Favourite Films of 1980
Monday is about movies. Sometimes TV. Sometimes I work through the years and list my favourite films. Today is that day once again. And today we make it to The Eighties! So, my favourites rom 1980
Every now and then I try to work through my favourite films of a year. We’ve made it to the eighties, and I won’t list all the others from before, but if you go back to the recent/ish newsletter covering 1979 you’ll get links to all of the 70s years from within that one post if you need to catch up or revisit any.
Today is about 1980. A funny time in movies for me — a handful of truly great films I think about a lot were released that year. A handful of films I have watched more than almost any film from any other year are included in there too (some because they’re cinematic classics, some because they’re fun-trash!) But there’s a lot of trash. A lot of pointless and/or one-watch forgettable stuff that was revered for whatever reason at the time too — like The Blue Lagoon, which, actually, calling it just “one-watch forgettable” is kind, others would point out its pervy, creep-factor. I was too young to clock that at the time and can only see that in the recent Brooke Shields doco, and the excellent You Must Remember This podcast, with its sub-series called “Erotic Eighties”.
Anyway, on with the show. Hopefully you know how this works by now. It’s not my word against yours. Just my word. You then can have your say at the end. This is the list of films I remember as being the most important and/or ‘favourite’ for me.
As always, in no order, beyond how they appear to me, and as I think of them here are my Favourite Films of 1980:
I have mentioned The Shining a bunch here already, because it feels central in my life. I love this film. Think about it often. Rewatch it all the time. It is my favourite Stephen King adaptation. My favourite Jack Nicholson performance. One of my favourite Stanley Kubrick films. The best effort by Shelley Duvall (R.I.P.) and she really bucked some horror tropes here:
It’s also been something I’ve talked about just recently on our brand new Stephen King podcast:
So I have to name this first, and get it out of the way. But I absolutely and always love this film!
Maybe it’s not so much a film to “love” — but it’s certainly one that is utterly undeniable. I’ve watched it three times, which is any amount. I may go in again, one more round. But every time it has stuck with me, the reason for rewatching is down to the performances, and the direction, and the cinematography, and the sweep of the music too. Absolutely. It’s just perfect movie-making. Uncomfortable subject, horrifying characters, but utterly mesmeric.
So, like, there’s the lore — SNL, and all the great blues legends being given a cameo, and the comedy stylings of the leads, and the musical performances in the film, and the cameos from so many actors as well, there’s all of that…but even if that didn’t hit, and believe me, it hit, there would be the fact that this was always a treat when it arrived on telly! Staying up late, watching it in the weekends, with my brother, and our cousins, or later with school friends. Introducing it to people. Playing the soundtrack over and over on a loop, joining a band in high school that played the material and even had suited and booted “Blues Brothers” in the lead singing…I mean this movie is just part of me. So I’m almost too scared to watch it again now, in case, somehow, now it sucks?!
It was only recently that I was mentioning this, in tribute to Donald Sutherland — R.I.P. It ranked there in my pick of his 10 best/favourite performances. But also, just what a film! Heartbreaking, and horrible to fathom for so many of us, triggering in the extreme for others, I’m sure. But also, perhaps, some sort of balm. Some helpful way of articulation. I love this film, one of my all time favourite dramas.
An amazing year for Sissy Spacek then. Finally winning the Oscar she’d first been nominated for in Carrie, and so much strong work throughout the 70s. But in this biopic she plays Loretta Lynn — brilliantly. Even doing her own singing. (You know I love the soundtrack!)
This is on my list of top 1980 films, top biopics, top Spacek performances, and it also features one hell of an acting turn from Levon Helm of The Band (absolutely one of my favourite drummers, and singers, and in my top two singing drummers!) Another of my favourite dramas of all time, but we’ll edge this one over into the biopic category.
And here’s five notable mentions — again in no particular order:
I know this is trash. And everyone loves to talk about how it ripped off/repeated Halloween, and totally ripped its jump scare ending from Carrie. But I don’t care. I fucking love this film. I love the stupid, OTT franchise. And it starts here. This is the beginning of one of my favourite horror movie franchises that dominated the eighties. So it’s a favourite and important film for me. And there’s some sneaky-brilliant marketing genius behind this film as the lead into a franchise:
The Marketing Genius of Friday The 13th
If John Carpenter was bugged by Friday the 13th, he didn’t really let it show; was too busy making his own next masterpiece. The Fog is a sly gem. A throwback, a cult film, a low-key little movie, with some of Carpenter’s best ever music (which is surely saying something) and establishing Jamie Lee Curtis as absolutely a new generation of Scream Queen (she was also in Terror Train and Prom Night in 1980 — making her the MVP of that year for me, and for horror). I love that this film is just a pure ghost story, the likes of which we hardly ever see anymore, and which are so hard to pull off. But this one really works. It’s a big call maybe, but this is one of my all-time favourite John Carpenter films.
Mentioned this just the other day, with the tribute to Gena Rowlands.
She was almost never in a bad film, and certainly she was never bad in any film. I only saw Gloria in recent years, catching up with the Cassavetes/Rowlands double-show. And what a show it so often was. Love Gloria, the correct level of unhinged.
Absolutely adored the Richard Pryor/Gene Wilder pair-up when I was a kid; it wasn’t until I was much older that I found out this wasn’t their first film together. I just thought this was their classic — and maybe it (still) is. But it was memorable for me, genuinely funny (as well as obviously plenty-silly) and a guy grabbed another guy’s balls with pliers. Oh how we laughed!
One of my favourite early 80s movie soundtracks (and scores — both the the sublime Moroder score and the song selection) and the movie that taught me that Richard Gere was good. I hadn’t ever cared about him until I went back and saw this. Also, just a pretty great film (Paul Schrader films usually make my list/s).
I guess the elephant in the room is Empire Strikes Back — which I really do quite like, one of the better entries into the Star Wars canon. But I don’t really take them seriously as ‘big’ or ‘important’ or therefore ‘favourite’ films; I just don’t. Sorry. I’m sure I’ll pick one Star Wars film for one of these lists eventually though. Superman II, similarly, is good fun, and epic, and close, but no cigar. And a shoutout to Alligator — an absolute piece of shit, but part of my origin story for loving horror films (at the time of its release, or my watching of it, a year or two later, I was terrified by it, even in all its hamminess). Lots of other fun, but bad films in 1980 - Roadie, anyone? And obviously some bangers (Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories is one of my favourite of his films, but you can’t have one of his in every year, and always with the apology-note of “I liked it at the time, that doesn’t condone the man’s alleged actions”, etc. A bit boring, no?)
So many silly films stick out most in my mind: Airplane! The Gods Must Be Crazy, Private Benjamin, One Trick Pony, Carny, Caddyshack, Smokey and The Bandit II — none of them really all that memorable or meaningful, but all of them still rattling around in my head. Anyway, that’s my list. I’ve gone way over. What’s yours? How was 1980 for you with cinema? Any favourites from my list also on yours? Or any you’d make a strong case for instead?
What a list! You won’t be disappointed with a rewatch of Blues Brothers. Ever.
You picked some gems here, but did you really have to mention the pliers? (OUCH!!)