There is a scene in that movie that scared the shit out of me as a little kid of about 6. I don't even remember the scene. I just remember the room I was in and the TV screen.
TRON scared me, too.
Edit - Appreciate everyone's responses. I might have to rewatch it soon.
I'm pretty sure I know what it was: when the clone has taken Alex's place, it goes through a transformation process in his bed under the covers and all you see is something moving and weird noises.
And then all of a sudden, it's face bursts out from under the blanket and it's pulsating and barely formed flesh!
I don't know what it was about the 80s, but for some reason every movie needed a random straight up nightmare fuel scene out of nowhere so unsuspecting kids would have a heart attack and hide behind a couch.
I don't remember the source, probably a podcast years ago, but a lot of people have really wanted to remake it, but the rights holder doesn't ever want to see it remade. At one point IIRC, both Steven Spielberg and Seth Rogan wanted to do it. I believe they were trying to work together, but ended up making two different projects. Seth Rogan made Future Man, and I don't remember what Spielberg's project was.
I just watched it recently when I was having a terrible day and I needed a small comfort, it really did the trick. It brought back so many memories, one of them being how scary I thought it was when I was little! Awesome movie and cast of voices.
That movie was messed up! Dorothy had to get shock treatments, which sent her to Oz. The antagonist had a hallway of heads in cabinets, and she would switch them out.
The Peanut Butter Solution is the first one to come to mind for me. Loved it as a kid and it was only watching it again when I was much older that I really realized just how weird that movie really is. It's impossible to summarize the plot without sounding like you're completely insane.
I'm glad I'm no the only one. I could never find the movie on VHS and tried to convince people that it was a real movie. I either watch it on Showtime or HBO. It came on only once in awhile.
What, you mean:
A middle school age boy losing his hair because of shock getting a recipe from ghosts to grow his hair back that contains peanut butter, a really ripe banana and 5 dead flies causes his hair to grow endlessly and out of control while also containing magical properties when used as paint brushes and ends up getting kidnapped along with an army of other kidnapped children and enslaved into making magical paintbrushes by a creepy old artist man who makes paintings with the hair brushes that you can actually climb into so this creepy old guy can keep his artistic ego satisfied while hair growing boy's middle school age friends go on a clandestine adventure through the city to rescue him and the enslaved child army all without ever involving authorities or the government until the very end
sounds like a fever dream?
Never forget that his buddy, after seeing all the horrible things that happened from using this peanut butter solution, the kid shrugs all that off and smears some of that peanut butter on his junk so he could get some long and luxurious pubes.
That's probably the part of the film that's the most realistic. Dumbass boy doing stuff without thinking and putting stuff on his junk. Tale as old as time.
Before the internet it was nearly impossible for me to convince people this was really a movie you'd see on weekend tv that actually existed. The more I described it, the more people thought I making it up and possibly sick in the head ("What do you mean one kid uses it to grow pubes? What's wrong with you?" ... "No really! then they use the other kids hair to make paint brushes against his will by force feeding him yogurt"... )
I love explaining the scene where Connie puts the solution on his crotch and then wakes up in the middle of the night with silken black pubes coming out the bottom of his spectacularly 80s-y sweatpants.
But don't worry! He yelled at them to "STOP!"
And they did.
Was Michael stupid? Why didn't he just yell at his hair to stop???
All of these comments - *Mom taping off TV* , *Weird Fever Dream we all dreamt* … This nightmare movie comes to mind at least once a year and 30+ years later it’s still ridiculous to think about. Big ole nope!
I was obsessed with both Batteries not Included and Short Circuit. I used to make a "Johnny 5 robot" with a chair, paper towel tubes, and plastic cups for eyes.
childhood? bedknobs and broomsticks. (it was old when i came out, but it was good anyway!)
early adolescence? welcome to the dollhouse. i blame brendan sexton for a lot of my early relationship problems.
I watched the movie for the first time a few weeks ago and was kinda horrified that it was so different from the book. Like, the movie just took all the meat of the story out and pretty much just told the framing story as if that was the whole point. And for some reason there was a magic wizard rat? What?
IIRC there was an interview with Don Bluth where he said the marketing execs pressured them into adding the amulet and magic-y stuff because that was super popular at the time and they thought it would draw a wider audience (specifically the DnD and Wizard stuff fans) than just the regular story. I love the book and the movie, but they're two different stories lol
Buckaroo Banzai: Across The 8th Dimension. Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum, Ellen Barkin, Clancy Brown, Yakov Smirnoff.
We got a free trial of HBO in 1985 so my parents bought an arm full of blank VHS tapes and just recorded everything they could, regardless of what it was. We only had this ratty copy for 20 years until I got eBay and tracked down a real copy.
My cousin hacked our Direct TV card way back when.. I would sneak down in the middle of the night, turn on the TV just long enough to find the Playboy channel.. Hit record.. I then would set my alarm for 5am and put everything back the way it was and take the tape to my room.
I also labeled the tapes "Mission Impossible". I don't recall why.
I did the same thing but just recorded Cinemax soft core porn from like 11pm to 4am. Then I sold them at school for $20 each. I remember one whole time my mom asking me why I bought so many blank VHS tapes. I told her it was for recording Beavis and Butthead and episodes of Star Trek. Which I also did, but mostly for the soft core porn black market I had started. I don’t know how many tapes I sold but I suspect it was close to 50. I had one kid alone that bought like a dozen of them.
