What are the 10 Worst movies of 1981 that you have seen?

The Beyond 
Saturday the 14th
Condorman
Pennies from Heaven 
They All Laughed
Gregory’s Girl
Time Bandits
Neighbors

The Four Seasons and On Golden Pond are in my top 10 best of 1981.  But hey, I hate a lot of popular movies myself, so I get it.  

Piranha II: The Spawning (1981), directed by James Cameron.

What's worse than mutant piranha fish? Flying mutant piranha fish!

I saw this on video tape and thought it might hold up as good cheesy R-rated fun, something like Humanoids from the Deep (1980). It falls short of that. The action scenes are solidly in the cheap effects creature feature genre, but the human interest main story pasting it all together is painfully bad, with weak attempts at comedy.

This obviously owes a lot to Jaws (1975) and the original Piranha (1978). At the time I saw every new horror film through Alien (1979) lenses and I remember thinking "A flying fish erupting from a corpse is just like the chest-burster, isn't it?"

The good aspects:

• I recollect Tricia O'Neil as easy on the eyes, but also that they were trying to suggest some other actress: maybe Jacqueline Bisset or Rachel Ward? Adrienne Barbeau?
• Lance Henriksen fan club!
• The water does not have that crystal clarity we like for really stunning underwater shots, but there are some lovely scenes and exciting, difficult stunt work.
• A generous amount of boobage and assorted T&A by lovely women. The opening scene is of ambitious underwater sex. Which doesn't turn out well, given the presence of mutant piranha. That'll teach the kids to try fancy fornicating.

Cameron cites Terminator (1984) as his first film, reluctant to take credit for this one. He certainly didn't have much control over the project and it was a rocky production; see the details in the wikipedia article. Which has many "citation needed" notes, so who knows the complete story?

Available on Blu-ray from Shout Factory.

Last list for today, and 1981 it is:

01. Insemnioid - 3/10
02. Hospital Massacre - 3/10
03. Buddy Goes West - 3/10
04. Student Bodies - 4/10
05. The Boogens - 4/10
06. Saturday the 14th - 4/10
07. Beware of the Jönsson Gang - 4/10
08. Final Exam - 4/10
09. Omen III: The Final Conflict - 4/10
10. The Loch Ness Horror - 4/10

I guess I need to see more bad movies from this year, or not. Anyway, Insemnioid was part of a 4 or 5 film package from the same director (forgot his name), and none were really all that impressive. Insemnioid felt like a bottom of the barrell, Alien rip-off, that actually was just pure trash, even if some of the special effects had a certain charm, others surely provided some truly nasty and disgusting ones, not to forget a certain scream, but overall, it went nowwhere for my part.

Buddy Goes West is among many of the Bud Spencer solo films, he beats people in the heads, eat a lot, and that is it. Not awful, just boring stuff in the long run.

Loch Ness Horror is almost, just almost so bad it is fun, but yeah, the trailer makes it look way more enjoyable than it really turned out to be.

Added The Beyond. Worst movie from 1981 I’ve seen yet.