Michael Brandon (Four Flies on Grey Velvet) stars as Jeff Dugan, the ultra-cool program director at Q-SKY Radio, LA’s number one rock station. Never mind the fact that the station has the frequency 71.1, which is impossible in the US as the FCC frequency range goes from 87.8 to 108.0. Also, in the US, there are no radio stations with “Q” prefixes: East of the Mississippi, all stations begin with “W,” while stations west of the Mississippi start “K.” There’s only one major exception — KDKA in Pittsburgh. In Canada, stations use “C,” while “X” is utilized for stations in Mexico.

Q-SKY has all manner of crazy on-air personalities, like Mother, who sounds a lot like Alison Steele, the Nightbird, who also inspired Stevie in The Fog (others have said she’s based on Mary “The Burner” Turner from KMET). She’s played by Eileen Brennan from The Last Picture Show. There’s also The Prince of Darkness (Cleavon Little, who beyond Blazing Saddles, Surf II and Once Bitten also played the DJ Super Soul in the movie that inspired Tarantino’s Death Proof, Vanishing Point), low rated Doc Holliday (former Detroit Lion Alex Karras), his replacement Laura Coe (Cassie Yates, The Evil) and Eric Swan (Martin Mull!) who is obsessed with being a success in show business and with women.

Despite Jeff getting the station to number one in the number two market in the country, his corporate bosses only want him to sell more advertising time. Then, sales manager Regis Lamar gets him a deal to advertise for the Army, he refuses. His bosses order him to run the ads so he quits. The remaining DJs protest by locking themselves in and even physically battling the police.

Everything works out — the station’s owner (Norman Lloyd, Jaws of Satan and Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes) is inspired by the DJs and fires the sales staff. Meanwhile, dumped by his true love and fired by his manager, Eric Swan has a mental breakdown while on the air.

Director John A. Alonzo, then noted as a cinematographer on Vanishing Point, Chinatown, Black Sunday and — after this film — Scarface, made his directorial debut with FM.

Screenwriter Ezra Sacks worked at Los Angeles’ fabled FM station KMET in the early 70’s when AOR — Album Oriented Rock — was in its infancy and being created by KMET program director Mike Herrington. The Army commercial incident depicted by Sacks in the film is based on an actual on-air incident in which KMET’s top-rated nighttime DJ, Jim Ladd (On the Air Live with Captain Midnight) ran an anti-army commentary on the air after running an army spot. The incident is chronicled in Ladd’s autobiography, Radio Waves: Life and Evolution on the FM Dial.

The head of MCA Irving Azoff participated in the making of the film as executive producer, but he disowned it before release and asked that his name be removed from the credits, as he felt that the film was “not an authentic representation of the music business” and that the studio didn’t give him creative control over the film, particularly when it came to the music. Then again, nearly every band in this movie was on MCA. You know — a movie all about rock and roll and rebellion with Jimmy Buffett in it. A negative soundtrack review by Rolling Stone magazine pointed out the music was heavily biased towards “commercial” musicians who Irving Azoff managed — in conflict with the so-called rebellious, progressive-underground rock format practiced by the very stations on which FM’s faux-station was based.

Another funny point of contention is that AM stations made their own edit of the movie’s theme song, Steely Dan’s “FM (No Static at All),” by clumsily interjecting the letter A in the title from the song “Aja” so that the song became “AM” on their channels.

Finally, while some claim that the TV show WKRP in Cincinnati was based on FM — an easy mistake, with so many characters seeming so similar (WKRP’s “Venus Flytrap” vs. FM’s “Prince of Darkness” in particular) — WKRP series creator Hugh Wilson has claimed that the sitcom was already in development and I’ve also read that a pilot had already been shot. Seeing as how the show debuted in September and this movie came out in April, that was a real worry. But by the time the show aired on CBS, many had forgotten this movie.

For years, this has been a difficult release. The soundtrack gave the film issues when it was released, with multiple versions being released due to the lack of clearing music rights. In fact, this movie was originally on our list of movies that have never been on released on DVD until Arrow made the announcement that they were releasing it.

