The Goonies – And the Cyndi Lauper Music Videos

Everybody remembers The Goonies.

The pirate map. The Fratellis. Data’s inventions. Chunk and Sloth. The underground tunnels. One-Eyed Willy. And a group of kids who somehow convinced an entire generation that there might be a pirate ship hiding underneath their hometown.

But if you were watching MTV in 1985, The Goonies didn't end when you left the movie theater.

This week on What We Saw On Stolen Cable, Uncle Patches and Sinister Cinema head back to Astoria to revisit The Goonies—and the wonderfully bizarre Cyndi Lauper music videos that became part of the movie’s story.

“The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough” wasn't just another song slapped onto a soundtrack. Cyndi Lauper turned it into a massive two-part adventure featuring members of the Goonies cast, Captain Lou Albano, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, The Iron Sheik, Nikolai Volkoff, The Fabulous Moolah, Freddie Blassie, and even André the Giant.

It was The Goonies meets MTV meets professional wrestling, and somehow in 1985 that made perfect sense.

We’ll revisit the movie itself, the cast, Steven Spielberg’s involvement, Richard Donner behind the camera, the practical sets and effects, One-Eyed Willy’s incredible pirate ship, and why The Goonies became one of those movies that seemed to live permanently on VHS and cable television.

But we're also digging into that Cyndi Lauper connection and a pair of music videos that feel like their own strange little extension of the Goonies universe.

For those of us who grew up during that era, the movie and the music video can be difficult to separate.

You didn't just watch The Goonies.

You watched the movie.

You watched the video.

You waited for MTV to play it again.

And somewhere along the way, Cyndi Lauper, professional wrestlers, pirate treasure, and a bunch of kids from Astoria all became part of the same memory.

This is What We Saw On Stolen Cable.

The Goonies – And the Cyndi Lauper Music Videos.

Because sometimes...

Good enough really was good enough.

Highlander – A Different Movie the Older I Get

When you’re young, Highlander is about sword fights, immortals, lightning, Queen, and a seven-foot lunatic tearing through New York City looking for somebody to decapitate.

Then you watch it again when you’re older.

And somehow…it’s not the same movie anymore.

This week on What We Saw On Stolen Cable, Uncle Patches and Sinister Cinema revisit the 1986 cult classic Highlander — a movie we originally came to for the swords, the Kurgan, Sean Connery playing an Egyptian Spaniard with a Scottish accent, and one of the greatest rock soundtracks ever attached to a fantasy film.

But underneath all of that is a surprisingly melancholy story.

Connor MacLeod gets the thing every kid thinks would be the greatest superpower imaginable:

He gets to live forever.

The problem is everybody else doesn't.

Friends grow old. Wives die. Generations disappear. The world changes while Connor keeps going, carrying centuries of memories—and losses—with him.

Suddenly Queen’s “Who Wants to Live Forever” hits a whole lot harder than it used to.

We’re talking Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery, Clancy Brown’s unforgettable Kurgan, Russell Mulcahy’s music-video style, wild accents, sword fights, questionable history, incredible locations, and a mythology that probably makes less sense the more you examine it—but somehow becomes more compelling anyway.

We’ll also look at how a movie that struggled at the American box office became a cult phenomenon big enough to spawn sequels, television series, books, comics, and generations of fans still arguing about the Gathering.

Because maybe the strangest thing about Highlander isn't that there can be only one.

It's realizing that the movie you thought you were watching at 15 isn't quite the movie you're watching decades later.

This is What We Saw On Stolen Cable.

Highlander – A Different Movie the Older I Get.

There can be only one.

UHF – The Right Movie at the Wrong Time

What happens when you make a movie for weird kids, comedy nerds, TV addicts, and anyone who thinks a flying poodle, a spatula salesman, and Rambo running through a television station sounds like a perfectly reasonable afternoon?

You get UHF.

This week on What We Saw On Stolen Cable, Uncle Patches and Sinister Cinema revisit Weird Al Yankovic’s 1989 cult comedy — a movie that seemed almost designed to become a cable-TV favorite, but first had to survive one of the most brutal summers in movie history.

And it didn’t.

Released into a summer packed with Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon 2, Ghostbusters II, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and more, UHF disappeared from theaters almost as quickly as it arrived.

But something funny happened after that.

People kept watching it.

VHS rentals, cable television, word of mouth, and an audience that finally caught up with its bizarre sense of humor transformed UHF from a box-office disappointment into a genuine cult classic.

We’re talking Weird Al, Michael Richards before Seinfeld, Stanley Spadowski, Wheel of Fish, Conan the Librarian, Spatula City, Gandhi II, Raul’s Wild Kingdom, and a movie that throws jokes at the screen so fast that half the fun is remembering the ones you forgot.

Was UHF simply too strange for 1989?

Did one of the biggest movie summers ever bury a comedy that deserved a better shot?

Or was this always a movie destined to find its real audience on VHS and stolen cable?

Grab your mop, drink from the fire hose, and whatever you do...

DON’T YOU KNOW THE DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM?!

This is What We Saw On Stolen Cable.

UHF – The Right Movie at the Wrong Time