This is part 4 of our ‘80s Cult Classics run. Today we’re digging deeper into the wildly fun section of the video store—where the premises sound made up, and somehow the movies ended up living rent-free in our brain for decades. From offbeat heroes and punk chaos to late-night oddities that played on cable at 1 a.m., but somehow also played perfectly on a weekend morning. This line up delivers a bit of it all.
What’s up guys! Welcome back to the channel. I’m Anthony Digioia, and this is your home for pure retro movie nostalgia, deep-cut discoveries, and that warm fuzzy feeling born from our weekend trips to the video store. If you love midnight-movie energy, VHS-era comfort flicks, and that special brand of ’80s cinema where the choices were bold, the hair was big, and the logic was optional, you’re absolutely in the right aisle. This is Movies Never Say Die… and Friday Night Rentals starts now.
Top Secret! (1984)
1984’s Top Secret! from the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker chaos factory stars Val Kilmer in his feature debut, along with Lucy Gutteridge and a battalion of deadpan assassins. Here an Elvis-themed American pop star stumbles into a French Resistance caper. Think WWII spoof plus beach musical plus Looney Tunes physics, all crammed into one gloriously unhinged spoof.
Personal confession time: I kinda man-crushed on Kilmer in this movie. He was the ultimate cool guy I wanted to be. I literally recorded this off cable onto VHS so I could study the man’s charm like game tape—how he carried his charisma, timed his double-takes, and landed a joke without blinking. And to no surprise Kilmer is the secret sauce here, flipping from effortless crooner to rubber-limbed goofball without ever losing that natural swagger. And Top Secret! isn’t just about joke density; it’s about comedic confidence density, and that’s why it all gels.
Theatrically it did modest business, pulling in around $20 million on an $8.5 million budget. As the ZAZ follow-up to Airplane! it didn’t soar the same way with critics, many of whom were lukewarm. Vincent Canby of The New York Times said it “lacked a comedic center of gravity” and wandered in its own landscape”. Not exactly glowing remarks.
But cable and video turned Top Secret! into a perennial cult favorite. This became a sleepover rite of passage. You’d rewind the backwards-room scene, pause for the underwater bar fight, and quote “Skeet Surfing” until your parents started to worry. It’s the rare spoof that rewards rewatching because the frame is stacked with Easter eggs—if you miss one joke, another smacks you two seconds later. ZAZ shoot this one like a real movie, not a skit parade, so the nonsense feels weirdly elegant. My taped-off-cable copy may be long gone, but the memories are still in heavy rotation. Now I have a fun turn for this one. We’re going from a thousand jokes a minute to a guitar solo for the soul with this next cult classic.
Purple Rain (1984)
In 1984, director Albert Magnoli brought us Purple Rain, a romantic musical drama starring Prince as “The Kid,” alongside the stunning Apollonia Kotero and a scene-stealing Morris Day. In this one a gifted but volatile Minneapolis musician battles rivals, family storms, and his own ego… before detonating the club stage with songs that turn pain into purple injected electricity.
Back in the day, a lot of the girls I knew liked Purple Rain, so, young Anthony did too. Secretly, I kind of loved it though. It may have been my first guilty pleasure. You’d show up for cool points, then stay because Prince basically plugged straight into your nervous system. The First Avenue sequences are shot like fever dreams—sweat, spotlights, perfect backlighting, all drenched in atmosphere. Between sets, the melodrama is pure ’80s cheese: popped collars, indestructible eyeliner, and emotions dialed up to eleven. But it works because the music isn’t decoration; it’s the engine. And every song pushes the story and the character forward.
At the box office, Purple Rain was a rocket—around $70 million on a $7 million budget. Critics were generally kind, though some took issue with its depiction of women and Prince’s acting chops. Vincent Canby again threw shade, saying Prince “expresses all the rage of a caged mouse.” Harsh—and not entirely wrong—but also not the full story.
On home video, Purple Rain became a must-own that lived in VCR cabinets all over the place. The soundtrack went supernova— “Let’s Go Crazy,” “When Doves Cry,” “Purple Rain”—turning living rooms into mini arenas. On VHS, this was a relationship flex: you rented it for date night, then rewatched it alone for the guitar solos. Prince here doesn’t “act” so much as radiate; the camera captures an artist forging an identity in real time and it’s a pure ‘80s treat. Morris Day brings comic swagger, Apollonia brings all the heat, and Minneapolis becomes a neon crucible. And it’s one of the rare music films where the setlist is the character arc. Now for our next rental classic, we’re dialing up the suspense, changing genres, and heading from the stage to the streets for a body-swapping ride through Los Angeles.
The Hidden (1987)
1987’s The Hidden stars Kyle MacLachlan, Michael Nouri, and Claudia Christian in a body-hopping crime spree where a weary L.A. detective teams up with a very odd FBI agent to stop an alien parasite that loves fast cars, loud music, and violent mayhem. It keeps switching hosts and upgrading its rap sheet, turning the city into its personal playground of carnage.
I first saw this at a friend’s house where his parents had turned the hall closet into a bootleg video store. Endless rows of tapes, matching handwritten labels, three movies per VHS—choose your chaos. As a kid, The Hidden was pure horror. As a teen, it played like a slick action thriller. Now it feels like a horror-action-sci-fi hybrid that winks just enough while still ripping with intensity. The opening Ferrari smash-and-grab is awesome and sets the tone for the wild ride packed into this tight 97-minute runtime.
Numbers-wise, it did respectably: just under $10 million domestically on a $4.5 million budget, solid for a New Line Cinema flick. Critics responded surprisingly well too. Roger Ebert gave it 3 out of 4 stars, praising the way it blended action and sci-fi. Then, like so many cult films, VHS and cable reruns helped it find its long-term audience and cement its reputation.
