So you love the 80s? I suppose that sentiment never left (when it comes to movies), but it’s come back in abigway thanks to Netflix’s 1980s self-aware sci-fi series,Stranger Things. That seriesreferencesmany films from the 80s, and obsessives have compiled all the references. From itsEvil Deadposter on the wall, to itsStand by Meband of friends on a quest to find a body (this one alive) and the musical score that would fit easily into aJohn Carpenterfilm. And beyond.
There are many more references, but those have been detailed all over the Internet. Many of the referenced films are indeed classics and deserve to get Valentines from modern filmmakers (though, for me,Stranger Thingsis less a love letter and more of a late night text barrage). However, we’re beginning to look at 1980s cinema with blinders on, only referencing certain directors and certain films. If the 70s were a decade under the influence, then the 80s are a decade of our current influences. From major political commentary to major action films, to envelope-pushing horror and exploitation films—with many midsummer sex comedies and sci-fi spectacles thrown in—it’s a great decade to mine from. Let’s just not lose focus of some films that haven’t been getting a lot of nostalgic shine lately.
If the films of Carpenter,Steven Spielberg, Rob ReinerandRidley ScottandTony Scottare the shinier things, then these 20 films are the less showier things. The great 80s movies that time forgot.
I feel an eye roll coming for that title, but the method for making the final list was first created by coming up with magnificent films that aren’t mentioned with great frequency and/or haven’t received the Criterion treatment or a big splashy rerelease recently. And then that list was whittled down to only include films that have received less than 10,000 ratings on IMDb. For what better barometer do we have of what’s becoming forgotten than stagnant database pages? (For the interested, I trimmed a few titles that were north of that barrier, such asThe Changeling,Jonathan Demme’sMarried to the Mob,Brian De Palma’sBody Doubleand surprisingly, the psychosexual terror ofAndrzej Zulawski’sPossession, R.I.P.).
Now that you know the method, my 36 selections (featuring at least one for each year of the decade) are listed below. Sound off on some of your favorites, what you think was missed (remember that 10K vote methodology) and what sounds intriguing enough to give a shot.
Related:15 Great 90s Movies That Time Forgot
Melvin and Howard (1980)
Melvin and Howardkicks off this decade list withJonathan Demme’s graceful and screwball approach to the 1980s money-obsessed landscape. Always being up-sold something would dot Demme’s lively output for the decade—fromSwing ShifttoSomething WildtoMarried to the Mob, which reduces mafia movies to a fast food jingle—but before the decade boomed with excess, Demme began with a tranquil twilight recreation.Melvin and Howardis a gentle lullaby of hopeful kitsch; the calm before the hyper-Capitalist storm.
A motorcycle races through the dark, a speck of dust spitting up dust, alongside a larger highway. The wildman on the motorcycle claims he’s Howard Hughes (Jason Robards), the man who picks him up, a people-pleasin' goof songwriter named Melvin(Paul Le Mat), and for an act of kidness in picking him from the side of the road and taking the ole grouch to his final destination, the man says he’ll include him in his will. A will does end up comin' and so then do the lawyers for the family members who want every bit of Hughes' wealth kept amongst themselves.
Demme’s landscape includes a burlesque revue, a landlocked boat, a TV contest and an acesMarty Steenburgenfor all; all of those venues represent a hope for the down-trodden (and reinforce theJohn Steinbeckquote that an economic revolution will never happen “because the American poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires”) but unlike social services or a gas station lotto, it’s entertainment. There’s so much cake to eat here, from Robards' bum-looking millionaire fighting through mental illness to the lawyer circus surrounding the poverty-line songwriter. He’d certainly become an unwitting folk hero by inheriting millions; trouble is, family doesn’t allow for outsider heroes. Millions of dollars come and go like the breeze over a desert inMelvin and Howard, but personal nirvana for the bum-like billionaire and the near-bum Le Mat, are pretty similar in nature. It’s a warm and delicate reminder, particularly as the decade of excess is the sun that’s rising tomorrow.
