The ’80s were a golden age of cinema. The decade gave us most of the original Star Wars trilogy, the best Indiana Jones movies, The Ghostbusters, and Axel Foley. However, not every movie that came out in the 1980s was great. And even some that were popular in the era have had trouble standing the test of time.
These are not the best ’80s movies. Not all of these movies are necessarily bad, some of them are actually quite good. However, for one reason or another these films, some of which seemed like they could have become classics at the time, have since been forgotten, or are otherwise overlooked for one reason or another.
Look Who’s Talking
It’s difficult to undersell just how popular Look Who’s Talking was at the time. The film, which starred the voice of Bruce Willis and a post-Saturday Night Fever, pre-Pulp Fiction John Travolta was one of the highest-grossing movies of 1989. It spawned a pair of theatrical sequels. And yet, until you read the title, you’d completely forgotten that movie was ever a thing.
Crocodile Dundee
Paul Hogan was once one of the biggest movie stars in the world. That is a true statement. Both of the first two Crocodile Dundee films were box office winners for multiple weeks and massive comedy hits. The third movie was not, proving that the world’s fascination with the franchise had come to an end.
Rambo III
The Rambo franchise is one of Sylvester Stallone‘s most popular, and so the movies have never been entirely forgotten. First Blood: Part II, where Rambo goes back to Vietnam to essentially win the war decades, later has aged pretty badly. However, Rambo III has aged even worse. The film is set in Afghanistan and sees Rambo aid the Mujahideen against the Soviet Union. Considering where things would go in the nation years later, it’s tough to watch now.
Tootsie
At the time it came out, Tootsie, starring Dustin Hoffman as an actor who pretends to be a woman to get a job, was seen as somewhat progressive and feminist. Dustin Hoffman says it changed him personally. However, by today’s standards, it’s actually incredibly dated and very much set in the ’80s idea of what was acceptable for women. Tootsie was a hilarious comedy once but now it’s laughable for all the wrong reasons.
Cocktail
Following Top Gun Tom Cruise was on the road to becoming one of the biggest movie stars in the world, and while he would eventually get there, it wasn’t without a few stumbles along the way. Cocktail, which saw Cruise as a globetrotting womanizing bartender, was sold as the next big star vehicle for the actor, and while Cocktail has one of the best soundtracks that has stood the test of time, the movie has not.
Driving Miss Daisy
Driving Miss Daisy was a box office hit that was nominated for nine Oscars, winning four, including Best Actress for Jessica Tandy and Best Picture. It’s got one of Morgan Freeman’s Best Performances. However, its view of black/white race relations in the Jim Crow South is seen today as incredibly simplistic and not truly reflective of the discrimination of the time.
Revenge Of The Nerds
The story of the underdog nerds taking on, and defeating, the bullying jocks is certainly a theme that many can get behind. Unfortunately, in Revenge of the Nerds our “heroes” do this by planting secret cameras in a sorority house and by having one of our main characters pretend to be a cheerleader’s boyfriend from behind a mask. It’s…it’s pretty gross now actually.
Big
Big was a very popular movie when it was released, and Tom Hanks, playing a boy who is magically transformed into a man, is perfect casting. However, the whole joke is that the character has the mind, and the maturity, of a child, so when you think about what the kid is put through in this film, it gets very uncomfortable very quickly.
The Cannonball Run
To be fair, The Cannonball Run was never meant to be anything more than a silly comedy that is so packed full of celebrity cameos that it’s hard to keep them straight. However, since the movie is now packed full of cameos from people who were famous decades ago, not all the cameos would even be recognized by a modern audience, making the whole exercise largely pointless.
Stakeout
Stakeout was a successful enough comedy in the 1980s that it got a sequel, the creatively titled Another Stakeout. And yet, how many people truly remember the movie that stars Emilio Estevez and Richard Dreyfuss as cops who are spying on a woman, before one of them starts a relationship with the subject?
Rad
If you weren’t around in the 80s it’s hard to describe how popular BMX was, especially for kids. It’s still popular today. It’s an Olympic sport. But a movie like Rad, about a teen’s dream to become a professional BMX racer was very much a product of its era, and while the ’80s nostalgia for this one may be strong, that era has long passed.
The Running Man
The Running Man may actually be one of Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s more popular 1980s films, but if you’ve tried watching it recently, you’ll discover that it lacks basically anything we’ve come to expect from modern action movies. There are no great action sequences. The characters are over the top, but without going full satire. And the appearance by actual game show host Richard Dawson as the evil game show host is a joke you had to be there to get.
Weird Science
Maybe the idea of a couple of nerds creating the “perfect woman” through science was supposed to be less creepy because she wasn’t “real” and that made it ok to make her a fetish object. Watching it now the entire relationship feels dirty and those kids should feel bad.
Rain Man
Dustin Hoffman won an Oscar for Rain Man in his role as a severely autistic man on a road trip with his brother who has ulterior motives. It is a great performance, and one that is arguably honest about mental illness, but it’s also another in a long line of able-bodied actors gaining recognition for portraying disability while actual disabled actors are frequently overlooked.
