or did they just try to make fantasy too cheaply and think it could be like horror and have a low-budget high return?
sharePretty much. It's funny that this movie was more successful than Ridley Scott's fantasy collaboration with Tom Cruise.
shareYeah, I think it was because "Conan the Barbarian" was a surprise hit and launched Schwarzenegger onto the B-list (it took a few more films to get him onto the A-list). So there were a ton of cheap Conan-style crapfests made during the 80s, all of them total schlock, including the Conan sequels.
There were a few attempts at a serious Fantasy genre film during the decade, including the excellent "Labyrinth" and "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen", and the pretty good "Dragonslayer" and "The Company of Wolves", which nobody remembers but me. So that makes four or five Fantasy genre films watching out of dozens or hundreds.
I remember "The Company of Wolves". Awesome movie! I also loved "Legend", "Time Bandits", "Krull"... so many awesome movies during an awesome decade 😊
shareOf those three films, I loved "Time Bandits"!
The other two, well, they were pretty schlocky.
"The Company of Wolves" is an awesome film indeed!
shareI wouldn't say oversaturated but it certainly made me realize how little we saw of the genre in the 90s by comparison.
shareSeems like the 90s was more thriller and romcoms.
shareYep, “Silence of The Lambs” pretty much ended the 80’s Horror/Fantasy vibe. Everything became suspense/thrillers after it came out.
Kinda like Nirvana ended “hair-metal” bands.
Most of the 90s movies related to fantasy were associated with Disney. I can think of quite a few 80s movies that blended sci-fi with the fantasy genre.
sharei can never get enough sword/shield/sorcery movies so I thought it was just right. I'm not sure if Excalibur, Clash of the Titans or the Conan movies started it all and why they died out in the nineties. I liked Willow but it was a little cutesy/campy. Beastmaster, Highlander and the Ator movies were my favorites. Some of the special effects in the Ator movies weren't as good due to the budget.
shareThat's the interesting part about the 80s. Fantasy films weren't as popular back then, particularly High Fantasy. Sci-fi and action drew bigger crowds back then. Most of the fantasy films released in the 80s went into these categories:
- low-budget, B-rated type
- low fantasy with just one fantasy element to save on money for special-effects
- high fantasy, but with practical special-effects
The only high-fantasy films I can really think of from that time period included:
- Labyrinth
- The Dragonslayer
- Willow
- Legend
Low-fantasy films were more abundant, but even those were few and far between. Those included movies like:
- Teen Witch
- Teen Wolf
So no, the 80s was not super-saturated with fantasy films.
(If someone can remember other fantasy films from the 80s, feel free to include them here).
I think the point could be made with your reply was that there was an abundance of fantasy movies in the 80s, but a lot of them were not high quality. A lot of them were trying to be the next big thing.... or not trying at all, but did not reach success. Then you had those films that weren't expecting to be huge but became big hits. As another user on this thread said, Conan was one of them. There were also movies like Labyrinth mentioned that were very well made but failures at first, only to gain more of a following years later.
shareIt was so cheap to shoot in Italy.
sharecheap fantasy with unknown roided out leads that were b movies and an excuse to show tits. they actually normally had good artistic front covers but were utter garbage
share