Film

There are lots of reasons why the 80s were awesome, of course. One of the biggest was American TV of the time, a view of mine that is in no way coloured by nostalgia. Oh no.

But the 1984 TV movie Time Bomb (another reason the 80s was so awesome – US TV used to do movies all the time) is a huge pile of 80s awesome. As if the idea of having Billy Dee Williams driving around in an armoured HGV full of nuclear material (with a very young Lou Diamond Phillips here in an uncredited role) weren’t enough awesome:

1. It has the music of Sylvester Levay and
2. It’s from a time when an international terrorist wasn’t automatically a muslim but could, in fact, be French and played by Morgan Fairchild

Now Sylvester Levay isn’t a name you hear much these days. But the Hungarian electrosynth genius was responsible for the theme for Airwolf:

That automatically qualifies him for extreme awesomeness.

But having Morgan Fairchild playing the terrorist. You’d never get that these days, which is why Time Bomb is so very, very awesome.