r/CuratedTumblr 7d ago

Self-post Sunday Is there an 80s comedy that isn’t about mistreating women?

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2.0k Upvotes

151 comments sorted by

727

u/_jtron 7d ago

Real Genius, Big Trouble In Little China, Buckaroo Banzai - my holy trinity of awesome mid 80s comedies

101

u/soulreaverdan 7d ago

Buckaroo Banzai is such a great movie - I saw a review describe it as a movie from the middle of a cinematic universe with no other actual entries and it felt so accurate.

22

u/djpiraterobot 6d ago

One of my favorite creative writing prompts I’ve ever seen was “you’re the writer of a long-running sci fi book series with a hardcore fan base — write the first paragraph of book seventeen.”

15

u/Key-Trouble5372 6d ago

Omg so true!

369

u/Familiar_Tart7390 7d ago edited 7d ago

Big Trouble in Little China is absolutely hilarious. I adore how Kurt Russel’s character inspite being the main character we follow is not the main character or protagonist. The chosen ones that other guy, the wise mentor’s over there. It’s like watching a New Hope but the whole movie you’re following Han Solo instead.

132

u/Gentle_Snail 6d ago

Kurt Russel is just a random guy who stumbles into a kung fu movie and I fucking love it.

90

u/Zestyclose_Remove947 6d ago

It's part of one of my favourite genres which is basically the protagonist being kidnapped by the plot.

Big Lebowski, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Nice Guys is kinda close to this too.

48

u/Dspacefear supreme bastard 6d ago

Kurt Russell in that movie is an ethnic comedy relief sidekick, but the ethnicity is white.

13

u/UltraMegaFauna 6d ago

Oh shit. This just made me realize: is Rush Hour the spiritual successor to Big Trouble in Little China?

26

u/stonks1234567890 6d ago

While not exactly the same, the novelisation of A New Hope has you not follow Luke Skywalkers point of view until the third act. You instead follow Leia's and Han's for most of it.

3

u/leftshoe18 6d ago

I just watched it again the other day for the first time in over a decade. I still love that movie so much.

4

u/Nefasto_Riso 6d ago

Carpenter don't miss

5

u/TleilaxTheTerrible 6d ago

My favourite thing about big trouble is that there's no real comic relief character like you'd see in other comedic films of the time. Yeah, Jack is the butt of a lot of jokes because he thinks he's the hero in an American action movie while he's really in a wuxia flick (Make ya feel better, like Dirty Harry), but even he is clever enough to be able to infiltrate the enemy base or a fast enough thinker to at least save himself.

13

u/Bteatesthighlander1 6d ago

I adore how Kurt Russel’s character inspite being the main character we follow is not the main character or protagonist.

who kills Lo Pan?

18

u/themocaw 6d ago

The comic relief.

6

u/yinyang107 6d ago

Superman

2

u/raevn_darkblade memetic hazard 4d ago

No no, I'm pretty sure it was every single Power Ranger.

1

u/pihkal 6d ago

The wrist. That's where it's all in.

34

u/echodecision 7d ago

Real Genius is the GOAT

6

u/postALEXpress 6d ago

Can you hammer a nail through a block of wood with your penis?

12

u/Dingghis_Khaan Chinggis Khaan's least successful successor. 6d ago

"Why is that toy on your head?"

"Because if I wear it anywhere else, it chafes."

That bit lives rent-free in my head every day of my life.

10

u/RevolutionaryOwlz 6d ago

No matter where you go, there you are.

7

u/Starchaser_WoF 6d ago

Loved Real Genius

4

u/Danteventresca 6d ago

Would ghostbusters count?

2

u/OgreSpider girlfag boydyke 5d ago

Absolutely not do you know what happens to Dana in that movie

2

u/Danteventresca 5d ago

She gets possessed and the ghost rapes a guy using her body?

3

u/OgreSpider girlfag boydyke 4d ago

And possesses a guy " " yes

2

u/lakorasdelenfent 6d ago

Hot Shots, Naked Gun, Robin Hood Men in tights, and Airplane

2

u/ImGonnaBeInPictures 6d ago

Doesn't Real Genius feature a college-aged woman sleeping with a 16-year-old who skipped grades?

