Episode 266: UI-Con's 1985 Action Movie Triple-Threat Match: The New Challengers with Andrew Tiede
1985 action cinema may have provided the most powerful heroes in fiction. Who would be the last man standing if they were to all enter a melee? It would be a better battle than anything involving Super Saiyans, Nameks, and weird earthlings. "I Dig Crazy Flicks Presents: The 1985 Action Movie Triple-Threat Match".
Could Goku defeat Chuck Norris? If Vegeta could get up to a power level of 9000, what the hell was Sylvester Stallone's level when he beat the Vietcong and Ivan Drago in the same year? Androids with numbers in the teens cannot take out Arnold "T-800" Schwarzenegger.
CatBusRuss and "Couchman Bakes" Andrew Tiede may have been the only two presenters at UI-Con 2026 who were not focused on anime. The two have their favorites Japanese animated series ("Evangelion" & "Dragon Ball" respectively), but when they were kids in the 1980s, those series were not exactly abundant in the United States.
The heroes for these two Midwesterners with Gen X attitudes were from cartoons based on toys. Toy lines that may have been the offspring of the most violent cinema. All boys owned at least one "Rambo" toy from Coleco, probably picked up from a K-Mart. And most of these kids tried set them against "Star Wars" and "G.I. Joe". Those with greater imaginations may have had them challenge "Transformers" and LJN's Wrestling Superstars.
Maybe Rambo would go "My Little Pony" hunting.
In Reagan's '80s, violence was something to be celebrated. 1985 was the peak of that mayhem. Who would not want to know which action star was the baddest? Russ and Andrew hoped their Central Illinois audience would help them determine the answer.
Was it going to just be a battle between Arnie and Sly? Or did the Cannon Group's ability to make five action movies for the price of a single flick from the icons too much for them to handle?
Were the two hosts afraid to bring in the glow of "The Last Dragon"? Was that the ultimate power in 1985? Can we sleep on the Shogun of Harlem?
What about Sho Kosugi's ninjitsu? CatBusRuss further researched this when he watched "Nine Deaths of the Ninja". It was a weird watch, but shows the range that the greatest cinematic ninja had that year when compared to "Pray for Death". Are these two flicks going to make Sho the winner?
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