Best Romance Movies of 1982

A struggling female soprano finds work playing a male female impersonator, but it complicates her personal life.

Stingo, a young writer, moves to Brooklyn in 1947 to begin work on his first novel. As he becomes friendly with Sophie and her lover Nathan, he learns that she is a Holocaust survivor. Flashbacks reveal her harrowing story, from pre-war prosperity to Auschwitz. In the present, Sophie and Nathan's relationship increasingly unravels as Stingo grows closer to Sophie and Nathan's fragile mental state becomes ever more apparent.

A young artist is commissioned by the wife of a wealthy landowner to make a series of drawings of the estate while her husband is away.

Zack Mayo is an aloof, taciturn man who aspires to be a navy pilot. Once he arrives at training camp for his 13-week officer's course, Mayo runs afoul of abrasive, no-nonsense drill Sergeant Emil Foley. Mayo is an excellent cadet, but a little cold around the heart, so Foley rides him mercilessly, sensing that the young man would be prime officer material if he weren't so self-involved. Zack's affair with a working girl is likewise compromised by his unwillingness to give of himself.

Australian journalist Guy Hamilton travels to Indonesia to cover civil strife in 1965. There—on the eve of an attempted coup—he befriends a Chinese Australian photographer with a deep connection to and vast knowledge of the Indonesian people, and also falls in love with a British national.

A Broadway playwright puts murder in his plan to take credit for a student's script.

A nutty inventor, his frustrated wife, a philosopher cousin, his much younger fiancée, a randy doctor, and a free-thinking nurse spend a summer weekend in and around a stunning - and possibly magical - country house.

Jim Craig has lived his first 18 years in the mountains of Australia on his father's farm. The death of his father forces him to go to the lowlands to earn enough money to get the farm back on its feet.

The powerful tales of seven diverse African-American women are woven together in this 1982 performance of Ntozake Shange's Obie Award-winning landmark play. A breakthrough portrayal of black women's experiences in America, the story combines music, poetry and dance to celebrate their unique culture while painting a poignant portrait of their terrible struggles.

Hank and Frannie don't seem to be able to live together anymore. After a five-year relationship, lustful and dreamy Frannie leaves down-to-earth Hank on the anniversary of their relationship. Each one of them meets their dream mate, but as bright as they may seem, they are but a stage of lights and colors. Will true love prevail over a seemingly glamorous passion?

The story of seduction continues from the Scott family to the McBride’s, where mother and son, brother and sister, father and daughter enter the perverse world of incestuous pleasures.

During the French Revolution, a mysterious English nobleman known only as The Scarlet Pimpernel (a humble wayside flower), snatches French aristos from the jaws of the guillotine, while posing as the foppish Sir Percy Blakeney in society. Percy falls for and marries the beautiful actress Marguerite St. Just, but she is involved with Chauvelin and Robespierre, and Percy's marriage to her may endanger the Pimpernel's plans to save the little Dauphin

A mentally ill man in a small Texas town goes on a killing rampage and is fatally wounded by police. When doctors use an experimental serum to bring him back to life, the killer develops superhuman strength and the town sheriff must pursue him.

After fifteen years of marriage, an affluent couple divorce and take up with new partners.

A perfect typical LA couple find their happily-ever-after life broken when Zach confronts his long-repressed attraction for other men.

It's 1961, two years after the original Grease gang graduated, and there's a new crop of seniors and new members of the coolest cliques on campus, the Pink Ladies and T-Birds. Michael Carrington is the new kid in school - but he's been branded a brainiac. Can he fix up an old motorcycle, don a leather jacket, avoid a rumble with the leader of the T-Birds, and win the heart of Pink Lady Stephanie?

A Sydney teen tries to make it as a rock singer, with help from her odd 14-year-old cousin.

A lonely farmer's daughter hopes to find love at the village ballroom.

Doc, who has just moved to Cannery Row, realizes that the only entertainment is the brothel. There he meets the spunky Suzy and they fall in love, giving them both a renewed chance at life.

Cymbeline, the King of Britain, is angry that his daughter Imogen has chosen a poor (but worthy) man for her husband. So he banishes Posthumus, who goes to fight for Rome. Imogen (dressed as a boy) goes in search of her husband, who meanwhile has boasted to his pal Iachimo that Imogen would never betray him. And Iachimo's determined to prove him wrong.

HBO Standing Room Only presentation of the 1981 stage revival. From the Neil Simon Book. New Yorkers Paul Bratter and Corie Bratter née Banks have just gotten married. He is a stuffed shirt just starting his career as a lawyer. She is an independently minded free spirit who prides herself on doing the illogical purely out of a sense of adventure

Quasimodo, the hunchback bellringer of Notre Dame's cathedral, meets a beautiful gypsy dancer, Esmeralda, and falls in love with her. So does Quasimodo's guardian, the archdeacon of the cathedral, and a poor street poet. But Esmeralda's in love with a handsome soldier. When a mob mistakes her for a witch, it's up to Quasimodo to rescue her and claim sanctuary for her in the cathedral.

A sobering mid-life crisis fuels dissatisfaction in Philip Dimitrius, to the extent where the successful architect trades his marriage and career in for a spiritual exile on a remote Greek island where he hopes to conjure meaning into his life - trying the patience of his new girlfriend and angst-ridden teenage daughter.

Harry is a shy hardware store employee. But whenever he takes a part in a local amateur theater production, he becomes the part completely--while on stage. Helene is new in town, a lonely itinerant telephone company employee. On a whim, she auditions for and gets the part of Stella to Harry's Stanley when the theater group performs A Streetcar Named Desire. Before anyone realizes the growing affection between Helene and Stanley, she falls deeply in love with the sexy brute, not knowing what the real man is like.

