The Fifty Five Films That Most Affected Me Growing Up

14 October 2018

It started with a “10 day movie challenge” on Facebook. Post an image, no explanation, from 10 movies that had an impact on you. 10 movies, 10 images. 1 per day. I realized I had 55. And totally want to comment on why. How they impacted me. And what movies they are. Here I expand on what I said about those first ten films and why they are great art. I then close by quickly listing another 45 films that almost made the cut. Including even bad movies, that nevertheless affected me.

Which all goes in the category of aesthetics, a branch of philosophy more essential to anyone’s worldview than most people realize or think enough about. It’s a subject that I write about on occasion (you can survey examples on my current and past blog), and have a whole section on in Sense and Goodness without God, where indeed I declare cinema to be possibly the greatest of all art forms—because it encompasses them all.

I’ll explore here what impact these films had on me growing up. And why. As I went through the first ten, the only ones I posted screenshots from on Facebook, I realized I had been interpreting this challenge as about formative movies, movies I grew up with. So I’ve stuck to that theme here, all the way through. I could produce a completely different list of impactful films I saw as an adult (which would include movies made long before, that I only first saw or appreciated as an adult). The full list of 55 pretty much covers all my favorite films I saw prior to 1988 (so far as I remember).

It’s a lot. Practically a whole store load. So you might read my remarks on the first ten now, and then peruse the others later. You can even use it as a video store and keep returning.

Almost all of these are very visual films. So you lose a lot of the power and aesthetic and even ability to follow what’s going on if you can’t see them. Even if any are available with narration (and most, being pre-21st century standard, might not be available in Audio Described formats). But I will note the few exceptions.

And do note:

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The Top Ten

I’ll start with the ten films that had the most impact on me growing up. Which means not necessarily the best or my most favorite (though they are on my favorites list for sure), but the films that had the most impact on me growing up. The movies that were the most formative of me as a person, of my ideas and future self. I present those ten first, in no particular order. And I have the most to say about these ten. My remarks will be briefer for the rest.

1. Sorcerer
Screen shot from the film Sorcerer by William Friedkin, showing the character played by Roy Sheider, dirty and exhausted, gazing with lost hope.

It’s long and takes a while to get into it. But this is far and away the best film William Friedkin ever made. His life’s masterpiece. And yet no one noticed it. You’ve probably never even heard of it. Everyone loves The Exorcist. And yet Sorcerer is far superior a film. Not that The Exorcist wasn’t a masterwork itself.

I rarely like dark films with doomed characters. But this is a paradigmatic exception: eerie, tense, different, fascinating. There has never been a film like it. Its setup. Its plot. Its journey. Its outcome. You can’t look away. The filmography, acting, writing, and film score are beyond exceptional. Gritty. Strange. Scary. Realistic. You want these characters to succeed, even though they are all scumbag criminals: a Jersey gangster fleeing a murder rap (and hit men from a rival mob), a South American assassin on the run, a Palestinian terrorist, an elitist French banker guilty of defrauding his whole family. Even (briefly…possibly…we never really find out) a spry old ex-Nazi.

The film does not involve magic. “Sorcerer” is the name the main characters whimsically choose to paint on a truck. Because what they have to do with it is nothing less than magic.

A gaggle of disparate fugitive criminals hiding out in a hopeless hovel of a town in South America realize fleeing there was a bad idea. But now, destitute, blackmailed by corrupt police, they can’t get out. Until an opportunity arises: terrorists have lit up an oil well, and the oil company needs that well back up in a matter of weeks or they lose millions. Their only desperate solution: hire some lunatics to drive trucks full of raw nitroglycerin through a jungle of dirt roads to “blowout” the well so they can recap it. The fugitives are the best drivers. Their survival, not likely. But the money, their passport out of hell. After half the movie sets all this up, the terrifying journey to the conclusion occupies the rest.

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Best line of the film (also the name of the track on the laser disk…yes, I had this film on laser disk!), spoken shortly after the scene I’ve screen-capped above exhibiting actor Roy Scheider’s hopeless look, said by the fugitive Palestinian terrorist, played by famed Moroccan actor Hamidou Benmessaoud: “I think I can clear it.” I won’t spoil what that means. You have to see it for yourself. It’s likely one of the most awesome scenes filmed in the whole of the 1970s.

What’s aesthetically remarkable about this movie, other than nailing every aesthetic challenge a film can meet (lighting, framing, directing, costume, sets, writing, editing, acting, and more, including a surreal and perfect film score by Tangerine Dream), is twofold. First, that it takes its time to build the backstories of each of the lead four characters, which is what makes the film long, and goes against film convention not to burn that time in fear of losing the audience. But it’s knowing the characters that makes the whole second half of the film so much more intense and fascinating. What makes their cooperation (and fear of betrayal) so tense and interesting; their motivations so much more intelligible; your engagement with their journey so complex. “What on earth would I do in that situation?” is a question you ask yourself a hundred times. It’s then on top of that, the second half of the movie is a movie unto itself, the most intense and terrifying story you’ll ever watch that’s, really, just some guys driving a couple of trucks. The emotional mastery of Friedkin in constructing this 1977 film is a marvel.

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2. The Empire Strikes Back
Scene from The Empire Strikes Back in which Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker are battling with lightsabers over the wind tunnel on the sky city.

It’s hard to explain how many ways this movie affected me, from its aesthetic to its darker, more intriguing story than Star Wars (which you’ll see listed next). The whole storyline kind of reflected growing up into an adult way of seeing the world. Yet through shear fantasy. I was enthralled. Even just the costumes and set design affected me, and still do. That’s some brilliant artistry going on there. This is what CGI tends to simply fail at, making movies more like bland cartoons than actual, arresting works of art that you lose yourself in. I believed this world. I believed this story. Every minute of it, you forget you’re watching a film, and not really living in this universe, this story.

Empire is also of course a rare example of a sequel being better than the original. But as the line goes from The Star Wars That I Used to Know, “have your friends direct your movies and they’ll turn out better.” George Lucas has never in fact been any good as a director. He’s not a very good writer either. Pretty much everything he has written or directed by himself is mediocre or worse. I wonder how much better Star Wars might have been had he not directed it; or had he taken on more capable co-writers. As it is, it’s the only remarkable work of direction and writing he’s ever done, other than THX 1138 (which, as good as it is, only fails to make my list for being a bit too weird and not wholly well done; it needed work). Yet Empire far exceeds Star Wars on every measure. To date still the Platonic Ideal of a Star Wars film. For decades we’ve longed for another. None has come.

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Aesthetically, this 1980 movie exemplifies the importance of craftsmanship in creating a world. Hands-on artists, who literally made things, made this movie, not digital engineers sitting in a chair hacking up a cartoon they want to trick us into thinking is real. Not that good CGI doesn’t exist. But it’s rare. And it rarely can replace the real thing. Real sets. Real costumes. Real models. Even real puppets. CGI is far over-used, usually badly, and yet even when badly it’s at an expense in dollars that just doing it for real would have cost less than. It’s one of the main reasons I rarely go to the theater anymore. Artists have forgotten the art. I like the art. It’s more impressive. And it loses me in a story more effectively. It conquers and colonizes my imagination in a way that defies description. It changes me forever.

But The Empire Strikes Back isn’t just a physical achievement. The story is very well written, the journey is continually engaging, the characters and performances perfect to the task. And yet all it really consists of, is a military battle, a training montage, and a confrontation on a sky city. And yet within that framework, so much happens that you can’t stop watching and feeling things about. And the story wraps at a conclusion, that isn’t final, but is where the film’s story should end. Perfectly. This is what I mean by the art of cinema.

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3. Star Wars
Opening scene of the film Star Wars, after the Rebel ship has raced downscreen chased by blaster fire and the enormous Star Destroyer coasts into the whole screen in pursuit over the planet Tattooine.

What you are seeing to the right is literally the first scene I ever saw in an actual theater. In 1977. My aunt took me. My first big screen movie ever. It was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. Which only makes sense if you know the context of that era, and how off the map Star Wars then was in cinematography and sound and imagination and genius. It broke every standard of the age. The line was an hour long (unprecedented at the time). I was 7.

Star Wars, as simple and trope-filled as it is, was a good, solid sci-fi film, but when it came out, it was unprecedented in the realism and beauty of its special effects and worldbuilding. It perplexes me that it was so far superior not only to everything that had been produced to that point, but even every other thing George Lucas has ever directed. What strange spell was cast that allowed him to build this unrivaled masterpiece that forever changed the film industry as a whole and sci-fi cinema in particular…and then only ever generate shit thereafter? I can’t explain it. Except perhaps that he worked more collaboratively with a well-selected team of artists in making this movie than he ever has since. Maybe? I don’t know.

