Say what you will about Gen X, but we truly had the greatest childhoods. It was a time before everything was documented on social media, we ran around largely unsupervised until the streetlights came on, and we grew up with the glorious entertainment that was Saturday Morning Cartoons. But that wasn’t the only entertainment advantage we had. We also grew up with 1980s fantasy movies and it was genuinely a magical time. The 1980s was a unique era when it came to fantasy film. Star Wars had just been a massive success in the late 1970s which helped to usher in a cultural shift when it came to the very popularity of the genre and things like Dungeons & Dragons were find their footing as well (we won’t talk about the Satanic Panic of it all). Filmmaking was also in a very interesting moment, relying on practical effects to bring inventive worlds to life.
But here’s the thing: while there was a wealth of fantasy movies in the 1980s and Gen X kids watched a lot of them thanks to VHS and the movies being replayed on television a lot, not all of them were great even at the time but now, decades later, even some of the ones that we really enjoyed back then haven’t held up. Be it low production quality or questionable themes or a combination of things, here are five fantasy films from the 1980s that are practically unwatchable today. That doesn’t mean we won’t watch them… just that they are pretty cringey now.
Here’s the thing about 1985’s The Black Cauldron: it’s actually not a bad movie. Disney’s foray into animated films with darker themes (it was the first animated Disney movie to receive a PG rating), The Black Cauldron was loosely based on the first two books in The Chronicles of Prydain series of novels. However, the movie ended up bombing at the box office and even jeopardized the entire future of Disney animation.
What makes The Black Cauldron unwatchable is how grim it is. There is no getting around it, the movie is downright upsetting in places and while there are some very ambitious elements in the film (it’s the first Disney animated film to feature computer-generated imagery) and it was a big swing content-wise, the movie also suffers from some weird pacing it is unrelentingly bleak. You have to really like dark fantasy or be a deep Disney nerd to watch this one.
This is one that pains me to put on the list since it is among my personal favorite movies, but if you find The Black Cauldron to be unwatchable now, you’ll find Return to Oz unwatchable for many of the same reasons. Also released in 1985 and also a Disney movie, the film is an unofficial sequel to the 1939 classic. If you’re a Wizard of Oz fan, the film is kind of great in that it is much more faithful to L. Frank Baum’s novels and it has some fantastic practical effects, but don’t go into this expecting Technicolor glory.
Return to Oz is grim and disturbing, much more of a body horror fantasy than something bright and fun. I mean, the movie features Dorothy about to get electroshock therapy in the first few minutes of the movie while later we see a glass cabinet of severed heads where the film’s villain changes them out like most people change socks. Oh, and forget flying monkeys, this movie has the Wheelers, which are far, far, far more horrifying. There is also a weird disconnect between the movie and its audio that, even if you’re into how weird the movie is can be very hard to sit through.
1982’s The Beastmaster is one of those movies that kids saw countless times on VHS or on television and it comes up frequently on lists of iconic 1980s fantasy movies. The sword and sorcery film is very loosely based on a 1959 sci-fi novel and tells the story about a man named Dar, who can telepathically communicate with animals who ends up taking on an evil wizard and his army as he turns out to be the rightful king of the land. At the time it was released, it was a family friendly adventure and pretty popular once it showed up on television.
Unfortunately, time has not been kind to The Beastmaster. Watching it today, it’s full of uncomfortable and downright creepy tropes, particularly when it comes to how Dar uses his telepathic powers. You see, he doesn’t just use those powers for good. He also uses them to creep on women bathing naked in a lake, something the movie plays as a joke. There is also a very weird incest subplot that just has not aged well at all.
Released in 1980, this one is another movie that Gen X kids probably know by heart because of how frequently it was on television or how many times we saw it on VHS. It is pretty much a cheap rip on Dungeons & Dragons and follows Hawk and Voltan, two warring brothers. Voltan is evil, busting into his father’s castle and demanding ancient power, but when he’s denied he kills his father. Hawk, the good brother, is given a powerful sword with magical powers as the king is dying and he vows to avenge his father by killing Voltan. When we were kids, we ate it up.
Now that we’re adults, though, the movie is just bad. It’s very clearly a low-budget movie with really cheap production design, the acting is not good and perhaps the strangest thing is that the movie sees a huge age gap between the two actors playing Hawk and Voltan, John Terry and Jack Palance. The only thing that makes Hawk the Slayer work at all these days is nostalgia and I’m not sure it can lift that much.
You might not think of 1987’s Mannequin as a fantasy movie and honestly, that’s understandable. Most people think of sword and sorcery or something with dragons when they think of fantasy, not a movie about a mannequin coming to life, but it here we are. Mannequin stars Andrew McCarthy, Kimm Cattrall, Estelle Getty, James Spader, Meshach Taylor, and G.W. Bailey and tells the story of department store window dresser Jonathan who creates a mannequin who just so happens to end up inhabited by the spirit of a woman from ancient Egypt. Yes, this is a romantasy and it has a fantastic soundtrack.
But for as charming as this movie is (and it is one of my personal favorites) if we’re being honest, the movie is a little hard to watch today. There are some pretty outdated gender roles in the movie and it is definitely a little misogynistic There is some questionable queer representation as well and don’t think too hard about the ancient Egypt of it all. Focus on the music — Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” will always be a classic.
What 1980s fantasy film do you think is unwatchable now? Let us know in the comments.
