I was with this movie when I was thirteen until the end.

John Bender (Judd Nelson), Claire Standish (Molly Ringwald), Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez), Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall) and Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy) all have their own reasons for a Saturday 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. detention with Vice Principal Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason). Before they leave, each of them must write a thousand-word essay that describes who they think they are.

Despite the fact that they all come from different worlds, they’re all living similar lives, crushed by parents who either give them too much or not enough attention. In one day, they all learn that they could be friends.

John Hughes, who wrote, produced and directed this film pretty much ran the 80s when it came to teen films. Of course, the error in this film, the one that never makes sense to me, is when Allison gives up her quirky individuality to put on makeup and become like everyone else. Even when I was young it felt hollow and it seems even more empty today.

P.J. O’Rourke, who worked with Hughes at the National Lampoon, summed up the film in a way that makes me question so much of it. He said that the movie lives up to Hughes’s politics, in that the students do not organize a protest together but, “like good conservatives do, as individuals and place the highest value, like this conservative does, on goofing off. Otherwise known as individual liberty.”

Everyone wants to have a moment of rebellion but when faced with the opportunity, so many of us put on makeup and try to fit right in.

For all the love that people have for Rad, let me tell you, Trashin’ was just as big in the video rental stores of my youth. Maybe it’s because I skated and so much of my culture came from Thrasher Magazine, but this movie is just as good to me, if not as celebrated today. I mean, Vinegar Syndrome isn’t rushing out a 4K of this one.

Corey Webster (Josh Brolin!) is an amateur skateboarder new to L.A. who wants to win a downhill competition when he meets Chrissy (Pamela Gidley, Cherry 2000 herself!), a girl who knocks him for a loop. She just happens to be the sister of Hook (Robert Rusler, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge), the leader of The Daggers, a punk rock skateboard gang who now wants to knock out our hero.

Sure, it all works out, but along the way, some of the greatest skaters of the 80s show up, like Tony Alva, Tony Hawk, Lance Mountain, Christian Hosoi and Steve Caballero. There are also appearances by Brooke McCarter (Paul of The Lost Boys), Brett Marx (Jimmy Feldman from The Bad News Bears movies) and Josh Richman, who directed several Guns ‘n Roses videos. Oh yeah — Sherilyn Fenn plays Velvet, one of the Daggers’ girls.

The soundtrack to this is kinda all over the place, with a theme song by Meat Loaf, of all people, yet there are plenty of scene correct punk and metal shirts, as well as Fear and the Circle Jerks songs. Perhaps the best music part of this film is an appearance by the Freaky Styley-era Red Hot Chili Peppers, back before anyone cared who they were and they’d show up in movies like this and Tough Guys.

Director David Winters started his career as an actor, showing up on Broadway in West Side Story and Gypsy before becoming a choreographer — he was the first to choreograph the Watusi, originated the Freddie and helped Elvis and Ann-Margaret dance in Viva Las Vegas. His first directorial effort was the Alice Cooper film Welcome to my Nightmare and he also was behind the Joe Spinell movie The Last Horror Film. His producing credits are insane, with everything from Linda Lovelace for President* to Young Lady Chatterley, Killer Workout and owned Action International Pictures, where David Prior made all manner of films.

So yeah. Thrashin’. Go find it.

*Lovelace dated Winters after divorcing Chuck Traynor. She credited him for introducing her to culture.

What makes the Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso duo so intriguing is that they would often make two movies at the same time.

During the making of Scalps, this film was also being made. This is much like how Violence In a Women’s Prison and Women’s Prison Massacre or The Other Hell and The True Story of the Nun of Monza feature similar casts and storylines but emerge as different films. Fragasso may have directed this entire movie uncredited, depending on who you ask.

A team of outlaws attack a band of settlers and kill everyone except a pregnant woman who dies in childbirth, but not before her child is adopted by a tribe of Native Americans. Given the name Shining Sky (Sebastian Harrison, Sodoma’s Ghost), he is raised by Chief White Bear (Italian western vet José Canalejas) as an equal to his son Black Wolf. Yet during a competition for the affections of Rising Star (Lola Forner, Wheels on Meals), Black Wolf is accidentally killed and our hero is forced to leave his tribe.