Everything I said about physical artistry for Empire applies to Star Wars, and indeed Star Wars originated the idea of really striving for extremely believable realism in film-making, while simultaneously making a fantastical space opera. And it’s really that that makes it remarkable, and affected me so powerfully as a child, and forever since. Had the same story been told but with much less effort at creating believability, it probably wouldn’t have been all that impressive. Think, for example, of The Black Hole, Disney’s first non-G rated film, made three years after Star Wars, yet still in the til-then-traditional sci-fi style of cheesy sets and special effects that just isn’t believable. The story was also crap. And so the movie went straight to the dustbin. That would have been Lucas’s fate, but for the inspiration he gave to his artists to far exceed that expected standard.

By contrast, I’ll mention Logan’s Run below, among my honorable mentions, as an example of a sci-fi film still in the old cheesy style, that came out just a year before Star Wars, and yet because it’s story is so excellent and engaging, it remains a classic. Similarly, I’ll also mention, Battle Beyond the Stars, which came out years later (the same year as Empire even), and is somewhere in between the realistic and cheesy style only because it’s budget was next to nothing. It remains a classic cheesy sci-fi film, because it found a niche in the genre of low budget cult-style filmmaking, and it’s story remains entertaining, as silly as it is (it’s also, interestingly, based on a marvelous Japanese classic—The Seven Samurai—much as Star Wars was based, more loosely, on The Hidden Fortress).

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So if it wasn’t for the daring revolution it achieved in realistic worldbuilding through art and craftsmanship, Star Wars might not have been as affecting a movie. Or as successful. Indeed the genius of it makes the most sense in its historical context; which may never be recovered. We already lived it. It might never again affect audiences the same way. Even apart from the bullshit changes Lucas made to the film—it is no longer possible to see it as it originally was, as it affected us. Now it has crap CGI and story changes. Lucas ruins everything.

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4. The Thin Man
Adorable animated GIF of Nick and Nora Charles kissing in the film The Thin Man.

Not so much a movie. But six. By far my favorite romantic comedy ever. Funny. Fun. I can never watch it enough times. Very influential on me as I was growing up. Nick and Nora Charles were half of my dream relationship for a very long time (the other, Morticia and Gomez Adams). They were my model of how to be. Relationships in movies and serials are pretty much never written this way anymore. Playful, mystery-solving party animals that have each other’s back and love the hell out of each other. I miss that in television and cinema.

It is of course from another time. The 1930-1940s. These movies were actually progressive for their time. But watching them today, they have their incidental share of mild racism and sexism. But they also capture the aesthetic and the feel of another era, too. They are a window into our culture of the past, both in incidental realities and in fantasy idealizations. The mixture of the classic noire detective mystery with comedy is unmatched. And the coy way sex is referenced throughout is charming.

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Best line: Police Lieutenant Guild, shocked to see Nick holding a gun when he bursts into their bedroom to rescue them from an armed hooligan, sternly asks Nick, “Haven’t you ever heard of the Sullivan Act?,” but sounding a bit like he says “Solomon” act. Nora, beside Nick in her nightgown, answers without missing a beat, “Oh, it’s alright, we’re married.” Of course, in accord with the Hays commission of the era, separate beds are depicted. Another favorite is when Nora meets Nick at a speakeasy and finds out he’s already six martinis in. She promptly orders six martinis so she can catch up. But my favorite line of all is “What’s your name?” “Letty. Letty Finhaden.” Which Nora says to Nick as a landlady introduces them she thinks for the first time…after Nora had just learned Letty was one of Nick’s previous lovers. Nick kisses her madly and they leave together. The landlady, stunned, declares, “Well that was the fastest piece of work I’ve ever seen!”

All six movies are great. The sixth only slightly less. I recommend them all. And for the visually impaired, these might work, mostly, with just audio. I don’t think the original Dashiell Hammett novels contain quite the same wit and comedy, but they are an alternative way into the dramas these movies became.

They’re now all on Amazon Digital:

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5. The Breakfast Club
Screenshot from The Breakfast Club showing Allison (played by Ally Sheedy) gesturing snarkily with a pen in her mouth.

Of course everyone who grew up in or around the 80s was probably affected by this film released in 1985. A masterpiece by John Hughes. But also another piece from its times, reflecting the culture of a bygone era. Films in the 80s took a lot of sexism for granted. Some more egregiously than others. But here, not inaccurately. It correctly captures attitudes and behaviors you’d really see. And that’s one of it’s powerful qualities: how well it nailed the mindsets of several different teen cultures, and the microcosm of their social hierarchy and struggle. Even so, Molly Ringwald’s article revisiting it is spot on.

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Aesthetically that’s not it’s only merit. It’s extremely well written, the characters very well constructed (even the principal and the janitor), the sets and costumes evocative of a real world we lived in, the perfect integration of direction, cinematography, and music. And in all that, it captures the subtle reality of class warfare in numerous ways (even the blue collar janitor plays a key role in that narrative, despite being practically background). It also subtly captures the widespread reality of how absent and clueless parents were. The world was moving far too fast for parents to keep up. But kids and teens lived and breathed their new world. The effort of parents and authorities to infantilize teens, to control them, to lie to them, has been steadily backfiring for decades. This is a movie that forces you to listen to them. And realize they aren’t children anymore. And need more autonomy and responsibility over their own lives—and rather than orders and commands, simply take-it-or-leave-it advice to help navigating the difficulties that entails. From people who aren’t complete idiots…as sadly many adults were. Perhaps still are.

Watch it again and think about it as a lens into the reality of a formative era in America. Of who we are today.

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6. Aliens
Scene from Aliens, where Drake watches and preps with Vasquez with their waist-mounted heavy support weapons.

I loved this movie in 1986 so much in my youth that my friend and I would bicycle across town to watch it double-featured with Highlander like six or eight times; we’d exit just before the regular Friday midnight Rocky Horror showing, which had a much different crowd lining up!

Aliens was a masterful action film. Even when it’s using tropes it deploys them perfectly and engagingly, and in that decade was pretty much unrivaled on all measures. Special effects. Action. Story. Acting. Direction. But above all, in the context of live action films, this was my first experience with realistically effective women fighters. Not just Vasquez who kicks all kinds of ass, and Ferro and Dietrich who only get taken out by surprise, even the little girl Newt carries her own, but above all, Ellen Ripley shines as the first woman in Sci Fi history to be allowed to exhibit believable and genuine charismatic and effective leadership that outmasters all the men. (I say “in the context of live action,” because my first actual experience with effective women fighters and leaders came from anime…I’ll get to that next.)

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Of course Ripley is already an effective character, in a leadership role, making good decisions and holding her own (and surviving) in the original film, Alien (in a role originally written for a man, yet didn’t lose an ounce of realism flipped the other way). But it’s in Aliens that she is allowed to exhibit all kinds of skills of combat leadership: rallying demoralized troops, making and carrying out effective plans, giving orders, solving and anticipating tactical problems, making command decisions under pressure, fighting with weapons and without, protecting her people, listening to the experts under her command, and earning the respect of everyone in the field by her actions, toughness, intelligence, and resolve. It’s hard to explain how impactful it is to see that depicted, and depicted very believably, in a world that didn’t really yet imagine women could do that.

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7. Nausicaä (of the Valley of the Wind)
Screenshot of princess Nausicaa flying over the Valley of the Wind on her sky-surfer with her pet fox-squirrel

I just mentioned my first experience with a realistically kick-ass woman who was an effective leader wasn’t in live action. It was in anime. Just a couple years before Aliens, I saw my first Hayao Miyazaki film. I’m not much into anime. But Miyazaki is a master. I’ve since come to love every one of his films. All are moving works of art. And the worlds and stories and characters he creates are unrivaled in their creativity and believability, despite settings that are always mind-blowingly fantastical.

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I think I originally saw this one on television when it was crappily edited and dubbed for American audiences and called Warriors of the Wind in 1985. The new, unedited, re-dub of 2005 is far superior and I highly recommend it (the voice cast alone is amazing; the story, much more intelligible). The imagination and crazy bizarreness of this film really struck me, and influenced me as a young teen more than I can say. As did the cultural ideals in how the heroes and villains, adults and teens, men and women, all comport themselves, which you don’t see in most US films of any kind…and of course the anti-war and environmentalist message you find in many Miyazaki storylines (diluted in the first American release, but still obvious).

Princess Nausicaä deserves to go on record as one of the great leaders in Sci-Fi, yet folks often don’t think to count anime when making those kinds of lists. This movie is also an important example of what can be done with art, that usually isn’t, and yet is so much more powerful than what usually gets done. The soul and strangeness and creativity and message, the characters who are simply written yet more complex than you usually find in Western films. And the total out-thereness of the ideas and world created. Without having to explain any of it. You just immerse yourself and figure it out.

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8. The Big Chill
Screen shot from The Big Chill, showing half the cast watching a football game and reacting differently.