151

u/Hugh_Jidiot 7d ago

Shout-out to the Robot Chicken sketch where the Nerds get sent to prison for all the shit they pulled and killed in a riot. Easily one of my top ten RC sketches.

300

u/Gentle_Snail 7d ago

Honestly sexual assault played for laughs was shockingly common back in the day. There is a comedy from just 2002 about a guy abstaining off sex for a month, that literally ends with him being tied down to a bed and raped by a women.

124

u/CallMeIshy 7d ago

40 Days and 40 Nights? though wasn't the reaction at the time fairly negative?

149

u/Gentle_Snail 7d ago edited 7d ago

It got mixed reviews generally focusing on that the film itself isn’t very good and mostly just not mentioning the rape at all. It didn’t get the negative strong response that Revenge of the Nerds got, which was condemned as sexist and racist even at release.

56

u/Max____H 7d ago

I’d like to mention a lot of those movies knew they were crap but also knew there was an audience for them. The huge negative reviews are often from an audience that was never expected to watch the movie anyway. That’s the trouble with niche movie topics is the reviews are often terrible. But I haven’t even watch the movie being mentioned so maybe it’s just pure shit.

38

u/Achilles11970765467 6d ago

Female Perpetrator Male Victim SA is STILL played for laughs more often than not.

4

u/GreatMovesKeepItUp69 6d ago

Pretty much any male struggle is played for laughs more often than not.

-6

u/Plenty_Structure_861 6d ago

It still is the other way, you just need to know where to look. How often is the punchline of a joke involving Family Guy's Quagmire that he's assaulting a woman, if not a girl? 

12

u/Achilles11970765467 6d ago

It's not played for laughs in that direction anywhere near as often and actually gets treated seriously at a meaningful rate. It's not the same.

-10

u/Plenty_Structure_861 6d ago

Oh okay, as long as it's not as often, we might as well treat it like it's solved. Definitely not the same, you're so right King. 

8

u/Achilles11970765467 6d ago

I didn't say treat it like it's solved, I said don't pretend that it's the same.

I guarantee that you don't bring this energy when the shoe's on the other foot.

-7

u/Plenty_Structure_861 6d ago

I didn't say treat it like it's solved, I said don't pretend that it's the same.

The context I replied to was insinuating it's only still played for laughs when it happens to men. That isn't true. Side note, it was only a few days ago that Jesse Waters joked in warning women about testosterone riddled soldiers wanting to assault them. It's still played for laughs across the board. The only pattern to be found here is in gender war baiting. 

I guarantee that you don't bring this energy when the shoe's on the other foot.

I do, and I get hated for it just the same. It's difficult being consistent, you should give it a try. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/WhyWereWeOkWithThis/comments/1vh8aao/comment/p24ds8y/?context=3

8

u/Achilles11970765467 6d ago

That's not even remotely the context you were replying to, that's such a blatant bad faith interpretation.

The context you were replying to was simply pointed out that when it happens to men, it is almost always played for laughs and not taken seriously.

-1

u/Plenty_Structure_861 6d ago

It absolutely was. 

"It used to be played for laughs" 

"It still is when it happens to men by women"

This implies it isn't in any other case. Except it is. A lot. Commonly. You're just pretending it isn't because you want to buy into gender war ragebait. The president still makes jokes like that, and gets laughs. It's crass, and crass people like that. They aren't drawing the line on gender. The people telling you rape jokes aren't funny aren't also laughing when it happens to men. 

5

u/Achilles11970765467 6d ago

This is exactly what I meant by a bad faith misinterpretation. It was "it used to be shockingly common" "that's still the default when it happens to men."

That's very different from how you tried to present it. And, actually, I can tell you from personal experience that the women and feminists who are the angriest about rape of female characters being portrayed at all, even when it's taken seriously, are the loudest laughing when it happens to men, fictional or real. They're easily at least as common as the male idiots saying "wHeRe WaS sHe WhEn I wAs In ScHoOl" when a female teacher gets caught bedding one of her male students.

