Movies Of The 80's - 1983

 

Introduction

As an 80's music aficionado, I've found myself interested as of late in the world of 80's soundtracks. Be it scores, or various artist albums, I'm always on the lookout for a CD to add to my collection.

Of course, there are the staples. Top Gun, Footloose, Flashdance, Ghostbusters, and the list goes on and on. These albums have been a mainstay in my collection since relatively the start of it. But, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and I wanted to dive deeper.

The problem I quickly found was that while searching based on films that popped into my head randomly, I wasn't necessarily delving very far. After mulling it around for a while, I finally broke down and decided that to truly find just what was out there, I first had to educate myself on what films were out there.

It took months of cataloging, which was based on limited time between work and other obligations, but finally I was able to reach the finish line. Utilizing links to Wikipedia by year denoting the List of American Films of (insert year here), I created a series of posts with each movie poster, ad, or some form of representation for made for television movies, to have a reference guide. Now I could truly begin my search into just what soundtracks were out there.

Not wanting all this work to go to waste, I decided I would take the next several weeks to present to you the Movies of the 80's! We've already looked at the freshman year of the decade, and it continues here with 1981.

I'm still struggling through the decade of films. Ninety percent of them so far have been things I've never heard of. I'm crossing my fingers that things improve.

Return Of The Jedi immediately pops out in my mind when 1983 is mentioned. If nothing else, I remember seeing that film that year, in theaters! All my poor knowledge aside for films of the 80s, I still have that going for me!

...And we're off to a poor start. The only thing I can stop and pause to say about The Big Chill is that I own the soundtrack.

Cheech & Chong's Still Smoking was among the VHS tapes my brother and I managed to see as young kids. In conjunction with their audio cassettes, we certainly passed a lot of Lego building time together listening to them in some form of capacity.

Much like many other people, I can't say that A Christmas Story was part of my vocabulary until it began its annual re-runs thanks to Ted Turner. Though its an iconic staple now, many seem to forget it it was only mildly successful upon its initial release.

I want to say my sister was watching Cujo one day, and I just so happened to walk in, stick around for a few minutes, and then leave. The only thing I really recall from it was the mom from E.T.

I have to believe that if I knew about a move starring Mr. T in 1983 that I would have been all over it. Us kids watched The A-Team whenever we got the chance to, and his name was definitely one in our vocabulary. To this day I haven't seen the film.

While I really like the soundtrack to Flashdance, when I finally saw the movie, it was not impressive. Has it just not aged well? I don't know. I never saw it back in the 80's.

Part of my VHS collection included Jaws 3-D, which I watched once, and never again. If memory serves, it was the one where they had an underwater sea base, and the shark took some form of offense to it being there.

You can't go wrong with Mickey's Christmas Carol. It's an iconic classic which to this day I make a point to watch every holiday season.

The Griswold's first outing is a classic. I've watched this film a number of times, but simply cannot get my hands on the soundtrack. It's rare and expensive!

As I mentioned in my 1982 post, I didn't start watching James Bond movies until I owned the box set on VHS. While Never Say Never was not among them, being unofficially part of the series, I did manage to track down and buy the film on VHS.

In correlation with the above, this was also the time where I first saw Octopussy. Roger Moore was my sister's favorite Bond, but as for me, I like them all for their own reasons.

I tried watching The Outsiders when it was streaming in 2022, but couldn't really get into the film. Iconic cast aside, it was just kind of boring.

I think I owned all the Porky's movies at one point on VHS, but I probably only watched them once.

I visually remember the massive double VHS set that was my dad's The Right Stuff. I tried a couple times to watch the film as a kid, but could never get into it.

Risky Business I caught in my late teen years, but I wasn't actually doing so in an effort to the film itself per se. Rather, for what Rebecca De Mornay was going to show.

We had come from overseas for one of the few brief visits to our grandparents. While at my mom's parent's house I saw out of the corner of my eye a trailer appear on the television. I erupted in excitement as I quickly realized it was for the next Star Wars film. Since then, I've seen the film more times than I can count.

I tried sitting down with my dad to watch Sudden Impact with him as a kid, but the film didn't hold my interest, and I eventually wandered off to play with toys. I didn't know who a Dirty Harry was, let alone that there were two films prior to it.

Superman III, on the other hand, was a film I saw frequently as a kid. The scene where the chick turns into an evil robot actually used to spook the crap out of me. In fact, as I type this, I'm still cringing. It's funny how the things that "scar" us as kids still creep us out as adults, even though we are very hip to the world of make believe in movies at this point.

I had never heard of Trading Places until I purchased my own VHS copy in the late 90's. It quickly became one of my favorite comedy films that I watched frequently until parting with the tape.

I picked up the soundtrack for Two Of A Kind one day, but it was more so because my sister wanted to "borrow" some tunes off of it. There are a couple track on it that made it worth keeping. However, I don't think I've ever seen the movie.

Valley Girl is a soundtrack I picked up during one of my many dollar bin scrounges. I've never seen the movie though.

Of course I've seen Winnie the Pooh: A Day For Eeyore. However, my taking in of the short film was through the release of The Many Adventures Of Winnie the Pooh.

That wraps up 1983, and sadly, I'm still not batting a very good average of films that I actually know, let alone have seen. I'm crossing my fingers that 1984 fares better, because that's where we're headed next week.

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