Remember the good ol’ days of video games in the 80’s when you would get excited by lame, block-shaped spaceship graphics? Kind of sad now huh? But regardless of how shitty graphics were back then, nothing beat heading down to the local cigarette smoke/shady hoodlum filled arcade, and pumping quarter after quarter into those hypnotizing upright machines. So when a movie came along that managed to combine my early love for horror and video games, I was jumping up in down in my favorite Spiderman pajamas. Yes, I’m talking about the forgotten 1983 anthology film, Nightmares. But it wasn’t the story about the giant rat that got me. Or the one with Lance Henriksen dodging a Chevy that was afraid of water. It’s all about the Emilio Estevez and his character J.J. in ‘The Bishop Of Battle‘!
*there’s no shame in getting some botox*
Never before had 25 minutes been so engrossing to me, unless we’re talking about a classic episode of Muppet Babies of course. The set up is fairly simple as we find a video game wizard, J.J. (Emilio Estevez), attempting to conquer the thirteenth and final level of The Bishop Of Battle. Strapped with a walkman and some Black Flag and Fear music, J.J. becomes obsessed with the game and will do anything to beat it, even sneaking out at night! Yeah, he’s quite the rebel. Thanks to the wonders of Youtube, why read my bad descriptions of the 80’s goodness when you can watch the whole thing? Enjoy below!
Even though it’s only one of four stories in the anthology, The Bishop Of Battle manages to incorporate everything that was both great and bad about the 80’s in it’s short runtime. It will make you want to hunt down a walkman, some sleeveless shirts, a feathered hairdo, and maybe a suspect joint or two from a previously mentioned shady hoodlum. And how cool would it be to actually be sucked into a video game?? Unless of course it’s that E.T. Atari game. Still attempting to get the hours of my life back that I spent on that crap. How many times did I have to fall down one of those damn pits while chasing some green computerized Reese’s Pieces in the middle of trying to collect parts of a telephone to get me back home???
*ooh – piece of candy!*