Playlists > The Best Movies of 1981

The Best Movies of 1981
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As with most of my lists, some of the movies show a different year, but they were all released in 1981.


Creator: melissa1983
Posted: 3 years ago
 
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Movie: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark ( 1981 )
In 1936, archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones is hired by the U.S. government to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis can obtain its awesome powers.
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Movie: Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior ( 1981 )
In the post-apocalyptic Australian wasteland, a cynical drifter agrees to help a small, gasoline rich community escape a horde of bandits.
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Movie: Clash of the Titans ( 1981 )
Perseus must battle Medusa and the Kraken to save the Princess Andromeda.
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Movie: Heavy Metal ( 1981 )
A glowing green orb - which embodies ultimate evil - terrorizes a young girl with an anthology of bizarre and fantastic stories of dark fantasy, eroticism and horror.
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Movie: The Cannonball Run ( 1981 )
A wide variety of eccentric competitors participate in a wild and illegal cross-country road race. However, the eccentric entrants will do anything to win the road race, including low-down, dirty tricks.
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Movie: Escape from New York ( 1981 )
In 1997, when the U.S. president crashes into Manhattan, now a giant maximum security prison, a convicted bank robber is sent in to rescue him.
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Movie: An American Werewolf in London ( 1981 )
Two American college students on a walking tour of Britain are attacked by a werewolf that none of the locals will admit exists.
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Movie: Mommie Dearest ( 1981 )
The abusive and traumatic adoptive upbringing of Christina Crawford at the hands of her mother, screen queen Joan Crawford, is depicted.
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Movie: Excalibur ( 1981 )
Merlin the magician helps Arthur Pendragon unite the Britons around the Round Table of Camelot, even as dark forces conspire to tear it apart.
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Movie: Quest for Fire ( 1981 )
This story takes place in prehistoric time when three tribesmen search for a new fire source.
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Movie: The Evil Dead ( 1983 )
Five friends travel to a cabin in the woods, where they unknowingly release flesh-possessing demons.
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Movie: Time Bandits ( 1981 )
A young boy accidentally joins a band of time travelling dwarves, as they jump from era to era looking for treasure to steal.
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Movie: The Boat ( 1982 )
A German U-boat stalks the frigid waters of the North Atlantic as its young crew experience the sheer terror and claustrophobic life of a submariner in World War II.
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Movie: The Fox and the Hound ( 1981 )
A fox named Tod and a hound named Copper vow to be best friends forever. But as Copper grows into a hunting dog, their unlikely friendship faces the ultimate test.
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Movie: Taps ( 1981 )
Military cadets take extreme measures to ensure the future of their academy when its existence is threatened by local condo developers.
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Movie: Thief ( 1981 )
Coming closer to his dream of leading a normal life, a professional safecracker agrees to do a job for the Mafia, who has other plans for him.
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Movie: Outland ( 1981 )
A federal marshal stationed at a mining colony on the Jupiter moon of Io, uncovers a drug-smuggling conspiracy. He gets no help from the workers or authorities when he finds himself marked for murder.
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Movie: The Howling ( 1981 )
After a bizarre and near deadly encounter with a serial killer, a television newswoman is sent to a remote mountain resort whose residents may not be what they seem.
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Movie: Victory ( 1981 )
As allied P.O.W.s prepare for a soccer game against the German National Team to be played in Nazi-occupied Paris, the French Resistance and British officers are making plans for the team's escape.
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Movie: Stripes ( 1981 )
At the end of a very bad day when he realizes his life has gone and is going nowhere, John Winger is able to convince his best friend, Russell Ziskey, whose life is not much better, to enlist in the army, despite they not being obvious soldier material. In basic training, they are only two of a bunch of misfits that comprise their platoon. However, it is still John that is constantly butting heads with their drill sergeant, Sergeant Hulka. Two of their saving graces are Stella and Louise, two MPs who get them out of one scrape after another. Their entire platoon is in jeopardy of not graduating. But what happens during basic leads to their entire platoon being assigned to an overseas mission in Italy, to test a new urban assault vehicle, the EM-50 project. John and Russell decide to take the EM-50 for an unauthorized test drive to visit Stella and Louise who have been reassigned to West Germany. In the process, the rest of the platoon, Hulka, and Hulka's immediate superior, self-absorbed Captain Stillman, get caught unofficially behind enemy Communist lines in Czechoslovakia. John and Russell, with Stella and Louise's help, will have to show their true mettle as US army soldiers and in the process test the capabilities of the EM-50 to rescue their platoon without the rest of the US army knowing what's going on, and thus without any assistance beyond themselves.
