“Chicks dig me, because I rarely wear underwear and when I do it’s usually something unusual.” – Stripes
How did Burt pull Excalibur from the stone? He had Arthurization.
This is the finale of, perhaps, the greatest decade of cinema – ever. It wasn’t on purpose, it was just how the dice rolled that we finished up at 1981. 1981 was a year where I benefited from many things – primarily living in a town with a movie theater, and said movie theater determining the lawful age for entry was defined as, “has money”.
Again, no sequels, but there just weren’t that many sequels in 1981 – people were working on their own, original ideas (mostly, Outland I’m looking at you).
Scanners – I saw this in the theater – how could I miss out? It was science fiction, and looked to be good. I was not disappointed. The movie itself is about psychic soldiers that were the result of a secrete (which is houw Canadians spelle, I thinke) Canadian plan to make super soldiers, or relieve the nausea of pregnant women. I forget which. In the end, there are nearly infinite shenanigans with exploding heads. The movie includes The Prisoner actor Patrick McGoohan, who I like to pretend was just playing the same character that he played in The Prisoner.
I look at the cat soldier in the corner and wonder if this movie was all about the dangers of a little pussy cat.
Excalibur – I’ve never seen a horse ride payoff with such a big surprise as when Uther rode his horse to meet Igrayne not long after the start of this movie. The surprise? The girl that Uther impendragons (with plenty of clanking) was the director’s own 19- or 20-year-old daughter, who played Igrayne. Talk about an awkward family Thanksgiving after that shoot – how could you tell if dad was wanting more turkey if he asked, “Can I see a bit more breast?” Anyhow, this is the classic story of Arthur and the round table and was done perfectly. If done in 2025 by Netflix®, Arthur would be played by an Indian or Pakistani and Merlin would be a sassy black woman who would complain that Arthur didn’t season his meat and if you complain you’re a bigot because England has always been centered around Indians, Pakistanis, and sassy black women.
Outland – What is Outland? Well, it’s High Noon in space, so I guess they could have called it High Moon, unless that was a Cheech and Chong space movie. This movie had no aliens, no super-science. Just what we could expect if Sean Connery was put in charge of a distant space outpost in a gritty dystopian future. The movie probably lost money. This is a rare movie for me in that I read the novelization of it by Alan Dean Foster before the movie came out, so my surprise level was at zero.
Would History of the World, Part 1 have been different if it starred Mel Gibson?
History of the World, Part I – My older brother (John Wilder) took me along with his date to this movie. I have no idea why he did that, but he did, and he had a driver’s license, which meant I didn’t have to hoof it home after the flick. Did I mention that his date was highly religious? I especially enjoyed laughing really loudly at the raunchy jokes (at least the ones I understood) and watching my brother squirming uncomfortably and pretending to be offended. This is my second favorite film by Brooks.
Raiders of the Lost Ark – I had no idea, zero, what this movie was about before going to see it, but from the opening scene I knew I was in the right place. The rather frenetic pacing and action that was used to move the plot along was fantastic – and it left me wondering why more movies didn’t (and still don’t) do the same. What I see for the last decade is that, rather than using pacing and plotting, instead the entire screen is filmed with action, creating a spectacle, but a spectacle that detracts from the characters you’re supposed to be caring about. Not in Raiders. Nope. This movie defined the action/adventure genre through the 1980s, being so much more than what came before, and setting a model that was often imitated.
The Cannonball Run – Burt Reynolds plus the rest of every actor from the 1970s star in a story about the real road race that clandestinely occurred back in the day. It’s hilarious, and a perfect use of Burt’s talents. He ended up making millions that he could share with his ex-wife. Critics hated it, audiences loved it.
“Don’t worry, we have the element of PEZ® on our side.”
Stripes – I don’t know how many people joined the Army because of this movie, but I know that, of the four guys I went to the movie with, two joined up. Both specifically pointed to this movie as the “why”. This is certainly one of Bill Murray’s five best movies. I mean, who doesn’t like Garfield? Regardless, this movie is hilarious, stands the test of time, and started a feud between Murray and Sean Young that apparently lasts to this day. Of course, the number of people who are disappointed in Sean Young is nearly as long as the number of people disappointed that being in the Army wasn’t nonstop madcap fun.
