Around the World in 80s Movies

Somewhere underneath the never-ending music and dance numbers is a story about keeping Shabba-Doo’s community center for inner city youth (named “Miracles”) from falling into the hands of a slimy developer who wants to bulldoze it to erect a shopping center in the middle of the community.  This would leave the kids nowhere else to go, so obviously they choose to fight the city council’s decis...

Former “Solid Gold” dancer Lucinda Dickey stars as Kelly, a waitress by day, aspiring jazz dancer in her spare time.  She has the looks and talent to go far, at least according to her dance instructor, but this move seems to come at a price, as he wants a little action on the side to help her career.  She makes friends with a couple of local street dancers, aka break-dancers, Ozone and T...

Style Wars is a documentary look at the street art among the youth of New York in the early 1980s, especially in the South Bronx, particularly in graffiti art and break-dancing.  The film takes a balanced look at the youth culture, showing the artistry and thought involved in young people trying to make a name and impact by creating art for people all over the city to see on the side (or the...

Producer and activist Harry Belafonte’s commercialized slice-of-life drama stars Guy Davis as Kenny ‘Double K’ Kirkland, a South Bronx hip-hop DJ with big dreams, and Jon Chardiet as Ramon, a Puerto Rican graffiti artist who would rather tag trains than get a real job.  Rae Dawn Chong is Tracy, an upper-class music student from  a college in Manhattan who sees something in Kenny&...

The seminal hip-hop film looks at underground Bronx art culture, including rap, graffiti art, break-dancing (aka b-boying) and DJing (aka turntablism), as we follow the exploits of a graffiti artist named Zoro and his quest to take his art and make it a living.  Charlie Ahearn and Fab 5 Freddy created this film to expose to the world the genuine artistry and talent going on in the South Bronx, wit...

The loose story of how Def Jam came to be, featuring the hottest hip-hop artists of the mid-1980s, Run-DMC, Kurtis Blow, The Fat Boys, LL Cool J, The Beastie Boys, and many more.  Blair Underwood plays Russell, whose management company is coming up with some hot musical acts, including Run-DMC, featuring his brother Joe, who he ends up losing to some rivals offering more money.  He gets into a fin...

Taimak stars as a young African-American Harlemite who is a devout student of martial arts.  He lives kung fu, breathes kung fu and is so entrenched in the ways of the kung fu warrior, he stands out in his predominantly Black community for his lack of hipness and Asian-tinged wardrobe (he even eats his movie popcorn with chopsticks).  He is sent out into the world from his master teacher to reach...

Sarah Jessica Parker stars as a Chicago teenager who works her tail off for a spot as a dance on her favorite dance show on television, but spats with her dance partner and a potentially rigged contest makes for a great challenge to success, not to mention her father will not approve if he finds out about her pursuit.  Helen Hunt, Shannon Doherty, Jonathan Silverman, and Lee Montgomery get support...

John Waters writes and directs this most accessible of his films, his only one to be rated PG, with HAIRSPRAY, the film that made Ricki Lake a prominent star to be.  Set in 1962, HAIRSPRAY explores race and class in a mostly divided Baltimore, where teens of different races weren’t allowed to dance on the same show at the same time. Tracy Turnblad doesn’t see why they can’t all b...

The sixth and final in the original Freddy Krueger arc finds us ten years in the future, where the psycho demon has killed off all but one of the original Elm Street children.  Needing new souls to maintain his power, Freddy plans to use the last teen to get him out of Springwood to new towns and new teens to murder.  However, his past comes back to haunt him in a big way, leading Freddy to have t...

The fifth entry in the A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET series sees the return of Lisa Wilcox as the heroine, Alice, taking on Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) yet again, who has come back to haunt her nightmares through her unborn child. Freddy wants to be reincarnated by feeding the fetus the soul of Alice’s friends, and with the baby asleep most of the time, the terrifying dreams seem non-stop. ...

Future action movie maestro Renny Harlin came to Hollywood from Finland to take over the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET franchise for one entry with THE DREAM MASTER, in which Freddy Krueger gets resurrected in order to get revenge on those who put him in his grave, and to hopefully take a few more teenage souls along the way.  Brian Helgeland co-scripts this effort that brings together Robert Englund, T...

