The fact that 1982 is a year that has been one that made me who I am today is pretty incredible to me. That year had so many of my favorite movies. ET the Extraterrestrial is a film that has been one of the most influential movies of my lifetime. I was only 8 years old at the time, but I loved that movie so much. I still remember watching it at a drive-in theater, and I felt ET and Elliot (Henry Thomas) flying through the screen and into the night sky. I will never forget this moment in my childhood.

1982: The Greatest Geek Year Ever is a four-part documentary series premiering on the CW network on July 8th and every subsequent Saturday after that for the entire month of July. It deals with the stories of various different films, video games, and people in the entertainment industry. From film critics like Scott Mantz, Leonard Maltin, and Drew McWeeny, film historians,  actors like Marc Miller, Dee Wallace and Henry Winkler directors like Don Coscarelli, Jim Hensen and Ron Howard, producers and other industry insiders like Robert Meyer Burnett. As well as television personalities. These people have vivid memories of this time in their lives.

As a film critic myself, people like Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel were a big influence on me. I watched them every week on the local NBC or PBS channel. They started forming who I was as a film fan. With movies like ET the Extraterrestrial, Poltergeist, Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, The Thing, Blade Runner First Blood, Beastmaster and Conan the Barbarian, and many others coming out that year I was instantly becoming the film fanatic I am today.  This was an important year in my film fan development. 

With a lot of documentary films, the most popular way to get information across to the viewer is by talking heads. Men and women who are talking to a camera where they are answering questions from a director. The people in the docuseries have a lot of great opinions about so many of my favorite films. Sometimes, the critics just didn’t get it, and these talking heads went into great depth talking about specific movies that came out that year.

The thing about some of these movies we love today and have such a great aficionado for is at the time they were panned and/or in deep trouble with producers and studio heads. Coming off of a great decade of film, the 70s, and the 80s weren’t exactly off to a great start. Even the arthouse cinema at the time was on point with critics. Filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, John Carpenter, Martin Scorsese, and many others had some amazing visions with some of the movies that came out that year.

Along with all of these great directors, there are just as many actors that had breakout films that year. Sylvester Stallone had two with Rocky 3 also starring Mr. T as Clubber Lang and First Blood with Stallone as John Rambo. Two of the greatest film franchises to date. It is one of the best action movies ever from my perspective. It has such a great message about Vietnam vets coming home from war. Mel Gibson in Mad Max, Jeff Bridges in Tron which was a.sci-fi film set in the world of a video game. Eddie Murphy, an SNL star, turned action star in 48 hours. This is the beginning of his movie career. Kurt Russell, another burgeoning action star, was in the horror classic The Thing. His career was a bit hit or miss, but back then, in the early 80s, he was on fire.

With all the great nostalgia that came out of 1982, people got one of the greatest moments in movie history with Sophie’s Choice. Other Oscar winners and nominees like Ghandi, Missing, Tootsie, Diner and The Verdict. Studios made iconic films like these that are awards contenders, but they are overshadowed by all of the Geek fair. Obviously, that is the main reason for this docuseries. We care about the 80s, mainly for this reason and specifically 1982.

This four-part series is full of nostalgia and amazing stories regarding the year of 1982. Through the lenz of these people I felt like I went back in time to when I was a kid. All the talking heads in the documentary really went into a lot of depth on their experiences with this year. How this year enfluenced them to become who they are today. As well as who I am today. It’s this kind of filmmaking that will inspire so many more in the future. This series is fantastic and brought me back to my childhood.

5 stars

Dan Skip Allen