“Snake Plisskin. I heard about you. I heard you were a clown.”
Escape from New York – John Carpenter directing Kurt Russell in a movie about a SpecOp warrior gone bad being put on an impossible mission? Count me in. 1981 was one of those years when it looked like New York was going to implode into a black hole of financial mismanagement, corruption, crime, and filth, and being a prison was probably a better option than being New York, at least until the WWE® singlehandedly brought the city back from the brink of failure with Wrestlemania©. All Hail Hulk Hogan™! Oh, yeah, there was a movie. It’s good, with simple, practical effects and Kurt Russell channeling John Wayne. I’ve seen it dozens of times, but it was best in the theater.
Gallipoli – Mel Gibson is notoriously humorous (except when he’s been drinking) but Gallipoli isn’t funny. I had no idea that the disastrous Gallipoli landing, and the outsized toll on Australians and New Zealanders. Gallipoli was a buddy movie about two young sprinters who joined up and were sent to Gallipoli, where they take part in the Battle of the Nek, which was a fiasco for the Australians. If you haven’t seen it, I fully recommend it.
I don’t recommend the Mel Brooks version of Gallipoli.
Heavy Metal – South Park™ parodied this movie as Heavy Boobage. They’re not wrong. Essentially this is a comic book movie for 12-year-olds that consists of hot, nearly nude cartoon girls and strong warriors with swords and Corvettes™ and spaceships. It has, however, all the plot written at an 8-year-old level. Yeah. The soundtrack was great, and one of the first double-albums I ever bought and also inspired my birthday request for a stereo. But? The movie is just not good. Garfield generally has a more complex plot, though with fewer boobs.
Should this movie be called “TradWife Metal”?
An American Werewolf in London – Studio executives wanted John Landis to put John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd in this movie instead of the Dr. Pepper™ guy and Griffin Dunne. What a fiasco that would have been, though adding a werewolf to The Blues Brothers might have been a nice plot twist. As it is, this is a funny yet poignant horror comedy which is a sentence I’d write about . . . only this movie.
Das Boot – This movie is soooooo long. Sooooo long, perhaps longer than WWII. The first time I watched it, one of my college buddies rented it. I feel asleep and saw the end. The second time I watched it, I fell asleep. Again. I still think I missed about 17 hours in the middle. Or is this movie still going? It’s long. I think the Germans lose.
Mommie Dearest – I watched this movie on HBO® and . . . liked it. I mean, there’s no particular point to the movie, but I enjoyed watching Faye Dunaway screaming about wire coat hangers and giving away Christina’s toys because Christina probably had it coming. One other reason I love this movie? Joan Crawford has Risen from The Grave by Blue Öyster Cult.
The next two are linked for me: Porky’s and Chariots of Fire. What is in common about these two movies? Well, one night a school team went on an overnight competition. As memory serves, we spent at least two nights at our destination. The competition was co-ed. Our coach took us to the movies. As did other teams’ coaches. A girl on a competing team who had expressed, um, strong interest in me also went to the movies. Her coach wouldn’t let their team go to an R-rated movie, but ours would. So, I went to Chariots of Fire.
Okay one wasn’t enough, we have a sequel poster:
Of good movies for a high school boy to take a girl to on a date, Chariots of Fire ranks right up there with Schindler’s List or Das Boot or Ernest Goes to Re-Education Camp. It’s about British people running or not running because it’s against their religion. How do you talk a date into second base when you’ve just spent two hours watching people discuss the morality of running on a religious day?
That same weekend I saw Porky’s in my hometown when we got home. Really, they’re the same movie if you replace religion and running with staring at nude girls in a locker room shower.
Taps – Our final movie of the review of movies from the 1980s is Taps. I promise I didn’t plan that. Taps came out as America was just getting into the Reagan era, and there was a feeling faded glory, that America was slipping away, and that traditions and honor no longer meant anything. Taps really captured that, and to me, it resonated because of the idea that the youth (which I was a member of, then) could make a difference, could be a bridge to the future. Plus? Tom Cruise with an M-60.
