Your favorite film of the eighties?

Sleepaway Camp.

 

Excalibur

 

The Right Stuff.

 

Better Off Dead or Big Trouble In Little China.

 

I couldn’t choose one, so here’s 20:

The Sacrifice
Crimes and Misdemeanors
This Is Spinal Tap
A Short Film About Love
The Night of the Shooting Stars
Fanny and Alexander
The Green Ray
Blade Runner
Fitzcarraldo
Lola
Withnail and I
Gregory’s Girl
When the Wind Blows
Tampopo
Diner
The Ballad of Narayama
The Long Good Friday
Sex, Lies, and Videotape
Time Bandits
Repo Man

In a separate category of its own:

Shoah

 

Hmmm...

The Jerk
Blame It On Rio
Up The Academy
Back To The Future
Back To The Future II
Gremlins
Urban Cowboy
Do The Right Thing
Can't Buy Me Love
Little Shop Of Horrors
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
A Chorus Line
The Blues Brothers
Foxes
My Bodyguard
Pink Floyd: The Wall
The Day After
War Games
Easy Money
Night Of The Comet
Brewster's Millions
Platoon
Hollywood Shuffle
The Princess Bride
The Last Temptation Of Christ
Say Anything
Fatal Attraction
Revenge Of The Nerds
Die hard
Christine
Cujo
The Breakfast Club
Valley Girl
Sixteen Candles
Fast Times At Ridgemont High
Full Metal Jacket
Cat's Eye
This Is Spinal Tap
Student Bodies
Blue Thunder
Lost In America
Airplane!
Colors
Boyz In The Hood
Better Off Dead
Heathers
The Lonely Guy
Star Trek: The Wrath Of Khan
Star Trek: The search For Spock
Star Trek: The Voyage Home
Scarface (Al Pachino)
Beverly Hills Cop
Trading Places
All Of Me
The Sure Thing
The History Of White People In America
The Toxic Avenger
The Philadelphia Experiment
WPINK-TV...oh wait...

 

Saw Raiders recently again on TV.

What a quality film.

They definitely do not make them like that anymore.

 

1984.

 

This almost made my shortlist. The film adaptation is better than it has any right to be, given that the source novel is one of the most towering works of the 20th century.

John Hurt is perfect as Winston Smith, and Richard Burton excellent as Big Brother. The supporting cast is strong, too, but there’s something off about the production values, for me; there is an ever-so-slight cheapness pervading it. The bleach bypass processing gives it a VHS quality, and not in a good way. It would have been better filmed in black and white, IMO. Then there is the problem of the score. I much prefer the Dominic Muldowney score over The Eurythmics’ too-literal efforts.

Overall, a flawed masterpiece.

 

One I see

Scarface!!!!!!

 

Well, I watched a LOT of movies in the 80s, but I never cared too much for action-adventure, and i've never seen Top Gun to this day, and don't care to. I love comedies and off-beat stuff, though.

 

Big Tom Cruise fan but I have never seen Top Gun and also have no desire to either. His '80s output does little for me.

 

Not even Risky Business?

 

Bingo !

 

Saw it last year for the first time. Thought it was fine but not one his top movies for me. If I had to pick an '80s Cruise film to watch it would be thought though.

 

LOCAL HERO

favorite movie ever.

 

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

 

Nothing in the 1980s would be in my top ten, but the first two that popped into my mind have not been mentioned: Hoosiers and Das Boot.

 

The Ninth Configuration followed by Fitzcarraldo and They Live

 

Always loved the original, essentially a slasher with a fantastic looking creature and a strong narrative drive. Conversely, I had heard terrible things about the 3rd and 4th film so I put them off for a long time. I found both to be really worthwhile films, doing something different with the idea of Pumpkinhead in this backwater rural setting, although lamentably using CGI in some shots.

 

Manhunter and To Live and die in LA, both with William L. Petersen.
Who can forget Prince of the City, another great one?

 

Blue Velvet

 

When Harry Met Sally is definitely one of my favorites.
Pink Floyd The Wall is too, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and...

 

The 1980's were a fantastic time for horror and action movies. Horror would wane early in the 90's but action would hold on and possibly improve. All of that time constitutes my childhood, and what a great time it was to grow up with those Joe Dante movies made especially for me. A film like The Gate just couldn't be made anymore without raising the age of the kids or diluting the horror elements, but back in 1982 you could show parent's smoking pot and a guy rip his own face off and still get a PG rating (Poltergeist.)

We have a resurgence now with Stranger Things/It, but these are things done by committee. Back in the 1980's you simply had people high off the hair spray fumes creating bizarre films that defied easy categorization, but had undeniable resonance. Something almost subconscious was going on, resulting in the phallic creature in The Strangeness, the WTF orgy of Society, the meta meta film Anguish, the conformity scares (The Stuff, They Live), the coming of age films (Company of Wolves, my precious Paperhouse), Argento at his most unhinged (Phenomena, Demons) and the destruction of the family unit with The Stepfather.

Some of the most fun films ever made came from this decade, many listed already like Back to the Future, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Airplane, Little Shop of Horrors, Beetlejuice, Dead Heat, Commando, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Killer Klowns from Outer Space and The Blob. You had the brief resurgence of 3D to elevate otherwise pedestrian films. Even the bad films were incredibly entertaining, like Scream for Help, Hobgoblins, Soultaker, Silent Night Deadly Night 2 and Spookies.

I recently watched The Deadly Spawn and was blown away by how it managed to encapsulated all the things I loved about the decade (humor, gore, kid leads, great creatures, likable characters, unpredictable turns) in a film that cost $25,000. To put that in perspective, the much discussed low budget wonder Evil Dead cost $350,000. The 80's were a weird time where all the genres just smashed into one. Comedy, action, horror, sci-fi, romance and kid's movies were no longer 6 different films at your cineplex. Genre directors like Carpenter, McTiernan, Cameron, Dante, Russell, Cohen, Verhoeven and Cronenberg were consistently hitting it out of the park. A great era to be a kid.