One thing that reminds me that I’ve done a pretty okay job raising my kid as a Generation X dad is their access to the movies of my youth. Some they love (like ‘Real Genius’), some they hate (like ‘Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom’), some they just acknowledge (like, sadly, ‘Ghostbusters’), but at the very least, I’ve tried to share the films that shaped my teenage universe in a way that my parents never successfully did. Of course, the argument of which is the GREATEST Eighties Movie is one fraught with opinions and Billy Murray appearances, but at least it leads us to today’s drive-in query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) still thinks it’s a minor crime that you couldn’t buy the excellent soundtrack to ‘Real Genius’, asking: What film is the GREATEST eighties movie of them all?
3 Comments
Veiling a Cold War analogy using fights and action in the dark corners of a city set with strobing light and water against a Queen soundtrack. Creative scene transitions moving us through a convoluted history. Sean Connery as an Egyptian posing as a Spaniard who nevertheless speaks like Scots Connery. There should have been only one… “Highlander”!
I often think about movie pitches that would’ve never been approved in the last 20 years, and i feel like Big Trouble In Little China is one of those very lucky, one in a million bat-ish crazy concepts that managed to get made.
A guy trying to rescue his girlfriend from a 2000 year old demon wizard with the help of his trucker buddy who thinks he’s John Wayne? Kung fu fight scenes, practical monster effects, an evil lair that looks like a mall concourse, Kurt Russell’s glorious mullet, and on top of all that, the John Carpenter synth-metal soundtrack? Chefs kiss. The only thing missing is a plucky group of kids riding their BMXs all over town trying to help the heroes.
This is up there!