Okay, that’s what I found. What (besides Maniac, which I’ve never seen) did I miss?
1981 was the pinnacle of my movie going experience as I had gotten a driver’s license and my first girlfriend in the same year and I had no idea where else to take a girl on a date. There were so many great choices that year but “Evil Dead” as one of the surprise hits as it also happened to be in 3D at the local theater. “Caveman” was also corny but fun and “Clash of the Titans” was really cool, and I got to see that one in our English class when we were reading The Odyssey.
That was also the year I made the dreadful mistake of going to see “A Change of Seasons” only because it had Bo Derek in it and we were hoping should would be nude like in “Ten” ( I think this movie actually debuted in 1980 ). Two hours of her talking with her clothes still on made me decide then and there that I would never go see a pointless romance movie again.
Das Boot was interesting only because I saw it in college a few years later just as I was about to make a commitment to join the Navy nuclear sub program. It had the opposite impact as Stripes as I realized I couldn’t deal with the claustrophobia.
Thankfully, I missed A Change of Seasons. Sounds dreadful.
Here it is a few days away from 2025 and New York is again going to implode into a black hole of financial mismanagement, corruption, crime, and filth.
I never realized that most of my time in 1981 was spent at a Saturday matinee when I should have been working out.
Hehehe – working out is never a mistake. I did spend most of 1981 working out, which really paid off in 1982.
You mentioned Alan Dean Foster writing Outland……He is truly one of the unsung heroesin Hollywood and has single handedly done more in terms of sci fi novels, novelizations and movie scripts than all other writers combined. In 1981 alone, he wrote the novelization of Outland, The Thing, and Clash of the Titans, all in the same year. That was coming off of writing (both novelization and original stories) much of the Star Wars series, Aliens, many of the Star Trek movies and shows, etc.
I’ve always been amazed that the guy isn’t more of a household name given his contributions.
He did have the Flinx and Pip the mini dragon series in the Seventies that were well loved by nerds like me.
And me. My favorite was the Tar Ayim Krang.
Same. One thing he exposed was Disney corruption. He saw that after Disney bought one of the companies he was getting royalties from the checks stopped. Disney explained to him, with a straight face, that they bought the assets without the obligations. I think he got it straightened out.
Good list! I couldn’t find any favorites that I would add, but a couple I would remove:
1. Escape from New York – Kurt Russell is out of place as a tough guy. He fits the roles that he had in Used Cars and Overboard or as Jungle Boy in Gilligan’s Island.
2. Stripes – I was on active duty at Ft. Knox when it was filmed there. The completion of basic training by Bill’s platoon, unsupervised, and their appearance at graduation was just ridiculous, not funny. The rest of the movie wasn’t much better.
Part of Stripes was filmed at Knox where they had ROTC Basic Training.
I got my commission through ROTC and never had Basic Training. Must have missed something in 25 years.
If you had the freshman and sophomore classes you didn’t need the Basic Camp. Did they send you to Advanced Summer camp at Ft Riley or Ft. Lewis senior year?
I’m just spitballing, but you never saw Tombstone, did you?
Yes, I saw Tombstone, and I thought Russell looked ridiculous with that huge fake moustache, and he didn’t fit that role either.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Hot tip: It’s not 1964 any more, and Kurt’s not playing Dexter Riley for Disney much these days.
I always liked Russell in anything. And, yup, Stripes was ridiculous. But I was in the mood for that!
I think I only saw Raiders and Excalibur in the theater in 1981, my older sisters took me to Excalibur because of course it was about a guy named Arthur. About the time when Uther says “Come, Igraine”, they realized their mistake but it was too late. The rest I saw on HBO at some point. It was a great year for movies, Taps is wildly underrated as a film.
Yup, I was surprised at the quality. Imagine having half of these movies in 2024?
