Top up your watchlist… 23 cult films of the 1980s
Dark, twisted or just plain maverick, these are some of the 1980s’ most deliciously offbeat movies – all available with a free 14-day trial on BFI Player. How many have you seen?
Bad Timing (1980)
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Nic Roeg’s complex, elusive cult classic is a Vienna-set tale of all-consuming passion, starring Art Garfunkel, Theresa Russell and Harvey Keitel.
Betty Blue (1986)
Director: Jean-Jacques Beineix
Jean-Jacques Beineix’s story of a volatile, highly sexual relationship was one of the most successful French films of the 1980s.
Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire (1987)
Director: Alan Clarke
Alan Clarke’s once derided feature is surely the only vampire snooker musical in cinema history and a genuine cult artefact ripe for rediscovery.
Burning an Illusion (1981)
Director: Menelik Shabazz
Menelik Shabazz’s pioneering first feature traces the emotional and political growth of a young black couple in Thatcher’s London.
City of the Living Dead (1981)
Director: Lucio Fulci
Lucio Fulci’s sensationally gory zombie horror finds undead hordes overtaking a sleepy New England town, with only a reporter and a local psychic to stop them.
The Company of Wolves (1984)
Director: Neil Jordan
Angela Carter and Neil Jordan’s magical, radical take on Little Red Riding Hood.
Crimes of Passion (1984)
Director: Ken Russell
Ken Russell’s second Hollywood film is a deliriously excessive erotic thriller with Kathleen Turner as an imperilled prostitute.
Dead Ringers (1988)
Director: David Cronenberg
David Cronenberg’s multi award-winning psychological thriller explores the bizarre lives of identical twins Elliot and Beverly, both played by Jeremy Irons.
The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982)
Director: Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway became a director of international status with this witty, stylised, erotic country-house murder mystery.
The Elephant Man (1980)
Director: David Lynch
David Lynch’s moving true-life tale of the severely deformed Joseph Merrick and his rescue from the hell of a Victorian circus sideshow.
Fitzcarraldo (1982)
Director: Werner Herzog
One of Werner Herzog’s most acclaimed and audacious films, Fitzcarraldo tells the incredible story of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an opera-loving fortune hunter who dreams of bringing opera to the heart of the Peruvian jungle.
Flight to Berlin (1984)
Director: Chris Petit
Chris Petit’s sparse moody thriller begins with a mysterious death. “They asked me the wrong question,” says murder suspect Susannah after being interrogated by the police.
Inferno (1980)
Director: Dario Argento
Dario Argento’s baroque, operatic horror follows a student who discovers a powerful witch living in a New York City apartment block.
Melancholia (1989)
Director: Andi Engel
Cerebral thriller about a German art critic who reconnects with his radical past when he agrees to be involved with an assassination attempt.
Millennium (1989)
Director: Michael Anderson
Flight crash investigator Bill Smith (Kris Kristofferson) discovers that time travellers from the future are visiting the present day and stealing passengers from doomed aircraft to repopulate a future, infertile human race.
Night of the Hunted (1980)
Director: Jean Rollin
Jean Rollin’s stylish and futuristically surreal horror about patients at a mysterious clinic whose memories are disintegrating.
Paris, Texas (1984)
Director: Wim Wenders
The late, great Harry Dean Stanton’s finest role came as the near-mute Travis, on a journey across America to reunite his family, in Wim Wenders’ moving tale of loss and redemption.
Saturn 3 (1980)
Director: Stanley Donen
A pair of scientists’ idyllic life on Saturn’s moon is ruptured by the arrival of a sinister psychopath and his murderous robot.
Scanners (1981)
Director: David Cronenberg
From singularly talented Canadian director David Cronenberg comes this sci-fi/horror classic about people with powerfully violent telepathic powers.
Straight to Hell (1987)
Director: Alex Cox
Alex Cox’s anarchic homage to the spaghetti western, with arguably cinema’s wildest cast: Dennis Hopper, Joe Strummer, Courtney Love, Grace Jones and Shane MacGowan.
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Miss Osbourne (1981)
Director: Walerian Borowczyk
Udo Kier stars in Walerian Borowczyk’s delirious erotic fever dream, which re-imagines Robert Louis Stephenson’s moral tale as a deranged domestic sex farce.
White of the Eye (1987)
Director: Donald Cammell
British visionary Donald Cammell directs this kaleidoscopic, highly stylised thriller about a series of brutal murders in an isolated desert community.
A Zed and Two Noughts (1985)
Director: Peter Greenaway
Following a fatal car crash involving a swan outside a zoo, twin-brother zoologists Oliver and Oswald become fascinated by the processes of decay.
