Part One

As part of 80's week here at MRFH, the staff recklessly faced serious trauma by digging up pictures of themselves from that time period. It's for a good cause, we say, hugging our knees and screaming at the air. Collectively, we hopped into the MRFH Time Machine-Thingie and zoomed back to remember what it was like, watching movies in that era.

Ah, klunky plastic glasses

Justin

One thing's for sure: when you're just a kid going through a decade, you're not as aware of the historical or trendy nature of the time. You're just a kid. When 1990 rolled around, yours truly was just 13, which means other than latching on to certain Saturday morning cartoons and the whole "neon sunglasses" thing, 80's society just skipped me on by. It wasn't until the latter 90's when my 80's fixation began, and suddenly I was gobbling up music and movies from that time period like nobody's business. But we're not here to talk about that, so I'll just relate my movie experiences from that time.

Going out to movies was a treat for us; we were on a tight budget, and my parents wanted to maintain control over what we were exposed to (something I didn't like then, but appreciate now). My brothers and I ended up watching a lot of TV-edited versions of movies -- since our family caught on to that whole VCR craze after 1981 -- and to this day the TV-edited lines from certain films are the ones I recall more than the actual lines that I heard later on. I think some of the earliest films I went to at a theater were Bambi and The Rescuers, good reliable Disney fare.

Even at a young age (perhaps, because I was at a young age), movies had the potential to really inspire me. Mostly, I'd just become a goof and do a weak imitation the next time I was playing. I remember seeing SpaceCamp (as raunchy as the language was) and spending that afternoon turning my closet into a shuttle cockpit. Transformers: The Movie was really hot stuff among my friends when it came out, since we had all the toys and watched the show faithfully. Most of us tried to draw the robots from the movie, which always came out misshapen and deformed, like a line of defective Autobot products.

Mickey Mouse, holding me (with glasses) and my brothers hostage

Many movies were out of my grasp, even though they were popular at the time. My older cousins would talk about their favorite gory scenes from Predator and The Terminator, leaving me to wistfully sigh and look forward to the future when I could watch them. I snuck over to my friend's house to watch Ghostbusters, only to have my grandparents (who were babysitting me) come and yank me away, citing that the film was "demonic". I didn't even get to see Back to the Future until shortly before parts II and III came out (which I happily got to see in the theater).

If I had to pick one movie that really defined my movie watching experience back then, it has to be Return of the Jedi. By the time 1983 rolled around, I turned 7 years old, and was a prime candidate for Star Wars fever. Going to see it in the theater was neigh near a religious experience; to this day, I remember more about that trip than pretty much any theater experience since. I bought the toys, read the novel (oh yes, high literature indeed), played the arcade games, and more or less became a geek from then on out.

What I miss most from my childhood cinema exposure is that movies back then seemed huge to me. They were truly events, exotic and larger than life. Now, they're "merely" great, but I've long since lost the ability to gape in wonder as a huge stop-motion Rancor crashed through a dungeon trying to crush Luke Skywalker. It's okay. It'll always be there in my mind to make me smile.

I'm pretty sure that's me in 1983, when I was about to turn 4. Or around then. Notice how Kyle has had to wear glasses since he was 3. *sob*

Kyle

I kind of remember the 1980's. I was born in 1979, so I'm pretty much a child of the 80's, or at least that's what I tell older people. To young women (girls, really) I explain that I'm a child of the 90's, which is sort of true when you take maturity levels in consideration. But whatever.

My 80's experience was slightly different from most. I was big on Chevy Chase movies (Fletch, the Vacation series) and I could watch Ghostbusters day in and day out. I don't remember it, but apparently my parents took me to a ton of movies and I was perfectly behaved. The first movie my mom remembers taking me to was that Disney Robin Hood movie. The only sore spot was when they took me to Return of the Jedi and I couldn't handle the Emperor. Even today, that's one scary dude! But my parents exposed me to a lot of weird stuff, ranging from The Great Mouse Detective (which I remember as being totally awesome!) to odd Woody Allen films I couldn't hope to understand in my youthful innocence. My mom drove in a terrifying Colorado snowstorm to get us to a Woody Allen movies once; she thinks it was Zelig (1983), but my instinct tells me it was Broadway Danny Rose (1984). Doctor Who was right: the memory cheats!

Oh, but I didn't see Pretty in Pink or The Breakfast Club or Sixteen Candles until practically the 90's. It was weird. They just didn't much for me. By contrast, Ferris Bueller's Day Off shaped me from '86 on, and combined with the television influence of Dan Fielding on "Night Court", I was prepared for my academic career as a shyster. Venkman was always the best role model, wasn't he?