Good list John. I might add Dragonslayer and Time Bandits as honorable mentions in the non-CGI Fantasy category
I have never seen Gallipoli – but now that I have seen the real place, I should watch the movie. And Raiders of the Lost Ark is almost without peer.
I never saw Heavy Metal either. I feel like I should, now, if for no other reason than it is controversial in a whole different way in that now it offends a whole different group of folks.
I suspect only really the Russians understand the impact of WW1 on the Australian psyche. Just about every family in the country was directly effected, having someone killed, maimed or wounded in their immediate circle. In a fighting force that was entirely volunteer.
Sir Winston was directly responsible for the Gallipoli disaster as Minister of The British Navy. That should have ended his political career. But didn’t.
If we ever get a smart TV, I’ll subscribe to a service where I can watch some of these, like Gallipoli.
Next to the Python Spanish Inquisition skit, Mel comes close in History, Part I.
Gallipoli may be the best Australian movie, ever. Heavy Metal is more of a cash grab with a good soundtrack.
I have fond cinematic memories of 1981 — it was quite a good year. I have to disagree with you about both Chariots and Das Boot, both of which I enjoyed greatly. One that you left out was The Neverending Story, also a charming movie.
I noticed in your discussion of that movie year something that I also see in my memories of it — our perceptions are heavily influenced with what was going on in our lives at the time. In my case, I was in the early years of my marriage, at the beginning of the childbirth period, and I was still early enough in my engineering career that I wasn’t disillusioned yet. So, naturally I liked the movies and music of that time.
I haven’t seen Chariots since the first go-round, but will give it the benefit of the doubt since the last thing on my mind was seeing a movie . . . .
SO FINE was a box office bomb, mainly because Ryan O’Neal was box office poison at the time, but that’s a shame because Andrew Bergman (THE IN-LAWS) wrote and directed; Richard Kiel and Mariangela Melato have choice parts; and Jack Warden improvises as hilariously and profanely as he did in USED CARS a year earlier. Loses some steam in the final act by going overboard but more than enough hilarious moments. Unjustly overlooked.
…ALL THE MARBLES is about the women’s wrestling circuit, Robert Aldrich’s final film, and also unjustly overlooked despite its flaws. Stars Peter Falk in a role originally intended for Paul Newman(!). It too registered barely a blip at the box office. You do get a nude mud wrestling scene and a lot of hot ladies wrestling so there’s that.
I’ll give ’em a look if they wander by! Thanks, Hal!!!
“A naked American man stole my balloons.”
Well, that’s a line that’s hard to beat.
Are you done now that you’ve finished up the decade or will you make a couple more for the last years of the 70s like you covered the first couple of years of the 90s? Or more genre posts like the Dystopian Movie one?
https://wilderwealthywise.com/it-came-from-1980/
https://wilderwealthywise.com/it-came-from-1981/
https://wilderwealthywise.com/it-came-from-1982/
https://wilderwealthywise.com/it-came-from-1983/
https://wilderwealthywise.com/it-came-from-1984/
https://wilderwealthywise.com/it-came-from-1985/
https://wilderwealthywise.com/friday-movies-because-i-said-so-1986-in-review/
https://wilderwealthywise.com/it-came-from-1987/
https://wilderwealthywise.com/it-came-from-1988/
https://wilderwealthywise.com/it-came-from-1989/
https://wilderwealthywise.com/it-came-from-1990/
https://wilderwealthywise.com/it-came-from-1991/
https://wilderwealthywise.com/the-dystopian-movie-post/
I’m going to keep going. I was surprised how good 1980 was, so why not? I’d love to hear what sort of genre posts people were interested in . . .
There are the big ones like Action, Comedy, Drama, Horror, Martial Arts, Noir, Romance, Science Fiction, Sport, Thrillers, War, Westerns.
Then there are more specialized themes like, just off the top of my head: A Christmas Carol adaptations, Blaxploitation, Disaster, Heists, Kaiju, Lovecraftian Horror, Racing, Slashers, Sword & Sorcery, Time Travel.
Perhaps the natural starting point is the one that’s been excluded from contention so far: a post containing your list of The Best Sequels™.
