Top 10(ish) films of … 1980

I turned nine in 1980 and was becoming a little more aware of movies, largely through sequels to movies I’d already enjoyed. That said, the hype surrounding The Empire Strikes Back was inescapable whether you were interested or not, and most other movies at the time I became aware of because of the posters everywhere. This was also a period of my life where I’d get taken to the USA for summer holidays (perks of having a parent in the travel business) which often meant I’d get to see movies months before they reached the UK—quite the privilege back then!

In terms of other events, 1980 was the year that Mount St. Helens erupted in Washington. I wasn’t there at the time, but I was in the area shortly afterwards and remember there still being ash everywhere. It was also, of course, the year that John Lennon was assassinated. The Beatles were before my time but the shock from Lennon’s murder resonated throughout the UK in a way that we wouldn’t see again until Princess Diana’s death. It’s curious to me that the seventies effectively began with the end of The Beatles and, ten years later, the eighties begins with the loss of one of the group’s major creative forces. With Elvis gone a few years earlier it’s almost as if the eighties was determined to shed the past and bring something new.

I’ve had to tweak the IMDB filters yet again. Nothing radical this time: just a minor adjustment to ensure I don’t inadvertently exclude movies based on the number of votes they have received while making sure I still get a top ten list that looks like it might resemble a valid ‘best of’ list. It seems IMDB is determined to not make this easy for me!

The Empire Strikes Back

What can you say about the iconic sequel to one of the biggest films ever made? I was in the USA (Seattle) when this came out and I remember seeing queues around the block whenever we passed a cinema that was screening it. I was stopped from spending all of my holiday money on a 12” Boba Fett toy on the second day of my holiday (to this day I still don’t know if I got lucky or not—I don’t know what else I spent my money on, but I remember that toy!). 

Bizarrely I can’t recall whether I actually got to see Empire during that holiday. I do remember going to see it at the Twickenham Odeon later in the year, with a bunch of friends, and it feels like I had already seen it at that point. What was it like to have seen possibly the best Star Wars movie at the cinema? Well, I was too young to have particularly well developed thoughts about the movie back then. It was fun. It was different. It had Yoda. I do remember being fairly well convinced that Darth Vader was lying about being Luke’s father. He’s a bad guy after all; why would he tell the truth? A friend of mine had the opposing opinion and he was the one who ended up being proved right.

In retrospect, what an anticlimax it would have been if he had been lying! “Oh yeah I just made that shit up, Skywalker. Just tryin’ ta fuck with you.” In retrospect, it feels like they tried to have both bites of that cherry with the sequel trilogy—are Rey’s parents significant, or are they no one—and that ended up playing about as well as getting James Franco to co-host the Oscars.

Superman II

It wasn’t until many, many years after I first saw this movie that I became aware of the behind the scenes shenanigans. I certainly had no idea that it was a patchwork movie cobbled together from the efforts of two very different directors. My Mum took me to see this at the Richmond Odeon and it was a blast. For a long time I thought it was easily superior to the first movie. How could it not be? One superhero against three supervillains? There’s just no way to top it.

I still enjoy the movie but it now seems more like a slight confection in comparison to its predecessor. It can’t be denied that the performances (Reeve, Kidder, Hackman, Stamp) are better than ever—in fact, casting Stamp as a supervillain is a stroke of genius that I’m not sure has been equalled—but the mish-mash of tones (Donner’s verisimilitude, and Lester’s comedy leanings) mean the film never quite gels. The opening scene in Paris comes across as cheap and tacky, and means that the structural and thematic bond with the first movie (wherein the nuclear missile that Superman launches into space releases Zod and his allies from the Phantom Zone) is lost.

That said, as a sequel it still works a whole lot better than Superman III.

Airplane!

In what might be a record for these posts, we’re now up to the third movie that I saw contemporaneously at the cinema. My local Odeon (the Twickenham one, not the Richmond one) used to a do a Wednesday night film club type thing where they would screen recent films for anyone who fancied a repeat showing. One time they showed Airplane! (known as Flying High! for any Australian readers) and I took myself off to see it. I remember enjoying it greatly although I’m sure a number of the jokes would have flown right over my head.

This is a film I remember fondly from my youth, and the Zuckers were definitely cinema’s resident comedy geniuses for a little while—until the parody circuit became worn and overtrodden. Looking back this feels like one of the rare films that managed to bridge two eras: it’s got the aesthetic sensibilities of a seventies movie (or even earlier, given its core source material dates from 1957), yet it also brings a style of comedy that felt fresh and new at the time and would persist throughout the eighties and nineties.

