As the mists of time slowly drew apart as cable television burned its way into our hearts in the late '70s and early '80s, there were a series of short films most of us were exposed to. My recollection is that these were time fillers, used as a buffer between movies when the prior film's run time didn't't land on a convenient hour or half-hour mark.*
Sometimes these were promo or behind-the-scenes featurettes for either already-popular or soon-to-be-released movies, and other times they were just short, entertaining standalone films plucked from festival or late-night film circuits and the like. The crowning titans of this latter version of wave-fillers were easily the spoofs of 2 recent science fiction movies that had captured the hearts and minds of the public, and were easy targets for a MAD Magazine style spoof. To those of you that remember, these will be incredibly familiar. And to those of you for whom the era I just described sounds like its own brand of "science fiction" ... well you are in for a treat.
I present to you, Hardware Wars and Closet Cases of the Nerd Kind!**
Take a breath, and then keep going!
*Funny to think of it, but we were beholden to cable TV's schedule, and not the other way around.
**And yes, these are both available on DVD nd yes, of course I just recently added them my permanent collection since the VHS tapes that were my prior "storage system" have proven difficult to find.*** Also, Hardware Wars has a remarkably large set of extra features and additional films that I have yet to make my way through, but am eager to dig into.
***And yes, I showed these to Nora a few days ago and she had never heard of either short film yet walked away amused by both (to varying degrees) so I know they still hold up!
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