The film includes “acting” appearances by Tom Petty and REO Speedwagon, along with live performances by Linda Ronstadt and Jimmy Buffett (who recite a few lines of dialog in the process); Steely Dan performs the title theme, which became a real-life radio hit. The Eagles, James Taylor, Bob Seger, Dan Fogelberg, Billy Joel, and Queen were also featured on the Platinum-plus soundtrack album. While the soundtrack became more popular than the actual film it promoted and there was a need to repress copies, it was stymied by clearance rights; it was remedied by having a group of session musicians — Studio 78 — cut an all-covers version for bargain label, Pickwick.

In addition to a high definition 1080p presentation of the film — transferred from original film elements — this blu ray also includes new interviews with the movie’s star Michael Brandon, its writer Ezra Stacks and a video appreciation of the era of FM radio and the soundtrack of the film by Glenn Kenny.

You can get FM from Arrow Video or directly from MVD.

Thanks to R.D Francis for his help with this article, as FM is one of his favorite films.

DISCLAIMER: This movie was sent to us by Arrow Video, but that has no impact on our review.

You know, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Rob Zombie would be a fun person to go see a drive-in all nighter with. But man, when he makes movies, I just get the hives.

But hey — it’s radio week. And Heidi, the recovering addict who has become a radio personality in Salem, fits the bill. Of course, she’s played by Sheri Moon-Zombie, but if you’ve seen one of Mr. Zombie’s films, you know that she’s showing up somewhere. Hell, I’d do the same thing too if I made a film. People would complain that Becca is in everything and I’d just get sad.

One night, as Heidi does her morning show-style show at night with Whitey (Jeff Daniel Phillips) and Herman (Ken Foree, Dawn of the Dead), a box shows up with a record that is supposed to be a new black metal band called The Lords.

You know, you’d think Rob Zombie would know a bit more about black metal. But nope.

Anyways, this music creates visions in Heidi’s head and begins to possess her, which continues in her apartment, as the old women downstairs end up being witches. The fact that they’re played by Judy Geeson, Dee Wallace and Patricia Quinn hammers that point home.

Bruce Davison and Maria Conchita Alonso are in this as a Salem witch trial expert and his wife who try to help Heidi, but she’s already too far gone and trapped in a Rob Zombie movie after he watched a bunch of Ken Russell outtakes.

Andrew Prine also walks on as a 17th century priest putting Meg Foster’s witch character to death. I mean, if you can get Simon King of the Witches and Evil-Lyn in the same movie, why not? Zombie ups the ante with Camille Keaton, Barbara Crampton, Michael Berryman, Sid Haig, Lisa Marie, Clint Howard and Udo Keir, making this movie like going to a horror convention without paying $50 to get a photo with your favorite genre star.

It could have been even better, as Richard Lynch shot some scenes for this film. However, due to his worsening health and blindness, Prine took over his role. The money was so tight that the major scene that would have had Lynch, Berryman, Haig and Prine on screen together was never re-shot.

Wait — so where are Keaton, Keir and Howard? They were in a planned film-within-a-film called Frankenstein and the Witchhunter, which was supposed to look like a Hammer film. It didn’t make it into the final movie.

I guess, of all Zombie’s films, this one comes in second place behind House of a 1000 Corpses. You have to admire the audacity of a movie where the lead character gives birth to a mollusk baby while “All Tommorrow’s Parties” gloomily plays. I mean, I was laughing so hard I fell off my couch. And Becca has tried to watch this numerous times to try to convince herself that it’s a better movie than it is. She’s rarely wrong, but this may be one of those times.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gregg Harrington is a podcaster, freelance journalist, musician and amateur screenwriter, known primarily for co-hosting the ’80s horror podcast Neon Brainiacs along with local filmmaker and actor Ben Dietels. When he’s not talking about Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger, he can be heard playing drums in the heavy grunge revival band, Pummeled and masterminding the straight edge power violence band, Rabid Pigs.

The importance of the radio has waned in the 21st century. The evolution of on-demand content via the Internet and other venues where we take in what we want when we want did a pretty swift job of dismantling the tastemaker privileges of the radio business. You can even hear it when you listen to the radio: Pittsburgh’s local “alternative” station has become an amalgamation of a handful of grunge bands, modern pop and one-hit wonders from the early 2000’s. You can hear Nirvana, Imagine Dragons, Pantera, New Radicals and Three Doors Down back to back. It’s weird. It’s also weird to think of a time where stations dictated what bands were huge and had more of a hand in curating local concerts and festivals.

