Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

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Ankerson
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#21

Post by Ankerson »

MacLaren wrote:
Tue Mar 09, 2021 1:40 pm
Ankerson wrote:
Tue Mar 09, 2021 12:24 pm
MacLaren wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 6:39 am
2 favorites of mine came on yesterday back to back.
With all that's out there today, it's easy to forget these gems
2 of my favorites that came on yesterday were:
Every Which Way But Loose 1978
Any Which Way You Can 1980
Another favorite was on last week as well and that was, Neil Simon's "Seems Like Old Times "
Lol, I tried to get my mom to make Aurora's Chicken Pepperoni! ( back in the day of course )
Those old movies can bring back some good memories. - of course, those were some good times.

That time period is interesting because it's between the early 70's disaster movies and the middle to late 80's mindless in a coma no plot action movies.
Hehehehe....... "Cobra" ......Marion Cobretti :D
🧀 🧀 🧀

Yeah, the list is pretty endless. LOL :D
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#22

Post by The Mastiff »

In the early 80's I remember well the Army barracks dayroom. We had no TV but we did have a VHS player with maybe 3 movies. They played one after another back to back as long as there was at least one guy still in there. I can't count how many times I watched " Smokey and the Bandit", "Every which way but loose" and I can't remember the other(s). Most people were more into their stereo soundsystems and would put thousands of dollars into them. Big money for those times. I had a Sansui AUX 1 (or something that sounds like that) and some JBL L150's ( maybe?) . That system at 300 something watts per channel was considered underpowered. Saturday night stereo wars were deafening and annoying.
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#23

Post by JD Spydo »

There was a Movie back in the 70s that I liked so well that I constantly rent it and watch it over and over. There's only been two movies in my entire life that had that type of effect on me. The movie was entitled "ROLLERBALL" with James Caan in probably his best acting job ever IMO.

The movie was set in the future>> a future that is becoming like the entire paradigm that was depicted in that movie. It was all about a game where no one was supposed to excel. But James Caan played the elite ROLLERBALL player who went by the name "Jonathan E". The corporate heads tried everything in that movie to destroy or to kill him but everything failed and at the end of the movie it was as though everyone in the crowd was literally worshipping him. Needless to say all the CEOs of huge corporations were not happy about it. It was a stunning and thought provoking movie. There was a sequel to it back in the early 2000s and sad to say it was absolute trash IMO. But the 1975 version of ROLLERBALL is a movie that everyone should see at least once. And then tell me if you think that movie was prophetic>> because I believe it was.
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#24

Post by Mushroom »

Both generations are before my time but I was a big movie nerd in high school and collecting DVDs was an obsession of mine. I could list off dozens of movies that I really enjoy.

Some of my favorite 70's movies in no particular order -
• Jaws
• One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest
• Apocalypse Now
• The Warriors
• Cheech and Chong: Up in Smoke
• and my favorite from the 70's - Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ;)

and 80's -
• Full Metal Jacket
• The Shining
• Stand By Me
• Dead Poets Society
• Rain Man
• and my favorite from the 80's - Beetlejuice :D

Don't get me started on movies from the 90's though. In short, the best movies of all time were made in the 90s. :cool:
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#25

Post by James Y »

Ankerson wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 3:36 pm
James Y wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 1:54 pm
Dawn of the Dead (1978)

IMO, the best zombie movie ever. Great storyline. Plus, I prefer zombies to be shuffling. It doesn’t make sense that someone who is undead screams and runs around like Usain Bolt, like they do in the recent zombie films.

Jim

Yeah it was an interesting movie, was low budget, but it did have a plot.

Jim,

There were a number of ‘70s horror films with low budgets that are superior to most of the high-budget horror movies nowadays. Back then, they seemed able to do a lot more with a lot less, when they wanted to. I liked that Dawn of the Dead’s main focus was on the protagonists, as opposed to the zombies. Same with the original Night of the Living Dead, which was super low-budget.

Another excellent low-budget horror film (from 1971) is Let’s Scare Jessica to Death. It’s creepy, and exudes an atmosphere of menace, even though to some current audiences it might appear that very little is happening. It doesn’t rely on cheap, predictable ‘jump-scares’ like current horror films.

Duel (1971), starring Dennis Weaver, and which was Steven Spielberg’s first feature film as director, was the first movie I ever watched on a color TV, the same evening my dad had just gotten it to replace the huge B&W one we’d had forever. Still a GREAT suspense film, shot on a low budget. It must have been a made-for-TV movie, because 1971 is the year we got that first color TV.