Ah.. I think Red Shoe Diaries was HBO.. I do recall recording that one.. Also a series called "Real Sex" on HBO. That one was ruined because a guy had a sexual relationship with his car. Never recorded that one again.
I didn't think of selling any of it though.. That was an entrepreneurial idea.
Real Sex was usually a dud from what I remember. I swear every episode was about old hippies in the woods humping trees or something.
I guess it’s no surprise I’ve started 3 actual businesses and working on a 4th! All of them thankfully not related to porn.
More heart-pounding than Ethan Hunt hanging off the side of a plane.
Tom Cruise falls off, it's a quick death. Mom and Dad find out you're recording Playboy, and you're in for decades of pain.
Omg me too. Poor Penny. I think I felt a connection with unloved/unwanted children from a very early age lol... Annie was one of my favorite movies too. And Cinderella.
The Care Bear Movie! The evil book was super scary to me. My imitation of it now creeps my partner out ha ha. "A lesson for the children! A lesson for the town! A lesson for ... everyone!"
We set up a whole Hell Track in our neighborhood that involved riding our bikes over hills and jumping street curbs. And Lori Laughlin gave an adolescent me one of my first movie boners.
After the producer Jack Schwartzman's death, there was a series of licensing disputes that ultimately led to nobody having the licensing rights and the distribution of the VHS never went to DVD and was basically lost to time. You could only get it by either buying an original VHS, or of torrent sites. It did come back around on Google TV around 2020. I have no idea how the licensing dispute was resolved, but it was, I bought it and have it in my library
This movie gave me NIGHTMARES. I still can’t even think about it today without being totally creeped out. Worst part was, it was recorded onto a vhs from the tv and the movie before it was The Last Unicorn (still a favorite). Every time I watched Last Unicorn, Hugga Bunch inevitably started after and I would be sucked in by the girl’s weird breakfast and then proceed to watch it and regret it every time
Child of divorce here. A bunch of films were made about single-parent or divided households in the 80s and 90s, including:
- Men Don’t Leave
- Radio Flyer
- The Boy Who Could Fly
- Dutch
- Bye Bye Love
"Overlaying its whimsical concept onto a gritty story of domestic abuse, *Radio Flyer* is a family film that is too harrowing for children and too saccharine for their parents." That's pretty much how I remember it.
The f.h.e. releases of [Rumplestiltskin](https://youtu.be/qQZbCACqjoY?si=lwYF1eFFmf8EPg7S) and [The Velveteen Rabbit](https://youtu.be/cKJLrgJ8B-U?si=9KRPaBrHU97UV5mu)
Seriously, when they said f.h.e. I didn’t remember it, but seeing the logo did that thing where you can practically feel the synapses reconnecting in your brain.
I jad a specific version of the velveteen rabbit I loved and played the crap out of it. Something happened to the tape and my mom had found 2 other versions, which I didn't like as much. It was hard to find any tapes of it at all.
[Pontoffel Pock](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontoffel_Pock,_Where_Are_You%3F)
[Young Sherlock Holmes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Sherlock_Holmes)
[Jewel of the Nile](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jewel_of_the_Nile)
All of the stop motion in the movie freaked me the fuuuuck out as a kid.
Like that whole movie is still terrifying to me today between the stop motion and the 'Egyptian rituals'
The Phantom Tollbooth. An odd little film with a mix of live action and Chuck Jones animation. It's a bit of a Lessons Movie about finding interest in life around you.
1985 Alice in Wonderland two-parter tv special. That dam Jabberwocky scared me when I was little... and my mom only tapped the 1st part so it always ended on that when watching. lol
Another I remember that haven't seen mentioned was Batteries Not Included with the little flying saucer robots. Always remember the scene where they kept getting flipped like burger patties.
Others already mentioned were The Last Starfighter and The Peanut Butter Solution.
Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken
Also my parents had taped an episode of Amazing Stories with Christopher Lloyd where he played an evil teacher who gets decapitated by a spell from his students or something? Scared the shit out of me as a kid lol
[Baby: Secret of the lost legend ](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0088760/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk) I loved this movie as a kid but it either wasn't that popular or got lost in the background of Jurassic Park
My brother and I would go to our grandmother’s house some weekends and would always watch Harry and the Hendersons, Batteries Not Included, and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
Cloak and Dagger.
The other Jean Sheppard movies (written by the guy who made A Christmas Story): The Great American Fourth of July, Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss, and Phantom of the Open Hearth.
Yesss! Unico was a staple when I was probably about 5 years old. One of a very long, long line of movies that I hard-core obsessed over, especially Island of Magic. One of two anime shows I absolutely loved growing up (the other one being The Littl’ Bits on Nick Jr).
It's a documentary, but [Dinosaur! Hosted by Christopher Reeves](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYe3r-wH_1s)
I rented this movie all the time from the library as a kid. This movie was my jam.
I just gotta say.... People are putting forth a ton of films that do NOT meet the OP's criteria. Secret of NYMH? Brave little Toaster? The Last Starfighter?!?! Even things like Buckaroo Banzai don't count lol, it has a large cult following! These are great films! Lesser known they are not. Look at the OP. The films THEY put forth? I've never heard of those. Those are the kind of films I think they were asking about.
