31.
FIRST BLOOD (1982)

Still not finished with the year 1982, my next pick is Sylvester Stallone’s greatest movie, First Blood. This film is much better than all of the Rambo sequels that followed. Rather than being set in an actual war zone, it’s set in civilian life. Traumatized Vietnam War veteran John Rambo drifts into a “quiet” rocky mountain town and gets harassed by local police. His pent up rage and paranoia from his war experiences gets triggered and, after beating up several police, he is pursued through the cold winter mountains by the authorities.

The craftsmanship of this film is outstanding in every department. Script, story structure, cinematography, cast, music, fight choreography, stunts and editing are all incredible.

Narratively, the film stands out from its action competitors because it lacks the traditional depiction of good guys vs bad guys. That over-simplistic, black and white is hardly ever true in life nor in this film. Rambo and the authorities are both partially responsible for the total chaos that ensues. Each side gets tied up in their own egos and desire for revenge. And Rambo’s own revenge motive is partially motivated by a desire to relive and alter his own experiences of the Vietnam War ... projecting the Vietnamese army onto the police authorities in America. Very few action movies manifest this kind of psychological truth about the nature of conflict.

Another standout feature of First Blood is the incredibly low death toll of the film. One particularly corrupt cop is killed when he falls from a helicopter while trying to shoot Rambo, but elsewhere the action only results in injuries. The explosive ending has Rambo virtually demolishing a town, but he only destroys property. Despite this extremely low death toll, the film has some of the most engaging action sequences ever filmed.

I have a couple of deep dive studies on specific scenes in First Blood. Check them out on my Film Analysis page.

32.
POLTERGEIST (1982)

One last film now from 1982, making a total of seven from this one year. That film is Steven Spielberg’s horror movie Poltergeist. And I call it “Spielberg’s” because he unofficially directed the film. Tobe Hooper was the official director, but this film screams Spielberg in its visual style and its themes of family bonding. There are even production stills and behind the scenes footage showing Spielberg directing the film.

Poltergeist includes a lot of the usual horror tropes, but it adds enough twists on the conventions to make its own mark. It uses a superb cast of, then, unknown actors to give a sense of reality to the family. The ghosts of this story seem to be electrical in nature. They use the static of an old cathode ray television as an inter-dimensional portal. And electrical sparks frequently characterize their appearances to the living.

There are too many standout scenes to list here, but some highlights include a possessed clown doll tormenting a young boy in his bedroom, a visiting paranormal researcher hallucinating the tearing off of his own face in a mirror, gorgeous special effects of the undead floating down a stairway, a hallway being supernaturally stretched out to ten times its length, coffins bursting their way out of the ground, and an entire house being sucked out of our world and disappearing into the spirit realm.

As with everything Spielberg was putting out in the late 70’s and early 80’s Poltergeist is shot and edited to perfection. All topped off by Jerry Goldmith’s heavenly score. Check out my long form deep dive and shorter freebies on the film at my Film Analysis page.

33.
RUMBLEFISH (1983)

Onto 1983 now, another outstanding year, and we have my favourite Francis Ford Coppola film, Rumblefish. This is one of the most criminally underrated and misunderstood movies of all time, as well as being one of the greatest for my money.

A very young Matt Dillon plays Rusty James, a teen from the slums who is obsessed with the glory illusions of gang fighting. His older brother, played by Mickey Rourke and known only as The Motorcycle Boy, is a local legend who had previously dominated the gang fighting scene, but suddenly quit and left town. Rusty is hoping to take the reins and live up to his brother’s “achievements”, but he lacks the intelligence and insight to do so.

The film failed commercially partially because of an extremely limited release and lack of adveritzing, but it also failed to connect with wider audiences for two main reasons. The psychological truths about youth attitudes to street violence were not what the young generation wanted to hear. They wanted movies like The Warriors (1978), but Rumblefish pulls the rug on the power and glory delusions of gang life. When I showed the film to my friends in my teens they hated it.

The other main reason for the film’s commercial failure was its heavy symbolism. Rumblefish doesn’t openly state its core messages for the unthinking. It demonstrates them through a bombardment of visual metaphors and dialogue subtext. It requires the viewer engage with and process that symbolism. That demand was too much for most viewers, so the film instead comes off as a long dream sequence where not everything makes obvious sense.

