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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Clash of the Titans ( 1981 )
Perseus must battle Medusa and the Kraken to save the Princess Andromeda.
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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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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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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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 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: 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: Wolfen ( 1981 )
A New York cop investigates a series of brutal deaths that resemble animal attacks.
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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: Southern Comfort ( 1981 )
During a routine exercise, a team of National Guards are threatened by angry and violent locals.
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Movie: Tattoo ( 1981 )
A troubled tattoo artist has designs on a model.
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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: 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: 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: Student Bodies ( 1981 )
A murderer known as "The Breather" kills off high schoolers.
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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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Continental Divide ( 1981 )
A hard-nosed Chicago journalist has an unlikely love affair with an eagle researcher.
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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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: ...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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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 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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.