Older People Are Sharing The Once Very Popular Movies That Are Now Seemingly All But Forgotten
These are classic films that just don’t get talked about anymore.
Back to the Future was a huge hit when it was released, and while it turns 40 this year — and is now as distant from us as a 1940s film was in 1985 — its popularity hasn’t faded. In fact, the movie remains as beloved as ever, continuing to attract new generations of fans over the decades.
However, sometimes movies that were huge cultural phenomena get forgotten over time. A good example of this is 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, starring Kevin Costner. The movie was a huge blockbuster. In fact, it was the second highest-grossing movie of that year — trailing only Terminator 2: Judgment Day and even surpassing Home Alone. And the movie’s theme song, by Bryan Adams, was all over the radio. But today, I think it would be hard to find anyone under 40 who knows about that film.
Recently, Reddit user Mundane_Bad_2437 was curious about those huge movies that have disappeared from culture when they asked: “What movie was popular back in your days, but has now been forgotten?” The thread got hundreds of responses. Below are the top and most often repeated movies:
1. “Love Story with Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw was a big hit. I’m guessing most young people today never heard of it.”
2. “The Airport franchise. Now, those films are known, if at all, for spawning the Airplane parody. Airport and its sequels were hugely successful and launched the 1970s disaster movie genre. Put some past their prime actors and a couple of hot chicks in an enclosed space, add peril, and count your profits.”
3. “Ordinary People, a truly extraordinary film, won Best Picture in 1980. But it’s often remembered more for taking that honor over Raging Bull and for Mary Tyler Moore losing the Oscar to Sissy Spacek. It is an incredible film, but it’s hard to watch for some people, so it sorta got lost.”
4. “All those Pink Panther movies!”
5. “The Police Academy franchise. Literally throw a bunch of stand-up comics in with comedic supporting actors and see what sticks is how those felt.”
6. “Disaster movies in general. Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, and The Poseidon Adventure, just to name a few. Those were huge movies in the mid-’70s with star-studded casts, and they are never mentioned today.”
7. “Crocodile Dundee was a huge hit at the time, but I don’t ever see it playing or anyone mentioning it.”
8. “The Warriors. It was always playing at midnight somewhere. Great way to end a night of partying.”
9. “Walking Tall (1973) with Joe Don Baker. It stayed at the local movie theater for over a year.”
10. “A Knight’s Tale. It hasn’t been totally forgotten, but it was huge when it came out. I lost count of how many times I saw it. Now I never even hear it being talked about. I watched it a few months ago, it’s held up fairly well.”
11. “The Last Emperor won Best Picture of 1987, but it’s barely spoken of today. I don’t think it’s because it’s a bad movie or anything, but maybe because its protagonist is not widely known in the West, and that whole period of pre-war and WWII history has faded from living memory. I personally think it’s a great movie that I try to watch once a year.”
12. “Cool Hand Luke. ‘My boy Luke says he can eat 50 eggs, he can eat 50 eggs.'”
13. “American Pie and Scary Movie. They don’t make them like that anymore.”
14. “Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Watched this for the first time within the last year. (I was 8 when it came out.) It’s hard to envision NYC being that gritty.”
15. “A sidesplitting 1970 romance-comedy film with Barbara Streisand as a NYC sex worker and George Segal as a failed writer, titled The Owl and the Pussycat, was very popular, and people quickly laughed and quoted the line, ‘Who gave you permission to read my panties?’ whenever the film was mentioned.”
16. “Tommy — starring Elton John, Tina Turner, Roger Daltrey, and Ann-Margaret. Saw it when I was about 15 at a theater that is now an XXX.”
17. “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. It was a silly comedy that had so many stars in it at the time. I streamed it not all that long ago, and it’s still funny!”
18. “Chariots of Fire was a wildly popular movie that benefited from the new availability of Beta/VHS/LaserDiscs being in homes. You couldn’t escape the theme song either; it was played on the radio and parodied on TV. I never hear anything about it anymore.”
19. “Billy Jack series. I worked in a video store in high school, and this older man would bust through the front door every couple of months and ask, ‘Where do you keep your Billy Jack movies?’ like everyone on Earth knew what that was. We never had them, and every time he’d tell me people love them and we needed to order them all as soon as possible. He claimed he was a stuntman in those movies. No one in my life before or since has mentioned those movies until now 
”
20. “Could not escape Time Bandits and Ice Pirates on HBO in the summers during the ’80s. Our family didn’t even have cable TV, but we’d be hanging out at my friend’s house, and it seemed like every time we checked, one of these movies would be playing.”
21. “Car Wash. Silly movie with great music”
22. And lastly, “I remember The Sting with Robert Redford and Paul Newman ran for months in the local theater in 1973, but I’ve never seen it show up on the streaming movie channels or other sources we have now. It was more popular than The Godfather films back then, but it just disappeared.”
You can read the original thread on Reddit.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
