Okay so we have been chugging along, and I have been offering five movies because I couldn’t bear to only talk about one per year but we have come to a year that will be the first of many in which we have to do some runners up. There are some years that are lean and hard to identify five favorites and then others that are chock a block with bangers, just movies I love stacked to the rafters. And so it is with 1982.

This will be a bit of a spoiler as when I rattle off the list of runners up, movies that did not make top five, but I still love regardless of objective quality, you may figure out what is on my list by process of elimination, but I don’t really care. I am not trying to surprise anyone here.

To this end the runners up are as follows (in no particular order): ET, Tron, Megaforce, Secret of NIMH, the Last Unicorn, Barbarosa, the Sword and the Sorcerer, 48 Hours, and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. If something you love is missing, know that I had to reign myself in on this list too. I really like a lot of movies in 1982. Also worth noting, my friend Ken was born this year and that is pretty rad as well.

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 1981and why as well. It is also worth mentioning that there will be spoilers here for what are now 44-year-old movies. Let’s dig in!

1.Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan-Nicholas Meyer

The second attempt to bring Star Trek to the big screen, the Wrath of Khan functions as much as an apology for Star Trek: The Motion Picture as it does the arguable best movie in the Star Trek franchise. It kicked off the ‘even numbered Star Trek movies are the good ones’ thing as an observable truism, it entered the  Kobayashi Maru test into the common lexicon, and it gave us the remarkably over the top ‘Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaan’ scream that is equal parts ridiculous and somehow emotionally resonant. Wrath of Khan is a real heavy hitter.

Tying directly into an episode of Star Trek the Original Series, Space Seed, Wrath of Khan brings Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban) back for revenge by luring the Enterprise, now a training ship full of Star Fleet cadets,  into a trap to rescue the USS Reliant which itself was looking for a barren planet to test the Genesis Device. When Chekov is captured by Khan and his crew, he and the Reliant’s Captain Terrel are infected with Ceti Eel larvae which will make them susceptible to suggestion, and are used to get Kirk, now an Admiral, to come to the rescue so Khan can take revenge for having stranded them on a planet that was quickly rendered desolate and barely habitable. Khan is thwarted but Spock has to sacrifice himself to save the crew.

There is a lot going on in this movie but director Nicholas Meyer manages to keep it coherent and crisp. The performances in the film, particularly from Montalban are top notch and really fulfilled the promise of what Star Trek could be theatrically.

The Kobayashi Maru, the unwinnable training simulation, starts off the film with commander in training Saavik, making an attempt to rescue a disabled vessel from Klingons and sets up the notion that a captain must face the possibility of failure and the loss of life very effectively. Saavik is incredulous that there could possibly be a no-win scenario, a feeling that is verified for her when she learns that Admiral Kirk is the only cadet to ever pass the scenario. When we learn on Ceti Alpha V while the crew is stranded that Kirk only won because he cheated and hacked the system the night before, it becomes apparent that there are two competing ideas going on here, one that in order to win the unwinnable you have to do everything necessary and the other that sometimes there genuinely is no way to walk away unscathed and sacrifices must be made. When coupled with the question if the good of the few outweigh the good of the many, you have quite a rich thematic tapestry.

This is the sort of thing that Star Trek really does best, when it delves into philosophy and moral quandaries. Khan is a ruthless character, but he is a relatable one. There are not a lot of easy answers here even if Khan’s methods put him squarely in the wrong. Spock’s ultimate sacrifice is a heartbreaking reality check on Kirk’s cavalier swashbuckling and really drives home the notion that doing the right thing has a cost. Even 44 years later, this movie holds up super strong.

My dad took me to this movie when it was in theaters. I remember the day vividly. It was at the Buena Vista theater which was a two screen theater I am going to talk about a lot in these articles until it gets torn down and replaced with a hotel. The line was stretched around the building and it was a hot June day as we waited in line. It was just my dad and I on a Saturday. Mom didn’t want to come along for some reason, despite liking Spock as a character in particular.

When we finally made it in, the movie had already started and we were finding seats as Chekov and Terrel were being shown the Ceti Eels and having the larvae put in their ears. This freaked me the fuck out and I had a whole ear thing for years after. I am still not super fond of the notion of having any kind of worm or bug put into my ears regardless of whether it is for the purpose of mind control or not, but I think that is just good sense rather than an irrational fear.

Ear terror aside, I loved Wrath of Khan as a kid. I have never been a Trekker particularly. I liked Star Trek when I was a kid and watched reruns of the original series and the animated series when it was on but I was always more into Star Wars. I didn’t really watch the Next Generation or any of the other shows after with any regularity, much to my first girlfriend’s chagrin as she loved Next Generation, but I have always watched the movies. I like TV but movies have always been my first love.

From Khan on I have seen every Star Trek movie in the theater. I have been to a bunch of Star Trek conventions and met a handful of cast members over the years. I have seen Shatner in person twice. I have read several of the books. Despite not being a massive fan, I have a lot of affection for Star Trek, particularly the original series cast. It all starts here, really, with Wrath of Khan.