Released in 1983, this is the first adult ensemble film I both loved and learned from as a young teen. Still do. Now I wonder…does anyone even watch this movie anymore? Could anyone today even recognize it from the shot at right, or any? Because if not that would be a shame. The Big Chill still rocks as one of the best dramatic comedies ever made. Everyone should consider giving it a go.

This isn’t action or suspense or horror or goofball. It’s pretty much a serious story of a bunch of old friends getting together for a funeral and staying over at one of their homes in the woods, and revisiting what happened to them since their college days. But it’s full of realistic humor and amusing interactions and outcomes. The over-arching theme is death and change and who we’ve become and whether that’s really who we should be, or if we even get to choose. But it’s also about a gaggle of people all of whom are different people, yet (mostly) still friends by experience and acquaintance.

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It’s a very adult film for a child, complete with themes of adultery, class, politics, drugs, suicide, asexuality, sexual harassment, unrequited love, even a surprise nonmonogamous quasi-triad by the end. But it’s funny. And it was so very honest and real, it taught me a lot as a young man how adults talk to each other and interact. It didn’t hide anything. And it has so many elements of a journey for every character there is always something to learn from or be fascinated by. Women also play as central a role as the men, making their own decisions and exhibiting very different personalities. Aesthetically, it’s a masterpiece of writing, editing, and acting.

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9. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Screenshot from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, showing the character Tuco, played by Eli Wallach, checking the mechanism of a pistol he just assembled from diverse parts, eager for revenge.

I couldn’t have a top ten list of films that most affected me growing up, without this one. It was my first and most awesome encounter with gritty, realistic, low budget yet superbly believable “Spaghetti Westerns,” that redefined the Western genre in cinema. Oddly, this was my idea of a kid’s film—way more adult than what most kids my age ate up, which even then I mostly found pandering childish pap. And this was the biggest and most impactful example, of a film where even the heroes are a bit shady, values aren’t black and white, and the circumstances and what’s right are not clear cut. Most astonishingly—as it’s such an epic long film that most kids would never even get through it, much less get what’s going on or why it mattered to any of the characters.

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Aesthetically, this saga is full of amazing stories with fascinating characters, great dialogue, and plots that suck you in. The sets and costumes are believable despite being on a low budget even for 1966. The direction and editing are top notch. In fact, this is a good example of how the decisions of where to put the camera and when, where to cut a shot and how, really make a low budget project into an enduring masterpiece. You don’t even notice it, unless you specifically pay attention to it. That’s how good it is. And the coup de grâce? An eerie, unprecedented, and awe-inspiring film score by master Ennio Morricone. I could have listed other films of that era that influenced me in the Western genre, even films I enjoy more and recommend more often. But this one still beat them out on the impact scale. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly really affected me as a child and became one of my favorite movies.

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10. Five Million Years to Earth (Quatermass and the Pit)
Scene from Five Million Years to Earth showing one of the ancient alien insect corpses in its travel seat on the recovered spacecraft, looking radically alien and terrifying.

A lot of folks won’t get this one. I could have put several films in best horror, The Thing for example. Far better film than this one. But Five Million Years to Earth was far more impactful on me as a child. As it was the first horror movie that actually freaked me out—with aliens truly alien, and mysteries almost Lovecraftian. This was my first real scary movie. And that’s saying something, as I’ve never found hardly any movies scary, then or now. It sparked my imagination, and taught me how original Sci Fi and horror could be, if the artists creating it would only find true creativity and genius in what they are constructing—not, I mean, in special effects (there’s always been creativity there), but in storytelling and concept.

This film has a complex history. It was a British production released in 1967 as Quatermass and the Pit, but renamed for American audiences. And it was a color reproduction for the cinema of an earlier, black-and-white British television series Quatermass (of which “the Pit” was just one episode). Which was also very good, but not what I saw, and not what affected me as a child. It’s super cheesy, as all 1960s monster movies were. But for a kid, it’s scary and neat. It really could be remade well, I think. It’s story has enough potential for it. And if the Lovecraftian alien horror of the original is preserved, its aesthetic potential is high.

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The premise is, basically, that a spaceship buried under London five million years ago is excavated by archaeologists, scientists, and the military (concerned it might actually be unexploded German ordinance from the war; then concerned it might be a threat to the entire world). It’s found to contain the corpses of alien insects who created a fascist, genocidal civilization on Mars and genetically altered apes on Earth to make human slaves (thus humanity itself is just the remains of an ancient alien industrial project). The ship contains what we might call an AI that’s reawakened by the team’s efforts to enter and explore the craft, with increasingly awesome telepathic and telekinetic powers that eventually start destroying London itself, and possibly all human civilization.

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And Yet More

Next is my honorable mention list of 45 more movies that were in contention for the ten most impactful when I was growing up—again in no particular order. This list is slightly different from the one I posted on Facebook, as I remembered some things I’d forgotten. Exclusion from my whole 55 should not be assumed to mean I think all other movies I saw then sucked. There were lots of other great films. But these are my favorites. And the ones that affected me the most.

11. Alien
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Of course the original. Inspired by the gritty and detailed realism of Star Wars, director Ridley Scott created the first truly engrossing space horror, in 1979. Scott is a master, and this is a work of art in every dimension. Far and away his best. We take it for granted now, but the idea of spaceships being dirty, industrial machines and life in space being laborious and scary, was a new concept when this came out. Making this an unprecedented film when released. It also introduced us to the first great female Sci Fi franchise hero, casting Sigourney Weaver in a man’s role, in a fit of inspiration by Scott. Aesthetically, it’s one of the best “haunted house” films ever made, and still the best “slasher” film of all time. Even though you might not think of it in those terms, that’s actually the construction and feel of the movie. Just brilliantly revised with its Sci Fi elements.

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12. Logan’s Run
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Still from the pre-Star Wars era, the special effects, models, sets, and costumes are all a little cheesy (even more so than the original Battlestar Galactica series!). But the story, concept, adventure and characters are marvelous. It’s one of my favorite early Sci Fi films. I’ve since become more fond even of Forbidden Planet (1956) and now have more appreciation for Soylent Green (1973). But Logan’s Run affected me the most as a child. It made me think about how societies can become dysfunctional, and only seem utopian on the surface, and in the fashion of Plato’s Republic, attempt to hide that fact from everyone.

I’d also put in this category Zardoz (1974), a film much harder to explain, far more bizarre, but that has since become more significant to me aesthetically and philosophically. Zardoz is a movie many people hate or think awful, because they don’t understand what’s actually going on or why it’s a brilliant conceptualization of a future so wholly alien to us it seems silly or incomprehensible. As our own society would to someone from ten thousand years ago. I may do a whole blog just on that film some day. [Oh, indeed I did! Sort of. See How Not to Live in Zardoz.]

But Logan’s Run, from 1976, may be the best Sci Fi classic of the 70’s until Star Wars the next year.

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13. Battle Beyond the Stars
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Probably the goofiest, cheesiest, low budget Sci Fi space opera film from the 70s (released in 1980). But as a kid, I loved it. It turns out to have been seminal for the 1980s, as it gave us the first big breaks for composer James Horner, then-FX-technician James Cameron, and then-set-carpenter Bill Paxton. All went on to be super famous. Cameron, especially, as the director of The Terminator and Aliens. Horner scored the latter; and Paxton, owing to befriending Cameron on the set of Battle Beyond, starred in it (and also got a bit part in Terminator).

This was a space opera reimagining of The Seven Samurai plotline. With all kinds of aliens, weirdos and criminals teaming up to help save a peaceful planet from the ravages of an evil overlord. Complete with a peace-and-love female-AI-commanded spaceship that is the shape of a womb with fallopian tubes that shoot lasers, and literal actual naked breasts on its bow. Who thinks of this stuff?

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14. Real Genius
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This 1985 film was a really important one to me, growing up a science nerd in high school myself, considering going into nuclear physics at the time. It’s a madcap sociopolitical comedy. Funny and engaging, you love all the characters, even the ones you hate. The aesthetic brilliance here is in the writing. Everything else, even the acting, is conventional. Competent but unremarkable. But the script is a masterpiece. The story meaningful. The wit and dialogue smart. The arcs the characters go through significant.

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15. Big Trouble in Little China
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This one really impacted me in my youth. You might ask why. After all, I could have included Streets on Fire on my list, a charmingly corny, retro-50s team-rescues-damsel film from 1984 that I also loved as a teen. But Big Trouble in Little China was unprecedented when it came out in 1986. It was creative and imaginative in ways I’d never seen before. It drew me into another world. And presented me with characters that are laughably campy yet in a strange way exaggeratedly realistic. It’s probably the first movie I saw that plays like a comic book and a tabletop roleplaying adventure at the same time, all in the way dialogue and scenes are written, and it works. But above all, it made fun of practically every action movie stereotype (including the likes of Streets on Fire). And with humor so brilliant, it almost goes unnoticed how clever it was. You believe you are in this story. Even as it makes fun of itself. Just the fact that the hero engages in the final boss battle unknowingly smeared the entire time with lipstick from the woman he just kissed, is gold. That he forgets to switch off the safety on a submachinegun he nabbed from a guard, and has to be reminded by his compatriot mid-battle, “Safety!”…priceless. Humorous realism, in a fantastical story. Genius.