One bastion of the importance of radio is 1994’s rock comedy Airheads, directed by Michael Lehmann (Heathers, Meet the Applegates). While Lehmann is known more for television directing these days, he certainly hit a home run with me in my adolescence with Airheads. Wearing out my VHS of it and later watching it over and over on Comedy Central glued each line of dialogue to my brain. Boasting an impressive cast and an even more impressive soundtrack, Airheads finds itself acting as a time capsule, capturing the hostile takeover of grunge, usurping the tight grip hair metal had on the American music scene, and recording a time where radio play made or broke local bands. Our absentminded heroes, played by Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi and Adam Sandler do a bang-up job embodying the spirit of musicians trying to “make it” in the 90s.

Down on their luck rock band the Lone Rangers are trying as hard as they can to get noticed around the Los Angeles music scene to no avail, so they resort to breaking into the local radio station, KPPX Rebel Radio, to force the station’s lead DJ, Ian The Shark (Joe Mantegna), to play their demo. When things go south due to the meddling of station manager Milo (Michael McKean), the gang pulls out an arsenal of toy guns that look extremely real and take the entire radio station hostage. From there, hilarity ensues. The chaos of the whole situation is fueled by the police presence outside and the shenanigans inside the station and over the airwaves, culminating in a feeding frenzy of a music video shoot in the parking lot and, later, in jail.

The musical touchstones of the film are many. For starters, Airheads revolves around the emerging single by the Lone Rangers (“there’s three of you, you’re not exactly lone”), “Degenerated”, which was originally performed by the New York punk band Reagan Youth. Kind of strange to think about that since the Lone Rangers are supposed to lean more towards Guns N Roses than east coast punk music. The movie version features Brendan Fraser on vocals with White Zombie’s guitarist Jay Yuenger and bassist Sean Yseult on the track as well. Speaking of White Zombie, for the club scene in the middle of the film, they can be seen performing “Eat The Gods” at the Whisky. Funny enough, the role of the live band was initially offered to Cannibal Corpse, but after the producers found out they had already appeared as a club band in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, they opted to go with White Zombie instead. It’s been reported that Metallica and Testament also turned down an offer to portray the band in that scene as well. The movie’s background is also doused in music ephemera, mostly of the punk and extreme metal variety. Stickers and posters can be seen with the logos of Cro-Mags, Obituary, and more. I’ve always felt this clashed with the Lone Rangers’ leanings more towards Sunset Strip glam metal, but I appreciate it nonetheless.

Airheads’ soundtrack is also pretty great, which is not surprising given the amount of 90s movie soundtracks that have lived on in the public consciousness (Judgment Night, Singles, Spawn, etc). Kicking off the movie is a re-recording of the Motorhead track “Born To Raise Hell”, which features guest spots from Ice-T (Body Count) and Whitfield Crane (Ugly Kid Joe, Life Of Agony). The original appeared on the band’s 1993 album Bastards. It’s a Motorhead song so you know it kicks ass. It’s also a great song to put over the opening credits, which is composed of the names of cast and crew along with time-lapse animations of random scenarios like making a sandwich and changing guitar strings. There are a few interesting cover songs on the soundtrack as well, including 4 Non Blondes covering “I’m The One” by Van Halen and, even more surprising, Anthrax covering the Smiths deep cut “London”. Coincidentally, Anthrax is also featured on the August 1993 cover of R.I.P. Magazine being read by Carter (David Arquette) during the film. Primus, Prong, the Ramones and the Replacements also make appearances as well.

As far as the movie itself, while it may not have gotten the best reviews or box office return, Airheads has lived on as a great music comedy, which I find to be on par with a film like This Is Spinal Tap. The villain-type characters portrayed by Michael McKean and Judd Nelson are spot-on, and the litany of secondary characters led by Joe Mantegna, Ernie Hudson and Chris Farley knock their performances out of the park. Plus, how many 90s comedies were made featuring three former Saturday Night Live cast members, two Ghostbusters, and a handful of MTV’s mover and shakers? Airheads is a truly fun watch and a visit back to a simpler time where people were radio stations were so influential, they were worth breaking into and taking hostages to get airplay.

You can stream it on Amazon Prime.

We also discuss Airheads as part of our “Exploring: Eddie Van Halen on Film” and “Exploring: 50 Gen-X Grunge Films of the Alt-Rock ‘90s” features.

