Well here it is, the year when I first have memories of going to a movie theater to see movies. And one of those is on the following list. Most of these were movies I saw on TV or video later but more important than how I saw them, it is the year that really starts off the foundational movies that informed my sense of humor and what I am into in terms of my fandoms. Later years would prove MORE foundational but this is where it all begins. The 80s, in particular, is the decade in which the foundations for me as a film and pop culture fan were first laid.

If you have not read the introduction to this exercise, I recommend you do so for context regarding what this all is. In short, be nice, these are my favorites based on how I encountered them in my life and what they mean for mean to me. This is not a list of objective best movies in their respective years and if a movie that you love or is considered great does not appear, it does not mean that I think it is shit or that I don’t love it. These are just my favorites for particular personal reasons. Feel free to let everyone know your favorite five for 1980 and why as well. It is also worth mentioning that there will be spoilers here for what are now 46-year-old movies. Let’s dig in!

1.Empire Strikes Back-Irwin Kirshner

I talked a bit about Empire in my Star Wars entry and that it was the first Star Wars I remember seeing and thought it was all there was at that time. And it is probably my favorite of the series as I look back on it, although Jedi held that spot for quite sometime based mostly on the fact that Luke had a green lightsaber and that was my favorite color. My childhood film analysis and taste was not especially deep.

Empire is the middle installment of the original Star Wars trilogy and became something of a template for the trilogy structure, which isn’t surprising if you look at each film in a three act structure, but is a different sort of story from the first movie, ends on a cliffhanger and a dark and depressing one at that.

The core three characters are separated early and when some of them come back together at the end, they are broken, changed, or frozen in carbonite and taken away by the bounty hunter Boba Fett. We learn that Darth Vader is Luke’s father and Luke gets a bionic hand after his dickhead dad cuts it off. Lando betrays Han and then saves everyone (aside from Han, of course). We get the introduction of force ghosts, Yoda, and a rad space worm living in an asteroid field. Holy shit this movie rocks.

The opening scenes on Hoth are maybe some of the most iconic in the series and have been replicated in video games more per capita that just about any scene, aside from, maybe, the trench run from the original. This opening scene also provided all of us the opportunity, as kids (or maybe not), to play as Han Solo and still use a lightsaber because Han used one to cut open Luke’s dead Taun Taun. It sparked a forever debate about how to pronounce AT-AT and also sparked wild theological debates because Han tells a deck officer he would see him in hell. It also gave us a great conversation in Kevin Smith’s Clerks in which Dante makes the case for why Empire is better than Jedi. When I first saw Clerks I agreed with Randall that to say this was blasphemy but as the years have rolled on, I see it more Dante’s way. It is regrettable that the gritty down ending has spawned generations of edgelords who are perpetually demanding things be grimdark in order to have stakes or maturity but Empire is so good that it is worth it. These takes also ignore how fucking funny this movie is thanks to Lawrence Kasdan having a much better grip on dialogue than George Lucas.

I saw this movie so many times in the theater that I lost count. I didn’t really have great object permanence or an awareness of time dilation so it is probably fewer times than I remember but it was more than a few. My mom was a server at Marie Calendar’s in the evenings and my dad did not know what to do with me. We were fairly different cats and even at four we didn’t have a ton in common. So he made me dollar pancakes for dinner and took me to the movies. There was a theater right next door to where mom worked so after the movies we would go over to see her and have pie. Those were halcyon days to be sure.

One particular night, I remember my dad was a bit over zealous with flipping the dollar pancakes and flipped one in to the sink, which was filled with dishwater. I thought this was the funniest thing ever. I am not sure he thought it was as funny as I did but this coupled with seeing Empire and then seeing my mom while eating pie has solidified itself in my mind as one of my favorite nights ever both in terms of movie going and in terms of being a kid with my parents. My mom was very happy to see us as she brought us pie and I was very happy to tell her about the AT-AT scene which was one of the first instances of me prattling on endlessly about a scene I love in a movie and my mom was really good at pretending to give a shit. I still do this now. You know this because you are reading it.

I love this movie and love that my dad took me so much. Every time I watch it now it feels like he is sitting there next to me as I am losing my shit about how cool the movie is. I will be forever grateful that he gave these memories and that George Lucas et al gave me this and every other Star Wars movie. Yes, even the Phantom Menace.

2.Airplane!-ZAZ

The follow up to 1977’s Kentucky Fried Movie, Airplane! announced the arrival of Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker, more commonly known as ZAZ. The team wrote and performed in the last picture but hear they take the directing duties as well, this time taking aim at airplane disaster movies like Airport ’77 (1977) that were popular at the time. This movie is essentially the urtext of parody movies and remains among the best to this day.

While Airplane! parodies a broad spectrum of disaster movies and pop culture at the time, it is actually an almost beat for beat comedic remake of Zero Hour! from 1957 in which the crew (and several passengers) on a commercial flight is stricken with food poisoning which forces an ex WWII pilot to take the controls and land amidst heavy fog. Watching the Zero Hour! trailer is absolutely wild because they did not just take the premise and do their own thing, Airplane! is basically the same movie but with Barbara Billingsly in speaking Jive. The main character in Zero Hour! is named Ted Stryker for godsakes!

