(Photo by Orion Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection. Movie: UHF.)
UHF celebrates its 35th anniversary!
If a movie some distance from the mainstream inspires you to watch and watch again, quote obsessively, recommend to friends and family to occasional bewilderment, while finding community with other like-minded fans, congratulations: You may have just helped create a new cult classic.
And the 1980s may just have been the big boom of the cult movie, as the home market of VHS tapes and cable television let people re-visit and share movies like never before. It’s hard to imagine the movies without Blade Runner, The Thing, and Scarface now, but they were not huge box office successes on release (with Blade Runner and The Thing outright bombs), but the fandom grew them into the pop culture cornerstones they are today. Arguably, they are the greatest cult movie success stories ever.
Ditto for The Princess Bride and This Is Spinal Tap, both directed by Rob Reiner. Tap popularized the mockumentary format, and Bride has been welcomed into family homes for generations. Again, these movies are more of those muted box office stories that became publicly entrenched through generations of critics and audiences championing them.
And John Carpenter was the directing king of cults in the ’80s. Along with The Thing, he helmed They Live, Big Trouble in Little China, and Escape From New York. Terry Gilliam was no slouch either with Brazil and Time Bandits, along with David Lynch (Blue Velvet) and and David Cronenberg (Videodrome).
In selecting the 50 best cult movies of the 1980s, we tried to cover every corner and fanbase. There’s comedies whose off-kilter sense of humor have people feeling like that finally something out there understands them. We’re talking the likes of nowhere epic Repo Man, the Coen brothers’ comedy Raising Arizona, supremely cynical Heathers, relentlessly quotable Withnail and I, deeply deadpan Stranger Than Paradise, spatulatastic UHF, and big-bootay’d Buckaroo Banzai.
’80s horror is still celebrated and sought after today, and the fringes are what make them special, populated with the likes of Re-Animator (still the best movie with H.P. Lovecraft’s name hovering over it), musical Little Shop of Horrors, transgressive slasher Sleepaway Camp, Evil Dead 2 (throw in the first Evil Dead while you’re at it), and two vampiric servings of Near Dark and The Lost Boys.
Filed under fantasy: Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. While on the action shelf, you can pull To Live and Die in L.A. (with director William Friedkin topping his French Connection car chase), hard-boiled musical Streets of Fire, the Bruce Lee-inspired The Last Dragon, and The Legend of Billie Jean, which is Joan of Arc by way of neon spandex.
And some cult movies really started gaining traction in the online age, like Hard Ticket to Hawaii, whose widely-shared video clips had people seeking out context for the insanity, and Miami Connection, an earnestly incompetent martial arts movie lost until 2012. These days, you can watch it in 4K with surround dragon sound.
We’re sorting the best of ’80s cult movies by Tomatometer, with Certified Fresh films first, including cyberpunk flashpoint anime Akira, and superhero camp Flash Gordon.
#1
Adjusted Score: 102829%
Critics Consensus: Brazil, Terry Gilliam’s visionary Orwellian fantasy, is an audacious dark comedy, filled with strange, imaginative visuals.
#2
Adjusted Score: 102357%
Critics Consensus: Repo Man is many things: an alien-invasion film, a punk-rock musical, a send-up of consumerism. One thing it isn’t is boring.
#3
Adjusted Score: 103761%
Critics Consensus: A delightfully postmodern fairy tale, The Princess Bride is a deft, intelligent mix of swashbuckling, romance, and comedy that takes an age-old damsel-in-distress story and makes it fresh.
#4
Adjusted Score: 102005%
Critics Consensus: Smartly directed, brilliantly acted, and packed with endlessly quotable moments, This Is Spinal Tap is an all-time comedy classic.
#5
Adjusted Score: 103689%
Critics Consensus: If audiences walk away from this subversive, surreal shocker not fully understanding the story, they might also walk away with a deeper perception of the potential of film storytelling.
#6
Adjusted Score: 99790%
Critics Consensus: Dark, cynical, and subversive, Heathers gently applies a chainsaw to the conventions of the high school movie — changing the game for teen comedies to follow.