The action is clean and crunchy, the dark humor lands without undercutting the stakes, and the effects are inventive without overreaching. MacLachlan’s serene weirdness plays beautifully against Nouri’s blue-collar exasperation, turning a high concept into a buddy movie that actually buddies. It even sneaks in a surprisingly warm grace note at the end—right after giving you goo, gunfights, and a killer flamethrower. Rewatching now, I still feel that closet-rental thrill. You don’t know exactly what’s on the tape, but you know it’s about to kick ass. And The Hidden is the kind of discovery that turns friends into instant fans—one chase, one host, and one rewound scene at a time. I hope you’re still with me out then because our next rental classic keeps the same scary energy but changes from an alien passenger to a seemingly normal highway drifter.
The Hitcher (1986)
In 1986’s The Hitcher, a young driver gives a lift to the wrong stranger and the open road turns into an endless nightmare. What starts as a simple favor becomes a deadly game of cat-and-mouse at highway speeds. Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell, and Jennifer Jason Leigh fill out the small but mighty cast in what might be the ultimate anti-hitchhiking PSA.
I first saw this at a friend’s sleepover birthday party where the parents rented The Hitcher, Police Story, Invasion U.S.A., and Police Academy for a bunch of eight-year-olds. Pure ’80s parenting. And this one freaked me out the most. No quips, no comfort, just desert sun, empty highways, and Rutger Hauer serving such calm menace that it felt uncomfortably real. As a kid, it was raw terror. As a teen, it became a cool, stripped-down thriller. As an adult, it plays like minimalist highway horror that just refuses to age due to its grounded roots.
At the box office it underperformed, making just shy of $6 million domestically on a budget of just under $8 million. Critics were mixed as well. Most praised Hauer’s performance but took shots at the script’s lack of depth and originality. Janet Maslin said Hauer brought “evil panache” to the role, but said the dialogue was “painfully crude”. Accurate, but not necessarily a dealbreaker.
Here VHS did what VHS did best, it turned The Hitcher into a legend. This became a weekend sleepover staple, and cable reruns quietly built its cult imprint. The film’s real power is its simplicity: widescreen desert frames, a score that hums like a frayed nerve, and set pieces that lodge in your brain without needing extreme gore to do it. Hauer is great in this one. He’s magnetic, unreadable, and inevitable. The movie never explains him; it just lets him loom. And it works. Howell sells the shell shock, Leigh gives the story a fragile heartbeat, and the ending lands like a steel-toe to the soul. And rewatching now, I still feel that birthday-party jolt… and I still double-check the rearview on road trips. Some road movies are about freedom; this one is about the price of it and it’s sort of timeless. So, what do you guys say? We lighten the mood a bit and switch from white-knuckle terror to a feel-good action rental that delivers a buffet of roundhouse kicks.
No Retreat, No Surrender (1986)
In 1986, director Corey Yuen delivered No Retreat, No Surrender, starring Kurt McKinney, Jean-Claude Van Damme in an early supporting role, and Tai Chung Kim as the literal ghost of Bruce Lee. Here, a bullied Seattle teen trains—with Bruce Lee’s ghost, of course—to take on a crime syndicate’s stone-faced enforcer, a pre-fame Van Damme playing the ultimate heel.
This was the Van Damme movie we discovered at the video store after seeing Kickboxer and Bloodsport. Overseas it ran as Karate Tiger, and it plays like a crowd-pleasing underdog story. In the U.S., it became the tape you grabbed when the other good ninja movies were checked out, or the one you rented to show your friends: “the hidden Van Damme movie where he’s the bad guy.” And it’s the definition of film that grew bigger in the rearview.
Theatrically it made a modest splash, pulling in about $4.6 million in the U.S. and Canada, plus another $1.4 million in France, on a tiny $400,000 budget. Critics to no surprise were not impressed. Walter Goodman of The New York Times joked that no black belts would be awarded to anyone involved, calling it an “exhibition of thunks and kerplunks.” So yeah, far from glowing press but you could say that about reviews for some of the best action movies from the ‘80s so, grain of salt.
But once again, VHS and cable stepped in and handed it a black belt in cult status. After Bloodsport and Kickboxer turned Van Damme into an action-shelf deity, this scrappier earlier flick started renting like crazy because fans wanted to see where the split-kick mystique really began. What they found was pure ’80s dojo sincerity. The training montages are backyard legend. The soundtrack is motivational cheese you could spread on crackers. And the finale delivers that stand-up-and-cheer catharsis the genre lived on during the era. McKinney sells the earnest grind, Tai Chung Kim brings a surprisingly gentle mentor vibe, and Van Damme—barely speaking—radiates raw screen charisma that hints exactly to where his career was headed. As a kid, I logged this as feel-good karate fuel. As an adult, it plays like the platonic ideal of B-action: heart on its sleeve, kicks to the face, and zero irony required.
And that’s our late-night stack for this trip down the cult-movie aisle. And if ’80s cult chaos is your thing, make sure to check out the other episodes in this series, plus The VHS Vault for some ’90s deep cuts that kept the rental era alive. I’m currently digging through 90s cult classics in that series. You can find all the episodes right here.
As for this one, if you’ve got your own memories of renting these gems, catching them half-faded on cable, or being hypnotized by the VHS cover art as a kid, drop those stories in the comments—I love hearing what you guys discovered out in the wild of the video store aisles. Thank you guys all so much for watching and supporting the channel. You guys are the best, you’re all part of the “retro family” and if you dug the retro vibes and haven’t done so, hit like, subscribe, and ring that bell so you don’t miss the next cart of Friday Night Rentals rolling your way.
Anthony J. Digioia II © 2026 SilverScreen Analysis & Movies Never Say Die