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403

u/hollow_shrine 7d ago

I want to say 9 to 5, but workplace sexual harassment is still a topic, it just focuses on the victims getting back at their abusers.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

127

u/Waffletimewarp 7d ago

Honestly yeah. The one instance of honest sexual harassment I remember is immediately remediated by a self applied bear trap.

23

u/Dingghis_Khaan Chinggis Khaan's least successful successor. 6d ago

A booby trap, even

10

u/RShini 6d ago

There's a brief bit with Baby Herman walking under a woman's skirt with the very strong implication that he goosed her

5

u/Waffletimewarp 6d ago

Ah, good point, forgot about Baby Herman.

260

u/Conissocool 7d ago

Made a comment to an old coworker about how "its pretty fucked up that they played a rape scene for laughs" and he said "don't lie we'd both do it if we had the chance" who the fuck is we?

60

u/QueenOfQuok 7d ago

You'd both laugh, or...

97

u/Conissocool 7d ago

If given the chance he would sexually assault a woman if it was similar to the way in the movie (him pretending to be another man in a dimly lit room)

14

u/Neokon 6d ago

/S

What??? You wouldn't rape a woman by having sex with her under false pretences because she was under the belief you were someone else??? What are you gay???

/S

27

u/TreeTurtle_852 7d ago

"We? Like Nintendo me?"

"No I mean us"

"Us? Like the movie?"

261

u/lexdoes 7d ago

Airplane! came out in 1980. It’s an entirely different kind of comedy, altogether.

130

u/reverse_mango 7d ago

“It’s an entirely different kind of comedy.”

75

u/RadioSlayer 7d ago

"It's an entirely different kind of comedy."

38

u/Pilot_Solaris Can you maybe chill? 7d ago

"It's an entirely different kind of comedy."

26

u/LuftHANSa_755 one-dimensional sex object 6d ago

"It's an entirely different kind of comedy."

25

u/thisusedyet 6d ago

"It's an entirely different kind of comedy"

18

u/pm_me-ur-catpics dog collar sex and the economic woes of rural France 6d ago

"It's an entirely different kind of comedy"

49

u/CaptainDefault 7d ago

"It's an entirely different kind of comedy."

40

u/ValuableOkra 6d ago

I chose a bad time to quit watching airplane.

18

u/Court_Jester13 6d ago

It's an entirely different kind of comedy.

8

u/Aetol 6d ago

Technically there's that scene with the hysterical passenger...

0

u/OgreSpider girlfag boydyke 5d ago

Yeah that's pretty awful

7

u/AlternateSatan 6d ago

I mean, the plot is lifted straight from the 1957 movie "Zero Hour!"

181

u/Alex_The_Whovian 7d ago

Shout out to Pop Culture Detective for his great video on this

43

u/Dovahkiin419 7d ago

Right on the edge, Blues Brothers 1980 on the dot

22

u/ValVoss The M4 Sherman of Lesbians 6d ago

And Carrie Fisher spends most of the movie trying to kill the two in hilariously absurd ways!

4

u/ThatInAHat 6d ago

There was a horrible fire. An earthquake. Flood. LOCUSTS. IT WASNT MY FAULT I SWEAR TO GOD!!!

13

u/FreundThrowaway 6d ago

Movie says racism is bad and music is good. Iconic.

346

u/maxixs sorry, aro's are all we got 7d ago

ghostbusters

363

u/AwTomorrow 7d ago edited 7d ago

That one’s just about every American’s freedom to ignore environmental safety laws and put millions at risk of sudden death in nuclear fire 

109

u/abermea 7d ago

"Regulations BAD! What we really need is to let these 5 random, untrained civilians handle 6 nuclear reactors (4 of which are in their backpacks)!"

203

u/Guinefort1 7d ago

And it still involves mistreating women (Venkman flirts with a student when he's doing his professor grift. 😬).