Settling amongst the white man, he acts as if he is mute. However, when Isabella (Cinzia de Ponti, so memorably killed on the ferry in The New York Ripper) flirts with him and cries rape when he rebuffs her, he’s run out of town by the henchmen of the governor (Alberto Farnese, who was in Scalps). Left to die in the wilderness, he’s rescued by Crazy Bull (Charles Borromel, The Blade Master) and must recover in time to stop Ryder (Charly Bravo, Panic Beats) from coming back to kill him.

White Apache is based on the true story of Santiago McKinn, an Irish boy who was taken by the Apache tribe and refused to leave them even when they were arrested by government forces. It was written by José María Cunillés (who also wrote Virus for Mattei) and Francesco Prosperi (who directed The Last House on the Beach, Gunan, King of the Barbarians and The Throne of Fire).

I’m at a loss why Mattei decided to make two westerns in 1986. Part of me was thinking he was following the Hollywood mini-revival that started with Silverado. Another thinks that he was excited that Tex and the Lords of the Deep and Django Strikes Again were being released and the cycle of Italian westerns would begin all over again. That said, I really enjoyed both films that came out of this Spanish location shoot and wish that Mattei had made more of these types of movies.

Sgt. Michael Ransom (Reb Brown, who was both Yor Hunter from the Future and Captain America) and his team of Strike Commandos are decimating a Vietnamese base, ready to blow it up real good. But one of the team is killed and alarms go off, scuttling the mission. Instead of allowing the team to come back and fight another day, the mission’s commander Colonel Radek (Christopher Connelly) orders that the explosives be set off while the Strike Commandos are on the retreat. One of Ransom’s men is killed and he’s knocked into a river.

So begins Strike Commando, a post-Rambo: First Blood Part II film directed by Bruno Mattei and written by Claudio Fragasso that lives up to everything I dreamed that it could be.

Ransom is rescued by a young boy named Laoh and brought to a village to recover. There, he makes friends with a retired soldier named Le Due (Luciano Pigozzi, making this an unoffical Pag and Yor reunion!) and tells the children of the village just how amazing America — mostly Disneyland — can be.

Of course, everyone in that village is soon killed by Russians, so our hero goes back to Vietnam again, this time motivated by the need for horrible revenge. He sees his little Vietnamese friend Lao one more time, talking him into the next life with more stories of Disneyland before unleashing absolute hell on the Russians until they threaten to kill civilians unless he surrenders.

Let me just share this dialogue with you, as Lao dies…

Lao: American… tell me… tell me about Disneyland.

Ransom: (choking back tears of rage) They got tons of popcorn there. All you gotta do is go climb a tree to go eat it. And there’s cotton candy. Mountains of it. And chocolate milk, and malts. And there’s a genie. A magic genie. And he can’t wait to grant your wishes.

Much like all post-John Rambo military films, that means it’s time to torture our hero, which includes making him stay inside a cell for months with a rotting corpse and forcing him to record a message renouncing America. Of course, it’s just words, not deeds, because in seconds Ransom is killing Russkies all over again before getting his revenge on Radek, which involves a gigantic machine gun and a grenade, all before a final battle with his nemesis Jakoda. They’ve already battled on a waterfall, Holmes and Moriarty be damned, but this time, the big bad and brutal Bolshevik has metal teeth after losing all of his molars in their last battle.

This is the very same Jakoda who made sure to tell our hero, “Hey, hero. Remember that Vietnamese village? With that boy called Lao? Nice boy, wasn’t he. That’s why I decided to save him for last. He had such fragile bones.”

Oh Vincent Dawn and Clyde Anderson! Oh Bruno and Claudio! You never cease to thrill me with the madness that you throw at the screen, filling this movie with explosions, machine gun fire and Reb Brown screaming every single line of dialogue with the blazing intensity of a thousand Republican wet dreams.

If you’re wondering, “Did Bruno steal any footage to make this?” the answer is, “This is a Bruno Mattei movie.” Look for the helicopter scenes from The Last Hunter. Why pay for something when someone else has already shot it? Bruno would pay himself back by reusing footage of this movie in Cop Game.

