Forgotten Films of the 80s

Summer Lovers is a beloved cheese fest. Hardly forgotten.

I loved Summer Lovers, so wanted to go there and lay on a beach naked next to Peter Gallagher when I was a young gayling.

Gotcha!

A 1985 action comedy starring Anthony Edwards as a college student traveling in Europe who gets sucked into a international spy ring.

INTO THE NIGHT starring Jeff Goldblum & Michelle Pfeiffer.

Summer Lovers was on a double bill with Rocky II. Eye of the Tiger, baby.

The french girl from Summer Lovers died tragically young in a car accident.

She's also in a movie called French Postcards that I loved as a teen.

D.A.R.Y.L (1984). Good cast, better than A.I.

Reckless with Aidan Quinn and Darryl Hannah.

Love it. Love the dance sequence. The music in general and naked Aidan Quinn.

Desperately Seeking Susan

R8 I loved Reckless too, all part of that Steel Town trio All the Right Moves and Flashdance.

the Reckless dance....so cool

Aidan Quinn should have become a bigger star.

Reckless: Kids in America. Pool scene!!!

Miracle Mile starring Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham.

Plenty starring M

"Midnight Madness" about a scavenger hunt around Los Angeles, with a really young Michael J. Fox.

Oops, "treasure" not "scavenger"

bump

All the stuff Faye made in Europe after scurrying away post “Mommie Dearest”

Two of a Kind (1983)

Rent-a-Cop

Six Weeks - Mary Tyler Moore's follow up to Ordinary People and her second attempt to get a Best Actress oscar backfired miserably. Got a couple of Razzie noms though.

Dad (1989).

Jack Lemmon gives a really great performance. Also with Olympia Dukakis as the cunty wife.

Mugsy's Girls starring Laura Branigan and Ruth Gordon

R19 It's a shame this movie is so shitty. At least we got a couple of catchy ONJ songs with it.

R9 Smithereens (1982) Same director as DSS but much grittier and much better

As kids we watched Six Weeks on HBO many times and always bawled at the end. Funny how movies like that that aired endlessly for awhile can just disappear.

Liquid Sky (1982) fashion, punk and a UFO in New York City

Woody Allen's b/w documentary style Zelig (1983)

R19 two of a kind as in closet cases?

R29 😄

The song Together In Electric Dreams by Philip Oakey is still fairly well known, even if the film it originally featured in, Electric Dreams starring Virginia Madsen, has been long forgotten.

Mannequin (1987) has a bit of a cult following and a great theme song. Plus it has Anthony from Designing Women (and a bit in the pilot of Golden Girls) and Sophia from GG as well.

Vice Squad

Featuring Wings Hauser and Season Hubley!

OP in Summer Lovers Gallagher looks like Robby Benson with larger facial features and heavier brows

R28, at least some of ZELIG is in color, IIRC.

OP- Perhaps a better title for your thread would be-

BEST FORGOTTEN Films of the 80's.

Jean-Luc Godard's "Hail Mary" (1985). Catholics were up in arms against it, so when it showed at my university, the line for tickets was very long down the hall. Someone set off a smoke bomb during one of the showings. It made no impression on me, I can't remember it and it's completely forgotten now. But it sure made a lot of headlines at the time!

R35 don't know about Zelig but Schindler's List and Raging Bull have some scenes in color but are considered b/w films

Independence Day (1983) is a real heartbreaker. Dianne Wiest should have gotten her first Oscar nomination for it, but barely anyone went to see it.

Letter to Brezhnev (1985)

Ordinary People

Paris, Texas and Eating Raoul seem to be forgotten now. I loved them both. The latter starred Mary Woronov, who played Maxine, the prison matron from the infamous Charlie's Angels episode "Angels in Chains."

Speaking of "Electric Dreams," WHET Lenny Von Dohlen? I liked him, but it seems like his career didn't do much, even though he has credits late into the last decade. I wonder what he was like as a person.

Shit Head from 1987

1969, which had an odd, but great cast; although it was just OFF,

Hope and Glory, which is still a favorite for me (my grandmother was a war bride not unlike Dawn.

