Kategoria: 1980

#1840 Halloween 2023: The Attic (1980)

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The Attic is probably the first movie this Halloween that takes an effort to be an actual movie. You know, one with story, building up characters and all that.

And it was a nice surprise! Carrie Snodgress who was earlier unknown to me creates a wonderful character of an old maid librarian living with her tyrannical father, and it’s easy to grow attached to her, her fears, self-doubt and small scale dreams to have the courage to take a possession of her life.

Ray Milland as the father and Ruth Cox as the unlikely young friend and confident both make for interesting, multi-faceted characters. Director George Edwards holds up the horror elements to the last minutes of the film – but they feel even more impactful at that point.

80s-o-meter: 70%

Total: 84%

#1830 Halloween 2023: Blood Beach (1980)

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Riding in the wake of Jaws, Blood Beach makes an attempt to frame the sand – or more precisely a creature therein – as the antagonist to fear.

…aaand it by large fails to do so. It is very hard to take this particular threat seriously.

On the positive side the movie itself, along with its early 80s beach scene and detective cast led by the late John Saxon and the Burt Young are all sufficiently entertaining to watch. All in all, Blood Beach is more of a mystery what dunnit story rather than a horror movie.

80s-o-meter: 72%

Total: 60%

#1819 Forbidden Zone (1980)

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Something of a cult classic due to it’s connections with Elfman brothers and Oingo Boingo, Forbidden Zone is a wild and wacky ride into a world of sheer eccentricity.

The movie is shot in black and white films, and takes visual clues from the early cinema and cartoons with psychedelic look & feel to them and mixes it all up with musical numbers, some of which are imaginative, while others feel like the cast is just mouthing a song like in a billion Tiktok videos out there.

While I’m a big fan of wackiness, problem for me with Forbidden Zone is that it tries way, waaaay to hard to be weird at all times, as in ”hey everybody look at me I’m so cuckoo”. This along with some inane humor like everybody dry humping each other really got old and tired fast. I do applaud the movie for trying something a bit different, and succeeding in capturing a very special kind of mood to it – but it really isn’t my cup of tea.

80s-o-meter: 2%

Total: 9%

#1783 Little Miss Marker (1980)

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I don’t know how great of a movie the original 1934 Little Miss Marker starring Shirley Temple is, but based on this 1980 version I really can’t see anything that warrants a remake – other than the team’s interest in nostalgia, that is!

More bizarrely, the movie is not even brought to the current day. But maybe the story of a gambler giving her daughter as a collateral to bet on a horse race would not fly today as it already seems quite implausible in the 1940s. But so does everything else in the movie, especially the love relationship between the characters played by Walter Matthau and Julie Andrews, and the denouement of them forming a family of some sorts.

On the positive side Matthau is probably the best actor of the era for the role, and his trademark grumpy tone makes his slowly evolving attachment to the now orphaned girl quite touching at best.

80s-o-meter: 5%

Total: 37%

#1774 A Change of Seasons (1980)

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As you can tell from the poster, A Change of Seasons tries to get the masses interested in it by blatantly advertising a hot tub scene of Bo Derek in it.

Well, that scene does exist, but little of worth anyone interest follows. We have Derek once again picking up an older gentleman, and his wife trying to be a swinger also by starting a relationship with a semi hippie nature type. And everything that follows is just downright ridiculous. With no real characters to work with, Anthony Hopkins just ends up walking around confused producing one silly line after another in scenes that seem downright forced.

A Change of Seasons is classified as a comedy, but really there’s nothing side splitting here, and the comedic aspect is just overall silliness and unrelated persons performing nonsensical lines. If you really, really have to see Bo Derek, my advice is to pick up 10 (1979) instead.

80s-o-meter: 80%

Total: 13%

#1765 Permanent Vacation (1980)

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The last Jim Jarmusch movie for the era is his earlier student work from the start of the decade.

Although I enjoyed the visual language of the movie, it’s much too muted for my taste, and there’s really nothing much of interest beyond the visuals, making Permanent Vacation hard film to recommend to anyone but Jarmusch completionists.

80s-o-meter: 70%

Total: 31%

#1752 Nijinsky (1980)

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Nijinsky was a movie sat on my shelf for years and I never really felt like giving it a go as it looked like it’s going to be this woefully boring period picture about some obnoxious male ballet star of the past.

Given this background I find it almost a feat that Nijinsky manages to let me down even more than I had anticipated.

Instead of being a movie about world of ballet, we are forced to watch a tug and pull relationship of young Nijinsky who is romantically involved with the ballet company manager. Both of the men come across extremely unlikeable and never did I feel like rooting for either one of them, or their toxic relationship. Other people around them get a part of their tantrums, and when this Nijinsky isn’t shouting to ballet dancers or choreographing numbers that look more like modern dance than ballet and getting laughed off the stage, he marries a nice woman just to get even with his former protégé and then beats her up.