Nice call on the sequel post! I’ll think about other categories . . . I’ll see if we can make ’em a bit quirky.
1981 was a monumental year for neo-noir crime stories, a genre I am quite fond of: Eyewitness with William Hurt and Sigourney; Cutter’s Way with Jeff Bridges; The Postman Always Rings Twice with Jack; Thief with James Cann (which Michael Mann wrote and directed shortly before starting his legendary work on Miami Vice); Nighthawks with Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams; Blow Out with John Travolta; Prince of the City with a special guest star cast list a mile long; True Confessions with De Niro and Robert Duval, Absence of Malice with Paul Newman; and Sharkey’s Machine with Burt Reynolds.
But the winner BY FAR for the title of 1981 Best Neo Noir is Body Heat. This movie has it all: Directed by Lawrence Kasdan, coming off of his epic success with The Empire Strikes Back; great performance by William Hurt, proving (along with Eyewitness) that he could actually act after the ridiculousness of 1980’s Altered States; and most of all – the film debut of Kathleen Turner in all of her glory as the femme fatale.
The final shot of Hurt with the high school annual when he finally realizes how thoroughly he has been duped is a timeless warning to all men: when you allow yourself to be trapped in an erotic Eden, women are far more dangerous than any snake.
Body Heat is one of the greatest films ever made. It’s not on AFI’s Top 100 list by accident.
I saw Body Heat and was disappointed. Can’t remember why, but maybe it was the sweaty William Hurt?
Well, a clarification. Body Heat is on AFI’s Thrills Top 100 list, not the All Time Top 100.
https://www.afi.com/afis-100-years-100-thrills/
I didn’t see it in the theater, but “Southern Comfort” stuck with me since I first saw it.
More for the city guys fucking with backwoods boys and having their shit pushed in than for having Powers Boothe, Fred Ward and Keith Carradine in it.
I only saw that late at night on HBO, and kept falling asleep.
What the book explained, and the movie left out:
The “backwoods boys” were all a bunch of stone-cold Vietnam combat veterans.
The Notional Guard weekend warriors were, in real life, exactly as portrayed in the film: all the f**k-ups, who signed up originally only to duck out of combat service.
Hollywood made it a city-mouse/country-mouse story, because they couldn’t stand to glorify the skills of guys who’d seen the elephant, preferring – then and now, as usual – to always portray military vets as physical and emotional cripples, baby killers, criminals, and losers.
Hollyweird hasn’t changed a whit since 1965 to the present day, because they’re the exact same Leftard draft-dodging dope-smoking hippies they always were.
I saw Das Boot at an event with an authority (from the US National Archives) on German WW-2 submarine warfare to handle Q&A afterward. He said that, while some things were dramatized, the movie actually tracked pretty close to the career of a particular U-boat captain. He also said that the typical career of a U-boat career lasted no more than a couple of weeks at sea before they were sunk. Allied success against German ciphers had a lot to do with that. I’m left wondering whether the real-life captain played in Das Boot survived by not going where was told to go, and not reporting where he actually went.
The WWII German submariners had the highest casualty rate of any branch of service of anyone serving in the war. The ciphers (as I recall) were broken because they always started with the same information and ended the same way.
Scanners? Meh.
Excalibur? Helen Mirren. Liam Neeson. Jean Luc Picard. Epic Arthurian battles. Just go see it already.
Outland? High Noon in space indeed. Just jumping on the sci-fi bandwagon. But Sean Connery vs. Peter Boyle? And Sean is rocking a shotgun? Oh yeah.
History Of the World Part I “These fifteen…>CRASH!<…ten, TEN commandments!" It's Mel, at the top of his game, after Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein. Yes please.
Raiders Of The Lost Ark? One of the Ten Most Perfect Movies Of All Time, and a heartfelt homage to decades of Saturday matinee three-reeler serials, done to cinematic perfection by the two acknowledged motion picture geniuses – of the time, then, and eventually, of ever.