#7
Adjusted Score: 99889%
Critics Consensus: Perfectly mixing humor and horror, the only thing more effective than Re-Animator‘s gory scares are its dry, deadpan jokes.
#8
Adjusted Score: 96780%
Critics Consensus: A terrifically original, eccentric screwball comedy, Raising Arizona may not be the Coens’ most disciplined movie, but it’s one of their most purely entertaining.
#9
Adjusted Score: 95462%
Critics Consensus: Akira is strikingly bloody and violent, but its phenomenal animation and sheer kinetic energy helped set the standard for modern anime.
#10
Adjusted Score: 95917%
Critics Consensus: Time Bandits is a remarkable time-travel fantasy from Terry Gilliam, who utilizes fantastic set design and homemade special effects to create a vivid, original universe.
#11
Adjusted Score: 96228%
Critics Consensus: Remixing Roger Corman’s B-movie by way of the Off-Broadway musical, Little Shop of Horrors offers camp, horror and catchy tunes in equal measure — plus some inspired cameos by the likes of Steve Martin and Bill Murray.
#12
Adjusted Score: 102854%
Critics Consensus: Misunderstood when it first hit theaters, the influence of Ridley Scott’s mysterious, neo-noir Blade Runner has deepened with time. A visually remarkable, achingly human sci-fi masterpiece.
#13
Adjusted Score: 96074%
Critics Consensus: Visceral, energetic, and often very sad, Sid and Nancy is also a surprisingly touching love story, and Gary Oldman is outstanding as the late punk rock icon Sid Vicious.
#14
Adjusted Score: 95761%
Critics Consensus: Less a continuation than an outright reimagining, Sam Raimi transforms his horror tale into a comedy of terrors — and arguably even improves on the original formula.
#15
Adjusted Score: 92405%
Critics Consensus: With coke fiends, car chases, and Wang Chung galore, To Live and Die in L.A. is perhaps the ultimate ’80s action/thriller.
#16
Adjusted Score: 94886%
Critics Consensus: Featuring an atmospherically grimy futuristic metropolis, Escape from New York is a strange, entertaining jumble of thrilling action and oddball weirdness.
#17
Adjusted Score: 92483%
Critics Consensus: A politically subversive blend of horror and sci fi, They Live is an underrated genre film from John Carpenter.
#18
Adjusted Score: 92411%
Critics Consensus: Grimmer and more terrifying than the 1950s take, John Carpenter’s The Thing is a tense sci-fi thriller rife with compelling tension and some remarkable make-up effects.
#19
Adjusted Score: 89926%
Critics Consensus: Near Dark is at once a creepy vampire film, a thrilling western, and a poignant family tale, with humor and scares in abundance.
#20
Adjusted Score: 88884%
Critics Consensus: Visually audacious, disorienting, and just plain weird, Videodrome’s musings on technology, entertainment, and politics still feel fresh today.
#21
Adjusted Score: 88233%
Critics Consensus: Campy charm and a knowing sense of humor help to overcome a silly plot involving a spacefaring ex-football player, his adoring bevy of groupies, and a supervillain named Ming the Merciless.
#22
Adjusted Score: 86941%
Critics Consensus: Director Brian De Palma and star Al Pacino take it to the limit in this stylized, ultra-violent and eminently quotable gangster epic that walks a thin white line between moral drama and celebratory excess.
#23
Adjusted Score: 82672%
Critics Consensus: The Dark Crystal‘s narrative never quite lives up to the movie’s visual splendor, but it remains an admirably inventive and uniquely intense entry in the Jim Henson canon.
#24
Adjusted Score: 84030%
Critics Consensus: Flawed but eminently watchable, Joel Schumacher’s teen vampire thriller blends horror, humor, and plenty of visual style with standout performances from a cast full of young 1980s stars.
#25
Adjusted Score: 82001%
Critics Consensus: While it’s arguably more interesting on a visual level, Labyrinth provides further proof of director Jim Henson’s boundless imagination.
#26
Adjusted Score: 80614%
Critics Consensus: Brimming with energy and packed with humor, Big Trouble in Little China distills kung fu B-movies as affectionately as it subverts them.
