It really is a absolute masterpiece . I highly recommend the book The world of the Dark Crystal by Brian Fraud , the crafting of the world is on another level. Did you watch the Netflicks series? Age of Resistance. I really enjoyed it expanding the world really well.
1982 was a weird year. I started my senior year in high school, and my little half-brother was only seven and we didn't live in the same house. Still, I managed to take him to a movie about every couple of months... and of course, half of them were Secret of Nimh, Last Unicorn, and Dark Crystal. For the last 40ish years, I've had to listen to how I scared him forever.
Fave movie of the year on this list: "Wrath of Khan". It's such a classic, in a year of classics. Fave movie from this section: "The Dark Crystal". I was a tween when this came out, so I was in the perfect demographic for this movie. And I *loved* it. It was *just* dark enough to be scary, but not enough to be off-putting for little me. And thank you for the detail of it (still?) being the only live-action movie with no (visible) actors in it. I love that!
The Last Unicorn was the first movie I ever saw in a theater as a child (I was 4). Loved it then and still love it. The book is my favorite book of all time and I read it once a year now. It's like a comfort book for me.
I have loved The Last Unicorn since I was little. I am currently 50 years old. I still watch it regularly. I also absolutely love The Dark Crystal. I still watch it regularly as well.
The original home release for Plague Dogs was actually cut in a few places. I believe it wasn't until the 2000s that a European release (maybe Germany?) had the full cut available.
Of this block I remember the Bronx warriors but not very well. Even less of a remembrance is mazes and monsters I remember seeing it but for whatever reason I never finished watching it. The two that I remember the most and love the most The last unicorn and The dark Crystal both of these I remember so well for my childhood.
Has to be The Dark Crystal but Plague Dogs is a very close second. That is a beautifully bleak film and ranks up there with Watership Down and When The Wind Blows for cartoons that scarred me
Plague Dogs movie made me cry and the book made me ashamed to be a human but those movies you listed absolutely are my favorites as well, how bout that?
Well now I have to completely mentally (in all senses of the word) rewrite my Ator chronology to incorporate Sangraal. This is almost as complicated as trying to fit all the Arthurian myths into one canon. But with bigger '80s hair.
The world science fiction convention in nineteen eighty one had an exhibit of some of the muppets and characters from the dark crystal. At the time, there had been no prepublicity about the movie. So we're looking at these things in utter awe and a bit of confusion. The 2 primary races are really impressive. Particularly the good guys who with their tail are probably about 15 feet long and yet it's there all you guys crouched down working walking in frog fashion as for the big and beetle warriors. Oh my effing, God was this thing terrifying. It was probably the size of a British police box AK.A the tardis. It. Kind of looked like a shiny, black jellyfish, a top, a collection of tentacles and claws.
I saw The Dark Crystal in the theater age 6. Holy moly I knew that was not like anything else I ever saw, even as a kid. Still unique and amazing all these years later.
I remember all the write ups in all the movie magazines in 82 about Slapstick, and then........it was like it never came out. I didn't know it actually existed.
I was super tense throughout the Plague Dogs segment, worrying you'd show the final shot, and I thought I'd been spared. But then you just had to slip it in, didn't you?
Lol thinking about the Man Who Saved the World i saw an old Bruce Le movie with Bolo Yueng and he fights a bull to the Klingon battle theme from Star Trek TMP
if nothing else Mazes & Monsters has some great Twin Towers footage.... and there is an early role for Clark Johnson in the film... Disagree about the cultural impact as it added to the moral panic around D&D via orginazations like BADD (Bothered about D&D) which along with the PMRC, who objected to Prince but also the D&D imagery found in Heavy Metal at the time... both fed into the Satanic Panic of the era
TBF, Pat Morita also played the Emperor in Mulan, Mulan II and Kingdom Hearts...soooo it's not just the fault of this movie...Also A lot of his roles pre-Karate Kid were...shall we say, not as culturally sensitive...
God I forgot how many great genre flicks there were in 1982. Given that Blade Runner, Mad Max, Tron, The Dark Crystal, Star Trek 2, Conan, Poltergeist and even freaking Annie got remakes and or sequels, why not The Last Unicorn or Plague Dogs? Chreistopher Lee really wanted a live action remake before he died, sadly he never got it. Also, there's a third book in the Richard Adams animal cruelty trilogy, Shardik.