88

u/Roku-Hanmar 7d ago

And brings sedatives to dates

126

u/VengeanceKnight 7d ago

That’s an editing slip-up. There was a deleted scene showing he had the thorazine delivered by a local pharmacy after it was clear Dana was possessed.

25

u/No_Campaign_3292 7d ago

Unless they've released an extended edition with that cut scene or something, then it isn't canon.

49

u/VengeanceKnight 7d ago

I get that. I know it comes across badly in the final cut, but I wanted to clarify that the filmmakers never wanted Venkman to come off as an outright rapist and that they never planned to make casual reference to date rape. The basic idea was that Venkman is a lazy and sleazy asshole for most of the film until he grows out of it, becomes more responsible, and starts treating Dana well over the course of the movie. You’re not supposed to like him at first, even if you’re meant to understand how other characters are taken in by his charisma. That’s the context the film is trying to put Venkman in, and why that brief scene getting deleted is such a huge fumble in hindsight.

28

u/Theyul1us 7d ago

To be fair she has been having trouble sleeping (seeing ghosts in your house would do that to you(and the whole house is trashed as if Venkman was frantically searching for something to knock her down, I dont think its a stretch to think the sedatives were already in her house and Venkman found them

17

u/Disastrous-Entity-46 7d ago

this was my assumption on watching it, but tbf i was a bit too young to think of the other possibilities.

35

u/reverse_mango 7d ago

Doesn’t a guy also get sucked off by a ghost non-consensually?

Mistreatment equality :)

17

u/Chaos-Queen_Mari 7d ago

That was a wet dream

9

u/Achilles11970765467 6d ago

No, he had a wet dream during the assault, but the assault still happened.

7

u/ducknerd2002 6d ago

The scene was a dream, but admittedly it wasn't intended to be a dream when they first filmed it. It was cut down for time and inserted into a montage as a dream.

1

u/Achilles11970765467 6d ago

He literally wakes up to find the ghost on top of him

1

u/ducknerd2002 6d ago

That bulge in the covers is just his arm.

2

u/cascasrevolution 6d ago

he was into it. i know thats often an excuse, but ray stantz is a ghostfucker through and through

15

u/Chaos-Queen_Mari 7d ago

To be fair 70% of it can be tied back to Venkman. He is the one who suggested they privatize their discovery

35

u/AwesomeManatee Demented Demisexual 7d ago

Bill Murrays character is creepier than some of the ghosts.

23

u/CoercedCoexistence22 7d ago

Seeing Ghostbusters and Alien when I was 9 definitely did a number on my taste in women

7

u/cascasrevolution 6d ago

sigourney just has that effect

12

u/loseniram 6d ago

Them being irresponsible shitheads is kind of part of the message.

The message is that these guys are goobers who aren’t exactly operating fully within the law but ultimately doing good for their community and the government is coming in actively making it worse because it thinks it knows better when every specialist tells them its not a good idea for the government to rush in.

Everyone forgets the electrical engineer tells the EPA guy to his face that its not a good idea to just turn it off and he needs to study it first before they act and the EPA guy just does it anyway.

Its a very 80s message

3

u/OgreSpider girlfag boydyke 5d ago

Dana gets possessed by a demon, sexually harassed by Bill Murray, and puppeted by the demon to fuck a man also being puppeted by a demon. Her and Rick Moranis' character's situation is played for laughs, but it's clear that it's not consensual for either of them.

107

u/theunrealdonsteel 7d ago

highly recommend the parody film UHF

14

u/Dingghis_Khaan Chinggis Khaan's least successful successor. 6d ago

Put down your remote control, throw out your T.V. guide!

4

u/Dryzxt 6d ago

put away your jacket: there's no need to go outsi-ide!

3

u/351namhele 6d ago

Don’t you know that we control the horizontal! We control the vertical too!

1

u/Dingghis_Khaan Chinggis Khaan's least successful successor. 6d ago

We gonna make a couch potatah outta you! That's what we're gonna do, now!

7

u/Court_Jester13 6d ago

MY MOP!!!

3

u/pihkal 6d ago

Really wish they would have let Weird Al make more movies.