Mon Oncle D’Amerique (1980)
Alain Resnaisis most known for his arty cinema likeHiroshima, mon AmourandLast Year at Marienbad, where black-and-white images and whispered narration—cut with neutron bombs, declarations of love, and beautiful people in hallways who are dressed elegantly but have nothing to do—made for the type of films that philistine folks would mock when people talked about foreign films.Mon Oncle D’Ameriqueis his most pop aware, star-studded (Gerard Depardieu, at the height of his French popularity) and most humorous film. But it still is very arty and philosophical; it’s his easiest film to digest but it’s nevertheless exciting because it’s so easy to digest as a film with direct messages, but you’re still left pondering your own existence afterward.
Depardieu plays one of three adults who come from different walks of life. He’s a bourgeois politician who leaves his wife for a young Communist who ran away to join the theater (Nicole Garcia), but no longer rebels after she experiences his lavish lifestyle. The other is a farm boy (Roger Pierre) who leaves his pregnant girlfriend to get a better job at a mill in the city. All three make choices to run away from something. We call this free will. A fourth individual inMon Onclebreaks the fourth wall and re-creates their interactions with real mice and humans dressed as mice while narrating various experiments. He’sHenri Laborit, a famous philosopher whose teachings laid the groundwork for advertising market research.Mon Oncle D’Ameriqueis funny. It’s dramatic. But it’s also very illuminating of human experience—how we condition ourselves to survive, resign, or fight with one another.
Alligator (1980)
Alligator, is a 1980s horror movie conceived to be by the numbers only, but coming from the pen ofJohn Sayles, it’s no surprise that this is actually a character-driven horror film that saves seeing the giant alligator for the third act. And when you get to see it head-to-tail (in the daylight no less!) it’s crashing a fancy city fundraiser.Lewis Teague’s film is quite a lot of fun in the eventual creature carnage, but also as a police procedural.
Robert Forsterleads the film, as a cop with a history, who goes up against the press whataboutisms—involving a partner of his who died in the past—when the real pressing concern is an alligator that’s larger than an automobile and has bust through the concrete and is snack, snack, snacking away on humans. It would be so easy for the film to just go that route, and though that’s what tips the movie into some gleeful territory, it’s extra-special because Teague and Sayles invest in characters throughout the runtime. There’s a subplot of Forster, ridiculed in the press, calmly disarming a bomb to show that he can keenly react in tense situations, despite the press narrative that’s dogging him about not pulling his gun fast enough to save his partner.
Between this andCrawl(and to a lesser extent,Lake Placid), the alligator creature feature is an example of great compact storytelling.
The Night of the Hunted (1980)
Jean Rollins’ amnesia horror movie has an all-time great horror opening, a marvelous ending, a prolonged sex scene, and a plot about a building of people collectively losing their mind so they start mindlessly having sex with each other and killing each other/themselves. So, yeah,The Night of the Huntedis not a bad night at the movies!
The opening is similar to a film noir movie, a woman in a hospital gown (Brigitte Lahaie) escapes from a tall building to the road to flag down a car, except she’s being chased by her friend who she can’t remember, and the stranger (Alain Duclos) who picks her up takes her back to his place to shag on his polar bear rug. Then the woman is taken back to the tower of forgetfulness by some shadowy doctors who snatch her back up and her savior, who took advantage of her amnesia before, sets out to try and save her in a bizarreRomeo & Julietfashion.
This is not the best Rollin movie but it might have the best plot from any of his movies I’ve watched. Just be prepared for that sex scene, it’s long enough that you or anyone in your vicinity will assume you’re watching a vintage porno; but the length of the scene justifies itself as Lahaie fights with her inability to remember anything in her mind with the pleasure she feels in the moment; a hazy thriller opening that would make Alfred Hitchcock blush. Its use eventually makes the ending somewhat touching! Two plants, intertwined, about to bloom.
Looker (1981)
How isLookernot already a cult classic? Is it becauseAlbert Finneywears high wasted-pants during a shootout and that’s not meant to be ironically funny?Michael Crichton’s beauty-in-advertising satire is some straight up Nicholas Ray + Frank Tashlin meets B-John Carpenter shit. I suppose a reason why it’s lesser known in cult factions is because it’s an earnest satire and not cooly detached. But that’s also what makes it unique.