But I’m getting off-track and into the wrong era(s). Sorry, MacLaren! :)

Jim
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#26

Post by The Mastiff »

Jim, I didn't know Duel was Steven Spielberg's. I just thought it was another late night good watch. A whole career of 2nd and 3rd shift jobs made me a night person and one who appreciated B through D movies. Back before cable the local UHF stations late at night didn't do much in the way of censoring so that is where I spent what little TV time I had. My parents never had a color TV until after I was grown up and gone and the TV was not only black and white but it was all of 13 inches. Whoo-hoo! When I bought my first 19 inch color TV I thought I was big time. :)
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#27

Post by JD Spydo »

There is another 1970s movie that really got into my brain in a big way. It was done by who I think may have been the best movie producer of all time>> and I'm speaking of Stanley Kubrick. The movie was entitled "Clockwork Orange". The movie has so many plots and rabbit holes in it that it would take me close to a half an hour to describe it. The first time I ever heard the term "Ultra-Violence" was when movie critics were describing that movie "Clockwork Orange".

Stanley Kubrick had so many great movies. His last movie was entitled "Eyes Wide Shut". And there is a lot of coded information in that movie. There probably was in Clockwork Orange as well but I never tried to put it all together. That movie is not for someone experiencing mental trauma or for someone who has nightmares easily. Clockwork Orange was so far ahead of it's time that I think if it were re-released it would be a big hit in this present time.
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#28

Post by Mushroom »

I agree Kubrick was phenomenal. He directed and produced The Shining and Full Metal Jacket (among other great titles) which are two of my favorite movies ever! Full Metal Jacket is probably my favorite from him.
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#29

Post by Ankerson »

Mushroom wrote:
Tue Mar 09, 2021 11:17 pm
I agree Kubrick was phenomenal. He directed and produced The Shining and Full Metal Jacket (among other great titles) which are two of my favorite movies ever! Full Metal Jacket is probably my favorite from him.

FMJ was one of the best VN movies made IMO.
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#30

Post by Ankerson »

James Y wrote:
Tue Mar 09, 2021 9:35 pm
Ankerson wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 3:36 pm
James Y wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 1:54 pm
Dawn of the Dead (1978)

IMO, the best zombie movie ever. Great storyline. Plus, I prefer zombies to be shuffling. It doesn’t make sense that someone who is undead screams and runs around like Usain Bolt, like they do in the recent zombie films.

Jim

Yeah it was an interesting movie, was low budget, but it did have a plot.

Jim,

There were a number of ‘70s horror films with low budgets that are superior to most of the high-budget horror movies nowadays. Back then, they seemed able to do a lot more with a lot less, when they wanted to. I liked that Dawn of the Dead’s main focus was on the protagonists, as opposed to the zombies. Same with the original Night of the Living Dead, which was super low-budget.

Another excellent low-budget horror film (from 1971) is Let’s Scare Jessica to Death. It’s creepy, and exudes an atmosphere of menace, even though to some current audiences it might appear that very little is happening. It doesn’t rely on cheap, predictable ‘jump-scares’ like current horror films.

Duel (1971), starring Dennis Weaver, and which was Steven Spielberg’s first feature film as director, was the first movie I ever watched on a color TV, the same evening my dad had just gotten it to replace the huge B&W one we’d had forever. Still a GREAT suspense film, shot on a low budget. It must have been a made-for-TV movie, because 1971 is the year we got that first color TV.

But I’m getting off-track and into the wrong era(s). Sorry, MacLaren! :)

Jim


Yes, most of the horror and Science Fiction Movies were lower budget back then.

I really like the older movies better, before they started using all of those computer generated addons we see these days.

And the quality of the acting was better also.
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#31

Post by MacLaren »

James Y wrote:
Tue Mar 09, 2021 9:35 pm
Ankerson wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 3:36 pm
James Y wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 1:54 pm
Dawn of the Dead (1978)

IMO, the best zombie movie ever. Great storyline. Plus, I prefer zombies to be shuffling. It doesn’t make sense that someone who is undead screams and runs around like Usain Bolt, like they do in the recent zombie films.

Jim

Yeah it was an interesting movie, was low budget, but it did have a plot.

Jim,

There were a number of ‘70s horror films with low budgets that are superior to most of the high-budget horror movies nowadays. Back then, they seemed able to do a lot more with a lot less, when they wanted to. I liked that Dawn of the Dead’s main focus was on the protagonists, as opposed to the zombies. Same with the original Night of the Living Dead, which was super low-budget.