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16. The Thing
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An absolute masterpiece of Sci Fi horror. From the sets to the direction to the film score to the plot and writing and performances and special effects, the original The Thing was a marvel when released in 1982. I had read as a child a graphic novel rendition of the original 1938 novella Who Goes There? in a collection of eerie Sci Fi stories. So when I saw it turned to life, and modernized, on the big screen I was awed. It was far superior and more faithful to the original story than the previous adaptation in 1951, The Thing from Another World. Which was also crap.

John Carpenter’s The Thing is terrifying in concept and scary in the moment and ghastly to watch. It’s realistic. It’s believable. The characters engaging and consistently well written. And the use of sound and staging to amplify the horror is exceptional, indeed rare still to find done so well. I think it’s Carpenter’s greatest film. A genuine work of art. It also now occurs to me that it bears certain conceptual similarities to Five Million Years to Earth.

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17. Krull
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Pure camp. But pure gold. As a tabletop roleplayer in the day, this 1983 release was the paradigmatic movie for fantasy adventurers to revel and lose yourself in, and riff on. There were others in that genre, like the delightfully far more terrible The Sword and the Sorcerer (released in 1982, I’m linking to the great 2014 RiffTrax version) and better ones too (Conan makes my list below). But Krull is a breed apart. Not only is it a bizarre mixture of Sci Fi and Fantasy genres, with fantastic sets and a very well-used budget, it’s also an excellent, trope-filled example of a hero assembling a team of ruffians and outsiders to rescue his damsel, and overcoming all kinds of impossible odds, from giant spiders and flame-riding horses, to intergalactic Cthulhoid gods.

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18. Gotcha
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Gotcha was another film that spoke to me as a teen. At its release in 1985, I identified with the clumsy, awkward-with-girls hero who finds his way (sort of) and love (sort of), in a grand adventure where his nerdy skills as a kind of tag-game-playing LARPer end up being crucial to his success. It’s also a comedy. Well written. And a classic 80s cold war movie, complete with hidden microfilm, KGB assassins, Berlin border crossings, undercover femme fatales, even LA gangs and a German punk band. Tropes galore, but amusingly rendered. Almost accessible without visuals, but not quite.

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19. The Amateur
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In contrast, The Amateur was a classic serious cold war movie that was and remains my favorite of that genre from the 1980s (released in 1981). Similar to the 1970s classic Three Days of the Condor. But better. The titular amateur is a CIA analyst with no field skills, just a computer programmer and codebreaker, whose fiancée is murdered by terrorists—spectacularly, on live television. So he blackmails the CIA into training him to infiltrate the Iron Curtain and kill her murderers. But for some reason they don’t want him to. A cat and mouse game ensues, where at every point both sides are trying to kill him, while he methodically succeeds at his task one by one, in ruthless ways. Until he discovers the horrifying truth. And through all that he succeeds, as Christopher Plummer’s character eventually explains to him, because he’s an amateur. He never did anything the way everyone trained expected.

  • It’s almost impossible to find now.
  • You can only get it expensively from DVD collectors.
  • There are some rips on YouTube but I don’t trust the sites they are on.
  • Wikipedia also has a good page on the film.

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20. Sixteen Candles
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This is another classic teen comedy from the 1980s that, as Molly Ringwald is right to point out, for all its enduring excellence still echoes the latent sexism and racism of the period that everyone just took for granted as funny. But we can accept that as a fact of when it was made, and put it in context. And in context, 1984, it was a well composed coming-of-age comedy that centers a female character, an influential film for me growing up. I actually identified with Ringwald’s character more than anyone else in the film. You may be surprised, as surely I’d identify more with “the dork” played by Anthony Michael Hall or his geek friends, but in fact I didn’t see myself in them at all. Identifying with a female character was a revelation for me and an important step in my development into an adult.

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21. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
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This 1986 release remains an influential film for every generation I’ve known. Even recently I saw a teenage girl carrying a self-made “Save Ferris Bueller” ring-binder exactly like the one in the movie. That’s how enduring this one has been. Indeed, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is an aesthetically brilliant comedy unmatched in its style, structure, and pacing. Still to this day. Creatively directed and edited, cleverly written, every performance spot on. Objectively, the characters aren’t great people. Ferris, for all his heart, is a philandering manipulator; his girlfriend an unambitious waste of a beauty; his parents total idiots; his sister an obsessively jealous goof; his teachers and principle clueless and weaselly; his best friend a neurotic loser who is almost the only character who really grows by the end. But that strange feature aside, watching this trio outwit the system of clueless parents and authorities to live and enjoy life is marvelous fantasy.

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22. Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)
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This old classic is the pinnacle of a whole genre that influenced me as a child. I grew up poor. There was a daycare operation back then that low income parents could drop their kids off at that was essentially just a movie theater that ran old movies all day long, as minders fed us popcorn and hotdogs and made sure we stayed enraptured by the screen or asleep in our seats the whole day. I loved this. And I saw countless classics there, including things I might never have seen but for this arrangement. Jules Verne. Our Gang. Pippi Longstocking. Topper. The best of them all, still my favorite to this day, was Journey to the Center of the Earth. Obviously, the original one, from 1959. Not the garbage ass crack that passed for a remake in 2008 (or any of the sundry others made). The characters are brilliantly written and performed, the story engaging Sci Fi fantasy, every scene smartly shot. It’s hokey—a Jules Verne tale scripted in the 50s after all—but affected me as a child. It mocked sexism and elitism, disparaged vanity and glory, promoted scientific honesty and spirit, exhibited teamwork. A perfect kids’ classic. Because even adults will enjoy the hell out of it.

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23. Conan the Barbarian
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This was a brilliantly made film I still have never seen the proper like of. The writing, acting, film score, and cinematography are pure excellence. A classic in the sword and sorcery genre that in 1982 went a cut above in creating a well-budgeted, gritty but realistic feel. Also an accurate rendition of the character and feel of the pulp novels, with even a little more emotional depth and seriousness. It also cast a believably buff woman as the warrior companion (Sandahl Bergman), against the usual cinematic temptation to put a sword in some waify supermodel’s hands and hope we don’t care about the implausibility. Bergman did all her own fighting and stuntwork.

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24. First Blood
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This was an impactful film for me. And still is, even on later viewing. I wonder how many have forgotten it. Its brilliance was lost under the gaudy glow of the ensuing silly character contrived in the sequels, “Rambo,” now a universal joke. But that character is the exact opposite of the one originally written and performed, teaching all the opposite lessons.

The original 1982 film is a masterpiece of the genre, perfectly written and directed, and well performed by the whole cast. It’s the usual trope of a damaged hero abused by the authorities, who then tears them all down with superior skills and ruthlessness in “American-style” revenge against all their arrogance and bumbling incompetence, and yet…though that’s how it goes, that’s not how it ends. The closing scene, of a broken soldier, is one of Sylvester Stallone’s greatest performances. And a moving commentary on how we treat veterans in our society (especially then). People forget, he doesn’t win. He can’t win. His skills, for all we marvel at them in action for a whole hour, are useless here. And that’s the point. The message got lost in subsequent installments of the franchise, where Rambo becomes invincible even when implausibly standing still, bare-chested in open ground. Learning nothing. And teaching us even less.

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25. The Outlaw Josey Wales
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I mentioned earlier that The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly made my top ten of most impactful films of the Western genre even though there were Westerns I liked and recommend more. This is one of them. In fact my favorite of the whole genre. The Outlaw Josey Wales is not explicitly part of The Man with No Name series, not even a Spaghetti Western (it was filmed in the U.S. and with twice the budget). But as filmed in 1976, though based on an unrelated novel from 1972, it is a mature rethink of that character. Here is a man whose turn into a ruthless outlaw is credibly explained, and his eventual wish to return to a quiet life believable, while he must face the fact that his violent deeds may always catch up with him. On the way he rescues and acquires a whole crew of quirky characters similarly looking for a better life, and they become a band of fiercely loyal friends who will fight to the end for some land and peace. The art of it is how it incorporates humor into a serious and disturbing story, and how the virtues of the hero, despite all his murders, lead to his acquiring a kooky but lovable “found family” that ultimately saves his soul.

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26. Robocop
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A masterpiece of political satire. That’s right. This is a political satire. An action comedy. That makes fun of Americans. And that’s why it’s brilliant. As brilliant as the other Paul Verhoeven films that also made fun of Americans, from Total Recall to Starship Troopers. Also excellent films that poke fun at American love of theatrical violence, and American media, commercialism, and latent militaristic fascism…and our persistent desire to treat workers (and soldiers) as expendable machines. If you’re an American and didn’t get that the joke was on you, you didn’t get any of these movies.