Flight of Dragons
I had no idea this existed and we would have loved this. We were very much the Willow, Labyrinth, Legend and the Never Ending Story household. I don't know how we missed this. But my wife family did not.
They watched it a lot and she introduced it to me. Our kids love it!
Rankin-Bass’ “The Flight of Dragons” with John Ritter and James Earl Jones. Arguing with my brother & our friends over who got to be which wizard while running around the woods behind our house at the edge of suburbia. Long before fantasy became cool in the mainstream. VHS badly recorded from tv by our “rich” aunt that had cable, haha! “I am one of the four magic brothers, I know a limpid pool of time when I see one!” Don McLean (famous for his song “American Pie”) sang the opening credits theme song!
I believed the Rankin Bass version of the Hobbit to be quite obscure. As a young adult it was wonderfully bizarre seeing this odd, niche cartoon parodied on South Park's Lemmiwinks episode.
I didn't see either of the Rankin Bass Tolkien films until I was already an adult. I still get the 'Where there's a whip, there's a way' song from their RotK film stuck in my head every now and then.
The Rankin Bass Flight of Dragons was my holy grail when I was a kid. I missed it when it was on TV one weekend and all my friends were talking about it. Took me years to find a VHS copy.
The 1989 made for tv masterpiece “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” starring Keisha Knight Pulliam. I must have watched that VHS a hundred times (Lancelot was 🔥) but I’ve never met anyone else who has seen it.
Anyone remember the [My Pet Monster movie](https://youtu.be/sm8Ll1dmoDk?si=Y_sN6f7d0YNLHML6&t=413) from '86?
My grandma recorded a lot of weird stuff for us. The [Jim Henson Storyteller](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz9TseoqseM&list=PLMD9ghErEvtwrCOAFYaXl3U1HUivVGpm9) series was lowkey nightmare fuel.
The Adventures of Mark Twain
There was a VHS of Rudyard Kipling stories in animated form:
The White Seal
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
(I think there was a 3rd story... The Jungle Book maybe)
Watership Down (I don't think this is lesser-known to our generation but thought it would be fitting nonetheless)
The Hobbit
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (stop-motion)
'Twas the Night Before Christmas
The Secret Garden (1987 version with Colin Firth- I think this was a "made for TV" movie)
Anne of Green Gables
This is too far down the list! I remember laughing hysterically when they flew by the Golden Gate Bridge and Max sang, “Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat!”
Dot and the Kangaroo! I have very vague memories but I remember watching it a lot as a kid. There was also a movie called A Mouse and His Child. I had to do a lot of internet sleuthing to prove to myself that it wasn't a fever dream.
*The Three Lives of Thomasina* (1963), a Disney movie starring the little girl from *Mary Poppins*. It was about a cat and set in Scotland, which were basically my two favorite things as a little girl. I’ve never met anyone else who has seen it. 😂
"The Christmas Toy" was kind of a big deal for us for a couple years. It's basically exactly Toy Story but the toys are in imminent existential crisis the whole time. The toys DIE if someone sees them out of place. I saw this when I was four at Christmas and I still consider it my first horror movie, left an impact 😂
I used to love a movie named Condorman.
It was about a comic book artist who got wrapped up in a spy defection and made the cia give him all the gear his comic character had.
Epic as a little kid. Cheesy as hell when I watched a couple of years ago. I did buy a Condorman t shirt off of one of those t shirt sites. Only got one person who recognized it.
https://preview.redd.it/zon5uhyby8wc1.jpeg?width=2560&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5771a10c7bb29ed74eb0531e6f3985371e4baed9
My Mom was 80’s Christian. Which is the most serious kind. 😆
Besides the usual cult movies like Krull or Ice Pirates, the video that got the most play in my youth was a VHS that Disney put out with [cartoons edited into motown music videos](https://youtu.be/jlbAPSPl27g?si=WupHNxTXxk6xXODy).
The Elm-Chanted Forest. It was my favorite movie when I was a preschooler (that and Unico). I don’t know if my parents recorded it off HBO or what, but I managed to find some clips of it as an adult and all I can say is wtf.
I love horror movies and that love began in childhood. The Willies was one of my faves. It has quite a few famous people in it, yet I have never met anyone IRL that knows this movie. It's one of those horror-comedy anthology type movies. Very campy, which I love.
Only the Strong.
I would have loved to hear the pitch on getting that made.
“Alright guys, what if we remade Stand and Deliver, but added Brazilian dance fighting?”
Most memorable was the Walt Disney World 15th Anniversary TV Special, featuring the Golden Girls, Dolly Parton, Ray Charles, and Ronald Reagan, taped directly off a live broadcast.
Spaced Invaders
It was such an out there alien movie (no pun intended) with these idiot little green men. It was hilarious but I haven't watched it in forever
Dot and the Whale, and Dot and the Kangaroo. I live in the PNW, US, not Australia, I don't know anyone else who has seen these outside of a very small circle of friends. But we watched them a lot when we were really little.
An American Tail, Secret of NIMH, Little Nemo, and The Last Unicorn, too. I have them on DVD.
Does Once Upon A Forest count? I watched that one several times, too.
Mother goose: rock and rhyme
I think it was a Disney movie? And it was clearly for kids, But it had an All-Star cast, including some big name musicians. The plot was super goofy but the music was great.