George Hickenlooper was a director who excelled at telling peoples’ stories. Edie Sedwick in Factory Girl. Jack Abramoff in Casino Jack. And documentaries on Dennis Hopper, Apocalypse Now, Peter Bogdanovich, Monte Hellman and this take of Rodney Bingenheimer, Rodney on the ROQ, the Mayor of the Sunset Strip, the man who launched so many bands into American consciouness.

When Rodney was 16, his mother dropped him off at Connie Stevens’ house, told him to get her autograph and abandoned him. He ended up as a stand-in for Davy Jones, as the live-in publicist for Sonny & Cher, opened a club, brought glam to the U.S. and took to the air on Los Angeles’ KROQ.

The list of bands that Rodney broke on his show includes The Runaways, Blondie, the Ramones, Social Distortion, Van Halen, Duran Duran, Oasis,The Donnas, No Doubt, The Offspring, The Go-Go’s, The B-52’s, X, The Smiths, Suicidal Tendencies, Dramarama and Nena.

In fact, I always wondered how a song like “99 Luft Balloons” broke in our country. It was because Nina Hagen and Christiane Felscherinow liked the song and asked Rodney to play it. The rest was 80’s video history. And in the same way he brought glam to the U.S., he’d bring Britpop here as well.

This movie took six years to produce and presents Rodney as a Zelig, a person that was there for the biggest moments in rock ‘n roll. He got Bowie his record contract, but he lives in a small apartment and until 2017, was happy playing music on Sundays from midnight to 3 AM on KROQ. But no more.

Rodney wasn’t the only Mayor of the Sunset Strip. There was also Bobby Jameson, who released Songs of Protest and Anti-Protest under the name Chris Lucey. He appears in Mondo Hollywood and his role in the Sunset Strip riots earned him the title.

Then, there was the shadowy cult figure Kim Fowley, who held sway over the Runaways (duBeat-e-o), recorded the song “Alley Oop,” wrote “They’re Coming to Take Me Away Ha-Haaa!,” co-wrote “King of the NIght Time World” for KISS, produced the demos for Gilby Clarke’s band Cherry, started another version of the Runaways and even had the time to make a mess of underground films.

Rodney comes from a time when celebrity actually mattered, when rock and roll felt like something and when one play of a song could make you rich and get you laid. We’ll never know that era again.

You can watch this for free on Tubi.

In the five years between The Crazies and Martin, much had changed, both in the life of George Romero and his adopted hometown of Pittsburgh.

After the post-World War II economic boom, an outdated manufacturing base — that had already been overextended for the past two decades — was further taxed by hostile relationships between management and labor. And Pittsburgh had even worse issues than the rest of the country, as the raw coke and iron ore materials to create steel were depleted, raising costs. The giant Pittsburgh mills also faced competition from non-union mills with lower labor costs.

As a result, layoffs began happening throughout the region. For example, Youngstown, OH — about an hour and a little more from the Steel City — never recovered from the Black Monday of September 19, 1977 and the closing of Youngstown Sheet and Tube.

According to a 2012 story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, by January 1983, the regional economy officially bottomed out. Unemployment in Allegheny County (where most of the Pittsburgh metro calls home) hit between 14 and 18% with 212,000 jobless individuals. It’s never been that high before or since. And in areas like Beaver County (close to where your author grew up and also where my grandfather worked in the furnaces for forty years), home to industry giants Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. and Babcock & Wilcox Co., the unemployment hit a staggering 27%. That’s higher than the Great Depression. And for many of the 300,000 manufacturing workers impacted by these changes — before this, you went to high school, you worked in the mill, you had kids, you died — Pittsburgh was dying.

George Romero found himself in similar straits. He was nearly a million dollars in debt thanks to the failure of every film after Night of the Living Dead. He’d taken to working on sports documentaries like his Pittsburgh-centric series The Winners and even directed The Juice is Loose, the story of football hero OJ Simpson — albeit years before his reversal in fortune — and Magic at the Roxy, a TV magic special. He confided in producer Richard P. Rubinstein that he was nearly out of cash. While the producer counseled Romero and explained that bankruptcy was an option, Romero didn’t want to screw over the people who helped him make his films. This action gave Rubinstein plenty of respect for the director and led to their partnership. While this, their first film together, didn’t pay back those investors, Dawn of the Dead would.

