What to Watch
Genuinely Underrated 1980s Movies
By Jordan A. · · Updated · 5 min read
The problem with 1980s movie lists is that they are all the same list. Everybody has already seen the John Hughes films, the Spielberg films and the big cult items that stopped being cult around 1998. Recommending those is not recommending anything.
So the rule for this one is strict. Every film below came out between 1980 and 1989, none of them is a canonical blockbuster, and most of them lost money or went straight past audiences on release. Each entry says what it actually is, who it's for, and where it will annoy you, because several of these are difficult on purpose.
The American oddities
Repo Man (1984) is Alex Cox's first film, with Harry Dean Stanton teaching Emilio Estevez to repossess cars in a Los Angeles full of punks, government agents and a Chevy Malibu with something glowing in the boot. Universal had no idea what to do with it and critics named it one of the best films of the year anyway. The soundtrack alone, Iggy Pop and Black Flag and Suicidal Tendencies, is a reason. It is deliberately shapeless, so go in for the texture rather than the plot.
After Hours (1985) is Martin Scorsese making a small panic attack of a comedy after the money for The Last Temptation of Christ collapsed. Griffin Dunne plays a word processor operator who goes downtown for a date and cannot get home, and every person he meets makes it worse, including Rosanna Arquette, Teri Garr, Linda Fiorentino and Catherine O'Hara. Scorsese won Best Director at Cannes for it in 1986. Nobody lists it when they list his films. It's the funniest thing he ever made.
Something Wild (1986) has Jonathan Demme starting as a screwball comedy, with Jeff Daniels as a straitlaced investment banker abducted into a road trip by Melanie Griffith, and then switching genre entirely when Ray Liotta arrives in his first major role. The turn is genuinely frightening and it is the whole reason the film is on this list. It also contains one of the best needle drops of the decade. Watch it knowing that the film you start is not the film you finish.
Miracle Mile (1988) is Steve De Jarnatt's film about a man at a Los Angeles diner who answers a ringing payphone and hears that nuclear missiles are seventy minutes out. Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham lead it, and the film runs close to real time from there. It sat unmade for years because nobody would let De Jarnatt keep the ending. He kept it. This is the tensest ninety minutes on this page.
Streets of Fire (1984) is Walter Hill's self-described rock and roll fable, set in a city that exists in no decade, with motorcycle gangs, neon rain and songs written by Jim Steinman. It flopped hard. It is also the most purely stylish thing here and it has visibly influenced everything from music videos to modern synthwave design. There is no depth to find. That's fine.
The quiet ones
Local Hero (1983) is Bill Forsyth sending an American oil executive, played by Peter Riegert, to buy a Scottish village, where he slowly stops wanting to. Burt Lancaster plays his boss, and a very young Peter Capaldi is in it. Nothing dramatic happens and the film is about a man realising his life is the wrong shape. It is the warmest recommendation on this list and the one to give someone who says they don't like 1980s films.
Housekeeping (1987) is Forsyth again, adapting Marilynne Robinson's novel, with Christine Lahti as an itinerant aunt who arrives to raise two orphaned sisters in a small Idaho town and refuses to live the way the town expects. It got a tiny release and almost no audience. It is strange, funny and quietly radical about what a family is allowed to look like.
Withnail and I (1987) is Bruce Robinson's first film, about two unemployed actors in London in 1969 who go to the countryside for a holiday by accident. Richard E. Grant, who does not drink, plays one of cinema's great drunks. It's the most quotable film in British history and it is really about the end of a friendship. It is also very slow for the first twenty minutes and the accents are thick, so subtitles help.
The difficult ones
Videodrome (1983) is David Cronenberg with James Woods as a sleazy cable executive who finds a broadcast signal that rewrites the people who watch it, and Debbie Harry as the woman drawn to it. Its argument about screens changing bodies has aged into something close to prophecy. The practical effects by Rick Baker are still disgusting. Do not put this on for a casual audience.
Near Dark (1987) is Kathryn Bigelow's solo directing debut, a vampire film that never uses the word, with a family of drifters crossing the American west in a taped-up van. Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton are the standouts. It cost five million dollars and made three and a half, largely because The Lost Boys had arrived two months earlier with a much bigger release. The bar sequence is one of the best set pieces of the decade.
Come and See (1985) is Elem Klimov's Soviet film about a boy joining the partisans in occupied Belarus, and it is the hardest film on this list by a very long way. It is not entertainment and it is not something to put on casually. It is also, by common consent, one of the greatest war films ever made. Watch it once, in daylight, with nothing planned afterward.
How to choose tonight
If you want the good time, Repo Man or Streets of Fire. If you want to laugh and then be unsettled, Something Wild or After Hours. If you want to be moved, Local Hero. If you want to be genuinely tested, Come and See, and clear your evening. Where each of these streams changes; the title page on BingeNext shows current US options.
If you'd rather have the digging done for you, our movie recommendation tool takes a few films you already rate and returns a shortlist with a reason for each and where they stream.
Topics covered: underrated, 1980s, movies, cult-classic, throwback
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and is responsible for every guide published on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu. Dates, season counts and where-to-watch details in these guides are checked against official sources before publishing, and corrections are welcome at Jordan@Bingenext.com.