The Cannonball Run? Burt. Dom Deluise. Him. Jack Elam. Farah Fawcett. Dean and Sammy. The movie was worth it just for the outtakes during the credits.
Stripes? One of Bill Murray’s Top Five Performances Ever. The genius of Harold Ramis. Dewey Oxburger. Sgt. Hulka. John Larrouquette. It’s Animal House Joins The Army. I trained in those barracks the summer the movie opened. I did Aaaaaaaaarmy training on that very drill field. “That’s a fact, Jack!”
Escape From New York? Snake Plissken. Lee Van Cleef. Isaac Hayes. Donald Pleasance. Ernest Borgnine. This is a Who’s Who of badassery. And the best use of NYFC in any film, ever, to this day.
Gallipoli? Hall Of Fame War Movie. Watch that, and The Light Horsemen, and you’ve got two of the greatest exports from Oz since Olivia Newton-John.
Heavy Metal? Best Soundtrack Ever. Worst Cartoon Ever.
An American Werewolf In London? Masterpiece of horror that isn’t horrible. Second best soundtrack of the year.
Das Boot? Another Hall Of Fame War Movie, and Best Submarine Movie Of All Time. Which is actually saying something. If it’s that hard for you, get the English-dubbed version. And some No-Doz. Falling asleep in this flick borders on sacrilege, and is roughly equivalent to falling asleep during Aliens, or Raiders Of The Lost Ark. No, really.
Spoiler Alert: After surviving WWII, Jurgen Prochnow moves to America, and pulls mega-heists in Beverly Hills with Brigitte Nielsen.
Mommie Dearest? It’s like The Exorcist, but less funny, and this time the mommy is the possessed one instead of the daughter.
Porky’s? Adolescents running slowly towards a hole in the wall facing the girl’s locker room. Yawn.
Chariots Of Fire? Edwardian Englishmen running slowly in sand on the beach, with a Vangelis score. Third best soundtrack of the year.
Taps? Another Hall Of Fame War Movie. George C. Scott showing you what Patton would have been like if he’d survived and come back home. Bonus: Tom Cruise and Sean Penn both get machine-gunned to death?!? It was like Christmas in July.
Spoiler Alert: After strafing children and leaving the Notional Guard, Ronny Cox moves to Beverly Hills, and becomes chief of detectives.
What you missed:
Time Bandits Monty Python times Sean Connery.
The Road Warrior Waitwaitwait. You skipped the effing Road Warrior?!? Assless chaps and mohawks, feral kids with sharpened boomerangs, fighting for gasoline in the wastes of Oz? WTH is wrong with you???
The Evil Dead The franchise that made Bruce Campbell a screen legend.
For Your Eyes Only AKA Bond Flick #13.
Body Heat The best film noire since Bogart was alive.
Blow Out Cinematic proof John Travolta could actually act.
Southern Comfort Powers Boothe and Keith Carradine vs. cajuns in another Hall Of Fame War Movie.
Absence Of Malice Paul Newman, sticking it to The Man, and taking the piss out of the media and the feds, neither of whom you can ever hate enough.
Nighthawks Cops Sylvester Stallone and Billy Dee Williams take on terrorist Rutger Hauer in NYFC in a manhunt worthy of The French Connection.
Death Hunt Canadian mountie Lee Marvin hunts down innocent man Charles Bronson in the Great White North. They both win.
The Four Seasons Alan Alda manages not to be annoying in a great flick he also wrote and directed. Carol Burnett helps immensely, and this flick also has the fourth-best soundtrack of the year. By Vivaldi.
Spoiler Alert: Len Cariou moves to NYFC after this, and becomes commissioner of the NYPD, where his son Tom Selleck follows in his police footsteps.
Whose Life Is It Anyway? Richard Dreyfuss tearjerker with real implications, but he’s such a good actor that by the end of the movie, you want to kill him yourself.
What you really missed: I quit scrolling through the IMDb after 500 movies, except to count and note there were more than 1000 releases (I ran out of energy to keep digging at that point) in 1981.
Even weeding out all the foreign flicks, and noting the prodigous number of softcore skinflicks (like Porkys) that were in wide release, a couple of things become obvious.