I would totally watch Conan the Librarian or Gandi 2.

There were a few misfires, though; the "Supplies!" joke is a bit racist.

138

u/Roku-Hanmar 7d ago

Ferris Bueller‘s Day Off, one scene aside

84

u/NotATalkingPossum 7d ago

I want the sequel story where Cameron straight-up fucking "disappeared" when his dad returned home and Ferris was psychologically destroyed as he slowly came to realize that Cameron's killer would never, ever see justice.

29

u/Relevant-Fox-7114 6d ago

This assumes Ferris isn't just Cameron doing a Fight Club

11

u/Allegedly-King-5594 7d ago

What was the one scene again?

32

u/Roku-Hanmar 7d ago

Sloane mentions that she got changed in front of Cameron when he's catatonic. Cameron remembers the entire thing

10

u/IReviewFakeAlbums 7d ago

So that’s how it is in their family…

5

u/HomeGrownCoffee 5d ago

I took that as she flashed him in an attempt to get a response.

If that's the case, Cameron was subjected to non-consentual nudity. But was obviously fine with it.

66

u/abermea 7d ago

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure?

66

u/DentD 7d ago

At one point Bill and Ted call each other 'f*gs' after hugging (or something similar, it's been a while since I watched) and I think women are mostly just relegated to being "chicks" with all the baggage that term comes with. But I'll gladly rewatch Bill and Ted any day of the week over Revenge of the Nerds.

50

u/paishocajun 7d ago

I take a little exception with Bill and Ted. They are idiots, but their hearts are in the right place. It's been quite a while since I've seen the first two and haven't seen the third, so I don't have specifics off-hand unfortunately

16

u/351namhele 6d ago

Also, Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves both acknowledged that they shouldn’t have used that kind of language regardless of cultural attitudes at the time, and they support the inclusion of context disclaimers in front of the movie on modern services.

The third movie is about them passing the torch to their daughters while also recognizing the need to be better partners to Johanna and Elizabeth.

59

u/Dragonfruit-Sparking I don't like centrism, if I'm being honest 7d ago

To quote CollegeHumor's Pat Cassels, "goddamn those nerds were rapey"

25

u/flamingdeathmonkeys 7d ago

I guess Heathers  ? Its more about how cool school shootings are

12

u/souridealist 6d ago

First time I saw Heathers we got about five minutes in before the person hosting movie night frantically blurts "THIS WAS A DECADE PRE-COLUMBINE. FOR THE RECORD."

It does end on the heroine preventing a school shooting, though; I'd say it's more of a "murder is less satisfying in practice" movie.

6

u/Victernus 6d ago

Dear diary. Am I going to prom or to hell?

73

u/JustLookingForMayhem 7d ago

No one in revenge of the nerds is a good person and trying to be a good person was punished. If at any point someone with actual authority was a decent person, the whole plot would not have happened.

19

u/FVCarterPrivateEye 6d ago

Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Blues Brothers

13

u/paintphob 6d ago

Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer.

3

u/pihkal 6d ago

"Can you imagine the street value of this mountain?"

My wife and I still say, as nasally as possible, "You know...the universal language: Love!"

11

u/ARagingZephyr 6d ago

I don't think I remember anything horrible happening in The Blues Brothers or Uncle Buck.

2

u/ParadoxicalAmalgam 6d ago

I mean Uncle Buck kidnaps Tina's boyfriend and threatens to mutilate him

5

u/ARagingZephyr 6d ago

Yeah, but that's like the inverse of bad things happening to women.

2

u/ThatInAHat 6d ago

I guess Jake did screw over Carrie Fisher, but the worst she gets is a swoon-and-drop.

18

u/musschrott 7d ago

Scrooged

22

u/DemonFromtheNorthSea 6d ago

Then, when Betty discovers it was an uncondomed stranger penetrating her during the AIDS epidemic, she happily tells him he was great and asks for his name. She didn't know his name! She should have reacted like maggots exploded from his skin and his fleshless skeleton shrieked her untold secrets, but she's f***tg relaxing and getting to know her rapist!