Robocop is the pinnacle example. With its mocking depictions of corporate corruption, privatization, and TV commercials, it was a great film to be made in the 80s, when the culture reached the height of all that is mockable on these counts. And for all that, it’s also good art (well shot, brilliantly scored), and just a great action flick and hero-against-villain tale, that also established a remarkable-for-its time gender and racial diversity in its cast (though is still white-male-centered, and doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, but you could hardly expect as much in 1987). It’s also notable for including a kick-ass policewoman as his sidekick, who doesn’t fall in love with the hero, but just has his back—and saves herself.

The 2014 remake, meanwhile, was just boring.

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27. Blade Runner
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I’ll repeat what I said about this on the Secular Web over a decade ago:

Though not a movie we might normally regard as having anything to do with religion or secularism, Blade Runner has a mythical undercurrent that is relevant to secular and religious values concerning just what rights a God would have with regard to his creation. Though religion never comes up in the film, the theme is there: artificial men are denied a lifespan sufficient to experience and learn about life, simply to control them, and they decide to go after their creator to force him to extend their lifespan. When he cannot, they kill him (a metaphor for man’s progress toward secular enlightenment).

This is another example of “what if” that makes one think about just what sort of fellow God would have to be to have created us, since our situation is not that different from the artificial men in the film, especially within the context of Christian theology where death was God’s attempt to punish us for daring to acquire knowledge. The antagonist (Rutger Hauer, in his finest role) begins a villain but you grow to understand him and actually reconsider his status by the end of the film. What is remarkable is that he converts to heroism at the last moment of his life not because of hopes of reward in heaven—he states overtly his certainty that he is about to cease to exist—but because he realizes his own ethical ideals in himself: all life is valuable precisely because it will soon cease forever; a decidedly secular revelation.

It’s also a demonstration of secular moral reasoning: Batty fought the whole film for more life; he would be a hypocrite if he didn’t realize in his own actions, the very actions he expected of the world. Thus he saves the life even of the man who murdered everyone he loved. As his last dying act. The aesthetic excellence of the film go well beyond its excellent construction of allegory, to include lighting, direction, physical effects, sets and costumes, film score, writing, and all the performances.

I used to prefer the theatrical release, as it was in 1982, to the later edits, which restored the director’s original vision (and fixed some mistakes), such as removing Harrison Ford’s narration. But I’ve turned around on that. I think the Final Cut now works better as a film. Meanwhile, some really great philosophical and artistic analysis appears in the book Retrofitting Blade Runner, which has even gone into a second edition! And several other books exploring the intersection of philosophy and the movie have since appeared.

The 2017 sequel, Blade Runner 2049, was even more excellent. And also produced philosophical analysis.

28. Phantasm
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This is my first favorite bad movie. Released in 1979, I was fascinated with it as a kid. It still holds a place in my heart as the ultimate B-movie. It’s terrible. Almost a master class in how not to make a film, failing on almost every aesthetic dimension. And yet it’s engrossing. And bizarre. You can’t help but be fascinated. And creeped out. There really wasn’t any other horror franchise like it. Flying, humming golden spheres that drill into your brain, liquefy it, and spit it onto the floor? Graverobbed corpses crushed in barrels of goup to become evil zombie dwarves? An alien plot to repurpose the Earth’s dead as slave labor on Venus? A kid, a guitarist, and an ice cream vendor as the heroes battling cosmic evil in a shiny black Plymouth Barracuda? Who thinks of this stuff? It was so out there, it inspired my imagination for years.

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29. Cherry 2000
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This is a great, clever, fun B-movie in the dystopian adventure genre. Indeed almost the Platonic ideal of it. Even the elements that are cheesy or dumb are so aesthetically perfect as cheesy and dumb. But the story, direction, and editing are what make it exemplary within its budget class. Plus the humor. And the awesome film score—a Basil Poledouris classic! (Who also did Robocop and Conan.) The film itself is immensely creative at every turn. Even the fact that they left on reel a stovepipe malfunction in a gunfight, and worked it into the plot, won me over.

How to describe it if you haven’t seen it? A naively romantic corporate manager at an urban recycling plant has a sex robot for a wife, owing to dating in the future being really weird and complicated. That’s the titular Cherry, model 2000, her year of manufacture (this movie was released in 1988 so they had some ambitious and depressing ideas of where we’d be by then). He owns her a decade or more later, by which time, “they don’t make ’em like that anymore.” So he faces existential tragedy when she short circuits because he confusingly tries to have sex with her while she is doing his dishes (not the only fun poked at the irrationality of men’s sexist ideals in this film; several moments hit the same theme). So he has to hire an infamous mercenary to drive him to Las Vegas, which is now in a vast deserted region beyond the rule of law, controlled by a weird desert gang obsessed with Hawaiian shirts, mini-golf and Twister. Because buried in the desolate sands of lost Vegas is the only remaining warehouse on legend that might have a replacement body for his bot. The merc he needs to hire he begrudgingly discovers is a woman (a sexy, brash, and capable Melanie Griffith), who rolls her eyes at the entire concept of his mission, but needs the work, so she takes the job. She easily bypasses the weird gangs in massively implausible battle scenes. But what happens next you just have to see for yourself. It’s weird. But that’s the genius of this film.

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30. The Road Warrior
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Cherry 2000 is a comic reimagining of a genre all but created by this serious, superb dystopian action film. The Road Warrior (a.k.a. Mad Max 2) was an aesthetic marvel of its time, with stunts, sets, costumes, and worldbuilding unlike any other before in its genre. Even its mastery of sound throughout is art. This was such an impactful film on the whole world, it has inspired its own Burning Man festival, Wasteland Weekend, that Wired magazine aptly concluded “makes burning man look lame.”

Every entry in the series, from Mad Max to Fury Road, has certain merits in story and creativity, each one exploring the imagining of a post-apocalyptic future where humanity has gone feral yet still relies on technology and machines to survive and prevail, thus creating whole new alien cultures from the ashes of a lost civilization. But this one especially was so well written for an action movie with minimal dialogue and plot, while at the same time creating a visual feast that drives the imagination. The amoral hero. The savage enemy clan. The besieged families trying to rebuild a peaceful world. All ending in a scheme to roll tons of precious refined petrol past an army of psychos keen to rape and kill their way to have it, producing one of the most spectacular chase battles ever filmed. And this was in 1981. No CGI. All real stunts. All real machines. Think about that. And marvel.

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31. Buckaroo Bonzai
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Or as it was actually, ridiculously titled in 1984, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. This wonderfully weird, delightfully bad movie was a favorite of mine, and affected me a great deal in my youth, simply because it was so weird. It threw you into a completely imaginary storyline, and a very elaborately conceived alternate reality, with tons of never-written backstory you quickly realized you had to figure out to understand what was going on. And I loved that. It felt like we were watching a humorous movie adaptation of Issue 23 of some fan-beloved comic-book saga about the superhero Buckaroo Bonzai. Brain surgeon. Physicist. Inventor. Daredevil. Master swordsman. Test pilot. Rock musician. Who fights international and interdimensional crime with his famous entourage of quirky sidekicks. It’s almost like who Elon Musk wants to be, but reality renders impossible. I feel like this could be remade into something wonderful. But from its time, it was and remains a cult classic.

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32. Ladyhawke
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Lots of people hated this. Mostly because they didn’t like a medieval fantasy adventure overlayed with 80s electro jazz. (Audience tastes would change by the time A Knight’s Tale came out and put Camelot-style adventure to a rock and roll soundtrack even the characters and extras sing along to.) But really, the film score, though not great, wasn’t so bad. And the movie actually quite good. Matthew Broderick’s British accent isn’t entirely convincing—nor explicable as this all takes place in Medieval Italy (and yet somehow every character has a French name). But its goofs aside, this 1985 movie is great. Funny. Engagingly written. Beautifully shot. A classically old-fashioned romantic tragedy. Exciting story. Fun characters and situations. Plenty of fight scenes. Black magic. Evil bishops. Shapeshifters. Curses. Scoundrels. You just have to see this.

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33. The Warriors
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This unusual noire action film from 1979 is simply B-movie marvelous. It adapts a novel from the 60s that was literally based on The Anabasis (“The March Up Country”) by Xenophon in the 4th century B.C. Only it’s all modern New York ethnic gangs. Who all dress in strange, tribal ways. Aesthetically it’s a clever film, in structure, shooting, editing, and writing, with an able film score that captures the intended creepy feel of the whole. The plot is simple, but uniformly tense: a mysterious charismatic ganglord is about to organize all the gangs in the city into one giant super-gang that can run the town. But just as he’s about to clinch the deal, he’s assassinated. One of the gangs that came to the parley, The Warriors of Coney Island, is blamed. And a hit is put out. All the gangs in the city are set to hunting them down as they have to fight their way home, against impossible odds, from the Bronx through the entire length of Manhattan to their home turf on the sandy shore of the sea. Much like Xenophon’s mercs.

