight. The show featured some tense moments, as the kids struggled to solve Rubik, in times of dire need. For some unknown reason Rubik had no arms, just a head and legs that appeared out of the cube. (I'm really not making this up, and I've not had any drugs!) 

The show aired on ABC in the United States for only one season of 18 episodes from 1983 to 1984. It was shown in a double bill with the Pac-Man animated series. With the kids being Hispanic, the the makers kept up the theme with the opening titles song performed by the 70s Puerto Rican boy band Menudo. The bands line-up changed throughout the years, and once featured the singer Ricky Martin for a period during the 80s. The Rubik theme is a pre-Ricky song however.

A video game created in 1982 by Starpath Corp. (formerly known as Arcadia) for the Atari 2600 home video game console and featuring the Starpath Supercharger cassette accessory (originally called the Arcadia Supercharger). In which the special cartridge had a cassette port, to allow for a whole extra 6KB of memory, giving a "supercharged" kick to those blocky Atari games. (Supercharger sold separately.) 

In the oddly titled Space Invaders shoot-'em-up inspired game you have to fight off communist aliens, wanting to convert your planet into mutant communists. They are lead by an egg laying, irradiated vodka swilling Mother Creature (a parody of Mother Russia it can be assumed), who is hell-bent of spreading the evils of communism across the galaxy. The game allowed for multi-players. Up to four people could join-in, with players sharing the two Atari joysticks. 

Wow! Look at those pumped-up graphics that the whole extra 6KB brought to the Atari 2600! Assuming that the blocks are a purposeful design choice, relating in some way to the Eastern Bloc! Or it could be that the massive 6KB expansion had no impact on the quality of games. And the fact that they attempted to incorporate a cassette based element to a cartridge based system wasn't an utterly ridiculous and backwards move on the part of the game-makers.

The infamously controversial platform game, that was so much a blatant rip-off of Super Mario Bros. that the original Commodore 64 cover art declared "The brothers are history". The Great Giana Sisters was a German computer game from 1987 developed by Time Warp Productions and published by Rainbow Arts. It's similarities to the famous Nintendo platformer were so great that urban myths developed around lawsuits being filed by Nintendo, against the makers of the copy-cat game. Originally released on the Commodore 64, it was ported across to the Amiga and Atari ST, as well as the Amstrad CPC and the MSX2. However a planned Sinclair Spectrum version never saw the light of day, supposedly due to legal pressures. Due to the controversy around the game, it has gained a cult status among retro gaming fans, and it rated as one of the best ever C64 games.

The game has two playable characters, the "sisters" Giana and Maria.  The game background and general style looks very similar to Super Mario Bros.  However in the game play, instead of collecting mushrooms from blocks, the sisters gather brightly-coloured balls from blocks.  After collecting the power balls, the characters do not grow large (like in Mario), but instead their hairstyle changes into Mohawks.  Allowing the characters to break blocks, a feature of both games.

The Beyond (AKA Seven Doors of Death) is a bloody gore filled cult horror film by Italian director Lucio Fulci. Considered by some to be the second movie in Fulci's unofficial Gates of Hell trilogy (which includes City of the Living Dead and The House by the Cemetery). It was initially released heavily cut in the UK and USA.

A young woman inherits an old hotel in Louisiana called the Seven Doors Hotel, where after a strange series of "supernatural" incidents, she discovers that the hotel was built over an entrance to Hell. The movie has gained a cult following not only because it is a classic example of Italian horror of the period, but also for the bloody over-the-top scenes strung together by a thin plot. The Beyond isn't a movie you watch for a cleverly conceived narrative plot, it a movie you watch for the set piece gory death scenes. Not more no less, this movie doesn't pretend to be anything more or deliver anything less than somewhat hammy schlock gore, by today's standards. But that is exactly what makes it the cult classic that it is. Zombies, Hell and a nod to Lovecraft. What more could you want?

The nod to Lovecraft, and that this is often placed in the Lovecraftian genre of movies is pretty much down to the reference to the book of Eibon the movie, which appeared in several of Lovecraft's stories. In other ways it nods to Lovecraft in the blurring of the lines between realities, the realms of the living and the dead. However Fulci claimed that it was more a homage to surrealist French playwright Antonin Artaud, than to Lovecraft.