Flash Gordon

I remember going to see this with a group of friends for my birthday. Except I don’t. Because it wasn’t my birthday. Flash Gordon came out in the UK almost exactly 6 months before my birthday (which is about as far as you can get from a birthday before you swing around the other way). I remember queuing up outside the Kingston Odeon with a group of friends, and naturally cannot remember anyone who might have been in that group.

The film, however, I remember very well. I was a big fan of the old Flash Gordon serials, which used to get regularly repeated on BBC2 in the early evening. The Sunday Times had started doing a Flash Gordon comic strip. The Queen song was everywhere! Flash Gordon, as weird as it might seem, was huge. At least for a while and, at least, for me.

The trial at the tree stump has always terrified me. Perhaps even more so because one of the victims was a Blue Peter presenter which really brought the danger slap back into your home. Stick your hand in a random hole in a dark tree stump and maybe/maybe not there’ll be a gross, bulbous scorpion creature ready to inject you with its lethal venom. Russian roulette. In space!

I also enjoyed the robotic character who leaked goo when he died (suggesting he was human underneath) and the human-looking villainess who conversely turned out to be a robot. A nice reversal of expectations that really landed with me and almost certainly influenced some of the choices I would make in my own stories many years later.

At the time I couldn’t have cared less who directed it. I don’t think the slightly kitschy look even bothered me—it was just all enormous fun. Looking back now it’s a continual source of amazement to me that this movie came from Mike Hodges, the man behind that grittiest, most brutal and un-kitschy British crime classic Get Carter. I don’t think Flash Gordon is anywhere near the success that Get Carter is, but it takes some talent to be able to pull together two so radically different movies

The Shining

It took me a while to grow into this film and, in all honesty, it might have been Mike Flanagan’s masterful follow-up, Doctor Sleep, that really sealed the deal but I’d certainly say The Shining has gone from being a horror film that I didn’t quite get to one that I increasingly see as a masterpiece.

I’m struggling to remember any of my earlier viewings of this movie (tho I do remember the book being absolutely one of the scariest things I’d ever read) so let’s skip forward to more recent years. My rediscovery probably kicked off when I started my great (and yet to be completed) Stephen King reread. The Shining is King’s third novel so it didn’t take long to get around to it. Obviously this made me keen to revisit the film—or, maybe, it was the 4k release of the movie that did it?

Either way, I ended up watching it three times in reasonably close succession over recent years and enjoying it at least as much, if not more each time. My sole complaint is that if there’s anyone you want to enjoy watching go off the rails it’s gotta be Jack; consequently you miss the tragedy of his character going off the rails but he’s so good, so captivating in the movie that you barely realise you’re missing anything.

The Blues Brothers

I don’t love this film nearly as much as the rest of the world seems to. I’ve seen it a handful of times (possibly even once in the cinema, on a rerelease, possibly in Germany, now that the memory gears are creaking into action) and I enjoy it perfectly well but it just doesn’t land with me the way it does with others. 

Quite like the music though.

Private Benjamin

I include Private Benjamin here because I rented it on video once, probably around the time it first came out (likely not long after its Betamax release in April 1982). I have no idea why I rented it but I do remember the poster quite well, so maybe it’s simply a case where the promotional campaign did its work on me?

I’ve never seen the movie since and barely remember it. In fact the only scene I remember with any clarity is Albert Brooks dying of a heart attack while having sex on their wedding night (what you might call the ‘instigating scene’) and the only reason I remember it was because I had never quite seen a moment like that in a movie before. It had simply never occured to me that sex could be fatal.

So, thanks, for that trauma, Private Benjamin!

Unseen

There’s a lot of movies from 1980 that I’ve not seen, and top of that list is indubitably Raging Bull. Why have I not seen what many proclaim to be the greatest movie ever made? Well I guess there are two reasons. Firstly, as regular readers may have gathered, I’m not a huge fan of sports movies. Also Jake La Motta doesn’t exactly sound like someone I want to spend a couple of hours of my life with. Furthermore I find (shockingly) that I can take or leave Martin Scorsese movies—there are definitely a handful that I love, but it’s by no means a given that his movies will gel with me.

That said, as a lifelong film buff it does seem somewhat negligent not to have watched Raging Bull at least once.

