Film snobs can talk as much as they want about over praised shite like Gandhi and Tootsie, but those films were the Voight-Kampff test which separated folks like me from them.
1982 was the year we finally kissed goodbye to the last vestiges of the nihilistic seventies and saw the start of over the top eighties excess; and what a year it was.
48 Hrs. (Walter Hill)
Basket Case (Frank Henenlotter)
Blade Runner (Ridley Scott)
Class of 1984 (Mark Lester)
Conan the Barbarian (John Milius)
Creepshow (George A. Romero)
Death Wish II (Michael Winner)
The Entity (Sidney J. Furie)
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Amy Heckerling)
First Blood (Ted Kotcheff)
Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog)
Five Elements Ninjas (Chang Cheh)
Friday the 13th: Part III (Steve Miner)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Tommy Lee Wallace)
The House on Sorority Row (Mark Rosman)
Human Lanterns (Chung Sun)
The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese)
The Living Dead Girl (Jean Rollin)
The New York Ripper (Lucio Fulci)
Next of Kin (Tony Williams)
Pieces (Juan Piquer Simón)
Poltergeist (Tobe Hooper)
Q the Winged Serpent (Larry Cohen)
Rocky III (Sylvester Stallone)
The Slayer (J.S. Cardone)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (Nicholas Meyer)
Superstition (James W. Roberson)
Tenebrae (Dario Argento)
The Thing (John Carpenter)
Turkey Shoot (Brian Trenchard-Smith)
Vice Squad (Gary Sherman)
Visiting Hours (Jean-Claude Lord, 1982)
Who Dares Wins (Ian Sharp)
A bunch of slasher films that I wasn't confident enough to list and really ought to revisit are: Alone in the Dark, Girls Nite Out, Humongous, The Dorm That Dripped Blood, The Slumber Party Massacre and Unhinged. To highlight how mainstream the subgenre was back then, even Chuck Norris had his own slasher film this year. A pity that it's awful, though. Also, I've been mixing up Visiting Hours with X-Ray all this time, thinking they were the same film under alternative titles.
Other 1982 films I haven't seen in ages, but remember liking were The Dark Crystal and Night Shift.
Unpopular Opinion:
I never cared for Tron.
Film Fact:
The first S.O.V film granted a theatrical release was from this year, and it was indeed terrible.
A great year. Also got soft spots for E.T and The Snowman as annual Christmas time wholesome watches.
ReplyDeleteA 1982 flick I've never got around to seeing is The Beastmaster. R.I.P Kase 2 and Dez.
Always fascinated by American suburbia in film as it's always seemed so much cooler to live and grow up there than in Blighty: E.T is a good example of it.
ReplyDeleteIt's worth watching The Beastmaster if you can get over Marc Singer being way too generic in it. Tanya Roberts and the winged devourers were my favourite parts in the movie. Never seen any of the sequels, though.
Forgot to add Chang Cheh's Five Elements Ninjas in the list. Corrected it now.
ReplyDeleteYank movie suburbia definitely has better weather and hotter milfs than British movie suburbia.
ReplyDeleteDid you watch The Mutations? Enjoyed its blend of Mad Scientist meets Freaks-ploitation.
Been wanting to check out The Mutatations for years. Very uneven, but it was a good time waster.
ReplyDeleteManaged to catch Brian and Charles over the weekened. Great film and way more enjoyable than that awful new Hellraiser film.
My favourite movie of 2022 so far.
ReplyDeleteYeah, definitely one of the highlights this year.
ReplyDeleteAdded The Entity and Superstition to the '82 list.