The King of Death, is a German experimental horror film by controversial film-maker Jörg Buttgereit, also known for his NEKRomantik films. The film covers themes of death and suicide, with seven separate segments spread over the seven days of the week. The segments are stitched together by footage of a body slowly rotting and consumed by maggots in time-lapse.

Part exploitation movie, part avant-garde arthouse, a thought provoking and at times disturbing film that will stay with you long after watching it. An uncompromising exploration of the cycle of life, which ultimately shows (though the decomposing corpse) that new life comes from death. The nearest example of a film like it, and themes it covers would be the 1990 experimental horror Begotten. Delivered in a cold, stark, detached style, der Todesking is a classic piece of cult European cinema. Not to everyone's taste, but a must see for anyone who appreciates experimental cinema at its best.

Other experimental Buttgereit movies that are worth checking out are 1993's darkly surreal serial killer film Schramm. 1986's Jesus - The Film, made in the exquisite corpse style in 35 segments by 22 individual film-makers in Germany, from 16mm film stock smuggled out of East Germany. More recently in 2010, he released Captain Berlin vs Hitler, a filming of his 2007 campy over-the-top and controversial stage-play. 

The reason I so love B.C.'s Quest For Tyres is that it was the first pirated computer game I ever got, after getting my Commodore 64.  And it was a simple yet brilliantly infuriating side-scrolling pixel perfect game. So typical of the era. Based on the Johnny Hart B.C. comic strip, the game was developed by Sydney Development and published by Sierra On-Line in 1983. It was released for the Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit, ColecoVision, ZX Spectrum, MSX, and Apple II computers.

As the player you become the stone unicycle riding  caveman Thor, who has to rescue his girlfriend, "Cute Chick", who has been kidnapped by a dinosaur. To do this, you must travel on the stone unicycle through several levels. Each level has Thor moving from the left to the right, avoiding various pot-holes, rocks and other obstacles along the way.

At the end of the day, the game was very basic. But that it was based of a comic strip, and featured many of the characters from that comic strip, some how made the game more than it was. The simple graphics captured the cartoon, and it did in some way feel like you were playing an interactive comic strip, rather than just a simple basic side-scrolling jump and duck game. Hence why B.C.'s Quest For Tires remains a stand-out game.

Designed as a satirical side-swipe at the American legal system, Capital Punishment was a board game produced in 1981 by Hammerhead Enterprises. The Monopoly style game was made to make a political point, but teeters on the edge of being creepy. In the game, a player may win by manoeuvring all four of his "criminals" in such a way that they are all get Life Imprisonment, are sent to Death Row or get the Electric Chair. Or the player may use his two "liberals" to spring the opposing players' criminals from the "Path of Justice" and sending them back onto the streets. 

Once released onto the streets the opponent's now innocent citizens can become victims of violent crimes, and thus being innocent, the dead victims get to go to heaven. Thus making two ways of winning. Get your criminals all sent down, or kill off all your opponents. Yeah, even as a purposely satirical game, this one is weird.

Hammerhead Enterprises also produced the satirical board game Public Assistance: Why Bother Working For A Living in 1980. They were a Maryland based board game maker, that was right-wing and anti-liberal, which maybe goes some way to explain the oddities of these games.

Horror sci-fi comedy and satire on capitalism, Larry Cohen's The Stuff is a much under-rated classic, that deserves re-watching. Cohen a prolific writer, producer and director scored another cult classic with Q-The Winged Serpent in 1982, but by far his best movie is satirical dark comedy The Stuff.

A weird substance is found bubbling up from the earth, and the two guys who discover it decide to taste it (As you would.) It's so delicious that they decide to market it as a new kind of dessert.The Stuff takes off as the new sensation, as consumers clamour to buy it. Becoming addicted zombies, as the stuff starts to take them over.

