Silverado (1985)
Silverado is a throwback Western that doesn’t bother trying to reinvent the genre into a new form. It embraces all of the old clichés and formulas of the olden days, rehashing them with popular stars...
Category: 1980s
Friday the 13th (1980)
The first in a series of truly awful slasher films, Friday the 13th sometimes gets some undeserved credit for being a landmark film in the genre, although clearly, it was Halloween that really nailed down the formula...
Private Lessons (1981)
Titillating stuff for its time, Private Lessons was but one of many films to come out in the early 80s about teenage boys that manage to score with older women willing to show them the act...
Stripes (1981)
Many of the creative forces behind the hit comedy Animal House reunited for a similar vehicle for Murray, Stripes. This one was a military face, but the formula would be the same, where a group of uncouth...
Modern Problems (1981)
I’m wondering if the creators of Modern Problems thought that Chevy Chase could ad-lib enough laughs to save this dud from falling apart and that they didn’t just film without a script save to set...
Alligator (1980)
For generations, people have rumored that there were alligators in big city sewers, flushed down the toilets by owners of baby alligators who no longer wanted to care for them as they became larger...
Dressed to Kill (1980)
The seed for Dressed to Kill was planted in 1974 when filmmaker Brian De Palma adapted Gerald Walker’s 1970 novel, “Cruising”, about an undercover cop searching underground gay clubs for a serial killer. De...
Hellraiser (1987)
A cult favorite for fans of author Clive Barker, but just plain silly (and very gory) schlock for just about everyone else, Hellraiser marked the first feature film as a director, adapting his own novel, “The...
Two of a Kind (1983)
Two of a Kind has only one selling point: it reunites the popular team of Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta, who ignited the screen in the mega-popular 1978 smash, Grease. While the two do work...
Lethal Weapon (1987)
Setting the standard for cop buddy movies for years to come, Lethal Weapon may not have revolutionized the genre, but definitely proves to be an exceptionally efficient example of how the formula can work when the...