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34. Repo Man
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This critically acclaimed cult classic is one of the weirdest movies of the era. Released in 1984, it tells the tale of a young punker who joins a band of amoral car repossession agents, who teach him their shady trade and eventually scramble to compete against each other and a rival team to collect a fantastical bounty put out by a murderous secret agency of the U.S. government—for a car that happens to contain the remains of radioactive extraterrestrial corpses that drive insane anyone who remains too long in their company. Eventually the alien souls mutate the car until it flies. Meanwhile the protagonist struggles against a boring consumer culture that eats generic “food” out of a can, and drinks generic “beer,” illustrating a meta-level humor that elevates the whole story into nihilistic genius.

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35. Ghostbusters (1984)
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This was at the time and remains a comic masterpiece. Time Bandits was a different movie that almost made my list, a darker but also excellent sci-fi comedy that affected me, aesthetically and philosophically. But Ghostbusters still beats it on every measure. Aesthetically, it achieves near perfection in directing, editing, writing, and performances, which is not easy to do in the comedy genre. It also had excellent special effects, yet never fails to get a laugh, or ever gets too serious or cheesy. But ultimately, the writing is what makes this movie. One way to demonstrate the genius of it is to compare the original to its 2016 remake, which just has none of the aesthetic qualities of the first one, consisting mostly of hackneyed slapstick and mugging, resembling more a crappy SNL skit that goes on way too long, interspersed with pro-forma scenes built solely to move the feeble plot toward it’s boring conclusion. Though truthfully, I don’t think any of the Ghostbusters sequels are any good (until most recently).

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36. Raiders of the Lost Ark
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Released in 1981, this cinematic masterpiece was, after Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back, the most awe-inspiring film I had yet seen in theaters as a child. It was an aesthetic masterclass in direction, editing, and stunts and effects, with a perfect script for its camp action genre. Everything the camera does in this movie is art. If you watch this alongside Jaws, another Spielberg classic in a darker, more intense genre, you’ll see why he is so much better a director than George Lucas. This guy’s an artist. He knows what he’s doing.

The sequels are not as good, but are all nevertheless solid films, even the fourth one that everyone hated was much better than it was given credit (it made more sense if you watch it as a recreation of 1950s comics rather than the 1930s comics the original was emulating): Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) reimagined the storylines and feel of old films of the 1930s (complete with its quaintly mild and stylized sexism and racism that actually fits the genre), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) replicated the feel of hokey religious films in the late 40s, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull reimagined the feel of hokey Sci Fi adventures of the 1950s.

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37. Manhunter
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This 1986 release is a sadly forgotten original entry in the Hannibal Lecter saga. Silence of the Lambs wouldn’t come out until 1991, and the franchise exploded from there, most recently in the fantastically excellent Hannibal TV series, the titular character there masterfully portrayed by Mads Mikkelsen, which for its entire run was its own artistic masterpiece unprecedented for television in its dark genius and style.

Most people think Lecter first appeared in Silence, and was thus first portrayed, and superbly, by Anthony Hopkins. But in fact he originally features in Manhunter—played then, just as excellently, by Brian Cox—with the male FBI investigator who caught him revisiting him in the asylum to get his help with a case (this time, catching a mass murderer police have dubbed “The Tooth Fairy”). A scenario replicated by a female investigator newly meeting Lecter in Silence (to catch a hunter of women, “Buffalo Bill”).

Manhunter was based on the original novel, Red Dragon, which was remade again into yet another movie in 2002, this time titled, indeed, Red Dragon. Which is a superb masterpiece all its own. A rare instance of two movies, the original (Manhunter) and its remake (Red Dragon), each very differently scripted, plotted, and shot, that are equally brilliant, perfections in the art. In fact Manhunter is so well written and shot, and so loaded with 80s noire style, that it significantly impacted my imagination at the time. And still does.

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38. Brainstorm
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This 1983 film was the best of several mind-bending Sci-Fi installments of the 1980s. A scientist invents a way to record people’s experiences and replay them into someone else’s mind. The government wants to exploit the military applications, including a secret torture program. Others use it for sex. The scientist uses it to fix his marriage. And his scientific colleague uses it to record her own death. And that tape becomes the center of a wild, dangerous game between the surviving scientist who wants to watch the tape to learn the truth about the afterlife; and the military, who wants to use it for its torture program. If you don’t already want to watch this film, I can’t help you!

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39. The Dead Zone
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I struggled to decide whether this slot should go to Looker, or The Dead Zone, both of which influenced me as a child. But I have to admit, The Dead Zone, released in 1983, is the greater artistic achievement, and affected me most as a child. If you don’t already know, it’s an adaptation of a Stephen King novel, about a troubled psychic who helps solve a murder and then struggles with what to do when he discovers a Donald-Trump-like presidential candidate will nuke the world if elected. A masterpiece in the genre, tightly and engagingly written, well shot, and excellently performed. Looker, released in 1981, is cheesier and not consistently as well done, but it also fascinated me as a child and had significant influence on me in a number of ways. It had a great 1980s film score, style, and Sci-Fi thriller plot, and I still do recommend it. But if you have to choose between the two, see The Dead Zone.

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40. Valley Girl
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The movie that gave Nicolas Cage his first lead role, in 1983. In hindsight, it’s ghastly. Basically, “guy stalks woman to prove he loves her and wins her over thus.” But back then no one noticed things like that. It was classified as a romance. It’s also, of course, a comedy, and it’s in that role that it excels in its genre, and affected me growing up.

This was another film in which I identified more with the female lead than the male lead. Not because my life was anything like hers. But because I understood her more. Her actions were throughout more like what I’d have done had I been her, than I could say about any other character in the movie. I also had parents and autonomy similar to hers. This is a movie that most captured the feel of what it was like to be going to high school in the 80s, yet didn’t center the upper class in the way Sixteen Candles did, an aesthetic achievement in its own right.

A far more surreal film that captured the feel of high school in a very different, more abstract way, was Three O’Clock High in 1987, which I almost included in my list. I would put it as number two in accurately capturing what it was like to be in high school in the 80s. Another I could list in this category would of course be Fast Times at Ridgemont High, still a solid entry in the genre. But I’d put Valley Girl ahead of both.

  • Currently unavailable on Amazon Digital (but check back later in case it arrives).
  • Meanwhile you can get it on DVD or Blu-Ray.
  • Wikipedia also has a good page on the film.

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41. Legend
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One of the most aesthetically powerful films I ever saw in my youth. In 1985, set in a faerie world with a cosmic faerie-tale plot, the fantasy and artistry of it were awesome. Although the writing and editing have potent flaws, due to scenes being left out. Attempts to fix this, by restoring cut footage in the latest Director’s Cut, are ruined by also replacing the music with the crappy alternative film score that went out with the original European release. The electronic Tangerine Dream score in the American release, which was only made for the shorter, cut version—but was what Americans heard in theaters then and is in the online edition now—makes the film. Accept no substitutes. But if you want to make more sense of the story, the Director’s Cut might help. Or just read the Wikipedia plot synopsis.

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42. The Terminator
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Released in 1984, this movie rocked my whole high school clique because of perfectly weird things that mattered to us. Like, for the first time we could recall in any action film, it shows people reloading their weapons at a realistic frequency. And many other details that created more realism in the story and action than you usually ever got, ironically for a movie that’s pure Sci-Fi: a robot from the future is sent to hunt down and kill the mother of the leader of a future anti-robot rebellion taking place in a post-apocalyptic “Sky Net” world; and a soldier from the future is sent to stop it. Resulting in a hundred minutes of non-stop heart-pounding chases and deaths that never gets boring and keeps you enraptured by its story and characters. It’s really a masterpiece in its genre.

I could compare The Terminator to another film that almost made my list, Blue Thunder. Which doesn’t hold up as well; it was a good 80s action movie that affected me growing up. But it lacked the same realism, and was fun, but more cheesy overall—it also contained excessive macho bullshit, and massive collateral damage that audiences never noticed, in much the same way they didn’t notice RomComs romanticizing stalking and rape. By contrast, The Terminator actually maintained the horror of its collateral damage throughout.

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43. The Secret of My Success
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I once had Working Girl on this list, as one of the best “business comedies” of the 80s (along with Trading Places, which I’ll get to below), also one of my favorite romantic comedies of the decade. But then I realized it came out in 1988, after I turned 18. So it shouldn’t have made the cut. It would, for movies that impacted me as an adult. But among films in the “business comedy” (and also “romantic comedy”) genre that meet my criteria, The Secret of My Success, released a year earlier when I was still in high school, is honestly my favorite. It is far superior to the somewhat similar Head Office (1985), which I loved at the time, but re-watching it it’s just cringingly full of sexism and racism, and another plotline where the “hero” persistently sexually harasses the lead woman from the moment he meets her until she falls in love with him. The Secret of My Success has a better, more mature plot. Where sexual harassment is depicted as both problematic and not straightforward. It’s actually a classic merger of the Bedroom Farce and Rags to Riches story that also becomes a social commentary on the incompetence of corporate America. All very well executed. And delightfully funny from beginning to end.

