Ultimate ‘80s Movie List: Best of the Best

What is the quintessential 80s movie?

We don’t mean the best movie from the 1980s. That’s a different category.

What movie truly represents and sums up the ‘80s?

The Breakfast Club (1985) — Possibly nothing captures the decade as well as this John Hughes teen classic. He gathered five kids representing five different social cliques and their strategies for handling the disinterested system that has power over their lives.

Beverly Hills Cop (1984) — What makes this movie great is it’s both fun and dramatic at the same time. Still, it’s Eddie Murphy’s Axel Foley who is unlike anyone from the ’70s, ’60s, ’50s or even ‘40s.

Sure there have been smart-ass detectives before (that was an old trope even by the 1980s) but it’s Axel’s DGAF attitude regarding authority that shaped a generation.

Poltergeist (1982) — The first scene is one of the best openings of any movie ever, and it’s pure 1980’s suburbia. The feel of what it was like to live in the ’80s is depicted perfectly. Not until the arrival of Netflix’s “Stranger Things” has a movie or show captured the elan of the moment so well.

Valley Girl (1983) — Every generation needs a star-crossed romance. The decade offered many to choose from, including “Say Anything” and “Romancing the Stone,” this is quintessential ’80s… with the Plimsouls leading a killer soundtrack.

Back to the Future (1985) — Part of what makes Gen X different is movies like this one that challenged the very nature of reality. Our hero Marty McFly is aware of two realities, one good, one bad that result from actions and inactions taken. Talk about a mindf*** for teens and little kids.

It’s not just asking a girl out to prom, which is challenging enough. It’s your entire existence on the line. Mess up and your life is Game Over, to quote another ’80s classic.

The Terminator (1984) — The intensity of this film can’t be understood unless you saw it in theaters, holding your breath for two solid hours. There had been nothing like it before, the sheer relentlessness of the pursuing Terminator. And a lot like “The Breakfast Club” this film has a kind of nihilism to it, of the inevitable relentlessly running you down.

It’s not high school bullies. The monster here is technology. It’s fitting since Gen X was the first generation consumed by technology.

Sex Lies & Videotape (1989) — Speaking of being consumed by technology, this brilliant little film by Steven Soderbergh (arguably one of his best) shows the challenges Gen X faced in the 1980s. The tensions between boys and girls, men and women weren’t enough. Now, it’s captured and witnessed on videotape.

Gen X is the first generation that had to live with the critical parent getting turned into actual technology, and it’s only gotten worse since then.

Blue Velvet (1986) — I thought long and hard about the difference between a good movie made in the 1980s versus an essential ’80s movie. Could the movie have been made prior to 1980, or did it have elements that were uniquely ’80s?

“Blue Velvet” makes the list because what kicks off the mystery is an ear found in a suburban yard. The deeper meta symbology of it being an ear. In a suburban yard. Brilliant.

Did we listen? No.

Ghostbusters (1984) — The decade featured plenty of great comedies, and more than a few were courtesy of Harold Ramis and Ivan Reitman. Their “Ghostbusters” tops “Stripes” and “Caddyshack” (which really is a ‘70s comedy) and “Back to School” because it has ghosts.

Ghosts are fun. Scary, sure, but interesting and like “Poltergeist” this movie hinted at a deeper truth: all the bodies buried were starting to come out both literally and figuratively in the form of mental illness, social justice, et al.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) — Ferris is the shadow of ‘80s nihilism. We see him now for the villain in the story he always was, but back then he was like Axel Foley… full of fun and mayhem.

Eighties films like “Footloose” capture both the best of that time and the worst. It’s wild to think of a movie being made now where a teenage girl gets beaten up and nobody says “boo” about it. And just a few years later “Love Potion No. 9” where a man essentially rapes an entire sorority house for laughs.

We’ve come far as a culture since then. I miss some of it, but I’m happy we’ve grown up or at least are pretending to be adults.

What film would you say best characterizes the ’80s?

Best ’80s Movies by Category

Comedy

• Stripes
• Beetlejuice
• Caddyshack
• Ghostbusters
• Weird Science
• Beverly Hills Cop
• A Fish Called Wanda
• The Witches of Eastwick
• National Lampoon’s Vacation
• Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Action

• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Escape from New York
• Conan The Barbarian
• Lethal Weapon
• Road House
• Red Dawn
• 48 Hours
• Predator
• Die Hard
• F/X

Horror

• Aliens
• The Thing
• Poltergeist
• The Shining
• Angel Heart
• Dead Ringers
• Re-Animator
• An American Werewolf In London
• The Changeling
• Serpent and the Rainbow

Drama

• The Breakfast Club
• Body Heat
• Risky Business
• Platoon
• The Outsiders
• Witness
• Stand By Me
• The Accused
• The Color Purple
• The Name of the Rose
• Less Than Zero
• Rain Man
• War Games
• Wall Street
• The Right Stuff
• Broadcast News
• The Natural
• To Live and Die In LA
• The Year of Living Dangerously

Romance

• The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• 9 1/2 Weeks
• Against All Odds
• The Accidental Tourist
• Valley Girl
• When Harry Met Sally
• Romancing the Stone
• Children of a Lesser God
• Fatal Attraction
• Blue Velvet
• Say Anything

Science Fiction/Fantasy

• Blade Runner
• The Empire Strikes Back
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Excalibur
• The Terminator
• Brazil
• They Live
• The Road Warrior
• Back to the Future
• ET: The Extra Terrestrial
• The Fly
• Batman
• Firestarter
• Dreamscape
• Enemy Mine
• Highlander
• The Golden Child
• Altered States
• Heavy Metal
• The Running Man
• My Science Project
• Cherry 2000