Lookerconcerns a brainwashing advertising conspiracy that a plastic surgeon (Finney) uncovers because his beautiful model clients keep coming back to him with orders for specific centimeter measurements paid for by one agency and then they end up dead a few days later. The specific measurements are for advertising beauty requirements that will make actors replaceable by A.I.
Nothing about Chrichton’s movie fits the proper mold of cult classic but damnit it should mentioned right up there withThey Live. And some aspects of Looker are done even better than many 80s cult classics. Firstly, the cinematography and set design is more dazzling than anything Chrichton’s ever written. Yes, the story is ludicrous but it allows for a lot of great set pieces and fake commercials that are full of surprises (especially when they’re filmed in front of an audience of investors). But the biggest surprise is that for an 80s movie that’s centered on models, not a single model is treated like a dummy airhead or even leered at. Industry standards and a short (shelf) life lends them more sympathy than most early-in-the-film horror victims. And Finney’s plastic surgeon is just a standup dude. (Aside: When esteemed actors stoop to low genre, Finney is probably my favorite. He’s essentially the same good guy rascal here that he is inErin BrockovichorTom Jones; see:Wolfenfor further proof; Finney’s early 80s was Swiss Army Genre Dad).
Stylistically, there are a few camera punches, backdrop shadows and computer simulation scans that are just pure art. Shout out to the once cinematographer ofNashville,Paul Lohmann, and the future production designer ofTron,Dean Edwart Mitzner,whose work here has aged better than that movie. This is kinda the perfect 80s socially conscious popcorn movie, in the same way thatGremlinsand the aforementionedThey Liveare.
Ms. 45 (1981)
Because he doesn’t use the killing of men to wash away awful rape scenes, directorAbel Ferrara(Bad Lieutenant) punked the “rape-revenge” subgenre (and exploitation films in general) withMs. 45.In fact, Ferrara even paints himself as a victimizer behind the camera. This is a film that boxes in its victim and constantly pushes her into corners (the victim is mute for christsakes!). Ultimately,Ms. 45expresses something we should all be able to agree with, that the societal silencing of women in rape cases is awful, but also, in a less popular opinion, so might be the filmmaker who makes an exploitation film about it. There’s a droney and acidic score, a dress-up disco party, a pentagram gang, and numerous other genre awareness tropes that take you to the edge of a thrill and then says, “fuck you.”
There are two rapes and they are shocking here. They happen back-to-back on one awful day and it shatters the worldview of a beautiful mute woman (Zoe Lund) who cannot call for help. The first rape is in an alleyway and the rapist is the director himself, Ferrara. The second happens when she returns home and a burglar is in the house. He is killed in gruesome fashion and Lund purchases a gun (and later a nun costume to hide her features) and begins offing catcallers, stalkers, and anyone who takes away her dignity when she can’t even talk back. After a few kills, her methodology gets muddled and more bloodlust-y. The score is great. Lund is great. And New York has never looked this soul-crushingly sick.
Ms. 45lacks gratuitous nudity and the forced sex is frightening, as it focuses on the horror of her face; a face that can’t scream for help. Rape is awful and should make you uncomfortable. Having it happen back-to-back is a blatant admonishment of the audience who’s ready to get into the genre kills but might not have let the full scope of depravity seep in yet. Because Ferrara is the man who attacks her first and leaves Lund in a pile of garbage, the film routinely puts her gun square in the center of the frame andMs. 45turns into a film about desiring to kill the man who is making her constantly go over the pain that was caused to her: Ferrara, the director of her first film.
Prince of the City (1981)
Sidney Lumet(12 Angry Men, Network) had made a film about a whistleblower detective against the corrupt NYPD before,Serpico, and many think it’s one of the best films of the 70s. But Lumet felt guilty for showing the cops who opposed Serpico as so one-dimensional.Prince of the City, which also details an NYPD police officer who records and turns in other policemen, is done not with a hero vs. everyone else story line, but instead shows a flawed individual, who is used by a flawed governmental whistleblower system, and shows that both decent cops and bad cops both go through a judicial minefield where every investigator or District Attorney is trying to get promoted through this case.
