The premise is simple, but the task is not. Every single movie released in the United States during the 1980s, reviewed in chronological order, published month by month.

Buckle up, because this is The Last ‘80s Newsletter You’ll Ever Need…

JULY

Ronald Reagan was nominated for President by the Republicans at their convention in Detroit.
Bjorn Borg beat John McEnroe at Wimbledon.
Billy Joel’s “Glass Houses” sat on top of the charts.
And in an act that was designed to send a political message,
the US officially sat out the Moscow Olympics.

Saturday Night Live was a big deal in my house, which was odd considering my dad’s aversion to the counter-culture.

One of my earliest memories regarding the show came when I crept downstairs one night because I could hear my parents laughing at something. It was the Julia Child sketch where Dan Aykroyd cut his hand and bled everywhere, and watching them lose their minds with laughter, I was amazed. From that moment on, I was obsessed with the show, and watching the cast members jump from the show to movies was one of the things that made the ‘80s so interesting from end to end. I wasn’t old enough for most of what was being released that had any connection to the show, though, but I pushed. I managed to see The Blues Brothers with my grandmother. I had seen Foul Play with my mom, and I’d seen Meatballs with my other grandmother. It felt like the SNL cast were all becoming movie stars and I was onboard, 100%.

Oh, Heavenly Dog! was a big deal not only because of Chevy Chase, but because he was teamed up with Benji. One of the things that my parents leaned on heavily was brand recognition, especially when trying to find things that they could take my sister and me to at the same time. Benji was beloved in our house, so this was one of the easiest sells of the summer in our house. Unfortunately, it was an early example of me realizing something didn’t work, and my parents were actively annoyed by the movie and its strange inability to land on a tone. And it certainly didn’t help me make the case that we should go see anything else with Chevy Chase.

It could be hard when I really wanted to see something and they really didn’t want me to see it. The Blue Lagoon was a huge buzz title, and thanks to all of my friends’ older siblings, there was this sense that you had to see the film or you were clearly a baby. I had to pick my battles, though, because there were all sorts of films coming out that I wanted to see, and I knew some of them were impossible. The Dressed to Kill poster hooked me the first time I saw it, and I did my best to find anyone who I could convince to take me to see this hyper-violent sexual thriller. Didn’t happen and for a long time, my only experience of the film was the Mad magazine parody. The Blue Lagoon didn’t happen, either, even though every one of my friends lied about having seen it, myself included. It got to where I had no idea what really was or wasn’t in the film because so many people who were talking about it were so full of shit. One guy spent an entire bus ride to school telling us how the film had real hardcore porn in it, and the cops were probably going to start arresting people for watching it, and the version he saw had already been cut because it was so crazy.

I was just as frustrated in my attempts to get someone to take me to see Used Cars, which I fixated on because I spotted Steven Spielberg’s name on the poster. I didn’t understand the relationship that he had with Robert Zemeckis, and at that point, I didn’t have any reason to know Robert Zemeckis by name. I just knew that the poster looked funny and it was, in some way, a Steven Spielberg film. That’s how powerful a draw that name was for me at that point. I was already hooked, and that was before he had really become the household name he is now. I tried to use Kurt Russell as a selling point since he was only really known at that point for his Disney movies and his performance as Elvis, and that meant he was a huge star in my house. Didn’t work. My parents were starting to realize I was playing them, trying to get them to take me to see R-rated films, and they started paying more attention to what I was asking for or talking about.

I didn’t have to actually see a film for it to sink in, though. I went away to summer camp that year, my first time staying away for a full week, and it’s safe to say that every kid at that camp that month was talking about Friday the 13th. It didn’t matter if you’d seen it or not. You absorbed it by osmosis. It had been out for a few months by that point, and it was already a huge cultural flashpoint for people my age. Somehow, I never had the very ending of the film ruined for me, but I started to feel like I had seen it just because every kid at camp was talking about it. The film conversations I had at that age still seem so vivid to me, and the dumber they were, the better. One friend’s older brother spent a long afternoon telling us how Hangar 18 was a documentary, and it didn’t matter how hard we laughed… he insisted.

The Last '80s Newsletter (You'll Ever Need)

July 1980 takes flight with one of the…

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