Maniac Cop deserves to be re-evaluated as a quintessential 80s B-movie – low on brains but high on charm – and lucky viewers should keep an eye out for cameos from The Evil Dead (1981) director Sam Raimi and the Raging Bull himself, Mr. Jake LaMotta.

The two kids are effortlessly real and emotionally complex, but profoundly simple, and Miyazaki’s unique masterpiece embraces that childlike existence.

William Faulkner once made the sage point that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Louis Malle’s Golden Lion winner Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987) is a Second World War-set film very much guided in spirit by the US novelist’s musing on the febrile relationship between memory, time and individual and collective histories.

Behind the visuals rests an absorbing performance from James Wilby as the titular character.

A garishly macabre vision of a Britain exiting the war years and trying to come of age, it presents a time when society was ridding itself of the shackles of its Best-Of-British conventions, and forging a new path. Sadly though, with any coming of age tale there are those who are unable to grow at the same rate. Withnail is one of those, too happy to take all the pleasures, and never wake up to reality.

Through a series of vignettes hung together by the widow of a noodle chef, this ramen-western explores how the pleasure and meaning we derive from food are vital and enriching components in the human experience.

Sid and Nancy rages with a vitriolic fury which eventually becomes tiresome.

Betty Blue, in either of its forms – whether it be the 121-minute theatrical version or the 185-minute director’s cut – takes a bad situation and makes it true-blue and beautiful.

In many ways, Down by Law feels like the quintessential Jarmusch. It's a perfect distillation of that strange whimsy and resolutely deadpan humour - harvested via the director's life-long passion for world cinema.

In an age where many horror franchises attempt to adhere as close to the original film’s formula as possible, Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 is a fun reminder of a time when makers were able to rewrite their own rules and go for broke. This was never going to top what had gone before, and by acknowledging that, the filmmakers have crafted a wonderfully demented alternative in its place.

A faultlessly fun genre picture.

Shines out as a rough diamond, a masterpiece of British cinema undeniably worthy of its classical title.

Demons and Demons 2 are classic (if that’s the right term) examples of what happens when any pretence at style or subtlety goes out the window, in favour of in-your-face carnage which is so over-the-top that it is no longer remotely scary, but just plain nauseating.

The editing, too, is rough around the edges, but it all adds to the sense of madness that pervades El Salvador – a sense that only grows the more intense the further that Boyle journeys into this Central American heart of darkness.

It’s the committed turn from Day-Lewis and Hanif Kureishi’s socially-astute, Oscar-nominated screenplay that manages to compensate for the film’s technical shortcomings, alongside the (then) landmark casual representation of a gay relationship on screen.

The true winning formula, however, is found in Voight and Roberts’ double-act. Their eccentric characters are funny, violent and heartwarming all at the same time, where we root for them despite the fact that they’re basically psychopaths.

That’s not to say that it’s a complete wash-out. The film comes to vivid life during Remo’s ridiculous yet hugely entertaining training sequences, and there are flashes of inventiveness and personality elsewhere. It’s just a shame that more often than not, the film feels like a stunt performance showreel – complete with distracting pre-CG concealing wire work – with not enough investment in character or pacing.

Paul Verhoeven’s first English language film Flesh + Blood is bloody, cynical and unrefined, but indicative of his later satirical tendencies.

The most commendable aspect of the The Return of the Living Dead is its ability to combine horror and comedy rather than allowing the different elements to become intermittent and the tone inconsistent.

As a piece of extraterrestrial-tinged whimsy, Lifeforce occasionally shows weak signs of life, but in the end it falls well short of achieving classic status.

A solid, stark, cheerless rendering of hard-boiled storytelling. It’s historical filmmaking at its most candid and its most pragmatic.

This third entry is undoubtedly the crowning glory in a series of films that could hardly be described as classics of the genre, yet are never anything less than gloriously entertaining.

Streets of Fire is fairly devoid of anything resembling a cohesive plot or lacking even a shred of subtext. It exists purely as pop action cinema, sweeping you up with a fevered enthusiasm and an overpowering desire to entertain which proves incredibly difficult to resist.

Pieces may not be in the same league as the slasher classics but fans of the genre will find much to enjoy in this knowingly silly exercise in day-glo splatter.

With a ludicrous plot that wouldn’t look out of place in a 80s American Saturday morning kids cartoon, this is the very epitome of B-movie zaniness.

Ultimately, the attempt to over-deliver on themes leads to a serious under-delivery of dramatic impact. This is a disjointed film, inexplicably a classic for some, that fails to engage with modern audiences.

Tarkovsky possessed a sensibility for, and mastery over, the cinematic form that few directors – before or after – have been able to match; a mastery evident in almost every sublime frame of Mirror.

Despite sharing the stylistic trappings of so many 1980s urban comedies – Three Men and a Baby, Big, Crocodile Dundee – Tootsie transcends its generic conventions with a wonderfully nuanced turn from Hoffman, a terrific supporting cast that includes Bill Murray and Jessica Lange, and a screenplay that is as sensitive as it is funny. Tootsie’s finely balanced writing is one of the film’s greatest strengths, being consistently funny without ever turning the central premise into a gag.