The third time was certainly the charm in the Nightmare on Elm Street” series with DREAM WARRIORS, which put together a team of adept but troubled teenagers in taking on the fiercely powerful (and growing more so by the day, Freddy Krueger, who is out to kill these kids in their nightmares.  Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) is back to show them how to defeat the evil rascal, but they need...

A very speedy follow-up to A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET replaces Wes Craven as the creative force, taking the series in a new and unexpected direction under the guiding influence of Jack Sholder.  Screenwriter David Chaskin supplies the subversive screenplay that caused it to become a cult hit in the gay horror-loving community for its homoerotic subtext that adds one more layer to this story of a co...

Wes Craven refreshed the struggling slasher film genre with this more surreal and intense take, saving New Line Cinema with one of the big surprise hits of 1984: A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.  Heather Langenkamp  stars as Nancy Thompson, who finds out that she is not alone in having a recurring dream about a badly burnt and scarred man named Freddy Krueger who terrorizes her with horrific acts of ter...

Dreamscape stars Dennis Quaid as a psychic enlisted into a top-secret government experiment that puts him into the nightmares of another person in order to cure them.  However, when the President of the United States becomes the subject, he finds himself embroiled in a plot to assassinate the world leader in his sleep.  Kate Capshaw, Max von Sydow and Christopher Plummer co-star in this low-budget...

Christopher Walken stars as a scientist out to protect his project, one that involves being able to experience the senses and emotions of another person, from getting into the wrong hands.  Natalie Wood, in her final film role, co-stars as the wife he is about to lose, if only they could remember the love they once had.  Special effects wizard Douglas Trumbull directs this troubled but still intri...

Joe Dante’s Explorers  marks the big screen debuts of two future stars, Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix, who, along with Jason Presson, make up the three young boys with a thirst for adventure and scientific exploration.  In their dreams, the boys have a connection to a circuit board that they eventually use to build their own little hovering spacecraft, thanks to the help of a strange spheric...

Disney’s first big foray into the realm of computer animation would prove to be a box office disappoiuntmen in 1982, but garner a legion of fans over the years for its revolutionary design work and the influence it still continue to have in science fiction today.  Jeff Bridges stars as Kevin Flynn, video game programmer, who is ripped off of several ideas by an unscrupulous power hungry man...

Henry Thomas plays Davey, a young San Antonio boy with a vivid imagination and a love o fantasy games.  The lines between fantasy and reality blur when he ends up in possession of a video game cartridge that is the conduit for top secret information wanted by some pretty bad hombres who will kill to get it.  With the help of his imaginary friend, the daring man of adventure named Jack Flack, Davey...

Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy star in this major hit from 1983, one of the first films to break through into the world of hacking and the burgeoning internet, WarGames.  Directed by John Badham, this tells the tale of a teenager who hacks into a database he thinks will allow him to play a not-yet-released video game only to discover he’s in a machine used by the military to launch nuclea...

Although he had claimed to be done putting on the red cape after SUPERMAN III, Reeve is lured back to make a fourth entry with a different studio from an idea he had written himself to bring back the series to respectability.  Alas, it didn’t quite work out that way in the end. Superman makes a decision to meddle in Earth’s affairs by getting rid of all of the nuclear missiles, but Lex...

Just as Kal-El was sent by his parents to Earth from a dying planet in order to save him, so too did Alexander and Ilya Salkind try to save their dying franchise by trying to spin it off with a new character with Kara, Superman’s cousin, better known as Supergirl!  Things didn’t quite go according to plan, however.  Helen Slater is fetching in the title role, and Faye Dunaway suitably...

Gone is Richard Donner, gone is Gene Hackman, and gone is the epic feel of the SUPERMAN series with SUPERMAN III, in which the creators finally wrest the controls away to make what they’ve been wanting to make all along: comedies!  Richard Lester returns as director, as Superman, once again played by Christopher Reeve, has to battle a genius computer hacker played by Richard Pryor from assis...

A patchwork film that somehow still works great as a piece of entertainment, despite the switch in directors from Richard Donner to Richard Lester a great deal of the way through.  Three power-hungry Kryptonians travel to Earth to dominate it, and the only one who can match them is Superman.  Alas, he’s nowhere to be found, and has even sacrificed his powers in order to be with Lois Lane.  M...