Jump to content

Regular 80's movies you think other people have forgotten


taksraven

Recommended Posts

OK, a terrible movie that I still own on VHS somewhere: Doctor Detroit.

Edit: others that are somewhere in my VHS boxes in the basement are Transylvania 6-5000, Earth Girls are Easy, Streets of Fire (which I actually own on HD DVD, which makes it a double lemon) and The Gate. I think I also own House (the '80s horror movie not the new TV show) and Return to Horror High on VHS but I'm not sure... it's been a long time since looking in those old dusty VHS boxes.

Ha! I rember House! I was a scary kid so I remember being scared of that one at the time. Dr. Detroit, now that's funny! What about "The Man With Two Brains"? Or even "The Jerk"? I think that one came out the latter part of the 70's maybe...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I guess it depends upon the definition of "guilty pleasure" and how I look at it. I think the only ones that might be a guilty pleasure to my mind are The Princess Bride and Tron. The other 1980's films I own I enjoy wholeheartedly without shame.

Aliens

Amadeus

Batman

Blade Runner

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Ghostbusters

Indiana Jones Trilogy

Predator

Road Warrior, The

Robocop

Shining, The

Full Metal Jacket

Terminator, The

Wall Street

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ha! I rember House! I was a scary kid so I remember being scared of that one at the time. Dr. Detroit, now that's funny! What about "The Man With Two Brains"? Or even "The Jerk"? I think that one came out the latter part of the 70's maybe...

I think The Jerk qualifies, it was made in '80 or '81 if I remember right. I saw it with my dad at a drive in of all places. I was never a big fan of Steve Martin. He's funny and all but I never really liked his movies... too "one note" for my tastes.

To crown this thread "Big Trouble in Little China" is on Fox Movie Channel right now, watching it on my big screen posting from my laptop. I have officially won the dork race.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I guess it depends upon the definition of "guilty pleasure" and how I look at it. I think the only ones that might be a guilty pleasure to my mind are The Princess Bride and Tron. The other 1980's films I own I enjoy wholeheartedly without shame.

Aliens

Amadeus

Batman

Blade Runner

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Ghostbusters

Indiana Jones Trilogy

Predator

Road Warrior, The

Robocop

Shining, The

Full Metal Jacket

Terminator, The

Wall Street

Tron was certainly a good film that lots of people slagged off at, so it could certainly be classed as a guilty pleasure. It funny but even the 1980's Batman series is abused by a lot of people now.

Oh, and one final point. The Road Warrior should be properly known as Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior or just Mad Max 2 (I know that this is nitpicking but since I live in that movies country of origin I know that most fellow Aussies prefer to see the correct title used). It was renamed by US distributors for the film. (The overdubbed soundtrack for the original Mad Max film was a bigger crime though)

Taksraven

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Streets of Fire (which I actually own on HD DVD, which makes it a double lemon)

I proudly admit that loved everything about Streets of Fire and I'm sorry that the Tom Cody trilogy never was completed. That film just dripped style. Besides, Diane Lane was bloody smokin' in that movie.

Actual guilty pleasures:

Howard the Duck

Splash (Daryl Hannah was the only reason I saw that movie in the first place... but I ended up kinda liking it)

the later Police Academy movies (Hightower and Tuckleberry RULE)

Footlose

And since we are still talking about 80s movies, I have to add I just saw Say Anything for the first time last night. If anybody writes that movie down as a guilty pleasure, I'll go and castrate him. It's the second most awesome romantic movie ever.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmm, not many movies I'd feel ashamed about from the 80s but these would do:

-The adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the 8th dimension

-Karate Kid

-Flodder (Dutch movie about one of the most anti-social families in film history)

-Cherry 2000

-Miami Super Cops (or any other Terrence Hill/Bud Spencer movie of the era)

-Canonball Run

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmmm...lets see now:

Red Dawn

Iron Eagle

Top Gun

Delta Force <=== Last Film of Lee Marvin. Lee Marvin + Chuck Norris = WIN. :D

Missing in Action <=== Back then I thought it was AWESOME to pop out of the water with an M60. :) My freinds though disagreed they argued that it was better to do splits ala Van Damme. :rolleyes: Sorry A1. :)

Invasion U.S.A. <=== Dual mini-uzi wielding Chuck Norris FTW!!! :D

Edited by grss1982
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know if it's a guilty pleasure, but I always watch She's Having A Baby when it's on the tube...

alright I'm lying, I bought the DVD...

Oh man, that was the first movie I ever went to by myself. My mother and I went to the theater and she wanted to see Back to School (Rodney Dangerfield) but I wouldn't go to that (just the sight of Dangerfield gave me the horrors) so we split up and I went to She's Having a Baby. I remember how strange it felt to be a 12 year old sitting in a theater by myself watching a coming-of-age drama. It was awesome. And Rodney Dangerfield still gives me the horrors.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmm...

I love 80s cartoons...movies.... not so much... at least off the top of my head... I guess Spinal Tap is an 80s movie, right? But I saw it in the 90s...

Transformers: The Movie - obviously - but that's kind of a technicality since in all fairness it was in cinemas for what? a week? And besides - I saw it on rental anyways (mom wouldn't take me - maybe she had a bad day or didn't want to watch it with me or something?)...

Hmm..Karate Kid? I enjoyed it but I don't have it on DVD or anything - wouldn't mind seeing it again...

Rocky - all of the Rockys - but that's not a "guilty pleasure" is it? I mean - Rocky got an Oscar - and all the sequals have lots of heart and are fun... this view is not a minority view, is it? Not something people hide in their closets?

Hmm...what else?

Top Gun I hate. Then again - there are very few Tom Cruise movies that I like - actually - there's one - Risky Business. That's an 80s movie - he gets left at home as a teenager and calls a prostitute: great flick!