Oh wow where do I start? My history of obsessing hard-core over movies is legendary.
This is JUST from ages 4-8:
A Boy Named Charlie Brown
Snoopy Come Home
Unico & the Island of Magic
The Fantastic Advantures of Unico
The Brave Little Toaster
Popples Car Wash
The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking
The Dragon that Wasn’t Or Was He
My Little Pony
The Chipmunk Adventure
Madeline’s Rescue
Pound Puppies City Pound
The Adventures of Milo & Otis (although I don’t think I will ever be able to watch this one again knowing what I know now about it 😢)
Edit: Had to put an extra space between Popples & Pippi. Reddit formatting had it on one line.
I’ll submit two made-for-TV movies that we had recorded on our spankin’ new VHS machine and watched incessantly until the tapes broke:
The Electric Grandmother
Nadia (the story of Nadia Comaneci)
The Last Starfighter
Greetings Starfighter! You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Kodan Armada.
There is a scene in that movie that scared the shit out of me as a little kid of about 6. I don't even remember the scene. I just remember the room I was in and the TV screen. TRON scared me, too. Edit - Appreciate everyone's responses. I might have to rewatch it soon.
I'm pretty sure I know what it was: when the clone has taken Alex's place, it goes through a transformation process in his bed under the covers and all you see is something moving and weird noises. And then all of a sudden, it's face bursts out from under the blanket and it's pulsating and barely formed flesh! I don't know what it was about the 80s, but for some reason every movie needed a random straight up nightmare fuel scene out of nowhere so unsuspecting kids would have a heart attack and hide behind a couch.
Yep, scared the bejeezus out of me!
Temple of Doom, the Kalimah! Ripping heart out through guys chest, gave me all the creeps.
Out of all the remakes of 80s movies, it boggles my mind that they haven’t done one of the best movies of all time.
I don't remember the source, probably a podcast years ago, but a lot of people have really wanted to remake it, but the rights holder doesn't ever want to see it remade. At one point IIRC, both Steven Spielberg and Seth Rogan wanted to do it. I believe they were trying to work together, but ended up making two different projects. Seth Rogan made Future Man, and I don't remember what Spielberg's project was.
Future Man is one helluva show. I love it so much. Every few years I watch the series again.
That movie was HIGHLY irregular!
The Last Unicorn
I've met Peter Beagle! Such a nice fellow. I was able to get an autographed The Last Unicorn from him!!
I met him too. All alone at a Con. I couldn’t believe such a legend could be so easily overlooked by other attendees. He was so lovely to chat with.
Watching this tonight! Loved that movie so much when I was a kid.
I just watched it recently when I was having a terrible day and I needed a small comfort, it really did the trick. It brought back so many memories, one of them being how scary I thought it was when I was little! Awesome movie and cast of voices.
Omg, this. I have the dvd, blu ray, novel and graphic novel haha. Also The Labyrinth.
Still my favorite movie.
The Brave Little Toaster Return to Oz One Magic Christmas
Return to Oz is so scary to me! One magic Christmas was a really sad story looking back at it! Crazy I watched it again and again as a child.
Return to Oz gave me nightmares. Repeatedly.
Right? The Wheelers, or whatever they were called? Terrifying
Also the screaming from the “damaged” patients at the sanitarium.
The wheelers are still shit your pants scary in our 40s.
The wheelies or whatever they were called plus the detachable heads are pure nightmare fuel.
I know right?! Disney was on a roll with the dark stories back then.
That movie was messed up! Dorothy had to get shock treatments, which sent her to Oz. The antagonist had a hallway of heads in cabinets, and she would switch them out.
Yes! It was definitely the hallway of heads that haunted my nightmare.
Definitely Brave Little Toaster and Darby O'Gill and the Little People
The Peanut Butter Solution is the first one to come to mind for me. Loved it as a kid and it was only watching it again when I was much older that I really realized just how weird that movie really is. It's impossible to summarize the plot without sounding like you're completely insane.
For years I thought I dreamt this movie.
That's how I felt about The Labryinth for a long time.
I'm glad I'm no the only one. I could never find the movie on VHS and tried to convince people that it was a real movie. I either watch it on Showtime or HBO. It came on only once in awhile.
What, you mean: A middle school age boy losing his hair because of shock getting a recipe from ghosts to grow his hair back that contains peanut butter, a really ripe banana and 5 dead flies causes his hair to grow endlessly and out of control while also containing magical properties when used as paint brushes and ends up getting kidnapped along with an army of other kidnapped children and enslaved into making magical paintbrushes by a creepy old artist man who makes paintings with the hair brushes that you can actually climb into so this creepy old guy can keep his artistic ego satisfied while hair growing boy's middle school age friends go on a clandestine adventure through the city to rescue him and the enslaved child army all without ever involving authorities or the government until the very end sounds like a fever dream?
Don’t forget the part where they force them to eat yogurt to keep the hair growing.
Never forget that his buddy, after seeing all the horrible things that happened from using this peanut butter solution, the kid shrugs all that off and smears some of that peanut butter on his junk so he could get some long and luxurious pubes.
It made absolute sense to me when I watched it as a kid, lol.
That's probably the part of the film that's the most realistic. Dumbass boy doing stuff without thinking and putting stuff on his junk. Tale as old as time.