1) Free internet porn has driven softcore low-budget Hollywood porn out of business. All that remains is actual porn, and high-budget crap concocted to get A-list actresses to strip for the camera.
2) The 80s were truly the golden age, because there was virtually a new first-run feature released more often than every single day, and you could find a good flick to watch a least every week, and some weeks multiple decent movies. O probably saw 100+ movies a year in the 1980s, because I could, and because studios and producers weren’t so chickenshit cheapskate they were afraid to spend $10M making something, just to see if anything stuck, which it frequently did.
Now they spend $300M of woketarded blockbuster flops, make 1/10th or less the number of movies annually, and the overwhelming majority of them absolutely suck.
We didn’t know how good we had it until it went away.
The Road Warrior, outstanding movie that it is, is a sequel, and thus sadly ineligible for this list.
Agreed on the last part. I’ll give Das Boot another shot after some coffee. The Four Seasons??? I avoided that like the plague because: Alan Alda and Adults Talking In Rooms.
Road Warrior was a sequel, and The Evil Dead was okay, but only really good when Sam went back to make The Evil Dead 2 (which was just the Evil Dead betterized).
Absence of Malice – I just remember the pompous commercials, so I “meh’d” out on that one. Worth it?
Sequel schmequel.
You could count the number of people in the U.S. who ever saw Mad Max on your fingers. Distribution was some guy out of the back of a van, to foreign art house dives in sketchy neighborhoods.
I’ll bet cash money it never played in Mayberry in your lifetime, unless it was via Blockbuster 10-20 years later.
You could count the number who’d seen it before Road Warrior premiered in the U.S. on your thumbs.
But the number of people who saw Road Warrior was counted in the millions. It was put out by Warner Brothers the weekend before Memorial Day, and was literally part of the culture by 4th of July. It single-handedly put both Australian cinema and Mel Gibson (maybe some have heard of him) on the map, and made 5X what Gallipoli pulled in, which latter film didn’t premier until Labor Day.
It’s kind of like calling Fantasia a sequel because it came out after Steam Boat Willie.
The problem with pigeon-holing The Four Seasons is that it was a hit with all ages. Along with Sweet Liberty, and unlike any season of M*A*S*H* after McLean Stevenson left, it’s one of the few times (maybe 5, in a 50+ yr. career) Alan Alda didn’t step on his own junk, and actually delivered a performance, instead of a sermonette.
Evil Dead set the table for the rest of the series, the pinnacle of which was Army Of Darkness.
Absence Of Malice was worth it for seeing Paul Newman doing almost anything, Sally Field playing someone who isn’t the heroine and who gets taken down a peg, Bob Balaban for playing someone who gets taken down period, and seeing Wilford Brimley, in only his fifth credited role, stretch his legs and do the taking down. He should have been nominated for an Oscar for this scene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUu8mY1TBIk
(The quality of that crappy YouTube clip is ass-tasticly poor. But you’re watching a scene by one of the great American directors of all time, in a climax featuring folks with 21 Oscar nominations and five awards between them, lifetime. This is why the whole movie is worth the time, IMHO.)
Ignore the commercials and most film trailers. True then, true now. Most studios can’t find their backsides with both hands when it comes to understanding what they’re making, or how to market it. And they either step on the punchline, or put the only three good bits from a 2-hour slog into a 30-second commercial. Anyone who’s ever been burned by a movie trailer or ten knows what I’m talking about.
TPTB thought Jaws was a great idea because they had a spiffy mechanical shark, and they only made Star Wars to shut Lucas up and get him out of their offices, and because he took DGA scale, in return for a few points off the gross of what they assumed would be a negligible sum, and the rights to ancillary merchandise, which they assumed would only be a couple of t-shirts and hats.
“Nobody in this town knows nothing.” – William Goldman
I actually had seen Mad Max prior to The Road Warrior – HBO had it on, as I recall. So when I saw it, I was like, “Whoa, that escalated quickly!”
But Road Warrior? It’s Best Mad Max. Period.