Aesthetically, the film is a sublime work of art. Shot in black and white (itself an uncommercial choice), it applies film noir light and shadow to an 80’s urban slum setting. Time lapse photography is used to make cloudscapes roll by rapidly in many scenes and to make shadows stretch and animate across exterior walls. Smoke is applied to many scenes for a dreamy effect. The result is visually stunning in its beauty and symbolism regarding years wasted on foolish and unrealistic youthful ego pursuits.

The soundtrack by Police drummer Stuart Copeland is one of the most unique you’ll ever hear … a fusion of inter-generational styles with a strong jazz leaning. Elsewhere the film’s characters are inhabited by an outstanding support cast – Dennis Hopper, Lawrence Fishburne, Diane Lane, Chris Penn, Nicholas Cage and William Smith. Dillon and Rourke are both marvellous in the lead roles too.

Rumblefish is one of the greatest films ever made, but it still hasn’t quite had its day in the sunlight.

34.
RISKY BUSINESS (1983)

Rumblefish may not have connected with the youth of the day, but in the same year 1983, a different type of youth film did, and that film was Risky Business. Young Tom Cruise plays Joel Goodman, the teenage son of upper-middle class parents in a well to do suburb. Joel is plagued with anxieties about the present and the future. He’s mainly anxious about girls, his grades and whether he’ll get into a decent college. His parents have high expectations of him, but his confidence is way too low for him to fulfil their wishes. As often happens in life, a person needs have their parental and financial security blanket pulled from them in order to truly grow. They need some hardship.

Joel gets the unpleasant lessons he needs when his parents go on vacation, leaving him in charge of their house. He ends up losing his virginity to a young hooker named Lana, but she steals one of Mother’s parents’ most prized possessions. He also accidentally puts his Father’s car into Lake Michigan. To resolve the entire situation before his parents return from holiday Joel has to quickly become a no-nonsense businessman, a pimp to put it more accurately. He sets up his horny friends with Lana’s hooker friends and gets enough money from the venture to cover auto-repair costs and reaquire his Mother’s prized possession.

Risky Business plays as a comedy, and a very good one, but it’s a deeply serious film. It drills home a message to its youth audience about how merciless and competitive life is outside of the protective bubbles of parental protection and school institutions.

Not to mention, the film is also gorgeous in all technical department.

The incredibly talented writer / director, Paul Brickman, was suddenly hot property after this film became a smash hit. He potentially would have gone on to become one of the greatest household name directors of all time if he’d done a few more films of this quality.  But, for some reason, he walked away from the film industry right after slamming it with Risky Business.

Check out my long form study on my Film analysis page.

35.
SCARFACE (1983)

Still in 1983, we have another classic … Brian DePalma’s Scarface, probably the boldest and most daring gangster movie of all time. Al Pacino, in a career highlight role, plays Tony Montana, a Cuban streetwise refugee who arrives in Florida, USA, hoping to make his fortune. Given his impulsive and impatient nature, the drug trade is his chosen route from rags to riches. His bold confidence, smart tactics and willingness to take risks rapidly move him up the drug trade ladder until he eventually kills his own boss and takes over his business network, becoming a multi-millionaire along the way.

On first viewing, this movie hits like a sledgehammer. There’s a ton of foul language, it’s extremely violent and it’s highly sexualized. Critics mistakenly focused on these elements, as they typically do, while overlooking the marvellous script by Oliver Stone, written before his directorial breakout film Platoon (1986). Stone had personally operated in the very drug trade the film depicts and had served prison time for it. In turn, he brings an authenticity to the characters and situations that virtually no other screenwriter would be able to come close to. The flamboyant costumes, the lingo, the attitudes … these aren’t fabrications. They’re a depiction of the insane Cocaine Wars that plagued Florida in the 1970’s and 80’s.

The second half of the film becomes more symbolic as we deep dive into the delusional inner world of super-rich Tony Montana. Regardless of money and power, he still suffers the same core psychological problems he did when he was a destitute common street criminal. And all the rage and ego explodes on screen in a final over-the-top gun battle.

Scarface has a fairly long run time, but it’s never boring. It moves fast and it takes us on a long journey with many sight-seeing stops. It’s also a superb comedy, but this aspect of the film has been overlooked.

Check out my studies of the film on my Film Analysis page.

36.
UNCOMMON VALOR (1983)

Still in 1983, we have one of the most criminally underrated movies on this list, Uncommon Valor. It was a strong commercial hit at the time, but critics never warmed to it. Even today, bland critics are unable to see anything good in this movie on account of their hatred of US militarism. In fact, they’re so blinded by that motive that virtually no modern critiques have identified the simple fact that Uncommon Valor isn’t a pro-war movie in the first place. If anything, it’s more anti-war.