It is a rare week that goes by that I don’t describe something as a Kobayashi Maru, because I am a lover both of sci-fi references and histrionic hyperbole. It is really helpful in  a lot of scenarios that seem unwinnable in a lot of different aspects of life, like politics, difficult work situations, deciding where to go for dinner, and being broken up with by people who get mad at you for something and then get mad at you when you try to fix it. It is very versatile. The themes running through the movie about responsibility and morality were also instructive to me when I was a kid and I have often spent time pondering the moral choices presented here. It certainly isn’t the first or only movie to raise these questions, but I was six so it really stuck with me. Wrath of Khan offers a lot and delivers on all of it and for that it is my favorite Star Trek movie.  It also offers a fairly perfect and happy June afternoon with my dad and for that it is my favorite movie of 1982.

2.Conan the Barbarian-John Milius

When Conan was in theaters I wanted to see it so bad. I was  into sword and sorcery fantasy movies, for as long as I could remember. I am not sure why my parents wanted to see it so bad given that my mom thought anything with any kind of magic in it was satanic. Regardless, it came to pass that my parents were trying to justify taking a six year old to see a rated R movie with some fairly rough content and the universe provided by way of a misprint in the newspaper ads. There was one with the correct R rating and one with a misprinted PG rating. My parents willfully decided that the PG one must be correct.

So we went and I was treated to a gnarly Arnold Schwarzennger vehicle that introduced me to all the best things in life, which of course are “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.” I didn’t know what lamentation was when I was six but I knew it was metal as fuck. I was also treated to more forced bathroom breaks of any movie before or since.

My parents pretty loudly complained about the mistake after we left and made sure to say over and over again how they couldn’t possibly have known it would have such content in it, presumably to make sure that god heard them. But I think it was just another instance of my parents really wanting to see a movie that was wildly inappropriate for me and finding any justification that they could put their hands on to do it. It is honestly no wonder I learned how to argue my way out of punishments using loopholes in the system given how often they did that to watch things that may or may not scar me for years at a time. Nothing in Conan really fucked me up, but Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones) fashioning a snake into an arrow does still stick with me. I pray to Krom that I am never on the receiving end of one of those.

3.Poltergeist-Tobe Hooper

Poltergeist, which many people believe was actually directed by Steven Speilberg, was not the first haunted house movie by a damn site, but it still managed to carve out its own identity and establish several iconic haunted house concepts. The reverberations of building a house on a Native American burial ground, and the concept of moving the gravestones but not the bodies are still felt today. Add to that scary clown toys dragging you under the bed, the scariest tree this side of Evil Dead, and the potential danger hiding in a partially dug in ground pool, and you have one of the best haunted house movies ever.

I saw this on VHS at some indeterminate time in my childhood. I particularly remember the portal between the first and second floor and the skeletons in the pool. I didn’t find Poltergeist especially scary, which is remarkable given that I was unwittingly living in a haunted house and seeing weird shit all the time, but I have always thought it was rad. I also don’t hate the remake with Sam Rockwell, which is probably sacrilege but I don’t give a shit.

It is also worth mentioning that the movie has absolutely nothing to do with Poltergeists (aside from the chairs moving around in the kitchen, I suppose) and outside of dropping some terminology, gets just about everything wrong when it comes to the paranormal. But it does have Zelda Rubenstein being creepy as hell and saying ‘This house is clean’ so I am willing to let that shit go.

4.Blade Runner-Ridley Scott

I didn’t realize it when I was a kid, but Blade Runner was really responsible for setting up a aesthetic that I love that has followed me the rest of my life. I love cyberpunk. I love 80’s synth music such that modern synthwave (Gunship, Carpenter Brut, Lazerhawk, et al) is one of my favorite genres. When I was a kid, I thought I just dug Han Solo chasing androids.

When I revisited Blade Runner as an adult, I realized that I loved it for more than just the aesthetic and Vangelis, but also for the bleak exploration of what life really means and how can you deny the sovereignty of the human experience to synthetics who have evolved beyond their programming. The ‘Tears in the Rain’ speech is an enormously haunting moment and Rutger Hauer delivers it with such fatalistic detachment that the deeply emotional resonance is almost a shock.

Philip K Dick is probably one of my favorite authors that I have never really read. I read ‘We Can Remember it for You Wholesale’ which Total Recall was based on but that is it. I am not really sure what kind of parity Blade Runner has with ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ but the fact remains that I love a lot of Dick stories that have been made into movies and that has to count for something.

Blade Runner was a flop when it first released, and I am very glad that in the subsequent years it has become as appreciated as it has. A lot of my interests and preferences have been influenced by it and I am glad to know I am not alone.

5.The Thing-John Carpenter

It feels weird to keep writing that movies are ‘iconic’ but there is nothing else to call a lot of these movies that set a standard for what followed and have led to subgenres based on them. Such is the case with the Thing.

This paranoid thriller, remade from 1951’s the Thing from Another World, ushered in a cavalcade of imitators and riffs on its core concept: an isolated research location set upon by an alien that can mimic members of the small group and no one knows who to trust. This has been emulated ever since in movies, TV, video games, and novels and continues to be the best example of the genre. If you want proof of this, look no further than the fact that people debate to this day who the Thing is in the final scene Macready (Kurt Russel) or Childes (Keith David). It is both fun to debate and doesn’t really matter as neither will be able to survive the cold of the night.

I saw the Thing quite a bit later in life. I may have seen the X-Files episode ‘Ice’ first, honestly. Had I seen this as a kid, I would probably have even worse trust issues than I do now and I may never have slept again. The practical effects continue to hold up to this day and while the Thing From Another World is a really good movie in its own right, the Thing remains the best argument whenever anyone says that all remakes suck. This is an absolute masterclass in paranoid horror filmmaking.