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Movie: History of the World: Part I ( 1981 )
Mel Brooks brings his one-of-a-kind comic touch to the history of mankind covering events from the Old Testament to the French Revolution in a series of episodic comedy vignettes.
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Movie: Nighthawks ( 1981 )
Conservative street cop DaSilva reluctantly agrees to terminate an international terrorist who has demanded media attention. But DaSilva's "at-home" tactics are very much put to the challenge.
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Movie: Halloween II ( 1981 )
While Dr. Loomis hunts for Michael Myers, a traumatized Laurie is rushed to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, and The Shape is not far behind her.
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Movie: Porky's ( 1982 )
In 1954, a group of Florida high-school guys try to help their buddy lose his virginity, which leads them to seek revenge on a sleazy nightclub owner and his redneck sheriff brother for harassing them.
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Movie: Scanners ( 1981 )
A scientist trains a man with an advanced telepathic ability called "scanning" to stop a dangerous Scanner with extraordinary psychic powers from waging war against non scanners.
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Movie: Nice Dreams ( 1981 )
Disguised as ice cream vendors, Cheech and Chong make--and subsequently lose--millions of dollars selling a batch of marijuana with an unusual side effect.
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Movie: Neighbors ( 1981 )
A quiet man's peaceful suburban lifestyle is threatened by the new, obnoxious couple that moves in next door.
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Movie: The Postman Always Rings Twice ( 1981 )
This remake of the 1946 movie of the same name accounts an affair between a seedy drifter and a seductive wife of a roadside café owner. This begins a chain of events that culminates in murder.
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Movie: Endless Love ( 1981 )
A high school student's love for a 15-year-old girl is thwarted by parental disapproval, circumstance and accident.
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Movie: Private Lessons ( 1981 )
An immigrant housemaid seduces a 15-year-old boy and later fakes her own death as part of his chauffeur's blackmail plot. Troubles arise when the two start to fall in love.
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Movie: Blow Out ( 1981 )
A movie sound recordist accidentally records the evidence that proves that a car accident was actually murder and consequently finds himself in danger.
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Movie: My Dinner with Andre ( 1981 )
Two old friends meet for dinner; as one tells anecdotes detailing his experiences, the other notices their differing worldviews.
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Movie: Possession ( 1983 )
A woman starts exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after asking her husband for a divorce. Suspicions of infidelity soon give way to something much more sinister.
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Movie: Friday the 13th Part 2 ( 1981 )
Five years after the events of the first film, a summer camp next to the infamous Camp Crystal Lake is preparing to open, but the legend of Jason is weighing heavy on the proceedings.
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Movie: On Golden Pond ( 1982 )
Norman is a curmudgeon with an estranged relationship with his daughter Chelsea. At Golden Pond, he and his wife nevertheless agree to care for Billy, the son of Chelsea's new boyfriend, and a most unexpected relationship blooms.
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Movie: Dark Night of the Scarecrow ( 1981 )
In a small Southern town, a wrongfully-killed man exacts revenge on those who murdered him from beyond the grave.
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Movie: Death Hunt ( 1981 )
In 1931 Canada, Yukon trapper Johnson has a feud with a dog owner who later retaliates by publicly accusing Johnson of murder and thus triggering a police manhunt in the wilderness.
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Movie: Caveman ( 1981 )
A cave-man seeks revenge on a much larger competitor for the hand of a beautiful cave-woman.
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Movie: For Your Eyes Only ( 1981 )
James Bond is assigned to find a missing British vessel, equipped with a weapons encryption device and prevent it from falling into enemy hands.
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Movie: Gallipoli ( 1981 )
Two Australian sprinters face the brutal realities of war when they are sent to fight in the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey during World War I.
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Movie: The Burning ( 1981 )
A former summer camp caretaker, horribly burned from a prank gone wrong, lurks around an upstate New York summer camp bent on killing the teenagers responsible for his disfigurement.
