A List of 80s Movies: Sex is Deadly

(Spoiler Alert! You've had 20 years to see these movies; don't blame me for giving the ending away.)

The 80s wasn't just a time of big hair and great alternative rock. It was also the time that AIDS entered the social consciousness (and the bloodstreams) of America. Misunderstandings and fear about it loomed large. It's not surprising then that the undercurrent of many movies was sex will sneak up and KILL you when you are not looking.

I actually noted this trend after watching the movie, Dangerous Liaisons in the theater. Yeah, in the 80s. Why do I remember a conversation I had twenty years ago? Well, I'm sitting in the food court at the mall after the movie and I'm like "notice how everyone who enjoyed sex had to be punished? The good girl actually dies of a broken heart!"

My girlfriend, who was cuter than she was smart, was like "Movies don't mean anything. They just are."

I'm like "As if! Someone wrote that movie. Writers put meaning in everything. There's a hidden message in everything around you: songs, advertisements, and definitely movies. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean you don't respond to it."

She made the universal gesture for "gag me with a spoon."

I remember the conversation (and the realization that my lover was an idiot) vividly. Let's see if I can remember the list of movie evidence I presented for her to ignore. Or failing the ability of total recall (we can indulge in the trick of all really great memories -invention, compensation, and general fluffing.) Oh yeah, I'm a child of the 80s. Cynical to the max.

Dangerous Liaisons is a great one to head the list as you can actually tally up the body count. Duel, heartbreak, social suicide, syphyllis, etc.

Amadeus. Another orgiastic period piece ending in madness and syphyllitic death. You might think the movie's message is ambition kills, but the ambitious killer is the one who survives.

DeathTrap. Michael Caine kisses hunky young Christopher Reeves in this campy mystery. No doubt they must die.

Fatal Attraction. Hide your bunnies! Infidelity is apparently leading cause of stalking, suicide, murder and rabbit stew.

War of the Roses. Even marriage... okay divorce... will kill you. (And your pets, of course.)

Tess. Okay, so its based on a novel that was soooo not written in the 80s. Still the screenplay was. Bleak and punitive. (I should know I watched it 9 times -I had such a thing for Nastasia Kinski.)

Cat People. Horror movie in which sex causes shapeshifting which only murder can cure. Starring Nastasia Kinski's breasts. Kinski is super sexy, in and out of her leopard suit. You'll agree she's to die for.

Electric Dreams. Proving you don't have to be alive to be killed by lust.

American Werewolf in London. Apparently only someone who loves you can kill you, for your own good, of course.

The Howling. Intentional community of lycanthrope rapists? No sex-warning here. Move along.

Heathers. Teen sex kills with a dark wit and a little help from Christian Slater and Winona Ryder.

Pennies from Heaven. The traveling salesman joke takes on new dimensions with Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters in a dark musical drama-dy. If her husband doesn't catch you the hangman will.

Body Double. Even voyeurism is killer.

The Hunger. David Bowie, Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve in an epic vampire love triangle in which everyone suffers. But so elegantly. The movie launches with a wonderful club scene (Bauhaus! Chanting "Bella Lugosi's dead") where Bowie/Deneuve pick up a sexy couple and bring them home for a menage a' vampire.

The Evil Dead Trilogy. Friday the 13th. Halloween. Nightmare on Elm Street. Dreaming or awake, sex kill baby kills. These 80s movies invented the horror movie rules like "first one to show her tits dies."

Sex=Death. Death=Hollywood box office gold. I'm sure if you put your mind to it you could make a list to rival my own. Or add these sexy, deathy flicks to your private collection.