What are your favourite 80s fantasy movies?
I've been catching up on and rewatching some lately. Legend, Highlander, The Never ending Story. What are some others that are similar? And why do 80s movies seem to hit different than other decades?
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Willow
To answer the second question, Willow hit different because in the 80s they were totally fine with making fantasy movies that were meant to be watched by families but also had no problem traumatizing children. Willow had those creepy rat dog things straight out of a nightmare. Same way The Neverending Story has the horse/swamp scene and Gremlins turned fluffy cute animals into scary wicked creatures. Honestly, it's a miracle any of us millennials survived without a serious case of PTSD every time we went to Blockbuster.
And don’t forget those weird muppets in Labyrinth that pulled their heads off while singing.
The 80s were a great time to be a kid but, yeah, no one cared if we got terrified to the point of not being able to sleep on a regular basis. :)
The threat of nuclear war wasn't awesome either but we had punk rock, D&D, and it still made sense to buy comic books.
and not every good guy somehow had to survive. that blonde guy (Eric?) died pretty brutally, and even though off-screen the babies mum and the nanny clearly died brutal deaths (and it was heavily implied), I think you even hear the nanny being torn apart by wolves
Oh yes.. I still remember the first time seeing that scene where everyone (almost) got turned into pigs in Willow. It really freaked me out at the time.
*shudders*
I think the heavy reliance on physical props, models and scenery. Combined with a certain darker style of story telling really made those movies stand out.