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Movie: The Incredible Shrinking Woman ( 1981 )
When an ordinary woman is exposed to a unique mix of chemicals, she begins to uncontrollably physically shrink.
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Movie: Arthur ( 1981 )
Arthur spends his time with booze and whores. His dad has a wife lined up for him that he keeps rejecting - until it's her or being cut off from $750,000,000. Then he goes shopping where he falls in love with a shoplifter.
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Movie: X-Ray ( 1982 )
While receiving a routine check-up, a woman finds herself stranded on the hospital's eighth floor, while someone dressed as a doctor is intent on her never leaving, even if it means killing any staff member who comes into contact with her.
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TV Show: Brideshead Revisited ( 1981 )
Based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh, two years in the making, and the equivalent of seven feature films back-to-back, this epic drama tells a story of romantic yearning and loss in the glittering but fading world of the British aristocracy between the wars.
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Movie: Ragtime ( 1981 )
A young black pianist becomes embroiled in the lives of an upper-class white family set among the racial tensions, infidelity, violence, and other nostalgic events in early 1900s New York City.
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Movie: Dead & Buried ( 1981 )
A suspense horror film set in a small coastal town where, after a series of gory murders commited by mobs of townspeople against visiting tourists, the corpses begin to come back to life.
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Movie: Student Bodies ( 1981 )
A murderer known as "The Breather" kills off high schoolers.
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Movie: Chariots of Fire ( 1981 )
Two British track athletes, one a determined Jew, and the other a devout Christian, compete in the 1924 Olympics.
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Movie: S.O.B. ( 1981 )
A movie producer who made a huge flop tries to salvage his career by revamping his film as an erotic production, where its family-friendly star takes her top off.
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Movie: Condorman ( 1981 )
Cartoonist Woody becomes the superhero he draws. Using his gadgets he helps a Soviet spy defect to the West.
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Movie: Looker ( 1981 )
Plastic surgeon Larry Roberts performs a series of minor alterations on a group of models who are seeking perfection. The operations are a resounding success. But when someone starts killing his beautiful patients, Dr. Roberts becomes suspicious and starts investigating. What he uncovers are the mysterious - and perhaps murderous - activities of a high-tech computer company called Digital Matrix.
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Movie: Body Heat ( 1981 )
In the midst of a searing Florida heat wave, a woman persuades her lover, a small-town lawyer, to murder her rich husband.
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Movie: Modern Problems ( 1981 )
Jealous, harried air traffic controller Max Fiedler, recently dumped by his girlfriend, comes into contact with nuclear waste and is granted the power of telekinesis, which he uses not only to win her back, but to gain a little revenge.
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Movie: Ghost Story ( 1981 )
Two generations of men find themselves haunted by the presence of a spectral woman. When the son of one of the elderly men returns to his hometown after his brother's mysterious death, they attempt to unravel her story.
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Movie: The House by the Cemetery ( 1981 )
A New England home is terrorized by a series of murders, unbeknownst to the guests that a gruesome secret is hiding in the basement.
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Movie: Prince of the City ( 1981 )
A New York City narcotics detective reluctantly agrees to cooperate with a special commission investigating police corruption. However, he soon discovers that he's in over his head, and nobody can be trusted.
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Movie: Fort Apache the Bronx ( 1981 )
In New York, South Bronx's main police precinct is nicknamed Fort Apache by its employees who feel like troopers surrounded by hostiles in a wild west isolated outpost.
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Movie: Knightriders ( 1981 )
A medieval reenactment troupe struggles to maintain its family-like dynamic amid pressure from local authorities, interest from talent agents, and their "King's" delusions of grandeur.
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Movie: Bustin' Loose ( 1981 )
Joe Braxton is an ex-con who has been given a second chance to freedom after violating his probation. He has been hired by a school teacher named Vivian Perry to repair and drive an old school bus and drive a group of Special kids to Ms. Perry's Washington Farm from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to give them a new home after The Clarmont Center for Children is shut down by the city. The kids have severe mental problems and Joe is not looking forward to the trip at all, but Joe later bonds with Vivian and the children, offering his support and love and changes his outlook on life. But Donald, the social worker and Vivian's lover who gave Joe his break is hot on their tail and wants Joe back in prison. Joe and Vivian must now prevent Donald from sending the children back to Philadelphia, where they'll have no future.