The D'Oyly Carte production of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. Love blossoms between members of different social classes among a general lampooning of the British class system.

A broadway playwright is burning the candle at both ends. He is dealing with pressure from a production nearing premiere, a wife who is leaving him, and 5 children 4 of which belong to her.

The musical uses the premise of a mysterious performance troupe, led by a Leading Player, to tell the story of Pippin, a young prince on his search for meaning and significance. In 1981, a stage production of Pippin was videotaped for Canadian television. The stage production was directed by Kathryn Doby, Bob Fosse's dance captain for the original Broadway production, and David Sheehan directed the video adaptation, with Roger O. Hirson in charge of the music. Ben Vereen returned for the role of Leading Player, while William Katt played the role of Pippin. However, this version was a truncated adaptation and several sections of the play were cut. An extended version running 135 minutes is also available.

Dance student Sinclair has a decision to make when her lover Rudy tells her he's leaving town.

The first sexual adventures of a young man, who goes to Paris and has fun with the hotel maids.

In this offbeat comedy, an unlikely romance develops between a flamboyant, middle-aged piano tuner and an extremely timid office worker

After their caravan is attacked and their respective families butchered by Arab marauders, teenagers David and Sarah flee across the desert. But the desert is filled with danger from the elements, animals and the unwholesome appetite of the Jackal, a sheik who wants Sarah for himself. However, the desert also holds temptation and love. David and Sarah hide out in an oasis and build a life for themselves, discovering each other in new ways.

Summer, 1948. 14-year-old Alan has just three wishes: that there will be lasting peace, that England will win the Ashes, and that he will finally kiss classmate Ann. So when he's cast opposite her in a play that requires a kiss and England seem to be doing well in cricket, life couldn't be better.

Michael Pappas and his girlfriend, Cathy, are enjoying the white sand beaches of a Greek island as well as the freewheeling nature of the locals. When Michael meets Lina, who is in Greece from Paris doing archaeological work, he is enamored with the beautiful foreigner. Cathy, unhappy about Lina getting close to Michael, confronts the woman -- only to be unexpectedly wooed by her charms as well.

Billie is an advertising executive with a secret past she can’t seem to leave behind. Joan is a hopeful young actress looking for the right part and the right guy. Sherry is a model whose whirlwind lifestyle is catching up with her.

A Shocking Accident is a 1982 British short comedy film directed by James Scott, based on Graham Greene's short story by the same name. About a boy whose father is killed in Naples, when a pig falls on him as a balcony collapses. The incident haunts the boy through his later life until he meets a girl who understands his side of the story. The film won an Oscar at the 55th Academy Awards for Best Live Action Short and was nominated for BAFTA in 1983.

When a professional couple, who have lived and worked together for many years, finally decide to marry, their sudden betrothal causes many unexpected difficulties. They soon find that being married is often quite different from being "best friends."

A backwoods, illiterate young woman from Arkansas battles to regain custody of her son from her estranged husband who feels she is an unfit mother. In the process, she falls in love with a struggling musician who helps her cause.

It's an extraordinarily touching true-story about Terry Jean Moore, the determined, independent and young woman who is imprisoned for 7 years on account of a "five dollar" robbery. In the prison she will be pregnant by a jailer and she has to fight for bear and keep her child.

Set in Louisiana, the film is a romantic drama that examines the social and financial inequality faced by Black people in the region.

The second Charles and Diana movie, with two virtual unknowns in the leads: Christopher Baines had acted on the British stage and on the BBC, but Catherine Oxenberg, a U.S.-born, British-raised professional model, here made her acting debut. Of particular interest was the casting of Dana Wynter as Queen Elizabeth, Stewart Granger as Prince Philip, Olivia de Havilland as the Queen Mother, and Ray Milland as a general factotum around the Palace.

A comedy/musical utilizing both new songs and parodies from the original (Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance), as well as references to popular films of the time, including Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark. In your typical boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy fights girl with swords plot, the story revolves around Mabel ...

The monstrous offspring of a violent crime grows up in seclusion on a remote island, where a boat-full of hapless teens have shipwrecked, unaware of what's lurking in the woods.

A scuba diving instructor, her biochemist boyfriend, and her police chief ex-husband try to link a series of bizarre deaths to a mutant strain of piranha fish whose lair is a sunken freighter ship off a Caribbean island resort.

An unmarried career woman decides she wants a baby and finds a suitable partner, a sportswriter working for the magazine she publishes. After she maneuvers him into proposing marriage to her, she learns that he happens to be sterile.

In East Texas, the summer after high school, Jack falls in love with Ginny, the daughter of the town's banker (Jack's mom's high school sweetheart). Ginny's been at boarding school; she's headed for Vassar. Over her father's strenuous objections, she spends time with Jack. At summer's end, Jack and Ginny elope to Louisiana (where 17-year-olds can marry without their parents' permission), and he gets a job in the oil fields. Her dad hires a menacing private eye to find them, Ginny's pregnant, her town doctor gives her horrible news, and Jack's mom has her own agenda. It seems that Jack and Ginny have grown up under a liar's moon. What will these sweethearts do?

Three troubled couples attend a two day marital retreat in hopes of saving their marriages. Unbeknownst to them, their psychiatrist is not who they think he is.

Erotic intrigue comes to a full boil in this story of two brothers who find themselves in a sticky situation when they begin lusting after each other's wives.

The year is 1995 and Michael Stringer is the only private eye left on Earth. One day, he is assigned by a woman to investigate Eden Isle, a complex for people who want a perfect life started by an industrialist named Korter. Interestingly, Korter is found on a beach and is 20 years younger than he was before. When he gets into the complex, he is caught in a web of mystery.

A spoiled rich girl used to getting her way comes up against a rancher who won't be intimidated by her.