The Long Good Friday (1980)

“The Long Good Friday” is an absolute pinnacle classic gangster film in the U.K., place of my birth. Here in the States, not so much. It may not have glory and prestige of “The Godfather” or “Goodfellas,” but it belongs in the same esteemed crime family. This is a hard-scrapple bitchin’ bloody mafia flick about a common London mafia thug who has risen to the level of Godfather, and now he wants to go legit.

It’s 1979, and in several years’ time, the city is expected to play host to the Olympics. (It’s fictional, youz guys.) Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) wants to buy up London’s real estate abutting the Thames River for development, with promised riches beyond compare to come. His investors? The American Mob. Guy ain’t going legit, just thinks he is, or tells us he is. Oh, but the IRA is bugging about, as one of his men has double-crossed them, and ended up knifed in a gay bathhouse.

The title is on purpose. It’s a long and bloody Easter weekend when Shant’s mob life goes to a violent hell, with bombings, murders, and threats galore, and one man will end up nailed Jesus-style to a floor. Hopkins has never been better or scarier, or more volatile, you can smell the brimstone coming off the guy through the TV set. When he rips a man’s throat apart with a broken whiskey bottle, it’s still a shocker, even on a 10th viewing. (I love this film.)

Helen Mirren is just amazing as Shants’ girlfriend-slash-brutal brains of the mob operation; every equal smarts to Hopkins’ brutality. She has to be one of the greatest actresses ever, period, end of story. Royally good. I will not stoop to a “Queen” joke, err, damn. Sorry.

The film starts off a puzzle box, with seemingly random scenes of dealings and bar hook ups and body dumps, all coming together at the end, in a wordless climax that should have won Hopkins an Oscar and can stand aside any scene in the more well-known films made by Coppola or Scorsese. Scotsman John Mackenzie is the director. He never made a better film and he died without merely a blip in the news this past June. Criminal indeed. (I cannot say I have seen his other work.)

Oh, and bonus points for “Remington Steele” and James Bond fans, this is Piece Brosnan’s first film rule, and he plays a wordless assassin who goes from man-on-man bathhouse shower action, I mean the kind that would send GOP voters into shock, to killer in a flash. But, hey, he uses a gun, so GOP voters will dig that, eh? Seriously, if you dig crime film, watch this, then put it in your collection. A+

Airplane! (1980) and Airplane II: The Sequel (1982)

“Airplane!” has been a favorite since I first saw it 30 years ago. A spoof of 1970s-era airplane disaster flicks such as “Airport,” plus “Saturday Night Fever” and “From Here to Eternity,” it is the tale of a shell-shocked flyboy vet (Robert Hays) who buys a ticket on a Chicago-L.A. flight to woo back the stewardess (Julie Hagerty) he loves. But tragedy – food poison! – strikes, and Hays must command the airplane after the crew is laid ill. Insert dramatic music.

Directors/writers Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker just kill it, every joke either a gold-star winner or so awful, you laugh anyway. The genius is how nearly every actor – Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, Robert Stack -- in the film is dead-set serious no matter what insanity occurs. My favorite bits change with each viewing, from Barbara Billingsley talking jive to the white man saves Africa spoof to the wrong engine sound and a horse in bed. I could drone on for hours about this classic, but just know this is the ultimate pick-up film on any bad day. Leslie Nielsen as the doctor is a cinematic god. RIP, sir. A

The sequel – aptly named “Airplane II: The Sequel” -- is not classic, or even really memorable. The cherries are far outnumbered by the shit balls in this mostly scene-for-scene remake-part-sequel set not in airplane, but a passenger ship Space Shuttle headed to the moon.

Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers moved on to greener pastures, as did much of the cast, leaving some guy named Ken Finkleman to helm this space ride. He’s the guy who made “Grease 2.” The semi-plot: An onboard computer control goes whack, causing mayhem. HAL spoof! Boring! Hays and Hagerty return, both on Ottopilot. Jokes about armed terrorists boarding unscathed as old ladies are strip-searched is funnier now than the 1980s, in a twisted way. But even at 85 minutes, the film nose dives. C+

Fame (1980 and 2009)

