Around the World in 80s Movies

Jaws 3 sees the sons of Sheriff Brody now in Florida, as eldest son Mike (Dennis Quaid) has laid the foundations for a two-year project to bring an underwater structure in the lagoon at Sea World to life.  The younger brother, Sean (John Putch) is also visiting, although he is still suffering from a strong phobia about getting in the water, brought about from his harrowing near-death experiences w...

Jaws 2  is set four years after  Jaws , in the same island community of Amity. Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) still patrols, though now shaken from his ordeal with the shark. Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) is catering to a land developer on the construction of new waterfront condominiums that will be very lucrative for a town still struggling to bring in tourists after the shark attacks of the past. W...

Roy Scheider stars as police chief Martin Brody of Amity, a Long Island resort community just about to enjoy its most popular season of the year, in the sun and fun of the 4th of July.  All is not idyllic on this day, however.  A teenage girl has been found washed up on the beach, apparently the victim of a shark attack.  Brody’s instinct is to close the beach, but he pulls back when the may...

In this sequel to the 1976 remake of Kong Kong , none of the original cast returns, except in archival footage shown in the intro depicting Kong after getting shot down from the top of the World Trade Center and falling to the streets below. We come to learn that Kong (Peter Elliott) improbably survived, existing in a coma for ten years on life support in a giant lab facility in Atlanta awaiting a...

In this remake of the 1933 classic of the same name, Petrox, a gasoline corporation, se nds an expedition to an uncharted island near Micronesia obscured by perpetual fog to find out if there’s oil there. Stowing away is Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges), a paleontologist from Princeton University curious if the reports of a giant primate residing on there are true. they pick up another unexpected pass...

Set in 1910, virginal Jane Parker (Bo Derek), a feminist who thinks women should be able to explore the world the same as men. She travels to Africa to find the father she never knew, renowned explorer James Parker (Richard Harris). James, who abandoned her when she was an infant, thinks Jane is the spitting image of his late wife, which brings up all manner of incestuous feelings. James continues...

Based on elements within Edgar Rice Burroughs’s 1912 novel, “Tarzan of the Apes,” Greystoke begins in the late 19th century, where a young couple born into Scottish nobility, Jack Clayton and his pregnant wife Alice, find themselves shipwrecked off the coast of Western Africa. Months later, they give birth to a boy who quickly becomes an orphan when his mother dies of malaria, an...

The Beastmaster follows the hero, Dar (Marc Singer), the son of a king snatched away from his mother’s womb by a witch under the employ of the evil magician named Maax (Rip Torn). Maax had been prophesied to be killed by the son of a king (to which he takes to slaughtering all of the young’uns he can).  The intended infanticide is thwarted by a goodly peasant, who raises Dar as his own...

The story of Sheena involves a young girl orphaned after her geologist parents are killed in a cave-in while exploring the source of mystical healing soil found near the jungle in the fictional African country of Tigora.  The native Zambouli villagers immediately adopt the girl, dubbing her “Sheena,” prophecied to be their savior and the future queen of the jungle.  Sheena grows up to...

An unofficial spinoff of sorts to the Conan franchise, Red Sonja starts off with Sonja (Brigitte Nielsen) as an attractive farm girl that evil lesbian Queen Gedren of Berkubane (Sandahl Bergman) finds fetching enough to invite over.  Sonja finds the offer so repulsive she ends up giving the queen’s face a nasty gash. Spurned, Sonja’s family is soon murdered by Gedren’s army, whil...

Power-hungry Queen Tamaris of Shadizar (Sarah Douglas), who   offers Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) a bargain. Taramis will resurrect his dead lover Valeria upon completion of a special mission. He is to assist with the protection of her niece, a young virgin princess named Jehnna (Olivia d’Abo). Jehnna travels with her bodyguard Bombaata (Wilt Chamberlain), to venture into the mystical castl...

The setting of this fantasy-adventure based on Robert E. Howard’s literary creations is the Hyborian Age, a fictional period invented by Howard, around 10,000 B.C. It is a time of magic, madmen, and mercenaries, and barbarians who kill before they end up killed. The film starts with Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) as a young lad in Cimmeria, orphaned at the hands of an evil snake cult-leader a...