In the movie sales of The Stuff drastically hit the ice-cream market, and the ice-cream industry hire ex-FBI agent turned industrial saboteur David "Mo" Rutherford, to investigate it. It reality much of the prop "stuff" used in the movie was ironically lots of Häagen-Dazs ice cream. They also used yoghurt, and for one large scale scene of The Stuff coming through a wall, fire extinguisher foam.

Of course The Stuff is in some part a homage to The Blob (1958), and in many ways harks back to the schlock horror of the 50s and 60s. It's very much a movie of the 80s, but is much better crafted than many of its contemporaries. It's unique, quirky, cleverly handled and directed by Cohen with a witty script that has some moments of sharp cutting satire. Making the movie much much more than the hammy schlock horror that it may at first appear to be. Hence why it deserves another watch for those who may have caught it the first time round and missed the clever nuances buried in amongst the quirky humour.

And if you have never seen it. First why not? And second, you are in for a deliciously toxic piece of classic 80s sc-fi horror. Highly recommended.

Interstingly, and somewhat a stand-out from teh rest of his career, one of Larry Cohen's first movies as writer/director was the blaxploitation movie Black Caesar (also known as Godfather of Harlem) in 1973. Starring Fred Williamson, it was a remake of the 1931 gangster movie Little Caesar.

The Quiet Earth is a film that sneaks up on you, a slow paced post apocalyptic sci-fi film from New Zealand that has left a lasting impression on many who have watched it. Directed by Geoff Murphy, who went on to be the 2nd Unit Director on the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, under the famous New Zealand film director Peter Jackson.

Based loosely on the 1981 sci-fi novel of the same name by Craig Harrison, the movie has also been compared to the 1959 post apocalyptic sci-fi The World, The Flesh And The Devil. Which also featured only three cast members, strikingly similar to those in The Quiet Earth. Leading some to describe it as an unofficial remake.

Scientist Zac Hobson awakens to a world where everyone seems to have disappeared. Eventually coming upon two other survivors, they set-out to try and discover what happened to everyone else. Zac believing it has something to do with an experiment he was working on called Project Flashlight, that may have caused something he calls The Effect. 

 A film of two halves. As initially the first half explores Zac's spiral into madness, as he believes himself to be the last man on Earth. Blaming himself for causing the disappearance of all teh people. Then he meets the other two survivors, and the film becomes one of human relationships, between three people from different walks of life thrown together by circumstance. With a cleverly conceived ending that is confusing and mind-bending, leaving some viewers in stunned silence as the credits roll.

Following last week's Mid-Week Movie Massacre: Top 70s Massacres Not From Texas With Chainsaws, we jump into the bloodied pool that is the 1980s. Based on a single image that I came across, while looking up last week's posters. The image (below) of a woman cut in half, slumped in the corner of a bathroom in a pool of her own blood. I've seen a lot of horror movies, but I couldn't place this one. Turns out I'd not seen the movie, a 1982 splatter-fest called Pieces. How this one had slipped under my radar is utterly baffling, but hey even the most hardcore cinephile can't see literally every movie out there can they?

Pieces is a US/Spanish exploitation slasher flick, (original title: Mil gritos tiene la noche translation: A Thousand Screams in the Night), which was apparently a "drive-in favourite", according to Wikipedia. A chainsaw weilding serial killer collects body parts from his victims to create a grisly human jigsaw puzzle. Even the clips of YouTube make this look like an all-out over-the-top awesome blood and guts roller coaster ride of gore.

I dug through YouTube to find the scene related to the image I had come across. And it has to be said that the close-up of cutting the girl on half was pretty realistic looking for such a low budget movie. It turns out that the film makers actually used a pig carcass, and cut through it with a real chainsaw. Nice and obvious touch that really worked. Right I'm off to see if I can get my hands on a copy of this film...

A full release version only made it to the  UK few years ago. It had a "limited" release in 1984, and from what I can see was never offically released on video in the UK. If it was released on video in the 80s, it would have certainly made the BBFC Video Nasties list. All of which I have, and it isn't among the schlock, gore and awful nonsense that did make it on the list. In the United States, an uncut and uncensored director's cut wasn't released until 2008.