#27
Adjusted Score: 80051%
Critics Consensus: Though perhaps not as strong dramatically as it is technologically, TRON is an original and visually stunning piece of science fiction that represents a landmark work in the history of computer animation.
#28
Adjusted Score: 97884%
Critics Consensus: A striking debut for director Jim Jarmusch, Stranger than Paradise is an effortlessly cool exploration of finding meaning in the mundane.
#29
Adjusted Score: 94859%
Critics Consensus: Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann prove irresistibly hilarious as two misanthropic slackers in Withnail and I, a biting examination of artists living on the fringes of prosperity and good taste.
#30
Adjusted Score: 91379%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#31
Adjusted Score: 83411%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#32
Adjusted Score: 83135%
Critics Consensus: Sleepaway Camp is a standard teen slasher elevated by occasional moments of John Waters-esque weirdness and a twisted ending.
#33
Adjusted Score: 80770%
Critics Consensus: Its kitschy leanings may wear thin on some, but True Stories is a disarmingly big-hearted, dreamy vision of Americana.
#34
Adjusted Score: 78756%
Critics Consensus: Better Off Dead is an anarchic mix of black humor and surreal comedy, anchored by John Cusack’s winsome, charming performance.
#35
Adjusted Score: 74028%
Critics Consensus: A robust ensemble of game actors elevate Clue above its schematic source material, but this farce’s reliance on novelty over organic wit makes its entertainment value a roll of the dice.
#36
Adjusted Score: 72163%
Critics Consensus: A silly and ribald superhero spoof, Toxic Avenger uninhibited humor hits more than it misses.
#37
Adjusted Score: 72190%
Critics Consensus: Peter Jackson’s early low-budget shocker boasts a disgusting premise – aliens harvesting humans for fast food – that gives the budding auteur plenty of room for gross-out visuals and absurd cleverness.
#38
Adjusted Score: 72091%
Critics Consensus: Streets of Fire may sometimes buckle under the strain of its ambitious fusion of disparate genres, but Walter Hill’s bravura style gives this motorcycle musical fuel to burn.
#39
Adjusted Score: 69533%
Critics Consensus: Sci-fi parodies like these usually struggle to work, but Buckaroo Banzai succeeds through total devotion to its own lunacy.
#40
Adjusted Score: 68833%
Critics Consensus: It’s sexist, juvenile, and dated, but Heavy Metal makes up for its flaws with eye-popping animation and a classic, smartly used soundtrack.
#41
Adjusted Score: 66023%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#42
Adjusted Score: 64438%
Critics Consensus: UHF is bizarre, freewheeling, and spotty, though its anarchic spirit cannot be denied.
#43
Adjusted Score: 62438%
Critics Consensus: The Last Dragon is a flamboyant genre mashup brimming with style, romance, and an infectious fondness for kung fu, but audiences may find the tonal whiplash more goofy than endearing.
#44
Adjusted Score: 61028%
Critics Consensus: Return to Oz taps into the darker side of L. Frank Baum’s book series with an intermittently dazzling adventure that never quite recaptures the magic of its classic predecessor.
#45
Adjusted Score: 57816%
Critics Consensus: A fun ’80s adventure with a slightly scary twist, The Monster Squad offers tween-friendly horror with just enough of a kick.
#46
Adjusted Score: 57528%
Critics Consensus: A gothic, campy, raunchy comedy elevated by Cassandra Peterson’s iconic persona yet driven off course by one-note jokes, this isn’t the best — or worst — introduction to Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
#47
Adjusted Score: 52259%
Critics Consensus: Mommie Dearest certainly doesn’t lack for conviction, and neither does Faye Dunaway’s legendary performance as a wire-wielding monster; unfortunately, the movie is too campy and undisciplined to transcend guilty pleasure.
#48
Adjusted Score: 47957%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.
#49
Adjusted Score: 42028%
Critics Consensus: Rebellious in spirit and anarchic in style, this Helen Slater-starring vehicle holds a certain youthful cool but is otherwise a disjointed retelling of an oft-repeated legend.
#50
Adjusted Score: 20858%
Critics Consensus: No consensus yet.