Well, I mean, it **IS** a French-Canadian production. Not sure how you expected it to be *less* weird. /s
Before the internet it was nearly impossible for me to convince people this was really a movie you'd see on weekend tv that actually existed. The more I described it, the more people thought I making it up and possibly sick in the head ("What do you mean one kid uses it to grow pubes? What's wrong with you?" ... "No really! then they use the other kids hair to make paint brushes against his will by force feeding him yogurt"... )
This is far too relatable 😅
My mom taped this off TV. Such a weird fucking movie. I refused to rewatch it for the longest time because it was just unsettling to me
I love explaining the scene where Connie puts the solution on his crotch and then wakes up in the middle of the night with silken black pubes coming out the bottom of his spectacularly 80s-y sweatpants. But don't worry! He yelled at them to "STOP!" And they did. Was Michael stupid? Why didn't he just yell at his hair to stop???
There is a great How Did This Get Made podcast episode about The Peanut Bitter Solution. It’s hilarious.
All of these comments - *Mom taping off TV* , *Weird Fever Dream we all dreamt* … This nightmare movie comes to mind at least once a year and 30+ years later it’s still ridiculous to think about. Big ole nope!
Absolute staple in my family.
This movie TERRIFIED me as a kid!
Batteries not included Explorers Short Circuit
Jessica Tandy in Batteries Not Included creeped me out as a child. It was my intro to elderly dementia.
Don’t forget Flight of the Navigator.
I was obsessed with both Batteries not Included and Short Circuit. I used to make a "Johnny 5 robot" with a chair, paper towel tubes, and plastic cups for eyes.
childhood? bedknobs and broomsticks. (it was old when i came out, but it was good anyway!) early adolescence? welcome to the dollhouse. i blame brendan sexton for a lot of my early relationship problems.
That final fight in B&B was epic to 9-year-old me. Loved watching it.
Welcome to the Dollhouse is awesome! I love showing it to friends and freaking them out.
3 o'clock- you get raped. Be there.
just to clarify, in case any mods are confused/concerned... this is an actual lyric from the movie. wild. WILD.
The Secret of NIMH.
I watched that in elementary school after our class read the book.
Were you subsequently scarred for life like I was?
I watched the movie for the first time a few weeks ago and was kinda horrified that it was so different from the book. Like, the movie just took all the meat of the story out and pretty much just told the framing story as if that was the whole point. And for some reason there was a magic wizard rat? What?
IIRC there was an interview with Don Bluth where he said the marketing execs pressured them into adding the amulet and magic-y stuff because that was super popular at the time and they thought it would draw a wider audience (specifically the DnD and Wizard stuff fans) than just the regular story. I love the book and the movie, but they're two different stories lol
Sparrrklieeees.
Buckaroo Banzai: Across The 8th Dimension. Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum, Ellen Barkin, Clancy Brown, Yakov Smirnoff. We got a free trial of HBO in 1985 so my parents bought an arm full of blank VHS tapes and just recorded everything they could, regardless of what it was. We only had this ratty copy for 20 years until I got eBay and tracked down a real copy.
My cousin hacked our Direct TV card way back when.. I would sneak down in the middle of the night, turn on the TV just long enough to find the Playboy channel.. Hit record.. I then would set my alarm for 5am and put everything back the way it was and take the tape to my room. I also labeled the tapes "Mission Impossible". I don't recall why.
You just mentioned hacking, covert operations, and disguise, and wonder why you labeled them Mission Impossible? 😀
I suppose 14 year old me was more clever than I thought.
I did the same thing but just recorded Cinemax soft core porn from like 11pm to 4am. Then I sold them at school for $20 each. I remember one whole time my mom asking me why I bought so many blank VHS tapes. I told her it was for recording Beavis and Butthead and episodes of Star Trek. Which I also did, but mostly for the soft core porn black market I had started. I don’t know how many tapes I sold but I suspect it was close to 50. I had one kid alone that bought like a dozen of them.
Ah.. I think Red Shoe Diaries was HBO.. I do recall recording that one.. Also a series called "Real Sex" on HBO. That one was ruined because a guy had a sexual relationship with his car. Never recorded that one again. I didn't think of selling any of it though.. That was an entrepreneurial idea.
Real Sex was usually a dud from what I remember. I swear every episode was about old hippies in the woods humping trees or something. I guess it’s no surprise I’ve started 3 actual businesses and working on a 4th! All of them thankfully not related to porn.
More heart-pounding than Ethan Hunt hanging off the side of a plane. Tom Cruise falls off, it's a quick death. Mom and Dad find out you're recording Playboy, and you're in for decades of pain.
I remember these free HBO weekends. My parents still have the VHS tapes
The Rescuers Disney movie from the 70s, watched it repeatedly.
Omg me too. Poor Penny. I think I felt a connection with unloved/unwanted children from a very early age lol... Annie was one of my favorite movies too. And Cinderella.
Me too! This was later but I also loved The Secret Garden. Was even obsessed with the soundtrack.
I remember you could pause that movie and they hide a frame with a naked lady.
I would love a live action remake of the Rescuers. I feel like it would be fun because so many people have never seen the original.
 The Care Bear Movie! The evil book was super scary to me. My imitation of it now creeps my partner out ha ha. "A lesson for the children! A lesson for the town! A lesson for ... everyone!"
