I grew up amid the neon explosion, wild fads, and giant hair of the '80s culture. My family was a big movie family - whether we were renting from Erol's, or taping off our newly-gotten cable, or just watching on TV, there was constantly a movie on in the background.
So when I got older, it made perfect sense that I would want to see all the '80s movies I could get my eyes on. But after I had seen literally all the movies that normal people/websites/IMDB/etc. recommended, I decided to get serious and watch EVERY movie made in the entire decade.
Now, to avoid going crazy and going broke, I've set up some basic rules. I won't spend a dime unless I happen to want to own the movie on its own. In other words, I won't buy or rent something just to check it off this list.
What list? The next rule is that I'm using Wikipedia's list for each year as my official "guidebook." That means I'm excluding most foreign movies and small independent productions and music videos and other things that would bog me down forever. Because let's face it, the '80s were video-obsessed.
I am also not watching movies I've seen in the last 15 years (since age 18) unless I truly can't remember the major plot details. I'm also skipping movies I've seen multiple times or many multiples of times (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, et al.) ... which means a lot of movies I'm blogging about are going to be little known cult classics, little known teen slashers, little known action trash, or just little known.
I reserve the right to break these rules whenever it would be entertaining. So if I feel like reviewing Raiders or the music video to Purple Rain, etc., I'm going to do it.
I also reserve the right to watch the movies in any order, because otherwise I'm going to get locked up in some obscure impossible-to-obtain from 1980.
Finally, I have no timetable. That's because I'm anticipating some issues getting ahold of some of the rarer movies, and the movie channels on TV can't be depended on to provide me with films I've never seen.
In the next post I'll post a list of what I've knocked off the list so far, a few preliminary notes, and what is coming up.
This is awesome Joseph!
ReplyDeleteA large portion of my 80s was spent playing computer games (as you would already be aware) and watching movies. My dad used to watch everything (literally), so my brother and I would go with him every week to the movie store and pick a few we wanted to watch. By the end of the eighties, this meant grabbing anything we could find in the horror and sci-fi section, including every Nightmare on Elm Street, Evil Dead, Halloween, Hellraiser etc. etc. we could find. I still enjoy those movies today (even the horrible ones), but I'm not sure I could possibly subject myself to EVERYTHING that came out during that decade! I imagine some of it would be so awful you'll want to poke your eyes out!
At first the sheer number of hours you would have to put into it seemed unachievable. However, if I do an advanced search on IMDB, select all feature films released between 1980 and 1989, select English language only (just to keep the list in check, although that would cut out many hidden gems), and then select only films that have at least 50 ratings (to cut out all the films you'd likely never find), I get a total of 3645 movies. Multiply that by 1.5 hours and you get 5467 and a half hours in total, which is 228 days of watching 80s movies plus probably half again writing posts. That's completely insane, yet it’s not close to what I would have to put in to complete my own adventure game list (500 games * 10 hours average is 5000 hours, but I have to write multiple posts for each game).
My chronological fetish is bothered by the fact you’re going to watch them in any order, but I understand your reasoning behind that. My OCD will get over it eventually! Anyway, you have a reader, and I’ll happily advertise this blog on my own. After all, the majority of the readers there are part of the same generation that watched all this stuff too.
Cheers,
The Trickster