Do you still think it’s 80s back to the future and the crystal trap? These 3 movies will change your mind!

Cinema history is full of examples of films that went completely under the radar for various reasons. Works that are sometimes rare are rarely or never televised. But which still deserves to be discovered.

Although this is sometimes a real obstacle… here are three examples of fantastic movies that all have one thing in common: they were made in the 80s.

Walker (1987)

An iconic British underground filmmaker, Alex Cox had his heyday in the 1980s. Although her career has faded quite a bit since then and is now out of fashion, she gave us some fierce gems. Like Sid & Nancy in 1986; Undoubtedly his most famous film.

A biopic starring Gary Oldman as Sid Vicious, a member of the legendary punk rock band The Sex Pistols. Both haunting and provocative, the actor perfectly portrays the band’s ephemeral second bassist, obsessed with his self-destructive behavior.

If we loved his equally iconic Repo Man and his absolutely insane soundtrack, this is the Walker movie we’re talking about, as well as the largely unknown.

Released in 1987, based on a solid screenplay by the great Rudy Wurlitzer, we especially credit Sam Peckinpah’s great story of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Walker It evokes the authentic story of this American who seized power with his group of mercenaries in a coup d’état in Nicaragua in the late 19th century.

What does it look like? Trailer, below..

Filmed at the time in Nicaragua with the support of the Sandinista revolutionaries. Walker Filled with strange anachronisms, which are entirely assumed by the filmmaker, it is seen as a cruel echo of the political situation the country was going through in the 1980s, with Reaganite American interventionism in Central and South American countries.

Starring the great Ed Harris in what is arguably one of the best performances of his career and a soundtrack by Joe Strummer, Walker Definitely a movie to find out if you’ve never seen it. The huge failure of the film permanently damaged Alex Cox’s career as well.

The filmmaker often cites his radical vision as the main cause of Latin American issues persona non grata in Hollywood. It must be said that the end credits images – a montage showing President Reagan and the bodies of people killed by the Contras – didn’t really help his cause…

Star 80 (1983)

The film depicts the tragic fate of Dorothy Stratten. Dorothy works in a bar. One day, Paul Snyder, a pimp, asked her to pose for Playboy magazine and take part in a Playmate contest.

She won the competition and posed for increasingly daring photos before landing several film and television roles. This is the beginning of fame… She marries Paul, who turns out to be an abuser. She has an affair with the director and wants a divorce, but Paul threatens her…

Love, fame (ephemeral) and beauty. And dead on arrival. In the (unfortunately very short) filmography of the great Bob Fosse, who unfortunately signed only a few, but so memorable films, such as his multi-Oscar-winning Cabaret or the fabulous Lenny with Dustin Hoffman, we urgently need to discover this nugget. There is Star 80, the last film of its director, who died of a heart attack in the middle of the street at the age of 60.

Here’s the trailer…

Starring the impeccable Eric Roberts, who finds here one of his best roles in a career that ultimately doesn’t really match the height of his talent, and the brilliant Mariel Hemingway (granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway), the film returns to the story of Dorothy. Stratten, murdered at the age of 20 in 1980 by a jealous husband who pulled a gun on her… after molesting the corpse of her ex-partner.

It was with Peter Bogdanovich that she had an affair with Straten. The latter was so devastated by his death that he not only wrote a book four years later, describing these tragic events (“The Killing of the Unicorn”), but he also married Dorothy Stratton’s sister Louise in 1988 (from whom he divorced in 2001).

really, Star 80 So rare that it has never had the honor of a DVD release in our region, nor a Blu-ray, unlike Bob Fosse’s other infinitely better-known works. A cruel injustice that a rather charitable video editor could have rectified if he had looked into the matter.

Devil in a Box (1981)

From filmmaker Richard Rush, whose name most people don’t really ring a bell, we remember first of all his awkward nonsense “The Color of Night”, an erotic-psychological thriller released in 1994, which tried to clumsily set the success of Basic Instinct, there were two. Years ago, years ago.

Starring Bruce Willis and actress Jane March as Jean-Jacques Anne in L’Amant, the film was an artistic-financial disaster that also completely destroyed the actor’s career, from which he never recovered. failure.

It would be very unfair to reduce Richard Rush to this artistic collapse. The filmmaker, who died in 2021, was the creator of the 1981 blockbuster Devil in a Box. The film is as rare and precious as it gets. Rightfully revered among moviegoers, it has never been released on television or DVD as far as we know. And even less so on Blu-ray; Unless you are importing from the United States…

Devil in a boxThis is the story of Cameron (Steve Railsback), a Vietnam veteran who is actively wanted by the police. Finding refuge on the set of director Eli Cross, he becomes, with the latter’s complicity, his stuntman in his film crew. Eli makes him take more and more risks in action scenes. So real that Cameron is now convinced he wants to film her dead…

Here’s the trailer…

In the mask of Eli Cross is Peter O’Toole, whose composition is more deserved, because the actor was at the bottom of the wave in the early 80s, between drug and alcohol addiction, on alcohol, only on top. On the Sand Dunes of Lawrence of Arabia… Ironically, she based her interpretation of the character on inspiration from her relationship with David Lean on the set of Lawrence of Arabia.

The pregnancy of the film was a big pain. Between the birth of his concept and his release, Richard Rush took ten years to create his work, which he initially refused. and two heart attacks during this period. It took seven years to finance it alone. He wrote his screenplay in 1970 and did not begin filming until 1977, finishing post-production in 1979.

But he was not at the end of his troubles. The film had major problems with distribution, with 20th Century Fox reportedly making it. The film was released in only eleven theaters in the United States… even the members of the Academy of Oscars had a hard time showing it, because the only theater that showed it was constantly closed due to technical problems. This suggests that fate has taken its toll on him.

Devil in a box However, it was nominated for an Oscar three times: Best Director for Richard Rush, Best Actor for Peter O’Toole, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Not to mention its six nominations at the Golden Globes, where it still won the prize for Best Music Composed by Dominic Frontiere.

With such major distribution problems, not only in the United States, the film opened at the international box office, grossing over $7 million. The failure was so devastating to Richard Rush that he would not return to directing until 14 years later… The Color of Night mentioned above. Still very sad.

Here again, we launch a distress call to the kind soul of a video editor who wants to look into the cradle of this somewhat cursed and much-maligned work.