This animated story involves a fantasy world imagined before the last ice age, featuring human civilizations and exotic dinosaurs coexisting. It is a time where the lands are divided among two factions, the evil Ice Peak sorcerer warlords, Queen Juliana and her wicked son Nekron, leading an army of ape-like subhumans, and the goodly Fire Keep clan led by King Jarol. The ice clan’s Nekron is...

Nine months after her Oz experience, Dorothy wants to return to check in with her friends. Aunt Em thinks Dorothy is mentally ill. She seeks treatment from an experimental clinic using electroshock therapy to treat maladies of the mind. Dorothy is taken to an eerie clinic run by an uncaring Dr. Worley and the stern Nurse Wilson. During the treatment, a mysterious girl watching over Dorothy interve...

The story involves Willow Ufgood (Warwick Davis), a farmer who dreams of becoming a sorcerer’s apprentice among the Nerwyns, which are a race of little people. One day, he encounters a baby who has washed onto the riverbank near his farm. The baby, who we come to learn is named Elora Danan, is a Daikini, a race much larger than the Nerwyns, but Willow’s brethren don’t think it&#8...

The moon of Endor gets attacked by a vicious band of thuggish Sanyassan marauders, whose ancestors also crashlanded on Endor some time ago, and a powerful shape-shifting sorceress named Charal under the leadership of King Terak.  They attack the Ewok village, taking the crashed Towani ship’s power source after killing Cindel’s family, then take away all of the Ewoks except Wicket back...

George Lucas’s story for this made-for-TV spin-off from the Star Wars films involves a spacecraft that crash lands on Endor. The mother and father spend the film looking for their two children, a fourteen-year-old named Mace Towani and his four-year-old sister, Cindel, not knowing that they’ve been taken in by the kindly Ewoks whose village lies a bit of a distance away from the crash...

The Star Wars Holiday Special is a two-hour made-for-TV musical variety show movie that aired on November 17. 1978 on CBS for its November sweeps period.). Variety shows were hot on TV in the 1970s and this effort would serve as a ratings bonanza, putting the hottest cultural phenomenon of the last year in front of as many eyeballs as they could on a Friday night when kids could stay up to watch T...

The final of the Star Trek films to feature the entire original cast, Star Trek VI  draws many parallels to the end of the Cold War between the United States (represented here by the Federation) and the Soviet Union (the big bad Klingons).  An explosion occurs on the Klingon moon known as Praxis (an allusion to the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl), which makes the Klingon race face possible extincti...

Star Trek V starts off with the crew taking over the reins of new Enterprise starship, and their first impromptu mission requires them to travel to the near desolate planet of Nimbus III, where a rogue Vulcan known as Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill)   has placed several key ambassadors as hostages in order to draw a starship to the planet.  His plans are to hijack the ship and crew, taking them on an...

Star Trek IV starts with our heroes on planet Vulcan, loading up to go home and face punishment from the Federation for their hijacking of the Enterprise and its subsequent destruction, as well as the sabotage of the Excelsior.  As they approach Earth, they find that a giant space probe is threatening to destroy the planet, emitting a signal that those on Earth are baffled how to respond to.  It i...

Star Trek III starts off with the weary Enterprise crew returning home after their near-death battle with Khan, and the actual death of Spock, whose body had been torpedoed to the Genesis world, which was a newly transformed planet, formerly without life.  While all involved are a bit worse for wear, the biggest effect on a crew member seems to be with Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley), who is exhibitin...

With Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the series took a swing in the exact opposite direction from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, putting things on a raw emotional level. This is a sequel, not of the first film, but of an original “Star Trek” episode, “The Space Seed”, also starring Ricardo Montalban in the Khan role. Now, it is 15 years later, and Khan and his men are maro...

Fast approaching Earth is a cloudlike alien entity that has destroys all that approaches its nebulous form.  The not-quite-fully-refitted Enterprise is the closest vessel available in its approach toward Earth. Admiral Kirk (William Shatner) pushes his way to take over the mission over the man he picked for his successor as the captain, Willard Decker (Stephen Collins).  Kirk makes every attempt t...

In this semi-spoof sequel to the classic TV show, “Dragnet”, Dan Aykroyd isn’t playing Jack Webb’s character, Joe Friday, in this film, but rather, his nephew, with the same name and personality.  He’s assigned a roguish new partner named Pep Streebeck (Tom Hanks)   with which to fight crime with, though he’s of a new breed of a police officer, not really respec...