Meaning, cultish nonmainstream movies that definitely show the influence of '80s fashions, music, esthetics, zeitgeist, etc. (Even if they were made a few years before or after the actual decade.) Examples:
Liquid Sky – a popular “midnight movie,” once upon a time. Very grim and gritty and nihilistic. (I once recommended it to my brother; he took a date to see it and didn’t forgive me for years.) Definitely shows the despairing punkish backwash of the '70s drugs-and-pleasure culture.
Doctor Caligari (no connection other than the title to the the German Expressionist classic) – Fookin’ surreal and absurdist, but somehow it works. As the Imdb comment states, “It’s a shame that Steven Sayadian’s career as a writer director never took off. He might have been recognized as a comic successor to David Lynch, or something. And, who knows, maybe we haven’t heard the last of him.”
Cafe Flesh – nothing better, if you’re into post-apocalyptic porn to which it would be flatly impossible for an even marginally mentally healthy person to masturbate. (Much more plot and richer characterization and better nonsexual acting, at any rate, than practically anything else you’ll find at your local XXX shop.)
“Liquid Sky” was the very first movie I thought of when I saw the thread title.
Off the time of my head, there’s -
Eating Raoul, which probably wins some kind of award for forgotten cult film. It’s about an uptight middle-American couple called “the Blands” who go about killing their free-swinging, hedonistic neighbors in an L.A. condo complex, and the illegal immigrant called “Raoul” who helps them dispose of the dead bodies as haute cuisine in a trendy restaurant.
Faces of Death, which was actually released theatrically in 1978, but didn’t become a true cult sensation until it came out in video in the mid-1980s. Pretty much EVERYBODY in my high school saw this flick, if nothing else but to satisfy morbid curiosity.
I heard about that for years and finally rented it a few years ago – I was sooooooo disappointed that everything in it was so obviously faked; I was expecting, you know, reality death clips. Non-porn snuff.
There’s absolutely nothing worthwhile or redeeming about this film at all… except that it’s AWESOME. For pure WTF? value, it puts even *Xanadu *to shame.
I just saw a screening of Forbidden Zone a few weeks ago, with Richard Elfman in attendance and answering questions afterwards. I was surprised how watchable it was, actually. They’re planning on releasing a new version of it, colorized, with bonus footage. (The original intent was to colorize the movie, but they ran into money problems. That is, they started making the movie before they had any and went broke several times during production.)
After Hours – very '80s, very urban, very nocturnal.
There’s one I remember that I’m trying to think of – there’s this teenage girl with a cliche teenage yuppie-wannabee boyfriend who wears a business suit and yellow tie while he’s still in high school (she breaks up with him in the first scene), a father with whom she’s always striking bargains (going to college, etc.), and a slightly-less-cliche Bad Boy who comes into her life . . . that’s all I can remember . . . I thought the girl was played by either Rosanna Arquette or Patricia Arquette, but nothing in either’s filmography seems to fit.
[doonesbury, late '80s]
BENJY DOONESBURY/SAL PUTRID: sigh I miss the early '80s, man!
MIKE DOONESBURY: Hey, I know what you mean, that was a great time.