Deciding on Braddock — one of the hardest hit mill towns — and utilizing family and friends, Romero started to film what he would later call his favorite film.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: An American living in London, Jennifer Upton is a freelance writer for International publishers Story Terrace and others. In addition, she has a blog where she frequently writes about horror and sci-fi called Womanycom.

A cult classic about teenage rebellion, the medium of radio (and the importance of rock music) features throughout Times Square (1980.) In the plot, it’s the vehicle through which the two protagonists connect. Initially, to each other and eventually to the greater adolescent female population of 1980 New York City. 

Two girls, Nicky Marotta (Robin Johnson) and Pamela Pearl (Trini Alvarado) come from divergent backgrounds. One is a street kid with no family bounced from home to home and the other the motherless daughter of a wealthy politician gaining notoriety for cleaning up the area where Nicky lives. Times Square. The two meet in the hospital where each is being examined for perceived mental illness.  

Despite their apparent differences, both are misunderstood by the adult establishment.  The girls connect through their love of music their shared fandom of an all-night radio show hosted by Johnny LaGuardia played by the velvety-voiced Tim Curry, who is excellent as always. Pam admires Nicky’s free spirit, and Nicky admires Pam’s intellect. The casting of the two leads is perfect. 

Following her discharge, Nicky goes back to break Pam out, wandering the hospital corridors, blasting The Ramones’ classic “I Wanna Be Sedated” on her boombox to entice her new friend to defiance. Together, they escape in a stolen ambulance and hole up in an abandoned warehouse by the east river. 

DJ Johnny picks up on the story and uses it to start a movement against Pam’s father, whom he despises for trying to gentrify his neighborhood. He puts the girls on the air and makes them famous. They become Icons for other disaffected young ladies itching to rebel against the “banality” and “boredom” of their everyday lives. They start a band called The Sleeze Sisters and begin spreading their message through their music all over the airwaves in graffiti throughout the city. Even when the girls engage in potentially dangerous hijinks–they throw televisions off of high-rise buildings onto busy sidewalks as a symbolic gesture against societal brainwashing–Johnny supports and protects them. 

Eventually Pam, who has been building up her self-confidence working as a stripper who “won’t dance nude” tires of Nicky’s high jinx and develops a crush on Johnny. Although it never explicitly says the two are lovers, their sleeping arrangements and Nicky’s jealous reaction to Pam’s wandering eye says it all. Nicky sets up an interview situation designed to prove to Pamela that Johnny is only in it for himself. He’s tired of his job on the night shift and sees this movement to boost his own brand and his show’s ratings. She suffers a mental breakdown and throws herself into the East River only to climb out asking herself, “What the fuck am I doing?” Johnny calls a doctor, who sedates her. Upon seeing this, Pam confronts Johnny angrily. She hates seeing her friend devoid of her usual fighting energy and inspires her to perform one last act of ultimate provocation. An illegal concert in Times Square. 

Pam calls all the news outlets and announces the free gig to take place on top of a theatre marquee smack in the middle of Times Square. Johnny’s message on the radio brings girls from all over the five boroughs to see their hero perform, dressed for the occasion with their eyes blacked out “like a criminal.” The cops show up to shut them down, leaving Nicky one last chance to grand stand “about life” and to thank Pam for changing hers for the better. She knows Pam must go home. Her Dad is watching from below. As a duo, the girls have taken things as far as they can and now it’s time for them to walk their own individual paths, each armed with the determination and confidence inspired by the other. 

As a final farewell, Nicky salutes the police and Pam and jumps into the crowd. They catch her and disappears into a sea of look-alikes. Pamela reunites with her Dad and the credits roll. Over a Bee Gee’s song. An odd, preternatural choice made by producer Robert Stigwood, who managed them at the time. They have no business being on a soundtrack with Patti Smith, The Ruts, David Johansen, Lou Reed,  XTC, and the Ramones. Moyle and star Johnson discuss this at length on the commentary track for Anchor Bay’s 2000 release. 

Along with being a fun ride, the film is also a beautiful snapshot of what Times Square was like in 1980. The real one. Before it became boring and banal. It’s magnificent in its corruption. You can almost smell the dried semen in the 42nd Street porn theatre the girls run through dodging law enforcement in the second act. It might be odd to say that I miss that time in New York’s history. As Nicky says in the film, “No sense makes sense.”