Top 10 Films
1980’s Comedy Movies You’ve Never Seen
By Dan Stephens
March 12, 2024
The 1980s was the decade of Spandex, big hair, Reaganomics, and a notorious and tragic terrorist attack at Nakatomi Tower. While nothing could be done to turn around the distress caused by Spandex, big hair, and Reaganomics, the latter was thankfully resolved by a bloodied New York cop in a vest.
While the decade can be remembered for its fashion faux pas, materialism, and excess, it was a great period of Hollywood comedy. National Lampoon’s Vacation, Beverly Hills Cop, The Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, Trading Places, Coming to America, and Airplane are just a few greats to emerge in the eighties.
With such a rich array of comedy movies emerging in the 1980s, featuring Hollywood legends from Leslie Nielsen to Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Bette Midler, Bill Murray, Steve Martin, and John Candy, it’s understandable that a few might have passed you by.
Fear not—we’ve got a rundown of lesser-known 1980s comedy classics that deserve your attention. How many of these have you seen?
10. The Secret Of My Success
Dir. Herbert Ross (1987)
Released to coincide with Michael J. Fox’s sudden stardom following the release and subsequent box office success of Back To The Future, The Secret of My Success is a fun, feel-good 1980s comedy boasting many of the traits that became synonymous with the decade. Self-worth, career paths, financial success, materialism, and big business are all present and correct.
It features Fox’s trademark energy under the experienced direction of veteran filmmaker Hebert Ross. Jim Cash’s crowd-pleasing script sees Fox’s plucky Brantley masquerade as a company executive to ascend the corporate ladder, leading to some memorable fish-out-of-water comedy scenes.
The Secret of My Success was one of Michael J. Fox’s most financially successful movies after the Back To The Future trilogy. In 1987, it was the seventh highest-grossing film of the year.
9. Outrageous Fortune
Dir. Arthur Hill (1987)
Shelley Long, whose 1980s film performances are seemingly (and unfairly) forgotten, teams up with Bette Midler to play a pair of actresses baying for the blood of the man secretly sleeping with them both. Cross-country antics ensue with layers of international intrigue and undercover shenanigans.
8. Neighbors
Dir. Avildsen (1981)
Swapping the character personas each was known for, Dan Aykroyd plays the over-caffeinated and potentially psychotic Vic alongside John Belushi as the “straight man” Earl Keese in this comic tale of suburbia-in-peril.
It is not a patch on The Blues Brothers and a strange directorial choice for Rocky filmmaker John G. Avildsen. Still, Neighbors is another opportunity to see Aykroyd and Belushi doing their best.
7. Dragnet
Dir. Mankiewicz (1987)
This part parody, part homage to the Jack Webb-fronted television series of the same name sees Aykroyd star opposite Tom Hanks as two mismatched cops on the trail of a strange cult known as P.A.G.A.N (People Against Goodness And Normalcy).
Aykroyd pens the screenplay (this time alongside Alan Zweibel and director Tom Mankiewicz), highlighting his skills in front of and behind the camera. The film is uneven, and not everything works, but it is great to see two comedy stars of the 1980s partner up.
6. Big Business
Dir. Jim Abrahams (1988)
In this fun comedy by Jim Abrahams, famously part of the team that created Airplane, Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin play a set of sisters mistakenly separated from their twins at birth. Each pairing grows up (believing they’re non-identical twins) unbeknownst to the error before a series of events simultaneously sees them in the same small town.
This initially leads to some funny scenes of the sisters being mistaken for their twins, including by the men who are trying to pursue them romantically. The premise adds weight to proceedings by making one set of sisters rich and the other comparatively poor. It leads to a formulaic conclusion, but Tomlin and Midler’s enthusiasm for their multirole performances rubs off on the audience.
5. Throw Momma From The Train
Dir. Danny DeVito (1987)
Like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Danny DeVito plays another childlike character, but here, he’s hamstrung by his domineering but lazy mother, whom he lives with.
In a parody of Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, DeVito’s Owen Lift plans to swap murders with nice guy novelist Larry (Billy Crystal). His resentment toward his ex-wife for stealing his book and making a success out of it leads him to have murder on his mind, too. It’s a fun comedy, with DeVito also manning the director’s chair.
4. Tapeheads
Dir. Bill Fishman (1988)
Tapeheads is one of those cult 1980s movies held dear by its admittedly small group of devotees and largely forgotten by those around during its release in 1988. But there are a couple of reasons why it’s a perfect product of its time, not least the quick-fix formulas that aspired but largely failed to deliver a hit for its stars, John Cusack and Tim Robbins.
Aside from building from a premise of hopeful “rags” seeking “riches,” the film evokes the spirit of MTV as a couple of best friends lose their jobs and begin a video production company. Their holy grail is getting their work on the Music TV channel, an indication of MTV’s power, prevalence, and influence in the eighties.
3. What Have I Done To Deserve This?
Dir. Pedro Almodóvar (1984)
Spaniard Pedro Almodóvar became prominent in the English-speaking world in 1988 with Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown. Go back four years and we’ve got What Have I Done To Deserve This. A very dark, sometimes bleak comedy features Carmen Maura, Ángel de Andrés López, Chus Lampreave, and Verónica Forqué. It depicts the escapades of an exhausted homemaker and her chaotic family dynamic.
The film portrays Gloria (Maura) as a downtrodden housewife and janitor ensnared in a loveless marriage. Her taxi driver’s spouse remains fixated on a former flame, a German singer from years past. He also dabbles in forgery, specializing in crafting counterfeit letters attributed to Adolf Hitler, with aspirations of forging Hitler’s diaries for a substantial profit.
A heated altercation between the couple culminates in Gloria killing her husband. Abandoned by much of her family, she evades legal consequences for her actions. Ultimately, she finds herself reliant on her youngest son, who engages in prostitution to sustain them financially.
2. Clockwise
Dir. Christopher Morahan (1986)
John Cleese is brilliant in this post-Monty Python era film about an overtly punctual school headmaster who conducts his life based on a strict regimen and perfect time-keeping but finds his entire day, en route to a headmaster’s conference, disrupted by one mishap after another.
Despite boasting a wonderful sense of madcap farce perfectly matched by Cleese’s Basil Fawlty-like anarchic energy, Clockwise is a British comedy movie to have fallen by the wayside. But it deserves a bigger audience.
Heading across the country from Gloucestershire to Norwich, this formerly prim and proper headmaster ends up learning how to enjoy life outside of the constant time-checking and straightening of ties, albeit with the police on his tail for car theft, trespassing, kidnapping, vandalism, and robbery.
1. Withnail And I
Dir. Bruce Robinson (1986)
Inspired by writer-director Bruce Robinson’s troubles as an out-of-work actor, his Camden Town squalor fuelled by booze, the film follows two unemployed Londoners living in similar “poverty” as they head off to the countryside for a much-needed holiday.
Mixing comedy with tragedy, Withnail and I provide a caustic, unapologetic, and inherently truthful window onto this fringe element of London’s changing cultural and societal makeup. It distinguishes itself thanks to Robinson’s sparkling dialogue and some fine performances, particularly Ralph Brown’s spaced-out drug dealer and Richard E. Grant’s perennially drunk Withnail.
Pathos intensifies the humor; laughs that are often guttural, physical reactions – full-bodied like the wine they drink. If anything, the film is funnier, more moving, more tragic, and more absorbing in subsequent viewings. At the very least, you can marvel at teetotaller Grant’s inebriated Withnail, the best performance of his career and the greatest drunk in cinema history.
