It's crazy looking back how much the 1980s (especially the first part of the decade) were an incredibly rich goldmine of fantasy-oriented movies, to an extent that I don't believe has been matched before or since. Sure, many of them were low budget and/or aimed at kids (and many of them were pretty awful), but there were some high-budget movies and things aimed at older audiences as well. It's no wonder kids in this era all took so naturally to D&D - we had already been totally inundated with and acculturated to fantasy, whether we realized it or not. This is just a partial list, going by memory of things I saw, and doesn't even include all of the fantasy-oriented TV shows of the era like Thundarr the Barbarian, The Smurfs, Fraggle Rock, ThunderCats, He-Man, and (of course) Dungeons & Dragons, or non-English-language and anime stuff that I didn't become aware of until the 90s or later:
1981
Clash of the Titans
Excalibur
Time Bandits
Dragonslayer
Heavy Metal
1982
Conan the Barbarian
The Dark Crystal
The Last Unicorn
The Secret of NIMH
The Beastmaster
The Sword and the Sorcerer
1983
Fire and Ice
Krull
Deathstalker
1984
Gremlins
Ghostbusters
The Neverending Story
Conan the Destroyer
1985
Legend
Return to Oz
Ladyhawke
The Black Cauldron
Red Sonja
The Barbarian Queen
1986
Big Trouble in Little China
Labyrinth
Highlander
1987
The Princess Bride
Masters of the Universe
The Barbarians
1988
Beetlejuice
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Willow
1989
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
Erik the Viking
Ghostbusters II
Some of the best stuff were the cheapo ones that I saw but later fell through the cracks like
ReplyDeleteSORCERESS (Thats Erlic!)
HAWK THE SLAYER (The bow burst attack)
CONQUEST (This had sort of a D&D cartoon bow)
ARCHER: FUGITIVE OF THE EMPIRE (So did this TV MOVIE)
HEARTS AND ARMOUR (Not much magic but plenty of rape)
The only one of those I've seen is Hawk the Slayer (which I was thinking was from the 70s but IMDB says 1980). I'll have to look for the rest - hopefully some of them have been posted to YouTube
DeleteThanks for the suggestions, Gene. I'll have to check some of these out.
DeleteThe 80's were also when we got to enjoy Indiana Jones, as well as some Star Wars, which both fit comfortably in the fantasy genre, especially when taking into account their influence on D&D fans at the time. And don't forget how rich the 80's were for horror movies, which are kissing cousins to fantasy movies, and a number of other sci-fi flicks.
ReplyDeleteI don't usually think of the Indiana Jones movies as fantasy, but considering that all three of them had some supernatural element in the finale, I suppose I should. Raiders of the Lost Ark was definitely one of the top 3 movie influences on my D&D games (alongside Excalibur and Conan). And Tobe Hooper had a big influence with both Poltergeist and Lifeforce.
DeleteI feel the quality that promoted Raiders of the Lost Ark as a D&D influence wasn't as much the fantastic elements, but more its focus on crawling through trap-laden tombs in search of ancient treasure. In that way The Goonies was also a movie that captured much of that D&D magic. Now, if D&D was an influence on these dungeon crawl movies or not is debatable, but taking into account the popularity of the game at the time it wouldn't surprise me.
DeleteI think the influence switched directions in about 1984. Prior to that point, I think the movies were influencing people to play D&D. After that, D&D's popularity was influencing movies - Conan the Destroyer (1984), Legend (1985), The Goonies (1985), Labyrinth (1986), and Willow (1988) all feel to me like they wouldn't have existed (or at least would have been significantly different) without the early 80s D&D boom.
DeleteIt's funny thinking back how many of the early dungeons I both created and played in were filled with traps straight out of Raiders of the Lost Ark and none of us batted an eye at it. I guess our experience with such things was limited enough that it just made sense to us that of course every tomb or shrine would have a giant rolling boulder, a room full of snakes, etc.
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