Gene Hackman plays Colonel Rhodes, a retired Korean War veteran whose son, Frank, was captured by enemy forces in Vietnam and, presumably, is still being held as POW. The Vietnam War may be over, but thousands of US soldiers are still being held in camps and used for slave labour, including several more of Frank’s squad. After identifying the whereabouts of Frank through paid Vietnamese informants, Rhodes and another grieved Father (a quite wealthy man) fund and assemble a team to conduct a rescue mission.

The scripting of the film went through multiple screenwriters and there was some bitterness from the first draft writer toward producer John Milius, but the end result is a very entertaining and well-crafted movie. The film never takes a stance on whether the Vietnam War should have occurred in the first place, but it’s openly critical of politicians (whose sons conveniently were not drafted to fight) and it’s critical of the post-war efforts to repatriate POWs left behind. Rather than being pro-war, the film is pro-friendship and pro-family, showing the lengths people will go to save a loved one.

It’s quite serious subject matter, and the story is politically very savvy in terms of the practicalities of the mission and the political obstacles faced. But the emotional load is lightened by engaging humour throughout the retraining section of the story (former veterans getting back in shape for the mission). The final battle scene, the raid on the slave camp, has some war movie cliché elements, but it’s very well-done overall and it has one of the most emotionally hard-hitting endings I’ve seen in any movie, in any genre. Even the hateful critics had to concede the ending was an incredibly powerful one. My eyes always well up at the film’s ending.

Technically Uncommon Valor is shot more or less by the numbers, but efficiently. The score by James Horner is excellent and parts of it ended up being reworked into his score for James Cameron’s Aliens (1986). But what really stands out is the cast and the dialogue. Hackman is at his best. There’s also Robert Stack, Fred Ward, Randall “Tex” Cobb and an excellent early role by Patrick Swayze.

37.
PSYCHO 2 (1983)

Now to my fifth and last choice from 1983, the masterpiece Psycho 2. It’s hard to imagine how a sequel to Hitchcock’s 1960 original could be done, over two decades later, but what was conjured up here is astounding in its conception. Script writer Tom Holland, who would later write and direct the original Fright Night and Childs’ Play films, teamed up with Australian director Richard Franklin. Both were serious Hitchcock fans and they understood his work at the deep subliminal level too.

The scenario they cooked up is very original. Insane killer Norman Bates is released after two decades confined in a mental hospital. Restored to sanity, Norman is released and returns home to the house where he grew up. He even has a new job in a local diner and befriends a young woman who moves in with him, but there’s just one problem … angry family members of one of his previous victims have it in for him. They’re attempting to drive him insane by leaving handwritten notes addressed from his dead Mother and making phone calls pretending to be her. Adding to the brew, new murders start happening and it’s only at the very end of the film that we discover who the real culprit is. Has Norman gone sane again? Is someone committing murders to blame on Norman? Or is there something entirely different going on? This film will keep you guessing right to the end. there’s not a single scene of filler material. Every scene counts. And the final pay-off works brilliantly.

The craftsmanship of the production is equally good with a lot of veteran crew members from the first movie returning to the production. Dean Cundey’s cinematography is marvellous throughout. Jerry Goldsmith’s score is haunting and beautiful. All supporting actors deliver the goods.

Psycho 2 has the gore factor increased for the slasher era audience, but it never comes off as crude. The psychological horror remains centre stage. It’s so good I rate it as even better than the first film.

Check out my discussion of Psycho 2 with screenwriter Tom Holland below …

38.
TERMINATOR (1984)

Onto 1984 now and, while it was a great year for film generally, only one movie from that year made this list … James Cameron’s The Terminator. The basic premise of the film was a story structure masterstroke. In the future a computer defense system called Skynet has been put in charge of US military systems, but it achieves self-awareness and turns on its masters, causing a nuclear war then setting out to eliminate humanity. Sounds like an expensive movie, right? Wrong! Cameron sets his film in 1984 by having a human-looking cyborg (The Terminator) travel back through time, sent by Skynet, to kill the Mother of the most prominent future resistance fighter, John Connor. The idea is that by killing the Mother, Sarah Connor, Skynet can historically sabotage the resistance movement. The plan would work, except the resistance movement in the future send one of their best soldiers, Kyle Reese, back in time to save Sarah. Reese also happens to be in love with her and turns out to be John Connor’s Father.