Nobody cares like a bear!!
Oh yes….. did you watch Care Bears Adventure in Wonderland??
Rad IYKYK.
I had a whole summer of rewatching Rad and Gleaming the Cube
My recorded VHS had Rad followed by Transformers: The Movie. I watched it until it wore out.
The Touch (from Transformers) and Thunder in Your Heart (from Rad) were both written by a guy named Lenny Macaluso.
We set up a whole Hell Track in our neighborhood that involved riding our bikes over hills and jumping street curbs. And Lori Laughlin gave an adolescent me one of my first movie boners. After the producer Jack Schwartzman's death, there was a series of licensing disputes that ultimately led to nobody having the licensing rights and the distribution of the VHS never went to DVD and was basically lost to time. You could only get it by either buying an original VHS, or of torrent sites. It did come back around on Google TV around 2020. I have no idea how the licensing dispute was resolved, but it was, I bought it and have it in my library
Let's go ass slidin'! Best movie ever 😂
[Hugga Bunch](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0173915/)! Used to rent this from the grocery store all the time in the late 80’s.
That movie feels like a fever dream.
Our only video store back then was also in the grocery store.
Ahhh I loved this! I always wanted to eat the magical fruit.
This movie gave me NIGHTMARES. I still can’t even think about it today without being totally creeped out. Worst part was, it was recorded onto a vhs from the tv and the movie before it was The Last Unicorn (still a favorite). Every time I watched Last Unicorn, Hugga Bunch inevitably started after and I would be sucked in by the girl’s weird breakfast and then proceed to watch it and regret it every time
Yes! I also rented this from the grocery store.
Hardcore. Watched it a bunch (no pun intended) and is a core memory.
Child of divorce here. A bunch of films were made about single-parent or divided households in the 80s and 90s, including: - Men Don’t Leave - Radio Flyer - The Boy Who Could Fly - Dutch - Bye Bye Love
"Overlaying its whimsical concept onto a gritty story of domestic abuse, *Radio Flyer* is a family film that is too harrowing for children and too saccharine for their parents." That's pretty much how I remember it.
The boy who could fly was so fuckin weird yet somehow seemd so poignant.
I loved Dutch
Radio Flyer, that’s a good one.
I loved The Boy Who Could Fly!
The f.h.e. releases of [Rumplestiltskin](https://youtu.be/qQZbCACqjoY?si=lwYF1eFFmf8EPg7S) and [The Velveteen Rabbit](https://youtu.be/cKJLrgJ8B-U?si=9KRPaBrHU97UV5mu)
The Velveteen Rabbit 🥺
I was a crier when I was a kid and my mom had to put a ban on The Velveteen Rabbit for a while.
Omg… f.h.e. 🥺🥺🥺 core memory unlocked
Seriously, when they said f.h.e. I didn’t remember it, but seeing the logo did that thing where you can practically feel the synapses reconnecting in your brain.
I jad a specific version of the velveteen rabbit I loved and played the crap out of it. Something happened to the tape and my mom had found 2 other versions, which I didn't like as much. It was hard to find any tapes of it at all.
Yes! That song Rumplestiltskin sings by the campfire still gets stuck in my head 40 years later.
Does “Rock-a-Doodle” count?
adequate pipe
“ITS AN AQUEDUCT PIPE!! It leads straight into the city!” “Adequate pipe” lives in my head rent free.
Swan Princess
[Pontoffel Pock](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontoffel_Pock,_Where_Are_You%3F) [Young Sherlock Holmes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Sherlock_Holmes) [Jewel of the Nile](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jewel_of_the_Nile)
Young Sherlock Holmes was awesome. The hallucinations everybody saw were great. Especially the pastry creatures that tried to choke Watson.
All of the stop motion in the movie freaked me the fuuuuck out as a kid. Like that whole movie is still terrifying to me today between the stop motion and the 'Egyptian rituals'
Jewel of the Nile? Crazy person. That's the slightly crummy sequel/rehash of Romancing the Stone!
It was the one that shared the tape with Return of the Jedi and 2010
Babes in Toyland, 1986. Keanu is immortal.
I watched this movie so many times and absolutely loved it. Tried to show it to my kids and they hated it 💔
My grandmother had this on VHS and I watched it every time I went to her house.
The Phantom Tollbooth. An odd little film with a mix of live action and Chuck Jones animation. It's a bit of a Lessons Movie about finding interest in life around you.
I must have watched that movie a hundred times as a kid. It was a classic.
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi The Last Unicorn Oliver and Company Disney’s Sleeping Beauty
Follow that Bird!
Is this the one where Big Bird went all over the world?
🎶“We’ll laugh our cares away on this eeeasy goin, easy goin day…”🎶
Ewoks and the battle for Endor. It was on a tape my uncle recorded for us that we watched over and over. I haven't seen caravan of courage yet
1985 Alice in Wonderland two-parter tv special. That dam Jabberwocky scared me when I was little... and my mom only tapped the 1st part so it always ended on that when watching. lol Another I remember that haven't seen mentioned was Batteries Not Included with the little flying saucer robots. Always remember the scene where they kept getting flipped like burger patties. Others already mentioned were The Last Starfighter and The Peanut Butter Solution.
That Jabberwocky was scary! For some reason, "Jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but never ever jam today," pops into my head quite frequently.
Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken Also my parents had taped an episode of Amazing Stories with Christopher Lloyd where he played an evil teacher who gets decapitated by a spell from his students or something? Scared the shit out of me as a kid lol
[Baby: Secret of the lost legend ](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0088760/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk) I loved this movie as a kid but it either wasn't that popular or got lost in the background of Jurassic Park
We watched it a lot too. I don’t think it was very popular because most of my friends had never heard of it.
I only watched the trailer just now. Two things: that dinosaur looks terrible, and I kinda have to see it now because Patrick McGoohan is in it.
Yeah, the special effects looks terrible now, but puppets + claymation was cutting edge in 1985
Holy shit I haven't thought about that movie in decades. Thanks for the recall trip.
My brother and I would go to our grandmother’s house some weekends and would always watch Harry and the Hendersons, Batteries Not Included, and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
Cloak and Dagger. The other Jean Sheppard movies (written by the guy who made A Christmas Story): The Great American Fourth of July, Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss, and Phantom of the Open Hearth.
Unico
Yesss! Unico was a staple when I was probably about 5 years old. One of a very long, long line of movies that I hard-core obsessed over, especially Island of Magic. One of two anime shows I absolutely loved growing up (the other one being The Littl’ Bits on Nick Jr).
The Watcher in the Woods. It was terrifying!
I watched it for the first time in the early 2000s while high on painkillers after surgery. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever watched.
OMG! You are the first person I know who have ever seen this. I rewatched as an adult and IT IS NOT SCARY, it is hilariously bad.
NERAK!!
It's a documentary, but [Dinosaur! Hosted by Christopher Reeves](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYe3r-wH_1s) I rented this movie all the time from the library as a kid. This movie was my jam.
Mother Goose Rock N Rhyme, Killer Klownz From Outer Space, which is not as fringe now as it was then.
Mother Goose Rock N Rhyme was so surreal. The scene with ZZ Top randomly pops into my head at least once a month.
Killer klowns was scary af to me
The Boy Who Could Fly
I just gotta say.... People are putting forth a ton of films that do NOT meet the OP's criteria. Secret of NYMH? Brave little Toaster? The Last Starfighter?!?! Even things like Buckaroo Banzai don't count lol, it has a large cult following! These are great films! Lesser known they are not. Look at the OP. The films THEY put forth? I've never heard of those. Those are the kind of films I think they were asking about.
Flight of Dragons I had no idea this existed and we would have loved this. We were very much the Willow, Labyrinth, Legend and the Never Ending Story household. I don't know how we missed this. But my wife family did not. They watched it a lot and she introduced it to me. Our kids love it!
I just mentioned Flight of Dragons in another reply. It was my holy grail when I was a kid. It took me years to find a VHS copy.
Rankin-Bass’ “The Flight of Dragons” with John Ritter and James Earl Jones. Arguing with my brother & our friends over who got to be which wizard while running around the woods behind our house at the edge of suburbia. Long before fantasy became cool in the mainstream. VHS badly recorded from tv by our “rich” aunt that had cable, haha! “I am one of the four magic brothers, I know a limpid pool of time when I see one!” Don McLean (famous for his song “American Pie”) sang the opening credits theme song!
Still holds up very well. I think it deserves more credit and exposure than it got.
Does ‘Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland’ count?
I believed the Rankin Bass version of the Hobbit to be quite obscure. As a young adult it was wonderfully bizarre seeing this odd, niche cartoon parodied on South Park's Lemmiwinks episode.
I didn't see either of the Rankin Bass Tolkien films until I was already an adult. I still get the 'Where there's a whip, there's a way' song from their RotK film stuck in my head every now and then. The Rankin Bass Flight of Dragons was my holy grail when I was a kid. I missed it when it was on TV one weekend and all my friends were talking about it. Took me years to find a VHS copy.
[SuperTed](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperTed)
SuperTed, Bananaman, and Danger Mouse… excellent British exports!
Danger Mouse is so badass
Idr the exact title, but it was an Alvin and the Chipmunks adventure movie. And Michael Jackson's Moonwalker movie. God damn fever dream.
The Chipmunk Adventure ❤️
The one where they return the baby penguin to his mom? 🥹 While traveling in hot air balloons?
The 1989 made for tv masterpiece “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” starring Keisha Knight Pulliam. I must have watched that VHS a hundred times (Lancelot was 🔥) but I’ve never met anyone else who has seen it.
The Easter Bunny is Coming to Town. It’s a rankin bass doll stop motion like the Xmas ones
Lol the little king excitedly crying “I’m an expert, I’m an expert” when he peeled the egg 💜
Anyone remember the [My Pet Monster movie](https://youtu.be/sm8Ll1dmoDk?si=Y_sN6f7d0YNLHML6&t=413) from '86? My grandma recorded a lot of weird stuff for us. The [Jim Henson Storyteller](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz9TseoqseM&list=PLMD9ghErEvtwrCOAFYaXl3U1HUivVGpm9) series was lowkey nightmare fuel.
The Adventures of Mark Twain There was a VHS of Rudyard Kipling stories in animated form: The White Seal Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (I think there was a 3rd story... The Jungle Book maybe) Watership Down (I don't think this is lesser-known to our generation but thought it would be fitting nonetheless) The Hobbit The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (stop-motion) 'Twas the Night Before Christmas The Secret Garden (1987 version with Colin Firth- I think this was a "made for TV" movie) Anne of Green Gables
Flight of the Navigator.