Treat Williamsplays Daniel Ciello (based on Robert Leuci) a narcotics investigator who is loyal to his partners. That loyalty eventually blurs into a loyalty to his informants, which sees him scoring heroin for them so that they’ll continue to tip off the suppliers. It’s important that Ciello isn’t a perfect cop who exposes corruption, but instead is a flawed cop who returns the calls of federal watchdogs because he feels guilty and can’t pinpoint when the lines began to gray for him professionally. And the resulting film, involving more than six dozen speaking parts and sprawling for nearly three hours, is more about the lengthy litigation process (which is slowed down by all of his initial agents getting promoted for their work on this case; thereby he’s shown no loyalty, just a pat on the back and left for new egos to tend to) than it is about dirty cops. One lawyer notes, rather profoundly, that we never hear of “a whistleblowing doctor or lawyer”.Prince of the Cityshows that while there’s dignity in a policeman’s attempts to come clean, it’s almost as murky as a junkie’s attempts to come clean.
Wolfen (1981)
Wolfenis perhaps the most curious film on this list. It’s the only narrative film fromMichael Wadleighthe director ofWoodstock.The cast is intriguing and a bit oddball, starringAlbert Finney, Diane Venora, Gregory HinesandEdward James Olmos. And although it’s a horror film that first introduced the in-camera thermography to show the predator’s point of view, staying low to the ground and pouncing on victims whose bodies are gradients of heat (later used more famously byPredator), there’s a pretty heady story about Native American land rights and an anti-gentrification stance in this film.
What are the Wolfen? An advanced species of wolves that can exchange souls with specific tribes of humans. They’ve taken residence in an abandoned Bronx housing project that wealthy individuals are about to bulldoze over to put another corporate monstrosity.Wolfenis a horror film with an extra layer that shows that every race and every species has a right to protect their land.
Liquid Sky (1982)
“Two Miss Americas.”
Fashion photographer: “And we could end it the two of them fucking!”
Margaret: “He can’t fuck.”
Jimmy: “I can too fuck. I just can’t fuck you.”
Liquid Skyis a lo-fi pansexual delight about junkie fashion models and the aliens who are harvesting the endorphins from their orgasms.Anne Carlisleplays both the quotable Margaret and the quotable Jimmy. She is beautiful as both a woman and as a man; id and ego. This film is quintessential counterculture 80s, which—like the American mainstream—was all about excess and entitlement. But the excess and entitlement here is to drugs of any kind and sex of any gender.
Its strange sci-fi leanings and genre mashups (at times this is a “rhythm box” musical, exciting neon runway show and a hyper-sexual gender-fluid experiment) make it every bit as much fun as Alex Cox’sRepo Man, just far less known (probably for that whole sexual fluidity thing; oh, and the novice acting).Slava Tsukerman’s film deserves its cult status.
Trance (1982)
The horror conclusion and electro soundtrack is what makesTrancea cult film but it’s the build to that conclusion that’s truly divine. This West German film follows a young woman (Desiree Nosbusch) who is obsessed with an emerging pop star who’s remained an enigma by only going by the name R and saying very little in interviews; we’re talking a deranged obsession here. She harasses a postman for not delivering her a response to one of her many, many “we’re soulmates” fan letters. She skips school, she withdraws from her family (except when R performs on TV), and after seven days of no letters, she hitchhikes to Munich to find him. The type of music R makes—minimalist synths and deadpan lyrics with repetitive keys—is a perfect soundtrack for Simone’s repetitive and morose obsession, abstaining from all human contact except when writing her letters. And the film’s imagery and pace perfectly matches that music style; occasional twitches that blip like a heart monitor for someone on life support.
I don’t think the cult-film ending works, personally, butTranceis a well-crafted find for fans of post-punk and rancid teen spirit; and genre fans should definitely seek it out to form their own opinion on the two halves of the film. But Simone’s parent’s statement that they didn’t call in a missing person’s report for her—to prevent a scandal—perhaps reinforces how isolated and alone she truly is. And why she’s drawn to such a blank slate human being whose song lyrics smack of depression and an identity crisis.
