Fantasy films from the 1980s

one of the strangest movies!

 

what's not to like!

 

Time Bandits

 

yes one of my favs as well...first saw this on HBO years ago...

 

Yep - DVD. If this is the same source I watched last year, though, the quality's just north of acceptable.

http://www.amazon.com/Navigator-Med...&qid=1407644212&sr=1-3&keywords=the+navigator

 

I am not a fan of gore...scary no...sickening yes...I really don't enjoy ppl being mutilated...I do love CGI creatures when done well! now to me that can be scary...

 

That scene always bothered me in Excalibar.-These two didn`t have much to say so I cut tounges out!

 

More sci-fi than fantasy, although there's music:

 

I loved Howard the Duck, lol. I saw it a couple of times in the theatre, maybe a couple more on HBO, but I can't remember tha last time it aired. Definitely an under appreciated masterpiece.

 

The image link is gone, but the movie is The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!

 

Here is another one: The Peanut Butter Solution

 

I have it on DVD maybe I should watch it! why I bought it? got it for a buck so why not?

 

love this strange movie!

 

Nice to see this old thread pop up, considering I missed it the first time around. Here's my top five:

1. Conan the Barbarian
This one pretty much has it all; an epic score courtesy of Basil Poledouris (finally available on CD in its complete glory after years of truncated or re-recorded presentations), awesome heroes and villains (you just can't beat Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Earl Jones), great quotable lines ("Two or three years ago it was just another snake cult, now...they're everywhere!), riveting action/adventure and sword/sorcery sequences (OK, the giant snake was fake-y, but it still worked better than I think any CGI would), and a relatively big budget allowing it to be filmed in a way that accentuated its grandeur such that even if it was essentially a "B" movie, it had the scope and feel of an "A" level picture. In other words, it's a classic which I'd love to see again on the big screen, but if the recent Blu-Ray release has restored the theatrical cut (the director's edit wasn't bad, just not as good as the original version), then I may have to take the plunge (oh, and the commentary on the old DVD with John Milius and Arnold is a hoot!).

2. Excalibur
For many years, this was pretty much the gold standard for fantasy films, and one that I watched frequently on cable television, plus it was the subject of many a junior high school joke for that sex-in-armor scene. Today, it misses the top spot mainly due to stiff acting from the leads, which always was its weak spot, imho, but that is largely off-set by Nicol Williamson's fine performance as Merlin, who pretty much steals the show every time he's on screen. In fact, I would have liked to have seen a "Sword in the Stone" type mid-quel made with him focusing more on the Merlin character, but sadly, that never came to pass.

3. Time Bandits
So great to see the love for this film here, which seems to be nearly forgotten these days by the general public. This was one of the few movies where I could personally identify with the protagonist, where usually children in these flicks are just plain irritating (I never really liked later "kid-friendly" fantasy vehicles like "Explorers" and "The Goonies" even though I myself was a rather nerdy 11-year old circa '81), and I've long theorized that Kevin may well be the young Arthur Dent of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" fame. While I suppose Time Bandits can be somewhat confusing and a little disjointed given its episodic nature, what keeps this film interesting is its Monty Python-esque atmosphere courtesy of director Terry Gilliam, and a few other Python alumni in the excellent supporting cast, who I'd say are much better here than in the official Python outing "The Meaning of Life" a few years later.

4. Clash of the Titans
I remember going to see this one at the cinema, and being wowed by all those scary monsters, particularly the Medusa sequence (the Stygian witches were great, too!). Still haven't seen the remake, but don't really care to given my general dislike of CGI, and ongoing appreciation for the work of Ray Harryhausen. Good call by keifspoon on how Harry Hamlin resembled Jim Morrison; I hadn't thought of that before, but I can envision a biopic featuring him in the lead role, which might have worked better than Val Kilmer in the rather awful "Doors" movie ten years later, but I mostly blame Oliver Stone for that.

5. The Highlander
This kind of blurs the lines between fantasy and sci-fi much like "The Terminator" did, but then I'm not exactly sure at what point one becomes the other, and actually it seems as though there are a lot of movies with elements of both. Here, Sean Connery is great in a supporting role (he had a much smaller but very good appearance in Time Bandits), and the Queen soundtrack is cheesy, but fun. Almost a "guilty pleasure" as are many of these; heck, the entire genre was considered geeky in those days, redeemed somewhat by "Star Wars" at the time, but I think today mainly by the twin successes of the recent Harry Potter series of films (I agree with Vidiot that these were very well done) and the ongoing Lord of the Rings franchise, the latter of which unfortunately are becoming clunkier as they go, so perhaps some fresh ideas (read: new directors) are needed.

Good memories of these highly entertaining movies!

 

what about Hobo with a Shotgun!

 

much fun, but it seemed to disappear fast!

 

I have all of those on DVD...they have been keepers!

 

Gaaaaaaa. Steve Gerber's original Howard the Duck comic was a riot, really funny, extremely well-written, and very entertaining. This is a perfect example of Hollywood totally ruining a terrific idea for a movie. In fairness to the filmmakers, there's just no way you can put a little person in a duck suit and pull this off. With CGI, now they could do a Howard movie just fine. As we just saw in Guardians of the Galaxy, maybe there's a chance they'll try Howard the Duck again.

Fantasy is really, really hard to do right in film. There were so many bad fantasy films in the 1980s, it was really wearying to watch them come and go. Damn near all of them sucked, if you asked me. I liked Time Bandits, Clash of the Titans wasn't terrible, Conan had some moments, Neverending Story was a good kid's movie (albeit with horrible effects), and I liked Princess Bride a lot, but a lot of the traditional fantasy films of this era were just awful. Willow was a good example of a good idea gone horribly wrong. I'm not a fan of Dark Crystal or Legend, both of which I thought were boring and looked totally weird.

I find it interesting that it took more than a decade for somebody like Peter Jackson to figure out how to do fantasy right... which is particularly amazing given the number of times different people optioned the Lord of the Rings characters and tried to make those movies. You might quibble about Jackson's methods, but his results are really extraordinary and nobody can deny his success.

 

Wow! You nailed it for me on this subject. Great synopsis!

 

I love the original Conan the Barbarian, the follow up and Red Sonja blah. Didn't Oliver Stone write the screenplay? As far as cheesy sword and sorcery films I think it's by far still the best not counting LOTR obviously. Along similar lines I liked the 13th Warrior. But overall this genre really doesn't have too many decent films which sucks because I actually like the genre.

 

except went he went to the Green tone!LOL!
well at least i have my DVD box set!

 

70 posts and no one has mentioned The Beastmaster yet?

Pretty sure HBO played this every 2 hours for a few years

 

This movie is one of my dad's favorite fantasy films of the '80s. I liked it too. Saw it in the theatre during its first run and then remember watching it many times on cable when it aired. Funny that you mention it being on HBO a lot. I remember that too. TBS showed it constantly too after it left HBO. Here is a quote from the Wikipedia page for The Beastmaster:

"It subsequently received significant local TV and cable airplay, notably HBO and TBS where it became a TV mainstay and viewer favorite. Its replay was so common that some waggishly dubbed TBS "The Beastmaster Station",[2] and HBO as "Hey, Beastmaster is On".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beastmaster

 

my wife and I watched The Beastmaster whenever it was shown on HBO years ago...I bought it on DVD when it finally came out....just a bunch of fun!

 

It really is a great movie.