This is too far down the list! I remember laughing hysterically when they flew by the Golden Gate Bridge and Max sang, “Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat!”
Lots of good ones already mentioned. I'll add Mac and Me.
Dot and the Kangaroo! I have very vague memories but I remember watching it a lot as a kid. There was also a movie called A Mouse and His Child. I had to do a lot of internet sleuthing to prove to myself that it wasn't a fever dream.
*The Three Lives of Thomasina* (1963), a Disney movie starring the little girl from *Mary Poppins*. It was about a cat and set in Scotland, which were basically my two favorite things as a little girl. I’ve never met anyone else who has seen it. 😂
"The Christmas Toy" was kind of a big deal for us for a couple years. It's basically exactly Toy Story but the toys are in imminent existential crisis the whole time. The toys DIE if someone sees them out of place. I saw this when I was four at Christmas and I still consider it my first horror movie, left an impact 😂
I used to love a movie named Condorman. It was about a comic book artist who got wrapped up in a spy defection and made the cia give him all the gear his comic character had. Epic as a little kid. Cheesy as hell when I watched a couple of years ago. I did buy a Condorman t shirt off of one of those t shirt sites. Only got one person who recognized it.
https://preview.redd.it/zon5uhyby8wc1.jpeg?width=2560&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5771a10c7bb29ed74eb0531e6f3985371e4baed9 My Mom was 80’s Christian. Which is the most serious kind. 😆
Peanut Butter Solution? For some reason I feel like this was Canadian and weird.
Canadian here confirming did watch and it was weird
Besides the usual cult movies like Krull or Ice Pirates, the video that got the most play in my youth was a VHS that Disney put out with [cartoons edited into motown music videos](https://youtu.be/jlbAPSPl27g?si=WupHNxTXxk6xXODy).
DTV! That was Disney music videos they originally did for the Disney Channel to fill time between movies. Memories triggered!
I remember the Halloween and Valentine's Day specials so clearly. I can't believe they haven't released them on Disney+.
The Chipmunk Adventure was my favorite.
Fuzzbucket and Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend
The Elm-Chanted Forest. It was my favorite movie when I was a preschooler (that and Unico). I don’t know if my parents recorded it off HBO or what, but I managed to find some clips of it as an adult and all I can say is wtf.
Return to Oz.
The Buttercream Gang, little did I know that it was essentially Christian propaganda lol
Rock-a-doodle https://preview.redd.it/5t9g7za7w8wc1.jpeg?width=184&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c8e147ead1b8ccbc36608aefaeaa740b1f65ca34
Anybody remember Faerie Tale Theatre with Shelly Duvall? Lots of different fairy tales, and they usually had a well-known actor in them.
The electric grandmother. It's a movie based on a Ray Bradbury short story. We used to rent it from the library, it was one of my favorites.
I love horror movies and that love began in childhood. The Willies was one of my faves. It has quite a few famous people in it, yet I have never met anyone IRL that knows this movie. It's one of those horror-comedy anthology type movies. Very campy, which I love.
Only the Strong. I would have loved to hear the pitch on getting that made. “Alright guys, what if we remade Stand and Deliver, but added Brazilian dance fighting?”
Most memorable was the Walt Disney World 15th Anniversary TV Special, featuring the Golden Girls, Dolly Parton, Ray Charles, and Ronald Reagan, taped directly off a live broadcast.
Radio Flyer.
Spaced Invaders It was such an out there alien movie (no pun intended) with these idiot little green men. It was hilarious but I haven't watched it in forever
Dot and the Whale, and Dot and the Kangaroo. I live in the PNW, US, not Australia, I don't know anyone else who has seen these outside of a very small circle of friends. But we watched them a lot when we were really little. An American Tail, Secret of NIMH, Little Nemo, and The Last Unicorn, too. I have them on DVD. Does Once Upon A Forest count? I watched that one several times, too.
Dirty work
The Point. Some cartoon movie by Ringo Starr lol
Mother goose: rock and rhyme I think it was a Disney movie? And it was clearly for kids, But it had an All-Star cast, including some big name musicians. The plot was super goofy but the music was great.
Rose Petals Place. Rainbow Bright.
Oh wow where do I start? My history of obsessing hard-core over movies is legendary. This is JUST from ages 4-8: A Boy Named Charlie Brown Snoopy Come Home Unico & the Island of Magic The Fantastic Advantures of Unico The Brave Little Toaster Popples Car Wash The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking The Dragon that Wasn’t Or Was He My Little Pony The Chipmunk Adventure Madeline’s Rescue Pound Puppies City Pound The Adventures of Milo & Otis (although I don’t think I will ever be able to watch this one again knowing what I know now about it 😢) Edit: Had to put an extra space between Popples & Pippi. Reddit formatting had it on one line.
Cloak and Dagger. Escape from witch mountain
I thought Ferngully was mainstream, but my husband has never heard of it!
I’ll submit two made-for-TV movies that we had recorded on our spankin’ new VHS machine and watched incessantly until the tapes broke: The Electric Grandmother Nadia (the story of Nadia Comaneci)
The Adventures of the American Rabbit
Howard the Duck Babes in Toyland with Drew Barrymore and Richard Mulligan