For all the harm that was done in the 1980s, from deregulation to the drug wars, the decade did deliver the age of the blockbuster, and several of its best examples are streaming on Netflix right now. Directors such as Spike Lee, Ridley Scott, Rob Reiner, Harold Ramis, Barry Levinson and Ivan Reitman delivered grand adventures, prestige drama and silly comedy that still hold up four decades later. It was the age of the numbered sequel, and the drive to make every film bigger and bolder than the previous. It’s no surprise that the ’80s movies on Netflix get a lot of attention.
These films are likely to leave Netflix soon, so enjoy your blockbusters while you can. Here are the best movies from the 1980s you can stream on Netflix right now.
Amadeus
Year: 1984
Director: Milos Foreman
Stars: Thomas Hulce, F. Murray Abraham
Rating: R
The fine line between genius and insanity is the subject of this big-budget costume drama that proved just how hip classical musicians can be. Milos Foreman tickles the vulgar underbelly of the sublime and the result is Thomas Hulce’s braying, chittering laugh as the wild-child prodigy, Wolfgang Mozart. F. Murray Abraham’s portrayal of Antonio Salieri’s descent into madness fueled by jealousy is the perfect foil. Lust, envy, greed—all of the deadly sins are here, set to some of the greatest music ever written. —J.R.
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Year: 1984
Director: Wes Craven
Stars: Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, John Saxon, Ronee Blakley, Johnny Depp, Amanda Wyss
Rating: R
Of the big three slasher franchises—Halloween, Friday the 13th and this—it’s Nightmare on Elm Street that presented us with the greatest and most complete of original installments. No doubt this is a factor of being the last to come along, as Wes Craven had a chance to watch and be influenced by the brooding Carpenter and the far more shameless and tawdry Cunningham in several F13 sequels. What emerged from that stew of influences was a killer who shared the indestructibility of Myers or Voorhees, but with a twist of Craven’s own demented sense of humor. That’s not to say Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) is a comedian—at least not here in the first Nightmare, where he’s presented as a serious threat and a genuinely frightening one at that, rather than the self-parodying pastiche he would become in sequels such as Final Nightmare—but his gleeful approach toward murder and subsequent gallows humor make for a very different breed of supernatural killer, and one that proved extremely influential on post-Nightmare slashers. The film’s simple premise of tapping into the horrors of dreaming and questionable reality was like a gift from the gods presented directly to the artists and set designers, given carte blanche to indulge their fantasies and create memorable set pieces like nothing else ever seen in the horror genre to that point. It’s a phantasmagoria of morbid humor and bad dreams. —Jim Vorel
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
Year: 1987
Director: Chuck Russell
Stars: Robert Englund, Heather Langenkamp, Patricia Arquette, Priscilla Pointer, Craig Wasson, Lawrence Fishburne
Rating: R
Dream Warriors is almost invariably hailed as the best of the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels, and this is one case where the horror fans aren’t wrong–although The Dream Master and New Nightmare are both solid, as well. After the oddball diversion (and famous gay subtext) of the first sequel, Freddy’s Revenge, Dream Warriors benefits greatly from a returning Heather Langenkamp as top tier final girl Nancy Thompson, now grown up and attempting to help a new generation of kids fight back against the pure evil that is Freddy Krueger. It’s a film that benefits from a perfect supporting cast of dreamers, all battling their own personal demons, but of course it’s Robert Englund who steals the show as Freddy. Building upon his persona from the first two Nightmare installments, this film is the zenith of “funny Freddy” as an archetype, expertly balancing the character’s menace with deadly one-liners that are instantly iconic. Every death scene in Dream Warriors is memorable, while the dream sequences are more unbound than ever. If the original A Nightmare on Elm Street is the series at its most frightening, then Dream Warriors is perhaps the series at its most purely entertaining–the mold that lesser sequels were always trying to duplicate in the years that followed, with diminishing returns. —Jim Vorel
Beverly Hills Cop
Year: 1984
Director: Martin Brest
Stars: Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, Lisa Eilbacher, Ronny Cox, Steven Berkoff
Rating: R
We might remember Beverly Hills Cop for Eddie Murphy’s one-liners and that perfect microcosm of 1984, “Axel F,” but at its heart, it’s an action movie. In fact, Mickey Rourke and Sylvester Stallone were both attached to Murphy’s role before last-minute re-writes catered the story to the SNL actor. And this was Murphy at his cocky, wise-cracking best—always in complete charge of the situation no matter how much of a fish-out-of-water his Axel Foley might have been.—Josh Jackson