It’s not often that I’ve hated watching a movie as much as I did Nijinsky, and I will be quite happy to throw it one away and never be subjected to it again.

80s-o-meter: 0%

Total: 0%

#1730 Falling in Love Again (1980)

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Not to be mixed up with totally unrelated Falling In Love released in 1984, Falling in Love Again is a look into a middle aged couple in a marital crisis, and even more into their past.

This is where the movie fails for the first time, as I would be much more content with the movie leaning totally with either one (although preferably the present moment – and pretty much primarily because it’s the part of the movie featuring Elliott Gould).

The movie feels like two movies in one, but disconnected – and despite them both being a-ok, neither one are nothing really that special.

80s-o-meter: 30%

Total: 58%

#1689 Halloween 2022: Night of the Demon (1980)

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Night of the Demon is one of those quite uneven low budget horror movies that I did not rate highly when watching through it, and it was only after reading the reviews that I learned that the movie enjoyed a cult status among the horror fans.

Basically a slasher with big foot – in other words a guy with patches of fake hair glued on him – Night of the Demon’s status escaped me, and only real positive thing I could say about it how the movie gets good kind of weird at times and at least tries something a bit new with its story of weird relationship between the big foot and a hermit woman.

For the gore hounds there’s dodgy killing effects to enjoy with perhaps the worst fake blood ever seen on the silver screen – I’m guessing cheap tomato juice. These kill scenes – or the story behind them – is perhaps the most interesting aspect or trivia of the movie, as most them were shot and posthumously added into the film by its producer completely as surprise of the director, a move which probably contributed quite heavily to the movie’s cult status.

80s-o-meter: 41%

Total: 22%

#1680 Halloween 2022: Saturn 3 (1980)

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Almost ten years into having Halloween features and still haven’t reviewed Saturn 3?? Well, to my defence it is a British movie after all but featuring US leads and undoubtedly better than the majority of similar Hollywood movies of the era, so it definitely still does earn its place here.

The film takes place in a remote station in Saturn’s third moon aka Tethys, aka Saturn 3, where a pair of a man and female scientists (Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett) receive a visitor from earth, Captain Benson (Harvey Keitel) whom we witness earlier assassinating the person who was to originally arrive at the station. There he starts to build a helper robot with an organic brain that he programs using a direct brain link connected to himself. As it goes, the robot picks the negative traits from him, including a crush to the female scientist and it is downhill from thereon.

The movie looks great and cinematic, but not 80s, nor 70s but strangely almost 60s or 50s in style. Having Kirk Douglas in the cast furthermore strengthens this feeling, but in this case I don’t really mind as it all works out quite well. The small cast is also a triumph with Keitel performing the role of a antagonist perfectly, Fawcett making for a perfect love interest that I can’t blame Benson falling on, and finally Kirk Douglas – already 64 at the time but in amazingly good shape, perfect for the role – whom you just could not have replaced and have the movie feel the same.

80s-o-meter: 55%

Total: 81%

#1675 The Competition (1980)

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The first thing that strikes from The Competition is the love and devotion the team shows for its subject, competitive piano playing. The actors have been instructed and trained carefully, perform their roles as piano virtuosos very well and at least for me superficially the way the competitions are carried out seems quite plausible, and without those facepalm moments.

Although not one of the movies he is most known for, Richard Dreyfuss once again reminds me why he is one of my favourite actors of the era. Amy Irving whom I recently saw in Crossing Delancey is a good pair for Dreyfuss, and them getting involved in the strange mix of mutual interest, friendship and rivalry does not seem too far fetched.

The Competition sidesteps the obvious pitfalls of ending up boring (due to its classical music theme that’s not actually thrilling), or being untrue to the same theme, and for this reason it’s a success.

80s-o-meter: 65%

Total: 74%

#1647 Die Laughing (1980)

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A horribly disconnected effort, Die Laughing throws in a little bit of everything into the mix without ever finding its own tone of voice.

How disconnected? It genuinely felt like watching an episode of some random late 70s afternoon TV series that just keeps aimlessly going on, and on, and one. The boring action is padded with even more boring sections of the main character performing songs in auditions – another aspect of the movie that felt totally artificial and plastered on.

Die Laughing can really only be recommended to those who want to relive the worst of the 70s television.

80s-o-meter: 12%

Total: 2%

#1645 Atlantic City aka Atlantic City, USA (1980)

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Atlantic City is a movie about transition periods and change. Sally is learning the ropes to be a dealer to be able to leave to Monaco to work on a casino. His former husband, now with Sally’s sister has arrived at the city to makes some money selling drugs, and they run into Lou, a small time old crook looking forward to finally becoming the big shot gangster with the money and a woman he could show off to his Florida pals.

And all this is taking place in Atlantic City that is going through sizeable changes where hotels and casinos of the old glory days are demolished to make room for new buildings.

