Over-looked '80s subgenres

[J.R.]

Ah, we all love bad '80s horror and comedy, right? Well, what about other genres from that wonderfully cheesy decade? For instance, skateboarding movies. The ones that get skating and skateboarders totally wrong. Gleaming The Cube: Christian Slater is a skatebaord punk whose brother is killed by the Vietnamese mafia, and he takes the bad guys down by making a skateboard out of a manhole cover and smacking into them. It has a hilarious cheese-pop theme. Thrashin': Josh Brolin in a skateboard version of Romeo And Juliet. It contains the classic skate joust. A bunch of guys settle their differences by skating around and hitting each other with maces and clubs. Parts of Police Academy 4: David Spade skates around a mall and harrasses old people. All of these movies have stunt doubles who are a few feet taller than the actors and wear bad wigs.

[Will]

Don't forget the rollerblading movies Airborne (with Jack Black!) and the great Corey Haim/Guy from Sleepaway Camp/Patricia Arquette futuristic roller blade gang movie Prayer of the Rollerboys!

[Mofo Rising]

Well, if you're going to bring up those two, let's not forget BMX movies.  The only one I can think of is RAD, but I'm sure there were others.

My favorite forgotten subgenre is the "mind transference" one.  There was a bunch of these in the eighties, most involving a father and his son.  As in LIKE FATHER LIKE SON or VICE VERSA.  Yup, endless laughs there.

[Will]

Oh yeah! And 18 Again

[J.R.]

What was the one with Fred Savage and Judge Reinhold? It was jaw-droppingly bad. There was a *very* bad skateboard movie in the '70s with Lief Garrett, called Skateboard. Another little genre was the "prodigy science students unknowingly build a weapon for the military", like Real Genius and The Manhattan Project.

[Steven Millan]

                 Great to see everybody here remembering those skateboard movies:yeah,"Thrashin'" was pretty awful(I'm sure that Josh Brolin's dad[James a.k.a. Mr Barbra Streisand]has fully forgiven him for doing this movie,guess he needed the cash and exposure that badly).Even my skateboard fan/expert brother completely laughed this film off the screen once he saw it.

[Bree]

Let's not forget those breakdancing/rap movies! Like Krush Groove, Tougher Than Leather, Breakin and Breakin 2, Electric Boogaloo.

Now those were the days.

[john]

>What was the one with Fred Savage and Judge Reinhold? It was jaw-droppingly
>bad.

 Vice Versa

[Neon Noodle]

There's the "Ninjas are still cool" genre with ones like Enter the Ninja, Revenge of the Ninja, American Ninja,  Kickboxer 2 (with a Brian Austin Green cameo) and the Godawful Ninja III: The Domination (Where is Sho Kosugi nowadays?)

This ties into the lesser-known "martial arts movies are not dead but we'll come as close to killing them forever as we can" genre with entries such as No Retreat, No Surrender (Way early movie with Van Damme, imagine a film combining the worst parts of Rocky IV and The Karate Kid...they went ahead and made it anyway....), The Perfect Weapon, Best of the Best, Bloodfist, anything with Billy Blanks before his Tae-Bo paychecks came in, etc....

But they are darn fun to watch!

[J.R.]

That's a genre I was going to mention. I guess in the '80s movie studios wanted to try to cash in on the cult following of Hong Kong cinema. Instead of getting the best talents from the source itself and casting real Asians in starring roles they Americanized the flicks and hired total honkeys to play guys who grew up in Japan or something. The majority of them were about Karate and ninjas, even though most of the popular chop-sockey films involve Chinese styles. Maybe more Americans knew of Karate?  The ones about ninjas often lauded the honor and art of Ninjitsu, even though ninjas are actually thieves. Also, the directors rarely knew what they were doing, lacking the finesse and artistry of real martial arts directors.

[ErikJ]

Does anybody remember when studios tryed to bring back 3-D? Spacehunter, Jaws 3-D, hell even Jason and Freddy got in on the act. My favorite and the worst of the 3-D crop was a little watched film called "The Treasure of the 4 Crowns." I remember sitting in the theater thinking what a load of crap it was. But yet I can still remember it fondly.

[john]

>My favorite and the worst of the 3-D crop was a little watched film called "The
>Treasure of the 4 Crowns."

 My favorite part of that movie right at the start. After the hero has avoided all the death traps and one-way passages and gotten the treasure, how does he get out? He breaks a window and goes through it! You'd think anyone smart enough to design all those traps wouldn't be stupid enough to put an untrapped window to the outside in the treasure room. Then again, in the time period the castle was built, maybe all the thieves were complete morons.

 Actually, the same thing happens in pretty much all movies; the hero fights his way past the traps and then just ducks out the back way.