Another excellent low-budget horror film (from 1971) is Let’s Scare Jessica to Death. It’s creepy, and exudes an atmosphere of menace, even though to some current audiences it might appear that very little is happening. It doesn’t rely on cheap, predictable ‘jump-scares’ like current horror films.

Duel (1971), starring Dennis Weaver, and which was Steven Spielberg’s first feature film as director, was the first movie I ever watched on a color TV, the same evening my dad had just gotten it to replace the huge B&W one we’d had forever. Still a GREAT suspense film, shot on a low budget. It must have been a made-for-TV movie, because 1971 is the year we got that first color TV.

But I’m getting off-track and into the wrong era(s). Sorry, MacLaren! :)

Jim
R U Kiddin? :D
Duel is an all time favorite!!
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#32

Post by James Y »

Yes, Duel still hasn’t lost any of its impact over time!

Two more films I forgot to mention:

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). My favorite American Clint Eastwood film, and my favorite American western, period (my all-time favorite Clint Eastwood film or western being the Italian movie The Good, The Bad & The Ugly).

Phantasm (1979).

Jim
Last edited by James Y on Wed Mar 10, 2021 9:17 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#33

Post by James Y »

The Mastiff wrote:
Tue Mar 09, 2021 10:16 pm
Jim, I didn't know Duel was Steven Spielberg's. I just thought it was another late night good watch. A whole career of 2nd and 3rd shift jobs made me a night person and one who appreciated B through D movies. Back before cable the local UHF stations late at night didn't do much in the way of censoring so that is where I spent what little TV time I had. My parents never had a color TV until after I was grown up and gone and the TV was not only black and white but it was all of 13 inches. Whoo-hoo! When I bought my first 19 inch color TV I thought I was big time. :)

I didn’t know Duel was a Spielberg film either, until several years ago, when I bought the DVD.

Our old B&W TV was a big, heavy-looking unit that our family had since before I was born. I was 8 when we had to get a new one, that first color TV. It only had 13 channels, IIRC.

For a couple years starting from age 9, I used to stay up late alone on Friday nights, watching a local channel that played weekly sci-fi and horror movies from 11:00 p.m. Let’s Scare Jessica to Death was one of the ones I watched back then, and as a kid it gave me chills (and even then I wasn’t easily creeped out). The same with an older movie, Carnival of Souls (1962), which was super-low budget, but very atmospheric.

Jim
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#34

Post by JD Spydo »

Mushroom wrote:
Tue Mar 09, 2021 11:17 pm
I agree Kubrick was phenomenal. He directed and produced The Shining and Full Metal Jacket (among other great titles) which are two of my favorite movies ever! Full Metal Jacket is probably my favorite from him.
That's interesting that you would bring up the Kubrick movie "Full Metal Jacket". My Brother was in the US Marine Corp for two tours of duty. And he said that Full Metal Jacket had more true reality in it than any other military type movie he ever saw. I was impressed to hear that from him because he doesn't get impressed very easily. But he really praised that movie.

I have no doubt that the torture they put that one guy through in boot camp in Full Metal Jacket actually goes on all the time with the command structure not even caring at all. Yep it was a reality check for sure.
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#35

Post by JD Spydo »

I find it really strange the none of you here have seen Clockwork Orange or Rollerball either one. But if any of you never saw either one I would highly encourage you all to check out both movies>> you can still rent or own both of them. Now for 1971 which is when Clockwork Orange was released it had more "shock factor" than any movie I had seen up to that point including Psycho which was deemed a gold standard in the horror genre during that era. But I was only 18 years old when I first seen Clockwork Orange and it truly rocked my boat at the time. I think that even by today's standards that Clockwork Orange is still slightly ahead of it's time in many ways.

Rollerball to me is so interesting because everything that transpired in that movie is now going on in our present world that we are now living in. In that movie corporations were the ultimate power and it's just about completely that way now. That movie was truly prophetic no doubt about it. It was James Caan's best movie by far IMO. >> I'm not a big movie goer anymore. The last two movies I went to see were horribly disappointing. When I seen the more recent version of Pet Sematary it was a horrible movie compared to the original. Movie quality is going way downhill IMO.
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#36

Post by bobnikon »

James Y wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 1:54 pm
Dawn of the Dead (1978)

IMO, the best zombie movie ever. Great storyline. Plus, I prefer zombies to be shuffling. It doesn’t make sense that someone who is undead screams and runs around like Usain Bolt, like they do in the recent zombie films.