My greatest dream is that someday, somewhere, somehow, Strike Commando and Thunder form an Italian exploitation version of The Expendables with Jake “Tiger” Sharp from Blastfighter, Paco Quernak from Hands of Steel and Nadir from Warriors of the Wasteland.

There’s a reason why Severin is my favorite label. They keep releasing movies like this and putting them out in way better quality than anyone ever thought that they’d deserve. Beyond a 2K remaster of the film — looking better than it probably did when it was originally screened — you also get interviews with Fragasso and Rossella Drudi. You can get this movie from Severin now.

A Hong Kong Ghostbusters? Sure, except even more delirious and strange than you’d ever expect.

This one starts at the opening of a Hong Kong high-rise. Judy Hsu (Shu-Yuan Hsu) becomes a victim of poltergeists and her spirit is possessed and returns to carry out the sinister plans of the evil presence, which also employs a ghost squad of dead Japanese soldiers who still want to fight World War II.

Security guards Chu Bong (Jing Wong, who also wrote this movie) and Fan Pien-Chou (Shui-Fan Fung) learn that the evil spirit’s plan is to kill people based on their birth year and time. Not so coincidentally, they’re marked for death.

Hijinks, as I always say, ensue.

This was directed by Ngai Choi Lam, who also made Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, so you know that there are going to be some out-of-control effects and gross-out moments, despite this seeming like a fun comedy. No complaints here!

It also has an animated skeleton, a baby monster who plays mahjong, a TV set that grows legs, an elevator filled with hands ala Day of the Dead’s dream sequence that ends with a giant hand emerging from the shaft that snatches away a girl, people getting ripped in half and spiritual kung-fu.

It may be completely less coherent than the film that inspired it, but I was entertained by every single frame of this one. Man, why didn’t they make The Ghost Snatchers 2 so I could see how Hong Kong filmmakers treated Vigo Von Homburg Deutschendorf?

There was a time, like probably 1986, where end of the world movies and rollerskating movies crossed paths to make one film. Mel Brooks was involved. And it went nowhere in our reality, but if we are to believe the theory of multiple Earths each with their own divergent timelines, there is one version of life where Solarbabies was a Star Wars sized hit and there would be a whole new slate of Italian ripoffs of end of the world rollerskating movies and not just the Roller Blade movies that Donald Jackson unleashed on an uncaring planetoid.

There’s no water in the future and there are orphanages and there’s a game that’s kind of like rugby on skates. A team of orphans — Jason (Jason Patric), Terra (Jami Gertz), Rabbit (Claude Brooks), Metron (James LeGros), Tug (Peter DeLuise) and Daniel (Lukas Haas) — have bonded over this game and when Daniel finds a glowing orb that might be the key to everyone having enough water, this family unit has to seek it out.

That’s because another orphan named Darstar (Adrian Pasdar) has stolen it and taken off for the desert with the Eco Protectorate e-Police in hot pursuit. Oh yeah — that orb is also called the Bodhi and is part of an alien who the government also wants to capture.

This movie leaves me with so many questions, like why did talented people like Charles Durning, Sarah Douglas and Alexei Sayle from The Young Ones end up in it? How do rollerskates work in the desert? How amazing is it that Mel Brooks lost $9 million dollars of his own money on this and had to fly out to the set to threaten to fire everyone when the cast fought with director Alan Johnson, who up until then was a choreographer and only directed one other movie, Brooks’ To Be Or Not to Be? Can you believe that this movie was delayed for weeks because of rain, even though it was lensed in a Spanish desert? And how absolutely wild is it that it has a theme song by Smokey Robinson, “Love Will Set You Free” that directly quotes Jesus throughout*?

Bad gut Grock — great name — was played by Richard Jordan, who had to have been sick of being in desert movies that bombed after this and Dune.

And you know, I loved this when it came out. I was that lone kid when Patric and Gertz got hot in The Lost Boys that kept saying, “But have you seen Solarbabies?”

*To be fair, every character in this movie is named for some religious figure and the Bodhi is at one point literally called the sphere of Longinus, which is a direct tie to the Spear of Destiny that pierced the side of Jesus and ended his life after being crucified.