The real gem in Atlantic City is the interesting array of characters with real yet a bit childish and silly aspirations, and in this sense the movie manages to positively surprise time after time: we don’t have to relate or even like the characters to be able to sympathise with their dreams.

80s-o-meter: 63%

Total: 87%

#1632 Carny (1980)

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I’ve always been a theme park aficionado, and as such I’ve a soft spot for carnivals and fairs, and similarly themed popular media. It was therefore a delight to see Carny during its first 30 minutes.

By that time many good and interesting things had taken place, and both Gary Busey’s and Jodie Foster’s interesting characters, and their relationship was established successfully. But as the carnival takes off from the town with Jodie Foster with it, so does the plot, going into all sorts of needless directions, none of which as interesting than what the movie had already going in its first minutes.

80s-o-meter: 70%

Total: 52%

#1623 The Baltimore Bullet (1980)

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It would seem that most of the pool hustler movies have also a strong scoundrel theme to them. So is the case also with The Baltimore Bullet.

The movie is pretty much unknown and does not hold a candle to the iconic hustler movies, but it’s a nice little exercise made better by the inclusion of a strong female protagonist, and Omar Sharif as the heinous pool shark.

A plus for the movie for actually depicting solid pool tricks, mostly performed by the actors themselves.

80s-o-meter: 70%

Total: 61%

#1616 The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980)

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Politically incorrect in multiple ways these days, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu depicts a quirky asian mastermind criminal, played by Peter Sellers, chased after a quirky inspector, also played by Sellers.

Movie feels visually and thematically old beyond its years – like something made in the 60s – and there’s only little value in viewing it these days. The Fu Manchu character has its moments, but anything that you see here is better made in for example the later Austin Power movies. Clearly made for a showcase for Sellers’ versatile character actor skills, neither of the character he plays here are amongst his best, and in many ways feel like a mix of some of his other roles.

The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu is probably the most remembered for being Sellers’ last movie, before his untimely death at the age of 54.

80s-o-meter: 50%

Total: 47%

#1611 Shogun Assassin (1980)

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A Japanese movie – or rather a mix of two – there’s a good reason why Shogun Assassin should be a part of this blog. The movie is combined from two Japanese movies of the Lone Wolf and Cub manga series originally shot in the early 1970s.

The project to cut the two movies together for Northern American release was a brainchild of Robert Houston and David Weisman who were the fans of the original movies. The movie got more attention a few years later as the home video release that got almost banned due to its graphic depictions of violence, gained a solid cult status and has been since featured in pop culture and movies.

The movie itself? Loved it. It’s stylish and moody without any camp factor often associated with ninja movies to it. The unlikely sword hero is a total badass and the fighting scenes are choreographed in a beautiful way, and I can totally understand why so many people often re-visit this movie.

80s-o-meter: 0%

Total: 87%

#1572 Halloween 2021: Toxic Zombies aka Bloodeaters aka Forest of Fear (1980)

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One more low budget indie zombie movie to shy away from, Toxic Zombies does little or nothing better than any of its contemporary rivals.

A pesticide is dropped on top of a few teenage campers, turning them into – you guessed it – blood lusting zombies. Typically with these kind of cheap productions the primus motor has been ”that weird neighbour kid” into gory special effects, who’s then all grown up and releases that one uninspired cookie cutter horror movie with horrid production quality, but inventive use of special effects.

Toxic Zombies doesn’t even have that going for it. Story wise there’s a bit more effort to it than other indie horror films, and the mood gets ok at times, but really, there’s nothing here to phone home about.

80s-o-meter: 57%

Total: 26%

#1557 Below the Belt (1980)

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A talent scout talks a waitress into entering a sherry show wrestling team. She befriends this motley crew of journeymen, travels around with them, and finally is put against her arch enemy as the so called climax of the movie.

A Rocky this isn’t, nor is it All The Marbles that at least had the star power and indisputable charisma of Peter Falk going for it. In fact, if All The Marbles was a disappointing movie, Below the Belt does it all in a little more disappointing and banal way.

The most interesting part of below the belt is its love story between two worn out wrestlers in the crossroads of their lives where one wants to go in one direction – and one to another.

The one without wrestling.

80s-o-meter: 58%

Total: 31%

#1552 Stardust Memories (1980)

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Although I do enjoy Woody Allen’s writing – he is the only author that makes the rich neurotic self centred adults caught in their first world problems movies tolerable – Stardust Memories and its insight into the life of the rich and famous seems more targeted to a selected group of his New York intellectual friends to enjoy, rather than something I could really relate with.

Allen is being his base neurotic screen persona and inconstantly disillusioned in his relationships with the fellow men, especially his love interests. And in this movie there are many of them.

You can’t blame the writing from not being smart; it is – and that if anything is what makes the movie enjoyable. But I left Stardust Memories thinking that a movie needs something more than just endless stream of wittiness to be really enjoyable.

80s-o-meter: 45%

Total: 58%