Jim
Evil Dead (and really love Army of Darkness which it spawned... pun intended).
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#37

Post by bobnikon »

MacLaren wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 12:33 pm
rangefinder wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 12:02 pm
I don't own very many DVD/BD, which means if I have the DVD/BD then it must be a favorite. So here's a list from a quick look through the DVD/BD shelves:

1979: Alien
1980: Airplane!
1981: The Dogs Of War, Raiders of the Lost Ark
1982: Blade Runner
1984: Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, Red Dawn, Terminator

These are not movies, but a few TV shows from that timeframe that I have one or more seasons on DVD:

1980: Magnum P.I.
1982: Police Squad!, Black Adder
Gotta love Thomas Magnum!
Which also makes me remember Simon & Simon 😀
You can't talk Magnum and Simon & Simon without throwing a nod to the oh-so-great copy cats Matt Houston and Riptide!
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#38

Post by James Y »

bobnikon wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 11:46 am
James Y wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 1:54 pm
Dawn of the Dead (1978)

IMO, the best zombie movie ever. Great storyline. Plus, I prefer zombies to be shuffling. It doesn’t make sense that someone who is undead screams and runs around like Usain Bolt, like they do in the recent zombie films.

Jim
Evil Dead (and really love Army of Darkness which it spawned... pun intended).

Yeah, Evil Dead (for me, mostly the first one) is another I forgot to mention. The problem with that era (‘70s and ‘80s) is there were so many good ones it’s hard to keep track of them all.

Jim
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#39

Post by James Y »

JD Spydo wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 9:45 am
I find it really strange the none of you here have seen Clockwork Orange or Rollerball either one. But if any of you never saw either one I would highly encourage you all to check out both movies>> you can still rent or own both of them. Now for 1971 which is when Clockwork Orange was released it had more "shock factor" than any movie I had seen up to that point including Psycho which was deemed a gold standard in the horror genre during that era. But I was only 18 years old when I first seen Clockwork Orange and it truly rocked my boat at the time. I think that even by today's standards that Clockwork Orange is still slightly ahead of it's time in many ways.

Rollerball to me is so interesting because everything that transpired in that movie is now going on in our present world that we are now living in. In that movie corporations were the ultimate power and it's just about completely that way now. That movie was truly prophetic no doubt about it. It was James Caan's best movie by far IMO. >> I'm not a big movie goer anymore. The last two movies I went to see were horribly disappointing. When I seen the more recent version of Pet Sematary it was a horrible movie compared to the original. Movie quality is going way downhill IMO.

Joe,

I did see A Clockwork Orange. I think we discussed it in PMs a couple years back when I finally got around to it. It’s a good movie. It’s the only Stanley Kubrick movie I’ve seen that I’ve liked. But I haven’t seen Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut, etc.

Admittedly, I never have seen Rollerball.

If you want to see a recent (horror) movie that is really good (IMO), check out Hereditary (2018). There is a bit of CGI, but is not overwhelmed with it, and it’s completely different from most of the horror films in the past two decades. The vibe and style of it is almost a throwback to the horror movies of the early ‘70s, only with a higher budget. It’s a disturbing movie, though.

Jim
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Re: Favorite late '70s/early '80s movies

#40

Post by bobnikon »

I read CWO before I saw it, so while it was good, and a fairly faithful representation of the book, the wow factor was gone because I had already seen it in my head.
JD Spydo wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 9:45 am
I find it really strange the none of you here have seen Clockwork Orange or Rollerball either one. But if any of you never saw either one I would highly encourage you all to check out both movies>> you can still rent or own both of them. Now for 1971 which is when Clockwork Orange was released it had more "shock factor" than any movie I had seen up to that point including Psycho which was deemed a gold standard in the horror genre during that era. But I was only 18 years old when I first seen Clockwork Orange and it truly rocked my boat at the time. I think that even by today's standards that Clockwork Orange is still slightly ahead of it's time in many ways.

Rollerball to me is so interesting because everything that transpired in that movie is now going on in our present world that we are now living in. In that movie corporations were the ultimate power and it's just about completely that way now. That movie was truly prophetic no doubt about it. It was James Caan's best movie by far IMO. >> I'm not a big movie goer anymore. The last two movies I went to see were horribly disappointing. When I seen the more recent version of Pet Sematary it was a horrible movie compared to the original. Movie quality is going way downhill IMO.
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