Hello. My name’s Ben. How are you? I am fine.
Would you like to play a game of chess?
I was 2 when the eighties started, but my parents were really cool when I was a kid and let me pick pretty much anything that caught my eye in the local video store – even violent grown up ones which they probably should have steered me away from. As a result I grew up as a highly imaginative child with an intense love of movies, which led me to be an occasional screenwriter and film director – I once directed a feature film called Time Of Your Life with a grand total budget of £2000. Unfortunately it was never fully finished, but you can catch a rough cut on YouTube.
But now I’m a responsible adult with a child of my own – and while I’m compiling a list of all the classic movies I want my own kids to experience and enjoy, I’m wondering whether 80s movies are all that they’re cracked up to be. Am I looking back at those films I loved with rose-tinted glasses? Do they still hold up after thirty-odd years? And what about those classics that everybody raves on about but I’ve never got round to watching?
So I’ve put together a list of movies made between 1980 and 1989 from two sources – the Wikipedia page for ‘1980s in film’ and an online encyclopedia of 80s movies at www.fast-rewind.com. This has given me a total of just under 1000 films to watch. It’s not the complete list of every movie ever made in that decade, but it’s a start. Besides, if I go at a rate of one film a week it’ll take me just over 19 years to get through that lot alone. Still, it’ll keep me busy at least. If a film has a sequel released in the same decade, I’ll attempt to watch all of them together. That should cut the total time down a bit.
Oh, and while I’ll be using a variety of means to watch the movies, you know, Netflix, Sky, YouTube etc etc, some initial research has shown that some of these films just aren’t available to view right now.
So maybe it’ll only take me 17 years…
If you’d like to suggest 80s movies for me to watch, especially those really obscure ones that are probably missing from my list, you can email me at eemem@hotmail.co.uk or get hold of me on Twitter using @every80smovie
Every Eighties Movie Ever Made 