So movie-wise, it was a mish-mash. My parents didn't really care what I watched, so by the end of the decade my dad was taking my 9-year-old self to see kneecaps get blown to bits in Die Hard. But by then I was already getting a lot of VHS play out of Schwarzenegger in Commando, Raw Deal, The Terminator, the Conans, The Running Man, and Red Sonja. Violence rules! But my parents also had a copy of Goldfinger, which started planted the seeds of Bond-dom that would bloom many years in the future... I burned out Star Wars tapes, and by the time I started elementary school I had most of the dialogue of Airplane! memorized. Good times! Looks-wise, I guess I looked up to Andrew McCarthy and William Shatner, which lead to psychological problems in the '90s (see: upcoming '90s week coverage). But overall, the 1980's were fantastic, and prepared me for a life as a wise-cracking street-wise punk. What more can we ask for from our pop culture childhood influences?

Hasn't changed a BIT

Clare

During the 80's I went from age 5 to age 15, so the vast majority of my introduction to movies in general happened during that span of 10 years. Which makes looking back on the entire decade and trying to determine which movies left the biggest mark on me or that I loved whole-heartedly at the time something of a daunting task. That's a lot of movies people. So I'll just try to hit the highlights and give each one a brief explanation. But even trying to whittle it down to bare bones, there's still gonna be a huge long list of essential movie memories. What can I say? I'm a child o' the 80's.

Movies and Me: Ages 5-10

Let me just start by saying that I very clearly remember spending many Saturday afternoons with my parents at the movies. It cost adults $2.50 for a matinee back then. No kidding.

The Empire Strikes Back definitely stuck with me for a long time. Han Solo getting encased in that wall thing at the end was, at the time, the most outrageously harrowing thing I'd ever seen. Really, there are huge sections of that movie that I remember being utterly stupefied by.

E.T. was, obviously, a big hit with me and everyone my age at the time. I've seen it again since becoming an adult and it's just kind of weird and stupid, but when I was little? Nothing could beat it.

Quest for Fire freaked me out. I didn't understand it at all and everyone was naked and beating each other up with sticks and stuff. I'm not sure why my parents thought they should bring me along for that one, but they did.

Never Cry Wolf was also a big hit in my early childhood. It's about this guy who goes and lives with wolves in Alaska and how they change everything about how he sees the world. It's a really great movie, but at the time I just remember being completely taken by the fact that he runs around with a heard of antelope naked at one point. NAKED!

Amadeus was amazing. It still is. I remember loving it from beginning to end even if I didn't fully understand all of it. I remember thinking Tom Hulce's laugh was the best thing ever.

Supergirl, we determined at the time, is the worst movie ever made. My dad tookme and my sister to see it once on one of our dad dates (a.k.a.: Dad gives Mom some much needed time away from the kids for an afternoon) and we all agreed that it was utter and complete crap. That assessment has stood the test of time. It sucked then and it still sucks today.

How do you know it's her? Cause her shirt says she is!

Around the middle of the decade, our family got access to a brand new contraption called the VCR. So my entire movie watching life basically changed at that point. For the last few years of the 80's I was hanging out a lot with my sister and her friends all of whom were older than me. So they introduced me to a GIGANTIC pile of amazing movies would have never known to watch on my own. Many of those "movie night" films still remain on my list of all time greats. However, for the purposes of this exercise, let me stick only to films I saw in theaters that left a lasting impression on my young psyche.

The Goonies. My sister took me with her to see The Goonies at least 10 times during the summer of 1985. It's a great kid's movie and stands the test of timetoo. But my sister's all encompassing love of it became the focus of our entire lives that summer.

Dirty Dancing, as has been clearly documented in my review for it, was, and still is, one of my all time most seen movies ever. I was 12 when it came out, so my reaction to it was on par with how a 12 year-old girl reacts to something like that. Lots of squealing and pining and obsessively memorizing. Good times.

The Karate Kid was a staple of my youth. I remember I went to see it in the theater about 8 times in one month. I loved every single second of it from beginning to end. The first time I saw it I actually stood up and cheered at the end when Daniel does his crane technique kick. I think I kept going back again and again to try to recapture just how amazingly cool I thought it was the first time.

The Princess Bride was at the time and still is one of my favorite movies. I remember very clearly seeing it with my mom and my sister in a nearly empty theater and all three of us HOWLING with laughter pretty much the entire way through. When it was over I felt completely energized and hyper and excited to see it again. We talked about it non-stop all the way home.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off, was also one of those movies that I clearly remember going to see with my sister and thinking it was perhaps the most fun and most hysterical things ever made. I saw it a ton of times before it left theaters. I still have huge sections of the dialogue memorized verbatim.

Purple Rain. My dad took me to this one because it was rated R and I begged and begged and begged to go see it for WEEKS. I had the soundtrack and a giant Purple Rain poster up in my room for years after that. I still think it's one of the best albums ever made, but the movie? Basically sucks.

And of course, the 80's wouldn't have been worth much of anything to me movie wise if I hadn't stumbled upon Say Anything late in the decade. I can't really describe in a short paragraph what impact that movie made on me. But it totally changed the way I looked at dating boys. After Say Anything I had no interest in going out with anybody who didn't remind me, at least in some regard, of Lloyd Dobler. I can honestly say that all the serious boyfriends I've had, including the one who became my husband, have distinct and specific personality traits that run directly back to my love of Lloyd Dobler. I'm not saying it makes sense. I'm just saying it's the truth.