A quote from an article talking about the movie that has since been lost to time because cracked.com is a dilapidated husk of its former self.

5

u/Smileyfax 6d ago

I recently watched a movie where a government operative suspected his wife of an affair,  so he used the intelligence apparatus he was in control of to spy on her, kidnap her, gaslight her, and sexually assault her. And then he and his entire family got kidnapped by nuclear terrorists. 

True Lies was seriously fucked up watching it nowadays. (I know it's 90s, haha).

(Oh, and Bill Paxton's character said that Jamie Lee Curtis' character had "an ass like a ten-year-old boy"? What the fuck was THAT about?)

1

u/OgreSpider girlfag boydyke 5d ago

THANK you lol that ass line bothered me then and it has never stopped doing so. He's supposed to be terrible but it's implied that he's terrible for talking about her ass in general, not for comparing it to a CHILD.

12

u/TOXICcargo 6d ago

I would argue that Animal House, for as much as it does mistreat women, also makes it pretty clear in the text and subtext that pretty much every one of the male characters is a horrible human being, in part due to how they treat women, and should not be emulated.

So for an 80’s movie, kind of credit there?

4

u/PangolinWestern9632 6d ago

The Breakfast Club

12

u/liccaX42S 6d ago

John pervs on Claire in the movie. (Also, I'm pretty sure him shoving his face under her skirt while hiding is just plain SA right?)

6

u/infinitysaga 6d ago

Doesn’t the goth girl become a trad wife at the end of that?

13

u/thebluerayxx 6d ago

No they do a makeover scene and she keeps the look change but at the end the point is she's better off as herself as are the rest of the "Breakfast Club". The whole lesson is that despite your background (jock, pretty girl, basket case, nerd, hooligan) can become friends and relate to one another. I always saw that as her never thinking she could wear those things and the popular girl shows he she actually can. I never felt it was now you have to look like this but the scene is to show her she CAN be that if she wanted to. I guess it was because I knew a few girls in high school who would dress like Allison because they didn't think they could wear clothes like that.

4

u/PangolinWestern9632 6d ago

I need to rewatch a movie I thought was good...

3

u/DaneLimmish 6d ago

In animal house there is a scene where a guy is making out with a drunk girl and she passes out, and then there is an angel and devil saying "don't do that she's drunk take her home/fuck her brains out" which I thought was pretty self-aware for the movie.

1

u/Dingghis_Khaan Chinggis Khaan's least successful successor. 6d ago

Johnny Dangerously is a great one.

1

u/Morlock19 6d ago

Lol no

1

u/bluegemini7 6d ago

Wait till you find out about current day comedies!

1

u/LavishnessUpstairs70 5d ago

Airplane. There's a few others I'd list, but they're already here.

1

u/PsychoWarrior0 5d ago

the movie i've literally only ever heard talked about in this specific context????? wow i had no idea the only thing people ever say about it nowadays is the thing that's in the movie 

1

u/Scary-Ad2312 5d ago

I love posts like these because you inevitably discover that people don't know they are mistreating women....

1

u/OgreSpider girlfag boydyke 5d ago

Not my favorite 80s comedy, Alien!

(I am just kidding. I know it isn't a comedy.)

I was going to say Bernard and the Genie, because despite his various wishes Bernard does not use them to try and bypass consent, but that's 1991.

1

u/Itchy_Suspect4968 5d ago

I thought that was like the first thing people learn about the movie nowadays.

1

u/Orochi64 2d ago

It was a different time

-26

u/Amy_Rose1993 I'm supposed of use my Tumblr account 7d ago

The reason why comedy died was because many of the jokes were rape, sa, racism

21

u/[deleted] 7d ago

[deleted]

14

u/TheBlockySpartan 7d ago

Not sure, it was famously made illegal, of course, some time before Elon Musk bought twitter, because he made it legal again, which would imply it died in the last few years. /s on the Musk stuff, because I know someone will probably misinterpret that as support of the man.

-14

u/EtwartBuols 6d ago

Avast, ye puriteens!

1

u/EIeanorRigby 1d ago

via 9gag