A few films that I may have seen but don’t remember watching include Caddyshack, Any Which Way You Can (was this one of the ones with the orang-utan?), Smokey and the Bandit II and The Blue Lagoon (I was vaguely obsessed with this tale of young love when I was growing up, but if I ever did watch the movie in the end I have no idea. I do remember the Top Secret! spoof of it tho).

I don’t have any intention of watching The Coal Miner’s Daughter. It may well be very good, but it has that air of particularly turgid Oscar-bait that lingered around some films from the late seventies / early eighties. I do however want to watch Cruising one day. It’s not a film I was hugely aware of until, perhaps, Mark Kermode flagged it but it looks dark and interesting, and Friedkin generally has a way of making his movies worth watching.

Mentionables

I was introduced to Dressed to Kill during my Film Studies course at University. It may have been a reintroduction as I’m fairly certain I’d already seen it, but I never saw it in the same way after that University screening. It became one of my favourite movies, largely due to the exquisite shot construction but I also appreciate the balls of someone essentially remaking Psycho in their own image. It caused a lot of controversy in the day due its perceived violence against women. I’m not sure it’s any more violent than many other films, but the somewhat transphobic elements would certainly be interesting to navigate were it released today.

Another one of my favourite movies, The Fog, also landed in 1980. I remember people talking about this one at the time (the way we’d talk about the latest horror movies in the school playground). I eventually rented it and it scared the daylights out of me. Something about the fog creeping up to your door, something knocking at the door but you can’t see what’s out there until you get a fishhook in your gut. I don’t find it quite as scary today but, second only to The Thing, it’s one of my favourite John Carpenter movies. (Yes, it’s not as accomplished as Halloween, but if I had to choose only one of them to watch …)

It’s perhaps ironic that this year also saw the release of Friday The 13th, one of many films for which Halloween paved the way but one of the few that had sufficient legs for its own franchise. I’ve watched this a few times recently and it’s generally better than I give it credit for but still seems like a bit of a poor cousin entry.

And to swing things around completely the other way, another film I have strong memories of from this year is Somewhere In Time. I caught this on TV once when one or other of the parents were watching it and somehow it’s always stuck with me, mostly the idea that Christpher Reeve’s character could will himself back in time but then be whipped back to the future through a random act of sheer carelessness (a contemporary coin lost in the folds of his vintage suit jacket that provides an unwelcome link to the modern day). There’s a strong element of tragedy and also inevitability that has lingered with me.

British cinema enjoyed the start of a brief resurgence with The Long Good Friday, a terrific gangster movie with a stunning performance by Bob Hoskins (who was relatively unknown at the time). I watched this most recently last year and it absolutely blew me away. There’s an exquisite sense of time and place about it—a London that’s on the verge of redevelopment, but also prey to the machinations of conflicting criminal organisations. In the midst of this is Bob Hoskin’s character, Harold Shand, trying to carve out his glorious future while his grimy, bloody past inevitably catches up to him.

I’m also a big fan of Stir Crazy, which to be honest is not a great movie but is completely carried by the comic partnership of Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. Unlike Silver Streak, Wilder is given free reign here to be as much the comedian as Pryor and the results are wonderful. Ignore the middling plot and simply enjoy the chance to see two comedy greats at their best.

Finally, some other worthy mentions from 1980 include the horror staple Prom Night (I think I’ve seen it); Robert Altman’s cult favourite Popeye (saw this at the cinema!); the surprisingly gritty Fame (I used to love The Kids From Fame but never really got into the movie); Altered States (which is one my watch list); and Michael Cimino’s studio-destroying folly Heaven’s Gate (which I may or may not watch one day)

UK Top Ten

UK https://www.saltypopcorn.co.uk/charts/yearly.php?year=1980

1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. Star Trek: The Motion Picture
3. The Elephant Man
4. Flash Gordon
5. Kramer vs Kramer
6. “10”
7. The Amityville Horror
8. Urban Cowboy
9. The Jerk
10. Airplane!

No real surprises in the UK top ten this year—the usual mix of blockbusters from this year and last year. We have a curiously high showing for the John Travolta mid-career entry Urban Cowboy, which I’ve never seen. According to IMDB it’s held in pretty high regard, but I can’t imagine why a “western musical” would find traction with a UK audience unless it’s leftover goodwill from Saturday Night Fever. Apparently it performed poorly among US teenagers because they didn’t know what “urban” meant. Whether that’s true or not, “Urban Cowboy” is certainly a very uninspiring title for a movie. This does seem to be an era of very poorly titled movies.

Join me next time for the surprisingly fruitful cinematic year of 1981 …