Born on the Fourth of July
Year: 1989
Director: Oliver Stone
Stars: Tom Cruise, Willem Dafoe, Kyra Sedgwick, Raymond J. Barry, Jerry Levine, Frank Whaley
Rating: R
Runtime: 145 minutes
Oliver Stone, essentially, found the perfect mouthpiece in Tom Cruise, as Vietnam veteran and anti-war protester Ron Kovic, to champion his own politics revolving around America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. The scenes recalling Kovic’s experiences that result in his PTSD, paralyzing disability and alcohol abuse are as gut-wrenching as anything in Full Metal Jacket, and witnessing the development of those things after his return to his country is a tragedy unraveling onscreen all its own. Cruise is phenomenal as a man truly broken—physically and psychologically—by his traumas (as is the scene-stealing Willem Dafoe as a fellow wounded warrior). Despite ending on a hopeful thread, Fourth of July is a tough watch, but very worthwhile—perhaps even patriotically necessary. —Scott Wold
The Breakfast Club
Year: 1985
Director: John Hughes
Stars: Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall
Rating: R
There’s no other movie that better encapsulated and enhanced the 1980s teenage experience, with all the positive and negative connotations that might conjure, than John Hughes’ iconic high school dramedy. The charm of The Breakfast Club lies in the simplicity of its premise: The whole thing is basically a chamber piece wherein each archetypal member of an ’80s movie high school clique is stuck in detention on a Saturday, left to work through their differences and confront their inner demons by gradually opening up to one another—but not without indulging silly teen comedy stuff, like how smoking marijuana apparently gives one the power to break glass by screaming. As such, some of the broader material may feel dated, but the tender performances by the future Brat Pack members, brought together by Hughes’ insightful writing when it comes to capturing the teenage experience of the time, serves a delicate balance between a time capsule into the period and a still-relevant examination of pubescent troubles. —Oktay Ege Kozak
Conan the Barbarian
Year: 1982
Director: John Milius
Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Earl Jones, Sandahl Bergman, Max von Sydow, Mako, Ben Davidson
Rating: R
The absolutely quintessential 1980s fantasy epic, sword-and-sorcery spectacular Conan the Barbarian was also the film that indisputably crafted the legend of Austrian muscleman Arnold Schwarzenegger for western audiences. Arnie had appeared in several American films at this point, but it was Conan that first harnessed his raw charisma and surprising physical comedy chops, starting him down the path toward Terminator and beyond. Conan is a rather dry character, a brooding brute driven by revenge and the understandable desire to “crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of the women.” But the key is the colorful characters he’s surrounded by, like odious snake priest Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones), or the thespian grace of Max von Sydow. The supporting characters flesh out the lush, low-fantasy world into which Conan is always ready to hack and slice. —Jim Vorel
Dune
Year: 1984
Director: David Lynch
Stars: Kyle MacLachlan, Jurgen Prochnow, Francesca Annis, Patrick Stewart, Sting, Brad Dourif, Virginia Madsen
Rating: PG-13
Before Denis Villeneuve, popular consensus on Frank Herbert’s iconic sci-fi novel Dune was that it might be unfilmable … because the great David Lynch had already tried to do just that in 1984, with mixed results. Lynch’s version of Dune has not maintained the best reputation among rank and file film fans, though it’s not hard to find ardent defense of it from cinematic aesthetes and devotees of Lynch’s filmography. What it undeniably has going for it is a grandiosity of visual style and panache, with incredible, overwrought costuming and set-dressings that evoke the interstellar peacocking that is absolutely present in Herbert’s tome. Less faithfully transcribed is Dune’s plot and themes of unavoidable horrors inherent in trying to exercise and wield power, even with good intentions. Lynch’s film isn’t given the space and running time necessary to really plumb these depths, an advantage now possessed by Villeneuve. The result is a more conventional revenge and messiah story, albeit one with all the idiosyncrasies of filming and performance one expects from Lynch’s oeuvre. Today, it’s worth watching for the costuming alone. —Jim Vorel
Firestarter
Year: 1984
Director: Mark L. Lester
Stars: Drew Barrymore, David Keith, Freddie Jones, Heather Locklear, Martin Sheen, George C. Scott, Art Carney, Louise Fletcher
Rating: R