The Transformers: The Movie
The original animated and awkwardly titled The Transformers: The Movie was designed to be a massive reset for the animated TV show, and more importantly, the toy line that inspired it. As a result, they killed off most of your favorite characters, including Optimus Prime. This scarred a generation of children and if you weren’t there you simply could not understand.
UHF
UHF stars “Weird Al” Yankovic as a guy who inherits a UHF television station and accidentally turns it into the hottest TV channel in town. “Weird Al” himself has absolutely stood the test of time, remaining popular for decades. However, nobody remembers what a UHF station is anymore, leaving this movie squarely of its era.
The Naked Gun
All three Naked Gun movies are hilarious. It’s no wonder there are plans to remake the popular franchise, with Liam Neeson taking over from the iconic Leslie Neilsen. And that’s probably a good thing, as the original films have this O.J. Simpson problem…
…Say Anything
In the 1980s …Say Anything was considered one of the most iconic teen romances ever made. It made John Cusack into a star. If a kid pulled some of those moves on a teen girl today, however, he’d probably be arrested for stalking and have a restraining order put into effect.
Tron
When Tron was first released it used cutting-edge digital effects that we had never seen before. The problem is that “cutting-edge” effects eventually become “really old and dated” effects. Tron is still a great movie but you have to get past the look to enjoy it.
Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon
The Last Dragon, not to be confused with the recent animated Disney movie, is a martial arts movie set in Harlem in the 1980s with a killer R&B soundtrack. No, none of that makes any sense today, but somehow it turned the movie into an ’80s cult classic.
The Last Starfighter
The Last Starfighter sees a kid living in a trailer park become an intergalactic hero after he shows his skills in an arcade game. The video game itself dates the movie terribly, but the fact that the screenwriter of Rogue One failed to get a remake off the ground shows that this one has not aged well enough for modern audiences.
Back To School
Back to School wasn’t so much a movie as it was an excuse to put Rodney Dangerfield on screen for an hour and a half. In the ’80s that meant comedy gold, and while Dangerfield’s comedy is still remembered fondly, that doesn’t mean modern audiences are seeking him out.
Flash Gordon
If George Lucas had succeeded in getting the rights to Flash Gordon we may never have gotten Star Wars. A few years later somebody did get a chance to make that movie, but the soundtrack by Queen has faired far better than the actual movie over time.
Gotcha!
Gotcha! locks itself into the 1980s twice over. First, its title and opening scenes are inspired by a game, also called Assassins, that was most popular on college campuses in the 1980s. Second, it’s a Cold War-era espionage movie. With both these elements in the same story, this movie was never leaving the ’80s.
Howard The Duck
The main reason that Howard the Duck has not survived the test of time is that it’s a bad movie that nobody wants to watch again. But even if the rest of the movie worked, the movie set very firmly in the ’80s with its music and the duck costume just doesn’t hold up to a modern eye.
Ladyhawke
You’d think a high fantasy movie like Ladyhawke, set in a fictional medieval world of magic, would have less trouble holding up over time. However, the movie stars Rutger Hauer and a young Matthew Broderick, peak ’80s casting, and has a soundtrack from prog-rock icon Alan Parsons.
License to Drive
It’s an observable fact that modern teenagers aren’t getting their driver’s licenses in the same numbers they used to. With that being the case, a movie that is all about teens desperate to be able to drive is clearly not going to be of interest to the audience that it was previously intended for.
Vice Versa
There have been multiple body-swapping comedies over the decades, which is maybe why nobody remembers Vice Versa. It wasn’t the first, and it wasn’t the best. If you want to watch a movie like it, there’s a more recent one that you’ll probably like more.
Midnight Madness
If you even remember Midnight Madness, a movie about teams of teenagers involved in a city-wide race to solve a series of puzzles, you are clearly a child of the ’80s. If you have seen the movie since then, it was only because you vaguely remembered having seen it as a kid, and then you discovered why nobody watches it anymore.
Over the Top
The world did not need Sylvester Stallone in a movie about competitive arm wrestling, and yet, we got just that. Anybody who saw this movie in the ’80s likely did so off Stallone’s star power, but that’s about all the film has going on. It’s difficult to make two people arm wrestling all that exciting.
Overboard
Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn have been together for decades, and have appeared on screen together numerous times. They have natural chemistry. That’s why the movie Overboard was popular with audiences upon release. But today a movie where a man tricks a woman into becoming his wife and his servant just sets off all the alarms. There’s no justification for doing that to somebody, and the jokes just aren’t funny anymore.
Police Academy
Considering the Police Academy movie spawned six sequels, a TV series, and a cartoon show, you’d think it would be one of the biggest names in entertainment. And yet, when was the last time anybody bothered with it? It’s a story about people becoming cops who should probably be arrested by them instead.
These movies may be dated or problematic, but that’s not to say they’re all unwatchable or without any redeeming features. If you enjoy some of them or would like to give others a try, more power to you. Just be warned that they are the product of a particular era.