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Movie: Hell Night ( 1981 )
Four college pledges are forced to spend the night in a deserted old mansion, where they are stalked by the monstrous survivor of a family massacre years earlier.
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Movie: Lady Chatterley's Lover ( 1981 )
A film adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's novel. After a crippling injury leaves her husband impotent, Lady Chatterly is torn between her love for her husband and her physical desires. With her husband's consent, she seeks out other means of fulfilling her needs.
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Movie: The Munsters' Revenge ( 1981 )
When a wax museum owner attempts to frame the Munsters for pulling a jewelry heist, they must both prove their innocence and find out the true thieves.
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Movie: Pennies from Heaven ( 1982 )
During the Great Depression, a sheet music salesman seeks to escape his dreary life through popular music and a love affair with an innocent school teacher.
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Movie: Galaxy of Terror ( 1982 )
Science fiction suspense thriller, in which a rescue space ship crew meets up with horrors projected by their own imaginations.
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Movie: Dragonslayer ( 1981 )
A young wizarding apprentice is sent to kill a dragon which has been devouring girls from a nearby kingdom.
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Movie: Sharky's Machine ( 1981 )
Tom Sharky is a narcotics cop in Atlanta who's demoted to vice after a botched bust. In the depths of this lowly division, while investigating a high-dollar prostitution ring, Sharky stumbles across a mob murder with government ties, and responds by assembling his downtrodden fellow investigators (Sharky's "machine") to find the leaders and bring them to justice before they kill off all his partners and witnesses, including Sharky himself.
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Movie: Wolfen ( 1981 )
A New York cop investigates a series of brutal deaths that resemble animal attacks.
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Movie: Rich and Famous ( 1981 )
Liz and Merry Noel become friends as college roommates and their friendship endures over the years. Liz becomes a respected "serious" novelist. Merry Noel marries, has a daughter and writes, too: "trash" fiction which becomes enormously successful. Their story begins in college and jumps ahead some years at a time to show their relationship with each other and those in their orbits as they grow and mature.
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Movie: The Final Conflict ( 1981 )
Now come into his full knowledge and power, the Anti-Christ in the body of Damien Thorne is about to strike his final blow. The Christ-child has been born again, on the Angel Isle, Great Britain (Scotland, England & Wales). The plan is simple, kill the Christ child to prevent him from growing up to bring the return of Christ and death of the Anti-Christ.
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Movie: Southern Comfort ( 1981 )
During a routine exercise, a team of National Guards are threatened by angry and violent locals.
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Movie: The Funhouse ( 1981 )
Four teenage friends spend the night in a carnival funhouse and are stalked by a deformed man in a Frankenstein mask.
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Movie: Under the Rainbow ( 1981 )
A visiting dignitary, a CIA agent, a Nazi spy, Japanese tourists, an assassin and a group of "midget" actors from The Wizard of Oz (1939) all check into an elite Los Angeles hotel called Under the Rainbow.
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Movie: Happy Birthday to Me ( 1981 )
At the snobby Crawford Academy, Virginia's group of friends start to go missing years after horrible events that happened to her as a child around her birthday.
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Movie: Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen ( 1981 )
Detective Charlie Chan helps SFPD solve the many bizarre murders. His clumsy grandson Lee, who's getting married, "helps" him. Is the Dragon Queen behind this?
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Movie: All Night Long ( 1981 )
A drummer plants doubts into the mind of a bandleader about his wife's faithfulness in an attempt to take over the band himself.
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Movie: The Bunker ( 1981 )
Dramatization depicting the events surrounding Adolf Hitler's (Sir Anthony Hopkins') last weeks in and around his underground bunker in Berlin before and during the battle for the city.
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Movie: The Legend of the Lone Ranger ( 1981 )
The sole surviving Texas Ranger of an ambush arranged by the outlaw leader Butch Cavandish returns to fight back as a great masked western hero - The Lone Ranger.
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Movie: The Looney, Looney, Looney Bugs Bunny Movie ( 1981 )
Bugs Bunny hosts an award show featuring several classic Looney Toon shorts.
