5 AWESOME FILMS OF THE 80S

The 1980s is my favourite decade for films. There is something about the movies that came out in those 10 years that really, well i think, changed cinema at points. After the jump is my list of 5 awesome 80s films, some you may know, some you may not, but these 5 are favourites of mine so please check out my little mini reviews and let me know what I might have missed....

This post is inspired by a top five rundown over on Ben's Basement (here), Ben's a former work colleague and a good film reviewer, so being a bit older than Ben and having a seen way way way more 80s films than him, I thought i'd do my own count down of top 5 80s films. Now my own top 5 films of all time contain three 80s films, Rocky 4, Streets Of Fire and Road House so I'm going to leave those off this list because I’ve talked about them quite often so here's my not all time top 5 but general top 5 80s movies...

HEAVY METAL (1981) Dir. Gerald Potterton

Heavy Metal is awesome, it's pure Anti-Disney animation. It came out at a time where Disney were struggling with their films and alternative animation studios, usually based in Canada were taking the opportunity to get their films out. A few great titles come to mind like The Last Unicorn, Star Chaser and Rock & Rule, all fantastic films, Ralph Bakshi was making his American Pop and Fire & Ice but Heavy Metal, at least for me, was a snap shot of what animation could do outside of the confines of a Disney animation department. Anyone who watches South Park may now be familiar with Heavy Metal as it was lovingly parodied in the “Major Boobage” episode, and while that is nice, you really need to see the actual film for your self. It consists of a series of random stories, each made in a different animation style but all connected via a glowing green orb. It's based on the french comic book Metal Hurlent and features music from bands such as Blue Oyster Cult, Black Sabbath, Devo and Cheap Trick, just to name a few. Each story is about 10-15 minutes in length and feature the voice talents of everyone from John Candy and Eugene Levy to John Vernon. Along with afore-mentioned bands it also boasts a fantastic Elmer Bernstein score, especially during the final segement called Taarna. It's a fantastic animated film which should be more widely recognised, anyway it's one of my favourite 80s films.

NIGHTMARE CITY (1980) Dir: Umberto Lenzi

Italian Gore maestro Umberto Lenzi, brought us the infected crazies way before 28 Days Later brought them to London.

Lenzi, known for his gore-tacular riff on Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Ferox, tones down the brutality for Nightmare City, essentially a zombie film but like Danny Boyle's film, they're infected, wreaking havoc in an unnamed city somewhere in the world (it was filmed in Spain), armed with knives, axes and other melee weapons. Local reporter Dean Miller and his doctor wife Anne, try to escape the marauding infected who are quickly over running the city.

Featuring a stellar performance from Hugo Stiglitz' beard and Mel Ferrer as a military general, Nightmare City is fast paced and bloody good fun. It's gory but not OTT gore like Ferox and works well as an Action/Horror hybrid. Out of all the 80s Italian gore fests, Nightmare City is one I can continually return to without it being a chore to sit through, which, and i'll get shot for this, is more than I can say for Lucio Fulci's films, which I must add I find tediously boring (Pete runs and hides). I had a hard time choosing between this and Antionio Margheriti's Cannibal Apocalypse which I find a fascinating film even if it is classed as an exploitation film, but Nightmare City is a much more fun film and that's why I love it.

EXPLORERS (1985) Dir: Joe Dante

Oh man did I love this film. Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix, Robert Picardo and space-craft called The

ThunderRoad, what more could a kid ask for. The film is basically about three kids who have this dream about a circuit, one's obsessed with 50s sci-fi, one's a science genius and the other is the cool guy who rides a motorbike even though he's about 13. They build a spacecraft out of junk and an old carnival ride car and the science kid has managed to create a force field that can keep them safe. The fly into space (remember the kid is a genius science kid) and the get caught in a tractor beam of a massive space ship. There they meet two aliens, a brother and a sister who communicate via old TV and Movie lines as that is their way of speaking English.

It's a really fun film and encapsulates the mid 80s perfectly, almost as if Dante had watched E.T and emulated his mid America Sububian setting. There's good performances all round from a very young Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix as well as Jason Presson, the lesser known of the three leads, but not only those three youngsters, but you get Robert Picado cameo as a character in a fictional film playing at a drive in and he also provides the voice for one of the Aliens and also a uncredited James Cromwell as River Phoenix' scientist father. Dick Miller pops up as a police chopper pilot but if you are familiar with Dante's work you'd expect Miller to show up at some point. The fun is played out to fantastic score by Jerry Goldsmith. Such a great little film and well worth tracking down.

MALONE (1987) Dir: Harley Cokeliss

Burt Reynolds, Muscle Cars, Hershel from Walking Dead, A sawn off Shotgun, Government Hitmen, Evil land barons who are trying to set up a new world order, Cliff Robertson, Moustaches and giant explosions can only mean 1 thing.....MALONE. One of the most underrated action films of the 1980s, Reynolds is Malone a government assassin who decides he's had enough so goes on the run. Ending up on a farm owned by Scott Wilson (Hershel) and his daughter played by Cynthia Gibb. He agrees to help out on the farm for room and board. Cliff Robertson wants hershel's land and will do anything to get it, but he didn't figure on Malone. Cue fist fights, gun fights, car chases and explosions aplenty. By the end of the 80s, Reynold's leading man stature was declining, most of his 80s films had flopped with the exception of a few. To raise his leading man status, studios tried to turn him into a bona fide action hero but Reynolds was in his late 50s and the attempt came too late, he couldn't compete with the likes of Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Willis so Malone kinda disappeared which is a shame because it's a hugely entertaining action film, it has it's flaws, the plot has been used many times previously but there's just something inherently cool about this film and to be honest I only discovered it this year thanks to MGM HD. The film is available on the MoD program from MGM but if you have blu-ray you can pick up a cracking German Blu for about £10. One of my new favourite 80s films.

HIGHLANDER (1986) Dir: Russell Mulcahy

Who doesn't love Highlander? The film with a French man playing a scot and a scot playing a Spaniard across a timeline that goes from medieval Scotland through to modern day New York, all set to an epic soundtrack of Queen songs and Michael Kamen scoring. Highlander follows immortal scotish swordsman, Connor McCload, the last of the Highlanders, he is trained by Sean Connery's Spanish (?) swordsman to fight the Kurgan, a beastly immortal played by the ever reliable Clancy Brown, who wants all the immortals dead so he can be the only one and have all of their power. It's a really great fantasy film with good performances from everyone involved especially Brown who's menacingly awesome through-out the film. The film opens with a great sword fight in a parking lot of stadium and it continues with good action scenes all the way up until the final epic fight between Connor and The Kurgan. Russell Mulcahy's direction looks fantasic, shot in widescreen with sweeping shots of the Scottish highlands and some spot on uses of light. It's fair to say that Mulcahy should forget about his sequel, the utter mess that is The Quickening because this is the definitive highlander film. I remember the first time I saw it, I was still in primary school and went a friends house, his mother was out and he said do you want to watch this? Then he showed me the cover of Highlander, I didn't know what it was but it had a 15 cert on the box and knowing my parents wouldn't allow me to watch it at home I said yes, I've loved it ever since.

So there we go that's 5 of my favourite films from the 1980s, it's not a definitive list of course, but how do rundown your top 5 films of the 80s when there are so many, and before people ask “ where's Blade Runner? Star Wars? Platoon? E.T?...etc, I am a massive 80s movie fan, I love all those films but I didn't want to list the same films everyone else lists, that would be too generic. Hope you enjoyed my little 5 films of the 80s, what are your favourites films of that decade? Comment below and let me see what I might have forgotten.