This one's kind of campy but realistic enough to have scared a young me, the first Children of The Corn- that movie shaped how I perceive cornfields, and long drives through nowhere have never been a fun idea to me largely bc of how they freak me out.

OMG, r15, I came to say "Midnight Madness." I watched it over and over again when it was on HBO in the 80s. Recently I was telling my 80s obsessed students about it as well. It was so terrible!

Actually, Peter Gallagher goes full frontal in Summer Lovers. Not that I used to know the exact time...

Peter Gallagher was BEAUTIFUL in Summer Lovers, Darryl Hannah a puce of wood as usual.

Puce can be lovely.

I loved Lenny Von Dohlen when he was in "Under the Biltmore Clock" with Sean Young. I watched that several times just to look at him.

I've Heard the Mermaids Singing

R42 Paris, Texas is SUPER popular, especially young Gen Z film school types. I see it all the time on Instagram "aesthetic" accounts. Nearly 200k people on Letterboxd have logged it.

My vote goes to Dennis Hopper's Out of the Blue. Masterwork that never got its due.

I saw the Mermaids Singing movie back when it came out. I just remember it because it introduced me to that beautiful area from Lakmé.

Choose Me

CHOOSE ME is fabulous.

Eating Raoul

One From the Heart

Out of the Blue had a rerelease in theaters this year r52, thanks to Chloe Sevigny and other wanting to celebrate Linda Manz’s life and work. I got to see it at my local arthouse.

Peter Gallagher was hot but a bit "too much" in Summer Lovers. He got better with age, R48.

Peter Gallagher would’ve been better than Harry Hamlin as Perseus in the 80/81 Clash of the Titans. Other forgotten movie: Matt Dillon and Laura Dern in Liar’s Moon, as a twelve year old I loved it.

Maxie (1985) with G.

Falling in Love (1984) with M.

All Night Long (1981)

Breathless. Proto Tarantino, no wonder he loves it.

Hunk starring DL Fav John Allen Nelson

It was your classic sweet, but terrible movie. He was gorgeous.

It was extremely offensive even by 80s standards but we loved Under The Rainbow because of The Wizard of Oz connection. I think it’s considered too problematic for the studio to release it anywhere now but I suppose it could be streaming on some platform.

There were several that seemed to be aired on HBO on a constant basis throughout the late 80's until about the mid 90's

They're all but forgotten now:

Just one of the guys

Campus Man

The Big Picture

Fandango

Summer School

Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid

[quote]Breathless

It seems so silly now, but at the time, I loved watching the sex scenes with Richard Gere,

One of my favorite B movies that transcends that moniker is Night of the Comet, it’s is just so good and well done especially showing teen girls realistically, even though the film is trying to exploit them at the same time.

He Knows You're Alone featuring the first film appearance by Tom Hanks. I saw it late one night on TV as a kid and it terrified me. Ashamed to admit I thought it was even scarier than Halloween. I grew out of that, but saw it again recently and it's a lot better than what most people would say. Lots of good suspense.

Repo Man

My Favorite Year and La Boum were favorites from the early 80s.

My Tutor (1983)

R70 I watched Night of the Comet last night for the first time per your suggestion.

Wow! The girls are great, plus so much atmosphere and oddness. And Mary Woronov is in it. So good.

The Stunt Man!

R75 Lol, you inspired me to watch it for like the 5th time on Tubi, still love the ending. Don’t know how they got Girl’s Just Want to Have Fun on the soundtrack, they must have locked it it just before it was released and blew up, or Cyndi needed a payoff right away and took what was offered.

Shag. Great movie with a great cast.

One movie that I used to watch all the time on HBO, but haven't seen since the 80s was Scavenger Hunt. I wish they would put it on Tubi.

We used to watch Scavenger Hunt on TV whenever it showed. I remember finding it hilarious, although I can't actually remember any of it now.

[quote]R78 Shag. Great movie with a great cast.

Everyone should note it was also marketed as SHAG: THE MOVIE.

My friend used to call it SHIT: THE MOVIE