Well, we lived in a small town, out in the country and the nearest theater was about 20 miles away; plus, my father was a school teacher and money for luxuries, like movies, was tight. We got to go to the occasional movie; but it was rarely more than a couple a year, for several years. I made up for it when I was able to drive and earn my own money, seeing just about every comedy, sci-fi and action film that came along, from about 1982, until I went off to college in the fall of '84. So, most 1970s movies I saw on either network tv or on video, much later.

I did not get to see Logan's Run, in theater and missed its network debut, because we couldn't tune in the local CBS station very well (it was about 80 miles away, without a strong broadcasting tower). So, All I knew was the 3 out of 5 issues of the Marvel adaptation that my cousin had. I didn't get to see it until I rented it, on videotape. I didn't get to see a Bond film, until Moonraker, in a theater; only on ABC TV. I did not get to see Close Encounters or Alien in the theater; only on video, in college. I missed out on the latter two Sinbad films, Golden Voyage of Sinbad and Sinbad & The Eye of the Tiger. Missed the first 3 Rocky films. I finally got to see Star Wars well after most of my classmates and after seeing the first half of the Marvel adaptation.

I didn't see a Dirty Harry film until The Enforcer was shown on television. Animal House and Caddyshack (and Trading Places and The Blues Brothers) were all after the theatrical run.

What did I get to see in theaters? Well, my dad took us to Return of the Pink Panther, PP Strikes Again and Revenge of the PP. We got dropped off to see The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training and The Gumball Rally (same race but predated the Cannonball Run films). My dad took us to see The Norsemen, with Lee Majors, as a viking. It was as bad as it sounds.

Disney films were more likely, though not many of the animated ones. We see The Million Dollar Duck, when it was new; Return From Witch Mountain, and Candleshoe (which is actually pretty good). We got to see The Apple Dumpling Gang (which is entertaining enough). The closest thing to an adult film, aside from the Pink Panther movies, was Silver Streak, with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. No F-bombs and SOB was one of the stronger curse words. No skin, either. My dad did take us to see Midway, which is probably where I first saw a trailer for Rocky and possibly the Star Wars teaser trailer (that might have been a bit later).

My first R-rated film was Uncommon Valor, after I turned 17.

In the late 70s, I earned my own money and my mother had made some money in real estate, so we saw a few more movies in that period, like Star Wars, Silver Streak, Superman. I didn't get to see Star Trek TMP until I had graduated college, in 1988.

At least, in those days, you could catch the better films on network tv, eventually (and edited for content); so, you got to see most of them. Films from the 50s and 60s I could see on syndicated movie packages, usually on weekends, which is how I saw most 60s war films, a lot of great comedies and caper films and the like. 30s and 40s films were a bit rarer and I saw more of those with cable tv and video rental.

One I didn't see until I was over 40 was Casablanca. Most of my life, via tv or other movies, where characters would talk about the film, I had heard about it; but, it was always the parting at the airplane and talked up as this great romantic scene. That sounded sappy and it became a cliched thing; so, I never watched the film. I felt like I knew it, from the constant references in other things. Finally, I decided to sit down and watch it and was blown away by it. It was way better than I had in my head and it was really affecting. The scene where the Nazis are singing their songs and bullying the refugees, in Rick's place and Victor Lazlow tells the band to strike up La Marseilles brought tears to my eyes, because I was so moved at how everyone took up the song and projected the defiance of the Nazis, particularly the singer with the orchestra. It was only later that I learned that many of the extras were refugees from the Nazis and there was nothing phony about the moment. It really is that great of a film, with tremendous and memorable performances. It also really captures the spirit of the times, in a dramatic fashion.

One movie I really wanted to see, at the time, was Excalibur. I was a King Arthur nut and was reading the novel that was released around the time, by John Jakes and Gil Kane (yep, as in Green Lantern), but which had nothing to do with the film. I loved the novel's take on th stuff, as it tried to be a bit more realistic and historical. Then, I saw the film, on video and was underwhelmed. It followed Mallory too much, for my tastes and I would have rather seen more influence from The Once and Future King or Mary Stewart. Helen Mirren was great, as well as Nicol Williamson, as Merlin; but, Nigel Terry was rather underwhelming as Arthur. Only ever saw him in one other thing (an episode of Highlander, The Series) and didn't care for him there, either. John Boorman staged some epic battle stuff; but, a lot of the dialogue fell flat and there was too much of an artifice to the look of many scenes. Also, the scene of Arthur's conception, while Uther is in full armor, was a bit ridiculous. Only later, when I watched it with the commentary track did I learn that Ygraine was played by Boorman's daughter and he was directing her in that scene. Talk about messed up! I think the problem, for me, was that Boorman couldn't decide to either do a fantasy Arthur or a realistic Arthur and vacillated between the two poles and never achieved either or even a synthesis. What was interesting was how many young actors I would see there, but not recall when I encountered them in later films and tv, with much better performances: Gabriel Byrne, Liam Neeson, Ciaran Hinds, Patrick Stewart, Clive Swift (though he wasn't young), and Robert Addie. Of course, Helen Mirren stood out in so many ways, from the performance and her beauty, which wasn't lost of her castmates and future lovers.....

(Warning, appropriate F-bomb, in story context)

Absolutely!

Furthermore, there have been a few different releases of the film, and for my money the original one remains the one to see. The second version, with a few added SFX scenes, actually managed to destroy a lot of the magic of the original (because some things are much better left to the imagination than shown to be more mundane than expected).

One thing that might hurt a modern first-time viewing of Close Encounters is that at the time we had never seen anything like it. It had a few holy f*** moments that wouldn't seem as impressive today. (I mean, they still work, of course, but the sense of absolute novelty isn't there anymore).

Last year, one of my friends texted me that he was watching Three Amigos, and I mentioned that I had never seen it. He started badgering me about missing one of the vital films of the 1980s. (I still find it baffling that he rates Three Amigos so highly.)

I mentioned that there are a lot of films from the 1980s that might be considered essential that I just never got around to seeing, and a lot of them were films that I just wasn’t interested in. I mentioned a few, I think it was The Karate Kid, Dirty Dancing, Footloose, Flashdance, Predator, Commando ...

He asked me if I had lived in a cave for a while! 😆 (To be fair, he does that for a lot of movies that are fairly obscure. A few weeks ago, it somehow came up that I have never seen The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, and you’d think from his reaction that I had never seen Casablanca or The Big Lebowski.)

So I made a list of about 30 or 40 “key” 1980s movies that I had never seen. Some of them weren’t really essential 1980s films. I got a lot of recommendations from people I know and I wrote down a few that I had wanted to see but never got to them (like Twins and Buckaroo Banzai) and I found a couple of “Greatest Movies of the 1980s” lists online and picked off a few films that sounded interesting (like Possession and White Dog).

So that’s what I did for several months in 2021. I watched 1980s films. I didn’t finish the list. Yet. Some of them are hard to find and I also took a break and never really got back to it.

I saw all the films that I mentioned in the second paragraph. I also saw Stop Making Sense, The Grifters, Thief, Mystic Pizza, After Hours, Something Wild, Risky Business, The Decline of Western Civilization, Blow Out, Smithereens, Missing, Sleepaway Camp, Trading Places, Coming to America, The Times of Harvey Milk, Police Story, Hellraiser, Hollywood Shuffle, They Live, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, Dead Calm, Sweetie, Boiling Point, Kindergarten Cop, Blind Fury.

And I still haven’t seen White Dog. It looks very entertaining!