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: 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: 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: Wolfen ( 1981 )
A New York cop investigates a series of brutal deaths that resemble animal attacks.
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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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 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: 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: 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 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: 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: The Monster Club ( 1981 )
A writer of horror stories is invited to a "monster club" by a mysterious old gentleman. There, three gruesome stories are told to him; between each story some musicians play their songs.
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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: 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 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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.
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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: The Fan ( 1981 )
Douglas, a record salesman, is an obsessive fan of actress Sally Ross. When his letters are rejected, he strikes out at her and her loved ones.
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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: 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 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: 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 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 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: 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 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: Tattoo ( 1981 )
A troubled tattoo artist has designs on a model.
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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: 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: Student Bodies ( 1981 )
A murderer known as "The Breather" kills off high schoolers.
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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: 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: Southern Comfort ( 1981 )
During a routine exercise, a team of National Guards are threatened by angry and violent locals.
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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: Shock Treatment ( 1981 )
Janet and Brad become contestants on a game show... but wind up as captives instead.
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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: 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: 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: Rubberface ( 1981 )
Janet is an over-weight girl who has a knack for making the other children in school laugh...by making fun of her own weight. In seeing the other kids reaction, she feels that she might have what it takes to be a comedian. She visits the local comedy club where she finds Tony Moroni who is a struggling comedian whose jokes are less than funny. Together Tony helps Janet find self-esteem and Janet helps Tony with his material.
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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.
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Movie: Road Games ( 1981 )
A laid-back American truck driver in south Australia starts to suspect a man driving a green van of killing young women along his route, and proceeds to play a cat-and-mouse game in order to catch him red-handed.
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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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Paternity ( 1981 )
A single man searches for a woman who will bear his baby with no strings attached.
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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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Miracle on Ice ( 1981 )
A fact-based story of how the U.S. Olympic hockey team beat the Soviet Union at the 1980 Lake Placid, New York Winter Olympics, then went on to win the gold medal.
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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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Horrorplanet ( 1981 )
A crew of interplanetary archaeologists is threatened when an alien creature impregnates one of their members, causing her to turn homicidal and murder them one by one.
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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: 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: 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: Heartbeeps ( 1981 )
Two household robots run away and try to start a family.
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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: Hard Country ( 1981 )
Ambitious young Jodie wants more out of life than the small Texas country town she lives in has to offer. Jodie realizes that in order to pursue her dreams she will have to leave Texas and move to the big city. However, her shiftless factory worker boyfriend Kyle wants to stay in Texas.
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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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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.