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44. Trading Places
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This 1983 comedy was and remains brilliant. In some ways Coming to America is its covert sequel and also excellent. But if I had to choose between them (and compiling this list, I did), I have to pick the first: Trading Places.

For those who somehow (!) haven’t seen it, the plot is a clever commentary on nature vs. nurture, making fun of racism and elitism and corporate greed, all while modeling lessons in real friendship and being a good person. A couple of white racist business tycoons wager that if they ruin the life of their white protege and replace him with a black conman off the street, the black man either will or won’t do as well, depending on whether ability is racial or environmental (likewise the white man will either recover owing to his genetic talent, or succumb to his new environment). It’s dumb because that’s not how environment works; but it’s a comedy, so you can let that go. Indeed, it’s Shakespearean in that way: implausible comedy that nevertheless carries profound meaning. A true farce.

The tables get turned, of course, by characters on both sides befriending each other and teaming up to “get back” at the tycoons. Leading to one of the most famously confusing finales in history. The writers forgot to tell the audience one single thing: on a stock trading floor, you can sell stock you haven’t yet bought. Because what you are really selling on that floor, is a promise to give the buyer the stocks you sold them. So by the end of the day, if, say, you sold a thousand shares in something that you don’t have, you have to buy those shares at the closing rate. Which may be a lot higher than you sold them for. And you’d be ruined. While your buyer makes bank. But you can’t buy stock without having the money or enough collateral to back your offer, which you can then lose if you buy high and the market ends low—or you sold low and the market ends high! So you are basically gambling on the closing price of the stock all day long. It’s perhaps also worth knowing, that unlike stocks in a company, stocks in disposable commodities expire (e.g. when your orange juice is sold and consumed, it’s gone), so the strategy of rebuilding its future value is forestalled. If you understand all that, the end of this movie will make a lot more sense.

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45. Dark Star
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For the category of really terrible, bizarre, but surprisingly nevertheless somehow brilliant Sci-Fi cult classic that impacted me the most growing up, the two in contention were Dark Star (1974) and THX 1138 (1971). Both, originally, the student films of subsequently famous directors (and play as such). Both contain many fascinating philosophical conundrums. THX, of course, was Lucas. A truly weird movie that’s hard to get through but rewarding if you do. It’s a plausible imagining of a dystopian future that plays out the idea of a friendly AI problem: what if we program an AI to just make us all happy, and what it does is keep us drugged all the time? As a film, it partly inspired the hilarious 1980s role playing game Paranoia.

Dark Star is better. But John Carpenter was a far better director, so we shouldn’t be surprised. A team of bored, abandoned, practically space-mad corporate astronauts are on a twenty year mission to blow up all the uninhabited starsystems that inconveniently get in the way of space colonies—using artificially intelligent bombs. Which becomes a key plot point as one of those bombs malfunctions and starts deciding it should just blow up in the bomb bay, and the acting captain (following the electronically-extracted advice of the frozen corpse of the actual captain who died years ago) has to literally argue philosophy with it (“epistemology, phenomenology”) to change its mind. It’s just one of several random, weird things that occupy the deliberately pointless plot, illustrating how things inevitably fall apart when you create a work environment like this.

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46. Tron
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Tron (1982) was probably the best Disney action film of the 70s and 80s (though Dragonslayer came close—also making my list). Tron was the first imagining of alternative, electronic universes we could live in that I had seen (prior to The Matrix in the 90s), and it was creatively original in every way. Aesthetically, the writing, action, directing, sets, music, and costumes, are all well done, despite all being relatively spare. A Sci-Fi classic that nailed its creative special effects, it was among the marvels of the decade.

With some retconning of my own, I also like Tron: Legacy (2010), as tropey as it is. You might concur if you realize the world the old Flynn created in it reflects his 80s douchebro personality, down to the very DNA of how everyone in it behaves. Like sexy women being employed to install the suits on new arrivals. Even what women in that world would think is sexy, comes from Flynn’s 80s manthink. As we should totally expect, as it was born from his personality, and created and run by Clu, an even douchier clone of his personality. Which is why it is key to note that his personality is very well established as classic douchebro in the original film. He only matures into a wiser, more reflective man long after he is exiled from all influence or control over his created world. An excellent illustration of how real gods will inevitably make worlds that reflect themselves. Flaws and all.

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47. 2010
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Officially titled 2010: The Year We Make Contact, this was the best near-future space travel movie of the 70s or 80s, the sequel to the 1968 classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. I wasn’t much affected by the original growing up, because I didn’t really understand it. I appreciate it far more now as the genius work of art that it is (though the ending required more exposition; it wrongly assumes the audience read the book). 2010 is a very different film, borrowing only some of the aesthetic and none of the feel of the original. But it’s an excellent movie in its own right; a great cold-war-themed, Sci-Fi action thriller.

The plot is engaging. American and Russian astronauts begrudgingly team up to investigate what’s happening to the abandoned spacecraft of the original Jupiter mission depicted in 2001. Tensely, as a new world war looms on earth, pitting their nations against each other. They revive Hal 9000, some still fearing he will kill the crew again. And they discover more about the alien powers at work in our solar system. The special effects, writing, direction, editing, and performances are all solid. Plus it delivers one of the most moving depictions of AI in cinema history, the element of this film that affected me the most.

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48. The Hidden
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This is an action horror classic that I fear has been widely forgotten. Released in 1987, it depicts a desperate chase to stop an alien presence on earth that hops from one human body to another, using them like puppets until they drop dead. Secrets unfold, a horrific crime spree unloads, and lots of bodies drop. Aesthetically, the directing and editing of this film, its storyline, and use of music, are its best features. It has just the right juxtaposition of terror and comedy throughout. Even the subtly brilliant performance by Claudia Christian is a thing not to miss, as she portrays an exotic dancer briefly inhabited by the alien—you’re more likely to know her from her later role as LCdr Ivanova on Babylon 5. Fans of Firefly and Law & Order also won’t want to miss Richard Brooks in a minor supporting role.

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49. Fail Safe (1964)
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I struggled to decide between Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove for this slot. Both came out the same year; both black and white classics; both adaptations of the same novel, Red Alert. Or sort of. Fail Safe was “actually” based on the serial “Fail-Safe” that came out a couple years later than and was so similar to Red Alert that a copyright lawsuit was settled over it. Strangelove is a famous Kubric comedy, an entertainingly apt satire of Cold War politics. I was definitely a fan. But Fail Safe affected me more growing up.

Because Fail Safe is a very serious depiction of a scenario that was all too close to being real (in fact, more than we even knew at the time). It exhibits the terrifying rationalism of even American intellectuals keen on starting a nuclear war, and musing about who in America would survive to rebuild; and then depicts the horrifying decisions that have to be made to avert it. Filmed very simply, the tense writing and performances are shockingly realistic, and can’t fail to impact you emotionally. It’s the ultimate cold war movie, because it most perfectly captures the fear of nuclear war we all then lived under.

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50. Dragonslayer
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Disney gave us two excellent action films in the 80s. Tron, in the Sci-Fi genre. And in the fantasy-adventure, sword-and-sorcery genre, Dragonslayer. Both are artistic masterpieces in each. Indeed, I think Dragonslayer remains the best dragon-themed movie ever made. It’s an excellent film. Classic, entertaining story. Thoroughly believable special effects. I highly recommend it. Growing up, its realistic depiction of the terrifying invincibility of a dragon, and the mixed bravery and uncertainty of its heroes, and the ensuing politics, was all refreshing. It also gives us one of the best depictions of a wizard and his apprentice in cinema history. But the physical effects made the film. The clever way camerawork is used throughout to accomplish effects that today would be ruined by using crappy CGI exemplifies an art that filmmakers have all but forgotten.

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51. The Keep
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Released in 1983, for a long time this was one of my favorite Sci-Fi horror films. Later I realized it’s actually a crap movie. Director, Michael Mann, hosed its production with bad planning and indecision, which was further compounded by the studio’s meddling, among other things insisting on cutting fifteen minutes of footage, all but rendering the plot unintelligible.

I didn’t notice these defects when I was a kid because I filled in the blanks with my own imagination, and was enthralled by the elements of the film that did work. And those things, artistically, were indeed masterful. Its visual and emotional feel is superb; the film score another eerie work of genius by Tangerine Dream; the characters engaging; and the parts of the story you can make sense of are really clever and intriguing.