This time travel plot device allowed the film to be made on a lesser budget and made the story humanly relatable, being that it’s set in the same world as the audience. The tight story structure initially hides the future war plot, instead drip-feeding it to us throughout the action, and through superb flashback dream sequences, as Sarah and Reese fight it out with the near-invincible Terminator.

The dialogue is sharp and condensed. The action is frenetic. The practical effects are slightly dated, but still better and more creative than boring CGI. The visual style is cold blue for most of the run time. And the film is drenched in a horror of war vibe that makes the sci-fi scenario feel all the more real. In fact the movie is as much horror as it is sci-fi.

Arnold Schwarzennegger was rocketed to stardom by his iconic Terminator portrayal, but in terms of acting it was Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor and Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese who delivered the goods. Biehn’s portrayal of Reese is so good, as is the writing of the role, I’d put his character up there with Indiana Jones and Mad Max. Unfortunately, the colossal shadow of the cyborg villain prevented either the Reese character, or Michael Biehn as a talented character actor, from being put to much further use in the medium. Biehn had several great supporting roles in other movies in the following years, but never achieved box-office leading man status. The actor’s self-confessed alcoholism didn’t help, apparently.

Check out my studies of the first two Terminator films on my Film Analysis page.

39.
FULL METAL JACKET (1986)

Still on the subject of war we jump two years ahead to 1986. The movie is Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, which depicts the training of Marines for combat in Vietnam, followed by their tour of duty in the second half.

It’s one of the least appreciated of Kubrick’s films artistically, but it is renowned for its entertainment value. The first half of the film is an onslaught of hilarious foul-mouthed insults from Sgt Hartman in an iconic performance by R Lee Ermey, combined with probably the best depiction of military brainwashing ever put into a fiction film. Both aspects of the first half of the film are much appreciated.

However, the second half of the film, the Vietnam War scenes, remain under-appreciated.  Most Vietnam War movies are set in jungles, but in reality most of the fighting occurred in urban city environments. Full Metal Jacket captures that element of the war. It also depicts the reality that a lot of soldiers consider their tour of duty to be like a sight-seeing holiday. They want to kill the enemy in the same manner that civilian men hunt animals for sport. And they want to taste some exotic women on their travels. The actual war itself is actually meaningless to a lot of them. And they get to role play like they’re in an action movie, hence the soldiers in the film are shown making their own little filmed documentary.

See my live discussion of the film below with executive producer Jan Harlan, for more on what Full Metal Jacket has to offer in its second half. And check out the other studies on my Film Analysis page.

40.
ALIENS (1986)

James Cameron hit the ball out of the park with The Terminator and just two years later he did it again with Aliens, his sequel to the monumental Alien (1979), which also made it onto this list.

Aliens doesn’t match up to the subliminally-induced dread of the first film, but it doesn’t need to because Cameron had enough fresh ideas of his own. His film does what a great sequel is supposed to do … it uses the first movie as a springboard for taking the audience on a new adventure of discovery instead of just re-treading familiar ground.

Lone survivor Ellen Ripley survived the first film, but was left traumatized. She escaped physically, but not emotionally. Cameron sends her on a journey of re-empowerment. As an advisor, she travels back to the source planet where the original Alien derelict ship was found in the first film. While she was in hypersleep for over half a century, humans had built a colony on the same moon and processed its air to be breathable, but now the colony has gone silent and Ripley must accompany a military rescue team sent to investigate. Most of the military team are killed by aliens and smart-minded Ripley gradually emerges as their replacement leader, overcoming her fear by tackling the aliens on with the aid of tech weaponry. By the end she has psychologically conquered her traumas from the first movie.

The basic emotional premise of the story was superb. Most studios and writers would be so focused on the alien itself, as if it was the only reason the first movie succeeded. But Cameron took the human route of concentrating on the character of Ripley. To that effect the aliens are incidental in this film. The movie is about her.

The film is technically impressive on all levels. Special effects, props, costumes, camera work, music and sound … it’s all great. And Cameron brings a batch of fresh characters in the forms of the android Bishop, the corporate sleazebag Burke, a traumatized child Newt, and a batch of entertaining soldier characters – Hicks, Hudson and Vasquez being the standouts.

Cameron's impressive achievement with this film is made even more evident in that every sequel and spin off since has utterly failed to live up to either Ridley Scott’s original film or Cameron’s sequel. The first two films in the series are the only ones that truly work. Prometheus had great concepts, but the cast and dialogue were mostly run of the mill, sometimes even downright annoying and pretentious. And the TV series Alien Earth was atrocious, as was the laughably boring Alien Romulus.

Alien and Aliens are the dual cores of the entire franchise.