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Movie: Carbon Copy ( 1981 )
When a rich white corporate executive finds out that he has an illegitimate black son, things start falling apart for him at home, at work and in his social circles.
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Movie: Absence of Malice ( 1981 )
When a prosecutor leaks a false story that a liquor warehouse owner is involved in the murder of a union head, the man's life begins to unravel.
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Movie: Going Ape! ( 1981 )
When his father, who owned a circus, dies Foster inherits $5-million--and three orangutans. But there's a condition: if he gives away the orangutans, or if just one gets sick or dies during the next three years, the zoological society will get all the money. So not only must he deal with three apes and an annoyed girlfriend, but he must also deal with kooky new roommate Laszlo who came from the circus to help with the apes, a greedy zoological society's president, three bumbling henchmen, and a cranky landlord.
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Movie: The Beyond ( 1981 )
A young woman inherits an old hotel in Louisiana where, following a series of supernatural "accidents", she learns that the building was built over one of the entrances to Hell.
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Movie: My Bloody Valentine ( 1981 )
A decades-old folk tale surrounding a deranged murderer killing those who celebrate Valentine's Day turns out to be true to legend when a group defies the killer's order and people start turning up dead.
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Movie: Buddy Buddy ( 1981 )
During a high profile Mafia testimony case in California's Riverside County, a hired killer checks into a hotel room near the courthouse, while his depressed next-door neighbor wants to commit suicide due to marital problems.
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Movie: Polyester ( 1981 )
A suburban housewife's world falls apart when she finds that her pornographer husband is serially unfaithful to her, her daughter is pregnant, and her son is suspected of being the foot-fetishist who's been breaking local women's feet.
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Movie: The Devil and Max Devlin ( 1981 )
When Max dies in an accident, he goes straight to hell. But the devil Barney makes him an offer: if he manages to get three innocent youths to sell him their souls in the next two months, he may stay on earth. Max accepts, and returns to earth, equipped with special powers. However his task is harder than expected, especially when 7 years old Tobi demands that he marry his mother.
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Movie: The Pit ( 1981 )
A solitary and strange preteen boy wreaks revenge on his harassers when he makes a disturbing discovery in the depth of a forest.
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Movie: Graduation Day ( 1981 )
A masked killer begins murdering students on the school track team after a track runner dies upon completion of a 30 second 200-meter race.
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Movie: An Eye for an Eye ( 1981 )
Sean Kane is forced to resign from the San Francisco Police Department's Narcotics Division when he goes berserk after his partner is murdered. He decides to fight alone and follows a trail of drug traffickers into unexpected high places.
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Movie: Continental Divide ( 1981 )
A hard-nosed Chicago journalist has an unlikely love affair with an eagle researcher.
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Movie: Tarzan the Ape Man ( 1981 )
While on an African expedition with her father, Jane Parker meets Tarzan, and the two become fascinated by each other.
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Movie: Whose Life Is It Anyway? ( 1982 )
Ken Harrison is an artist who makes sculptures. One day he is involved in a car accident, and is paralyzed from his neck down. All he can do is talk, and he wants to die. In hospital he make friends with some of the staff, and they support him when he goes to trial to be allowed to die.
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Movie: Harry's War ( 1981 )
After his aunt dies of a heart attack while fighting the IRS, Harry Johnson decides to take up the cause.
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Movie: They All Laughed ( 1982 )
A mad cap private-eye caper about a team of detectives who are following, and are being followed by, a group of beautiful women.
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Movie: Back Roads ( 1981 )
A prostitute and a drifter find themselves bound together as they make their way through the rural South, doing what they have to do to survive.
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Movie: The Hand ( 1981 )
A comic book artist loses his hand, which in turn takes on a murderous life of its own.
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Movie: St. Helens ( 1982 )
Dramatization of the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens. The movie begins with the volcano's awakening on March 20 and ends with its eruption on May 18, 1980.
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Movie: Saturday the 14th ( 1981 )
A family inherits an old mansion which houses the dangerous 'Book of Evil' that has all the monsters of the world trapped inside it.
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Movie: Roar ( 1981 )
A naturalist living with big cats in East Africa expects a visit by his family of four from Chicago. A mix-up leaves him searching for his family, who have been left in the clutches of wild lions.