The setup alone will draw you in. In WWII, a Nazi unit occupies an ancient fortress in the mountains of Romania. Something starts horrifically murdering them. The SS is sent in, believing the murders are partisan activity. An elderly Jewish scholar, and his daughter nursing him, are diverted from their fate in a concentration camp to help translate the weird language the monster keeps painting on the walls over his victims. And a supernatural traveler navigates his way to the fortress with a magical weapon to stop the evil. All converge in a final battle.

What doesn’t work is that it’s never explained who the good and evil spirits battling in the end are; why the good spirit only wakes up hundreds of miles away and has to make a long journey to get there; and why the historian’s daughter falls in love with him. The rest at least you can figure out. The romance between the daughter and the “good spirit” I simply ignored at the time because it made no sense and was the least interesting thing going on. But on reviewing, the edit that made it on screen practically depicts it as supernatural sex slavery. She instantly falls in love with the “hero” seemingly because of magic, not actually knowing even one thing about him, and he subsequently literally shuts her up when she gets too mouthy by casting sleep spells on her. It’s comforting at least to know the original, lost edit (based on the novel) made a better account of all this.

It’s still worth seeing, for all its faults. Because those faults are juxtaposed with unrivaled brilliance.

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52. Kelly’s Heroes
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This was my favorite war movie growing up. Several films in that genre also affected me back then, from Catch-22 (1970) and Operation Petticoat (1959) to Force 10 from Navarone (1978) and Das Boot (1981). All of which I also highly recommend. As a kid I also loved the truly terrible original version of Inglorious Bastards (1978). And The Beast (1988) only didn’t make the cut here because I had just become an adult when it came out. But my favorite among all these was Kelly’s Heroes. It’s a great action comedy with a tense plot and awesome cast, including Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Don Rickles, and Donald Sutherland. Plus it prominently features tanks. Which were my obsession when I was growing up.

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53. War Games
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An exciting cold war classic I hope everyone has seen by now. Released in 1983, this was the best “hacker” film I ever saw. And another fascinating exploration of AI. And, you might not have noticed, of Game Theory. It’s a well written story that originated several tropes—from the “Sky Net” of Terminator fame to the “kid genius who thwarts the bumbling government” trope, taken to a serious turn in the forgotten 1985 thriller The Manhattan Project (wherein a teenage boy builds a nuclear bomb just to prove how easy it is and everyone rightly freaks out; settling both these films squarely in our cold war context of the time).

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54. Taps
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I was torn between including this darkly serious drama, and the goofy cold-war comedy Stripes. Of the latter, you can see the original version I saw as a kid or the extended edition released in 2005 that restores some hilarious lost footage that makes more sense of the original plot. Both movies came out in 1981. And both affected me a great deal as a child. And I recommend both—but for wildly different reasons. Stripes doesn’t age well; culturally, you’ll find a lot of it annoying now.

Not so Taps. It also impacted me more, especially in its emotional and philosophical messaging. Because it was a serious movie for a child, about children in a military academy who take over their school under arms when it’s announced it would be closed. And it had me rooting for the kids in the story, until it becomes clear by the end I shouldn’t have been. A lesson in reading complex situations, and not being suckered by American mythical narratives, that I’d never forget. It’s also the first major film role for Tom Cruise, which he performs superbly, despite being one of the very few roles in his whole career that isn’t a hero.

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55. Escape from New York
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This famous B-movie from John Carpenter is a classic in the pulp action genre. Released in 1981, it imagines that by 1997 the world will be in such crime-ridden decline that the state simply walls off Manhattan and leaves it as a lawless penal colony where more and more convicts are exiled. But the President of the United States ends up crash-landing in the middle of it. So a ruthless criminal has to be coerced with a time bomb in his neck to go in and rescue the President from the hordes of psychos and gangs that now inhabit the ruins. It was and remains a fun, sarcastic, low-budget action adventure, recommended for all. Ironically the mediocre sequel, Escape from L.A., was released in 1996…one year before the original was set!

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Apart from the few things I mentioned specifically for each film that I learned or how it affected me in particular, in all 55 cases, the impact these films had on me was both aesthetic and philosophical: they taught me what art was in the film medium, and the difference between good and bad art, and what artistic potentials there are in the world (and that those potentials must always exceed even what I’m aware of, as each new surprise demonstrated); but they also taught me what kinds of worlds and relations and people we can imagine, and about how to think through abstract and social situations, and how to anticipate or understand different kinds of people and the situations they might get themselves in, literally or allegorically. Most of all, they all honed in me a discovery of the complex and important ways people can be good, bad, heroic, or villainous, and that all these things can exist by degrees. The world isn’t simple. It isn’t black and white. And understanding people and the world requires understanding their histories.

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11 Comments

  1. Doubting Thomas
    Doubting Thomas on October 15, 2018 at 9:21 am

    My dad got into laserdisc when I was a kid and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly was my favorite movie we had. It was so long that it took up three full sides. The last side comes in right as Tuco stumbles into the back of the grave, opening up the final shootout scene. I must have watched that hundreds of times.

    Reply
  2. Richard Carrier
    Richard Carrier on October 15, 2018 at 5:22 pm

    Update: I added a final thought to the whole list today.

    Reply
  3. lreadl
    lreadl on October 16, 2018 at 8:49 am

    Good list, Richard. Being about 20 years your senior, my list would vary quite a bit. But many of the films that would be on it would have been accessible to you and are missing. Films like To Kill a Mockingbird, Lonely are the Brave, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Billy Jack, MASH,

    Reply
    • Richard Carrier
      Richard Carrier on October 16, 2018 at 1:15 pm

      That’s interesting. I saw all those films growing up. None really impacted me. Which may be for a variety of reasons.

      I mention even in my article above why 2001 didn’t. Until later in life. I just didn’t get it; I needed more experience to. The others I don’t think spoke to our generation anymore. Billy Jack was amusing but out of date by the time I’d seen it, hardly significant anymore in a world where more of us were being affected by the morally similar but more progressive television series Kung Fu. Likewise, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner felt more like an interesting but no longer relevant historical piece in a world that would readily celebrate Lethal Weapon. It would be years into adulthood before I would realize there were still people who thought it was weird to have a black friend over for dinner; our family did all the time when I was growing up, and no one ever made a fuss—so that became my perception of the world at the time.

      But sometimes the differences weren’t generational but a happenstance of just being more attuned to a different aesthetic for probably random reasons. Hence I just didn’t like most of the rather mean and self-centered humor of MASH; whereas the more serious antiwar comedy Catch-22 powerfully affected me in a way I can’t describe. I don’t think that means the latter was a better movie. Just that it had far more of an affect on me. For whatever reason. Which in this case is unlikely to be generational as both films came out in the same year, and that the year after I was born.

      Reply
  4. Jeremy
    Jeremy on October 16, 2018 at 3:24 pm

    “There has never been a film like it.” (Sorcerer)

    Except the film it was based on, The Wages for Fear.

    I like Sorcerer, and I like what Friedkin did with it, but for me The Wages of Fear blows it out of the water. One of my favourite films ever.

    Reply
    • Richard Carrier
      Richard Carrier on October 16, 2018 at 6:34 pm

      Wages of Fear is not that much like Sorcerer. It has the same rough plotline and some similar events (intentionally). But it differs from there on every measure. Comparing them is like comparing John Carpenter’s The Thing and The Thing from Another World. Apart from sharing the same rough plotline, they are not enough alike as films. Even the plot and events deviate in many ways. They do not use quite the same characters, do not share the same lighting and shooting, do not use the same setup, do not have the same conclusion, do not share hardly any of the same script. Aesthetically, I wasn’t as impressed with the black and white original. But I was also young, so I might not have been attuned to its qualities. It was certainly very critically acclaimed though. No slouch of a production for its time.

      Reply
  5. Brian Lemaire
    Brian Lemaire on October 19, 2018 at 5:22 am

    Of all these in your list, Tron is a favorite of mine. It illustrates the concept of an operating system (the Master Control Program) to us lay people.

    Reply
  6. Walter Wilson
    Walter Wilson on October 19, 2018 at 12:00 pm

    This is Richard to a T 🙂 ” Give us a picture from 10 movies that affected you” and he gives us 95 complete with essays! Love it.

    Reply
  7. owen
    owen on October 22, 2018 at 12:10 am

    is Scarface on the list ?

    Reply
    • Richard Carrier
      Richard Carrier on October 24, 2018 at 10:19 pm

      No. I rarely like gangster movies. Indeed, almost never. By which I mean, movies entirely about gangster life (not movies that happen to feature gangsters). And that’s for a variety of reasons. Including the fact that I often find them boring and repulsive. Carlito’s Way is one of the extremely rare exceptions. And one could probably deduce why I don’t like gangster movies, by mapping out all the things Carlito’s Way does, that almost all other gangster movies don’t.

      Reply
  8. ou812invu
    ou812invu on April 12, 2019 at 10:38 am

    Terminator part 2 was much better than Terminator part 1.

    Also did you like Johnny Dangerously? It was one of my favorite goofball movies.

    Reply

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