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: Cannibal Ferox ( 1983 )
Anthropologists take a trip to the jungles of Colombia to study native cannibals. Instead, they find a band of drug dealers, using the natives to harvest coca leaves. After awhile, the natives are tired of being tortured slaves, and turn on their masters, as well as the anthropologists, thus filling the screen with gruesome splatter!
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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: 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: 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: Piranha II: The Spawning ( 1982 )
A scuba diving instructor, her biochemist boyfriend, and her police chief ex-husband try to link a series of bizarre deaths to a mutant strain of piranha fish whose lair is a sunken freighter ship off a Caribbean island resort.
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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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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: 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: The Last Shark ( 1982 )
An enormous and angry 35 foot Great White Shark takes revenge on humans when they build a beach just for swimmers by a coastal town. After several shark attacks, and the Mayor does nothing to stop it, James Franisscus and Vic Morrow sail in pursuit to stop it.
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Movie: The Incubus ( 1982 )
A small town's doctor takes matters into his own hands after a series of gruesome and bizarre rape crimes perplex the clueless authorities.
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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: One from the Heart ( 1982 )
Hank and Frannie don't seem to be able to live together anymore. After a five-year relationship, lustful and dreamy Frannie leaves down-to-earth Hank on the anniversary of their relationship. Each one of them meets their dream mate, but as bright as they may seem, they are but a stage of lights and colors. Will true love prevail over a seemingly glamorous passion? Welcome to Coppola's Broadway-like romantic musical.
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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: Cutter's Way ( 1982 )
Richard spots a man dumping a body, and decides to expose the man he thinks is the culprit with his friend Alex Cutter.
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Movie: Butterfly ( 1982 )
In 1937 Nevada, silver mine caretaker Jess Tyler is reunited with his teenage daughter Kady who will do anything to persuade Jess to let her have claim to the mine.
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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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Reds ( 1981 )
A radical American journalist becomes involved with the Communist revolution in Russia, and hopes to bring its spirit and idealism to the United States.
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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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Heartbeeps ( 1981 )
Two household robots run away and try to start a family.
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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: 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: Just Before Dawn ( 1981 )
Five campers arrive in the mountains to examine some property they have bought, but are warned by Forest Ranger Roy McLean that a huge machete-wielding maniac has been terrorising the area. Ignoring the warnings, they set up camp, and start disappearing one by one.
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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: Faces of Death II ( 1981 )
This movie continues in the same vein as F.O.D. 1 with short scenes of death related material. Mortuarys, accidents, police work are filmed by TV crews and home video cameras. Some of the material are most likely fake, some not as likely.
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Movie: Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story ( 1981 )
The life and death of the "Playboy" centerfold model/actress Dorothy Stratten.
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Movie: Shock Treatment ( 1981 )
Janet and Brad become contestants on a game show... but wind up as captives instead.
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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: 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: 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: 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: 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: The French Lieutenant's Woman ( 1981 )
Anna and Mike portray two characters in a film set in 19th century England who fall in love despite the fact that Mike's character is engaged.
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Movie: ...All the Marbles ( 1981 )
Harry Sears manages The California Dolls, a female wrestling tag team who tour America, hoping for a chance at winning big time. Harry's also romantically involved with one of them. Their fortunes seem osecondary to him (particularly when Harry accepts an engagement involving mud wrestling!) but then a chance at the big ring match beckons, in Reno, Nevada
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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: 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: Tattoo ( 1981 )
A troubled tattoo artist has designs on a model.
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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 Prowler ( 1981 )
The film begins with the return home of a wwII veteran who was the recipient of a "Dear John Letter". After swiftly dispatching a courting couple in a Gazebo we leap to present day where a college celebration becomes the hunting ground for a uniform clad killer.
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Movie: Paternity ( 1981 )
A single man searches for a woman who will bear his baby with no strings attached.
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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: The Boogens ( 1981 )
Otherworldly creatures are released from the bootleg tunnels underneath a small-town mining community, and begin chomping on the locals.
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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: True Confessions ( 1981 )
A worldly ambitious monsignor clashes with his older brother, a cynical Los Angeles homicide detective who is investigating the brutal murder of a young prostitute.
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Movie: Raggedy Man ( 1981 )
A divorcee with two sons has an affair with a young sailor passing through her Texas town in 1944.
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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: 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: 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: 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: Evilspeak ( 1981 )
An outcast military cadet taps into a way to summon demons and cast spells on his tormentors through his computer.
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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: 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: Deadly Blessing ( 1981 )
After her husband dies under mysterious circumstances, a widow becomes increasingly paranoid of the neighboring religious community that may have diabolical plans for her.
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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: 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: 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: Student Bodies ( 1981 )
A murderer known as "The Breather" kills off high schoolers.
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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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Eye of the Needle ( 1981 )
A ruthless German spy, trying to get out of Britain with vital information about D-Day, must spend time with a young woman and her crippled husband.
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Movie: Jaws of Satan ( 1981 )
A preacher whose ancestors were cursed by Druids battles Satan, who has taken the form of a huge snake.
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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: Wolfen ( 1981 )
A New York cop investigates a series of brutal deaths that resemble animal attacks.
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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: Zorro: The Gay Blade ( 1981 )
Mexico, 1840s. When the new Spanish Governor begins to grind the peasants under his heel, wealthy landowner Don Diego Vega follows in his late father's footsteps and becomes Zorro, the masked man in black with a sword who rights wrongs and becomes a...
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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: 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 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: 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: 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: 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 Great Muppet Caper ( 1981 )
Kermit the Frog, The Great Gonzo, and Fozzie Bear are reporters who travel to Britain to interview a rich victim of jewel thieves and help her along with her secretary, Miss Piggy.
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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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Clash of the Titans ( 1981 )
Perseus must battle Medusa and the Kraken to save the Princess Andromeda.
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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: 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: The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia ( 1981 )
A small town stud wants to go to Nashville and be a big country star. His ambitious kid sister works as his manager. When they cross paths with a small town sheriff, their dream comes in jeopardy.
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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: Final Exam ( 1981 )
In a small college in North Carolina, only a select few students are left to take mid terms. But, when a killer strikes, it could be everyone's final exam.
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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: 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: 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: 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 Four Seasons ( 1981 )
Three middle-aged wealthy couples take vacations together in Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Along the way we are treated to mid-life, marital, parental and other crises.