“I’m gonna live for ever. I’m gonna learn how to fly.” Those words are the soul and theme of 1980’s “Fame.” It is the almost-prayer that students at the N.Y. School of the Performing Arts send up as they dance impromptu atop cars and trucks in the busy streets. The reality, though, is harsh: Failure is more likely, or a desperate late-night abortion, or a self-imposed exile worthy of Michael Corleone. The young actors, especially Gene Anthony Ray as a homeless dancer, are amazing. The remake serves up synthetic fluff so square it wouldn’t disturb a single moral at a Family on the Focus meeting. In 2009, there are no open gays at a drama/arts school. Seriously. The young actors are OK, hired more for their magazine cover appeal rather than gritty talent. The teachers (Megan Mullally especially) rule the roost. Both films suffer from a rushed auditions-to-graduation timeline and a myriad of plots that get lost in the kitchen sink pace. 1980: B+ 2009: C-

Caddyshack (1980) and Caddyshack II (1988)

“Caddyshack” well may have been the first “R”-rated movie I ever saw, back in the early 1980s on HBO, then the only way a child got to see forbidden movies. I didn’t get 90 percent of the jokes, but I laughed hysterically at the gopher and Bill Murray’s grungy assistant groundskeeper. I’m older now, but I still adore that puppet and Murray’s stoner wiseass, and that random Baby Ruth incident. Heck, the entire film is random, packed with adlibs from Murray, Chevy Chase, Ted Knight, Brian Doyle-Murray and Rodney Dangerfield, plus a gaggle of horny youth. Its bare-bones plot tracks a series of characters in and around a snobby golf course and country club, focusing on balls of both the greens and sheets, and drugs and booze. Some scenes soar, others fail. I’ve known many rich, white, golf clubbing, country club bigots who love this fully and openly un-PC film, but have no idea they are the butt of every gag. B+

In “Caddyshack” everyone thought a Baby Ruth candy bar in a pool was a piece of shit. They bolted. No mistake about “Caddyshack II,” though. It is shit. Anyone with brains from the first film got out of the pool after reading the script to this laugh-free snoozer. Not Chase. He stayed. Idiot. Dan Aykroyd replaces Murray, while Jackie Mason tries to be Dangerfield. Both give performances too awful to discuss. A fiasco with a capital F.

Top 10 Reasons Why I Love “Flash Gordon” (1980)

10. Hero Flash Gordon (Sam J. Jones) wears a T-Shirt with his own name written on it. In large red letters. Just in case he or we forget his identity.

9. The entire production, from backdrops to flowing gold capes and that Sherwood Forrest planet, looks like a 1940s Technicolor Errol Flynn adventure film, rolled up in a well-read comic book, doused in LSD, and smoked by Salvador Dali.

8. Anytime Timothy Dalton (a future James Bond) gets to play a piss ant, there will be scenery chewing genius. No Brit does hissy fit better. (See “Hot Fuzz” for further clarification.)

7. Only this British/Italian production could get away with so much sexual banter in a children’s film. It’s like an outer space-set child's production of “Rocky Horror Picture Show.” With half-naked birdmen.

6. The delirious soundtrack by Queen. “Flash! Ah-ha! Savior of the universe!” … “Flash! Ah-ha! He’s a miracle!” The best rock-opera comic-book film score ever written.

5. Scenes like this: A co-pilot asks Flash for an autograph for his “son,” Buzz, before immediately being called “Buzz” by the pilot. Also, the across-the-galaxy telepathic scene where Flash, being seduced by an evil princess, tells his new girlfriend (Melody Anderson) to “hang up.” This is comedy done right.

4. As the titular hero, Jones is a block of lifeless granite. No expression. No blinking. And that flat, dull voice of his that sounds dubbed by another guy altogether? It was dubbed by another guy. I love super hero movies where the filmmakers beg you to root for …

3. The villain. Max Von Sydow, who previously played Jesus (“The Greatest Story Ever Told”) and a doomed priest (“The Exorcist”), has never been so good at being this bad as Emperor Ming. (“Are your men on the right pills? Maybe you should execute their trainer.”) Hail Ming!

2. The climatic wedding scene. The best scene in the film, and possibly funnier than the nuptials in “The Princess Bride.” Certainly more fatal. Who knew evil alien space emperors had priests on hand?

1. From the opening credits to “The End?,” this flick strives to be wonderfully, spectacularly, laugh-out-loud, jaw-dropping bad. And it does so brilliantly. Children get a perfect big-screen production of an adventure comic book come to life. Adults get a riotous sex comedy with not a little S&M tossed in. Both get silly action. It’d almost all be offensive, but it’s just too funny. For Greatest Bad Movies of All Time, “Flash Gordon” is the savior of my movie universe. A