Rambo I never really liked...

Roger Moore as James Bond - love those; and they are 80s primarily - but...again...is James Bond a guilty pleasure? No...

Platoon was a great movie...

Scarface - AWESOME 80s movie....

But these are cult classics, no?

Lots of good Jack Nicholson films from the 80s as well - The Crossing Gaurd is legend, Postman always knocks twice - or is that 70s?

Is the Shinning 70s or 80s? Somewhere there abouts.

I like Red Dawn - even thugh it's cheesy - but ...well..I don't own it - and if I don't own it, that means I didn't make the effort to actually find and buy it - which means I didn't love it really...

Planet of the Apes... again - cult classic...not guilty pleasure...

It's really difficult for me to find anything...

Hellraiser - the original one - LOVE IT! But - it's a wonderful cult classic top notch horror flick..not some "guilty pleasure"...

Aliens...ditto.

Alien was 79 I believe so can't even consider it.

No...I'm sorry - I'm afraid all of the eighties movies I like are actuallly good.

Lastly - anybody ever see Cherry: 2000?

I think it was an early 90s flick, not 80s, but it might as well have been the 80s... great GREAT albeit SUPER-CHEESEY sci-fi with Mellany Griffith...

Mad Max and all subsequent sequals I also like... have 1 and 2...no Thunderdome...need to track that baby down.

Anyways - I showed Mad Max (1) to my girlfriend and she was HORRIFIED by it :) But then again; she'd never seen alien and when we finished watching it, she was sweating, shivering and couldn't sleep :) I love the fact that her cultural outlook/history is TOTALLY different from mine (she "gets me back" by showing me old Polish movies from between the 50s to the 70s and telling me stories of working on a tobaccoo plantation as a kid :)

err...anyways - ahh...fond memories :) I have so many of them that I think I'm officially starting to get old :)

Pete

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lastly - anybody ever see Cherry: 2000?

I remember watching that shortly after it came out during one of those "free weekend" things that HBO and Showtime used to do. Loved it at the time. I'll have to Netflix that one to see just how terrible it is after all these years.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thrashin'

Gleaming the Cube

Weird Science

Real Genius

Explorers (River Phoenix, Ethan Hawke)

D.A.R.Y.L (With the kid from Cocoon)

Cloak and Dagger

The Never Ending Story (original)

The Philadelphia Experiment

Streets of Fire

Electric Dreams

Beastmaster

License to Drive

Revenge of the Nerds 1 & 2

Born in East L.A.

The Last Starfighter

Revenge of the Ninja (Sho Kosugi and Sasuke/Ninja Warrior competitor Kane Kosugi)

The Road Warrior

The Perils of Gwendolyn (obvious reasons OO)

Better Off Dead

Strange Brew

History of the World Pt.1

Short Circuit

And a Sci-Fi movie with Molly Ringwald and some dude traveling in a futuristic SUV, the name escapes me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks to Gubaba for the topic idea.

Come on, we all have guilty pleasures from the 1980's. For some, it was Megaforce, for others it may have been the truly politically incorrect like Red Dawn, and for others still it might have been the Brat Pack films like "Pretty in Pink".

Lets confess.

For me it was The Dark Crystal. For a movie that was so heavily criticised I thought that it was fantastic. Watched the film, read the book and enjoyed both.

I will try to think of others.

Taksraven

Ah, Megaforce, you have interesting tastes! ^_^

Red Dawn I don't think was politically incorrect. The Cold War was still in full swing and war with the Soviets was always a concern in the back of everyone's mind. The movie was playing into that fear, even if WWIII didn't go nuke right off the bat.

Some 80s stuff that's forgotten by now but I still like:

Conan The Barbarian - I believe that this was Schwarzenneger's first recognizeable break? I was in love with this movie when I saw it as a kid. I bought the DVD with a few extra scenes in it a while back. A while back when I was looking at the Age of Conan game at Best Buy, one of the teenaged girls working there was asking what the deal was with that game since all the guys were snatching it up. I just told her it was some online game set in a the world where Arnold Schwarzenneger's Conan character was set in.

"Conan?"

"Yeah, Conan the Barbarian?"

"....."

"It was one of Arnie's early movies."

"I don't remember that."

It was then that I realized how young she was and how old I was. She was probably born in the mid or late 90's, far later than when movies like Conan were constantly being showed on Cable :lol: Anyways, I loved this movie and I still do. Holds up well as an action flick with some great music.

Red Dawn - Another forgotten movie by now. I always enjoyed viewing this flick. WOLVERINES!!!

Beastmaster - Well, yeah. Like alot of kids back then, I enjoyed this movie alot. Swords, animal attacks, gory deaths. What more can you ask for? A good example of 80s family entertainment.

Invasion USA - A Chuck Norris action flick. As a kid, I never understood the whole story, just as long as Chuck Norris kicks some tail in for the USA.

Road Warrior - The role I always think of when Mel Gibson's name comes to mind, and it seems alot of people have forgotten this character. AWESOME setting, car wrecks all over the place, mad men with mohawks, guns, crossbows, flamethrowers, a helicopter-thingie, Humongous, a loyal dog, and pure 'Grade A' A**-Kicking all over the wastelands. Very little humor, except for blasting someone in the face with a shotgun. Action flicks don't get much better than this classic.

Edited by Warmaker
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know why the title and subheading of this thread have been changed. I don't think it was needed. Anyway.......

Another great film from the 1980's is the 1985 film The Quiet Earth. SF from New Zealand, need I say more. Its one of those "Last man on earth" stories, but I don't want to give away any more. If you havent seen it, its well worth looking at.

Another one from the 80's is the Australian movie "Bliss". Another classic.

Both films are quite obscure but they are both outstanding.

Taksraven

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...