Star 80

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Promotional movie poster for Star 80

Star 80 is a 1983 film about the true story of Playboy playmate of the year Dorothy Stratten who was murdered by her estranged husband Paul Snider in 1980. The film was shot on location in Los Angeles and the death scene re-enactment was filmed in the actual apartment of the murder. Star 80 is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Village Voice article "Death of a Playmate" by Teresa Carpenter. The film's title was taken from the vanity license plates of Paul Snider.

The fictionalized director Aram Nicholas is based on Stratten's real-life lover, Peter Bogdanovich. Hugh Hefner sued the producers of the film because he did not like the way he was portrayed, perhaps in part due to the fact that the article the film was based on suggested that Stratten was as much a victim of Hefner and Bogdanovich as she was of Snider. Hefner also later sued Bogdanovich for the negative portrayals in Bogdanovich's book about Stratten, The Killing of the Unicorn.

The film runs for 103 minutes and is rated R by the MPAA for nudity, language and violence.