Airplane! introduced us to Leslie Neilson doing deadpan comedy and brought us Peter Graves asking a kid if he likes Gladiator movies and while that second one is off color it also remains hilarious. The comedy here holds up a lot better than one might expect from the time period and even the era centric jokes still land. Now, granted, I am from that era but I didn’t know shit about shit in 1980. I didn’t even know that Empire was the only Star Wars movie.

I saw this later in life, after I saw the Naked Gun and started casting back in time to find what ZAZ did before it. I think I will always prefer the Naked Gun (and by extension Police Squad!) over Airplane! but Airplane! is still fantastic and still holds up.

3.Flash Gordon-Mike Hodges

Based on a 1934 comic strip, Flash Gordon is an interesting sci-fi artifact in that it came out the same year as Empire Strikes Back, which the cartoon strip and serials partially inspired, and looked like absolute horse shit by comparison. It is weird to think about these two things existing in time together.

Telling the story of a football player from Earth being transported to the planet Mongo to battle the evil Ming the Merciless in a bid to save the planet from tyranny and to try to get back home. The cast is pretty wild with Playgirl pin up model Sam Jones as Flash Gordon, Max Von Sydow as Ming, Brian Blessed as Prince Vulcan, Topol as Dr Hans Zarkov, and Timothy Dalton as Prince Bairn.  All accompanied by one of the most awesome Queen songs ever.

I love the shit out of Flash Gordon. When I was a kid, I didn’t know it was cheesy and looked like it a dollar 78 budget. I loved the wood beast scene. I loved the hawk people flying around. I loved the fight on the disk over lava with spikes coming out. That shit was like crack to me when I was a kid. Like Black Hole before it, Flash Gordon was something I just bought right into and never looked back. I remember the first time I saw it was during a trip to visit my aunt and uncle in San Diego and we were going to a cliff overlooking some tide pools and I tried to talk my Uncle Jack into having a mock knife duel at the edge of the cliff. This might be why my mom worried about me taking this stuff too seriously.

I met Sam Jones a couple of years ago at San Diego Comic Con and he was awesome. I didn’t realize how big of a deal this would be to me until I was next to the man. He was very nice and very gracious and it was wish fulfillment of the highest order. I thought about asking if he would have a mock knife duel at the edge of a cliff with me but I managed to keep myself in check. I have a Flash Gordon shirt that I wear weekly that never fails to get compliments wherever I wear it. That really speaks to how much of a beloved cult classic this movie is and why it endures. If hearing FLASH…AAAAHAAAAHHH doesn’t make you smile, you might not actually be alive.

4.Caddyshack-Harold Ramis

Caddyshack was another one of those movies where I saw the sequel first and then went back at watched the original. I was drawn in by the gopher puppet and captured by my general love of silliness. It is important to point out that despite the order in which I saw these movies, Caddyshack is far superior to its sequel, and it isn’t close.

I revisited Caddyshack recently to see how well it holds up and my particular verdict is: Very Well. When I was a kid, I liked Bill Murray’s Carl the best, such that I still use the ‘so I have that going for me, which is nice’ joke construction fairly regularly now, but on the most recent rewatch I realized I have been sleeping on Ted Knight for a really long time. He steals just about every scene he is in and when you consider who he is in scenes with, that is really something.

I do have to say that Rodney Dangerfield is my least favorite part of this movie. I think that is mostly just a question of taste though because he is basically just doing his stand up here and I am not a big fan of that. He is really just there to move the plot and piss off Knight but I found myself straight faced during just about all of his material.

Caddyshack is overall just very silly and I love that. There is some commentary about the class war here and that is nice, but it doesn’t go very deep in that direction. I am mostly hear for watching Chevy Chase, Billy Murray, and Ted Knight cook and it is a five-star dinner.

5.The Shining-Stanley Kubrick

I have a confession to make before I do this. I prefer the book. A lot. I am a huge Stephen King fan and I saw the movie later in life after having read the book and the first time I saw the Shining, I was actually pretty upset with it. I feel like as an adaptation of the book it is godawful and undermines what the book was about entirely. Having said that, the Shining is an iconic horror masterpiece that cannot be denied.

Setting the source material aside, Kubrick crafts an enduring haunted hotel movie that has spawned a legion of imitators and several conspiracy theories enough to warrant its own documentary. The legend behind the making of the movie almost outstrips the film itself, which is impressive on its own. Anchored by an iconic performance from Jack Nicholson, the Shining is foundational to the horror lexicon and generates heated discussion 46 years later.

This is a very well documented movie and there is little new insight I am going to be able to provide regarding its impact on cinema. It took me awhile to appreciate it for what it is though. I had to step away from the source material and engage with it on its own terms. And the things that Kubrick brings to the movie are the things that most people remember most. The Grady Sisters in the hall, the hedge maze, Here’s Johnny, and the blood out of the elevators are all movie inventions. That they are so different makes it much easier to just appreciate the movie on its own terms, it just took me some time to get there.