Firestarter combines two of King’s favorite subjects: innocent people with psychic powers they can’t control, and the abusive overreach of government authority. Director Mark L. Lester’s take on King’s bestseller briefly criticizes the government’s self-destructive paranoid tendencies, as evidenced by the overzealous captain played efficiently by Martin Sheen, but he’s mostly interested in exploiting then-groundbreaking pyrotechnic effects as he pulls off a fairly average retelling of a telekinetic father (David Keith) protecting his daughter (Drew Barrymore), who can create fire with her mind, from evil secret agents who want to dissect said mind. Just like in the novel, all of the story beats are predictable, especially if you’ve seen your share of “pure-hearted civilians run from the horrible government” thrillers, but Drew Barrymore’s haunting presence and a striking midpoint set-piece that shows her burning a bunch of agents in her front yard turn it into a halfway-decent time-waster. —Oktay Ege Kozak
Mobile Suit Gundam: Char’s Counterattack
Year: 1988
Director: Yoshiyuki Tomino
Stars: Toru Furuya, Shuichi Ikeda, Hirotaka Suzuoki, Maria Kawamura, Nozomu Sasaki, Koichi Yamadera
Rating: TV-14
The first Gundam theatrical film and final chapter in the original saga begun in 1979 with the “Universal Century Timeline” of the Mobile Suit Gundam TV series, Char’s Counterattack has the weight of three seasons of TV behind it. Yoshiyuki Tomino, creator of the Gundam series, directed and wrote the film, adapting it faithfully from his novel, Hi-Streamer. Widely considered the best film in the Gundam franchise, Char’s Counterattack is most successful at wrapping up the 14-year rivalry between the “hero” of the Earth Federation, Amuro Ray, and the leader of Neo-Zeon, Char Aznable. The story involves a classic Gundam dilemma: Char’s Neo-Zeon force attempts to drop an asteroid filled with nuclear weapons onto Earth, which would free the colonies from the yoke of oppression by their rivals, the Earth Federation, and kill everyone on Earth in the process. As with all of the best Gundam tales, Tomino approaches the story from a hard sci-fi point of view, clearly laying out the science behind things like giant mobile suits and “newtypes” (humans that have evolved to acquire psychic abilities). Tomino carefully lays out the reasoning behind Char and Amuro’s passions and hatreds, not allowing the viewer to choose a clear side. Gundam series have always been willing to take on discussions about the horrors of war and how mankind, for all its advancements, never seems to be able to free itself from humanity’s baser instincts. Char’s Counterattack attempts this as well, yet it’s mostly concerned with wrapping up the rivalry between Amuro and Char—and on that note, it succeeds wildly. Featuring gorgeous, tense fight sequences set in space, an excellent soundtrack by Shigeaki Saegusa, and some of the most lauded Gundam designs in the history of the franchise, the film is inarguably one of the high points of the Gundam Universe. One downside: If you don’t have the investment of spending hundreds of episodes of television with these characters, the plot can be confusing, and Char/Amuro’s ending will likely not resonate as strongly. Regardless, Char’s Counterattack remains a key moment in the Gundam universe, one still worth checking out almost 30 years later. Hail Zeon!—Jason DeMarco
Starman
Year: 1984
Director: John Carpenter
Stars: Jeff Bridges, Karen Allen, Charles Martin Smith, Richard Jaeckel
Rating: PG
John Carpenter’s Starman is one of those movies that is inextricably linked to another, similar film of the era that would go on to much greater pop cultural impact–in this case, Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Initially developed alongside Spielberg’s Night Skies (which would become E.T.) at Columbia, it was a film that was seen very differently by various writers, producers and would-be directors. Some envisioned Starman as a family drama, others as hard sci-fi spectacle. The eventual release of E.T. threw a spanner in the works for the Starman script, as it was also about a friendly alien who comes to Earth and is taken in by a supportive human presence. Enter, John Carpenter of all people, whose vision for Starman focused more on its dramatic and romantic aspects, and the bond that develops between a woman and an alien (who happens to look just like her dead husband) as they travel across the country on the run from the U.S. government. It’s safe to say this is about as different a take on alien life from Carpenter’s 1982 masterpiece The Thing as is possible. Even with that in mind, though, you can’t really fail to note the Amblin-esque feel–this film is Carpenter at his most Spielbergian, something particularly inescapable during a sweeping close-up of the face of Karen Allen, who had starred in Raiders of the Lost Ark only three years earlier. And yet, there’s trademark Carpenter to spare here as well, particularly in the genuinely horrific transformation of the alien presence into an adult Jeff Bridges, which briefly calls to mind the body horror of The Thing. —Jim Vorel