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Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

Kung Fury is more about the faux-80s that was brought about by Far Cry: Blood Dragon.

Not that that's a bad thing, but "true 80s" flicks are a bit different IMO (ie: Breakfast Club, Back to the Future and the like).

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Saw two (was it three?) decapitations in the first two minutes. One thing which distinguishes the 80s "genre" was that those things were rarely shown outside movies like The Omen. TV was deliberately sanitised, protagonists developed nice, tidy holes when they got shot, they had time for a few last-minute words, they expired with dignity.

It's grotesque on purpose. Note the burning baby carriage and "Try cocaine" billboard in the beginning. And that goes all way through, as core of its satire.

I realise that, but "80s action comedy" isn't really true. 80s action comedies include such gems as The Naked Gun, Beverly Hills Cop and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

What's the referent for this movie, if it's "80s action comedy"? I can't think of anything like it, it's more like Duke Nukem frankly.

It is a parody on '80s action comedy. That's exactly how I understood it. Given that films like The Naked Gun themselves are a parody, Kung Fury came out pretty much as it did :)

References here are obviously Knight Rider and the like.

You're aiming to high when you reference The Naked gun, Beverly Hills Cop and Bill & Ted. This film references the lower budget fare more than the popular big budget films. Don't think of the films you'd see of the cineplex in the 80s, think of the films you'd either see late night on one of the local UHF TV stations or on VHS, often starring Chuck Norris or some no-name mediocre white martial artist. Also emphasis on Action, not the Comedy (or think of Kung Fury as a comedic take on 80s low budget action films).

I was a backer, but also grew up in the late 70s/80s and this film skewers my childhood movie memories to near perfection.

Escape from New York, Big Trouble in Little China, maybe even Howard the Duck

Pretty sure that the baby carriage is a reference to Battleship Potemkin [1].

[1] https://www.google.ch/search?q=battleship+potemkin&espv=2&bi...

Yeah, seems like it.

I think the baby carriage is an homage to the Odessa Steps scene of Battleship Potemkin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship_Potemkin

Well that or whatever they were in gets blown up and you never actually see them die. But explosions have remained a popular death to this day, so they don't really date 80s movies.

Speaking of movie patterns, I noticed that Hollywood seems to be dropping sex scenes lately. In the 90s/early 2000s had to have protagonists in romance and a sex scene. Recently, it's hard to find a popular movie with one.

Let's face it, studios liked sex scenes because they were low-cost and (for many people) compelling. Often the most boring and irrelevant part of the movie, though.

Conversely, I am struck by how much really unpleasant violence there is today.

I believe it peaked in the 80s and is going down since. I just watched the magnificent "Slugs" (80s gore). I didn't expect so much nudity.

Paul Verhoeven and David Cronenberg would beg to differ.

Searching IMDB for 1980-1989 keyword "Decapitation" shows 259 movies.

But those aren't action movies from the 80s.

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