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Nine ’80s Movies That Should Remain Happy Memories

April 29th, 2007

I think that most people can agree that as we age, our personal tastes grow with us. It occurs to me now that as I was growing up, I was exposed to quite a bit of… shall we say… questionable entertainment. The worst part is that I loved it.

Here, I present a list of 9 movies that I will knowingly and deliberately skip past if I were to see them on my television. These films represent a bundle of happy childhood memories that I just could not stand to ruin with “objectivity” or “reality”.

Note that this phenomenon differs significantly from “guilty pleasure” movies, these are movies that I never wish to see again because I know that it just won’t be the same. Also note that this is my own personal list (after looking at it you’ll have no question as to how I ended up as a software developer) AND I’m not saying that any of these movies ARE bad, just that they’ll just never be the same if I watched them again today.

1. Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)

Yes I know “It’s a Roger Corman Classic”. Yes I know it had George Peppard and Robert Vaughn in it.

To that I rebutt that it also had Richard “John Boy” Thomas, a busty Amazon warrior princess and a spacecraft that resembled the female reproductive system. I’m happy to go on with my generally happy feelings about this movie without verifying my worst fears.

2. HeartBeeps (1981)

You know that the movie wasn’t good when you only watched it repeatedly as a kid because Star Wars was already rented out from the video store. This was one of our fallback films that my mother would rent when she was desperate for 90 minutes of peace and quiet.

Looking back at it now, it was probably really bad (I think but I don’t know, I will never know for I will never view it again).

3. Krull (1983)

This is another movie that I only have faint memories of but it really sticks out in my mind because I was in “the big city” when I saw it. It was one of my first conscious trips into downtown Philadelphia and we went to see this crazy cool movie in some old theater.

That’s my memory and I’m going to stick to it. My boss says “Yeah but the chick is smoking hot!”.

4. The Last Starfigher (1984)

I so wanted to be recruited by the Star League when I was a kid. Running outside and shouting into the night sky “PICK ME” became a swell routine after watching Alex Rogan defeat the Ko-Dan armada for the 27th time.

Picking up where Tron left off, this movie really brought the visuals home back in the day. Unfortunately I suspect that that was all that it really brought home. I have to lock it away.

I know that I’m going to catch some heat for the next few…

5. The Transformers: The Movie (1985)

I saw this one in the theaters. It was quite a shock to see my beloved playthings actually DIE ONSCREEN! Stunning actually.

Here’s some trivia for you, in the theatrical release, when… what’s his face gets sucked into some… vortex or something, he actually let out an “OH SHI*”. No lie. They edited it out for the home video release.

I very nearly picked this one up on DVD but managed to resist. Barely.

6. Highlander (1986)

This is a movie that I didn’t really get into until I was a teenager. My friends and I loved this movie. It pretty much consumed us from top to bottom for the better part of a year.

I actually managed to sit through 10 minutes of the movie on cable a while back. I had to turn it off. Between Clancy Browns over the top performance, Christopher Lambert being… well, Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery slipping into his comfort zone (where he’s stayed to this day) this movie lost a lot of luster in those 10 minutes.

On the upside, this movie got me into Queen which harkened the ending of the “Metal” period into my “Classic Rock” times.

7. Labrynth (1987)

I know that I’m going to get a lot of flack for this one but this is mostly my own fears at work here. Sure you’ve got Jim Henson’s creations mucking about and your usual flights of fancy. However you still have a bunch of Muppets and the King Muppet himself, David Bowie (at right).

As usual, I have fond memories but the above recipe doesn’t look that appetizing to me and I’d rather not spoil it.

The runner up for this spot was “The Dark Crystal” if you’re keeping score at home.

8. Masters of the Universe (1987)

This is another movie that I watched for 10-15 minutes on cable recently. Holy hell. I can’t believe that I once thought of this as quality entertainment.

Even with Dolph “I must break you” Lundgren doing a passable job as He-Man and Frank Langella as Skeletor (WTF?) it just falls down and goes boom in more ways than I can even describe here.

9. Pump Up the Volume (1990)

Ok so technically it wasn’t released in the ’80s but it was PRODUCED in the 80’s, therefore I get to cheat and include it in the list. Besides, I need a representative outside of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre.

This is another movie that I was into in my mid-teen years. Go figure, it’s a film about teen angst and rebellion in the days before the internet. This movie actually nearly inspired me to start my own pirate radio station. Ah, to be young and idiotic again.

This is another entry into the “I don’t know that it’s bad but I don’t want to find out either” category. Checking it out on Wikipedia though I now remember that it did have a decent soundtrack featuring Pixies, Soundgarden, and Sonic Youth.

That’s all that I’ve got! Thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment below.

Also, don’t forget to check out the usual subject of this blog, SportsNode.com where you’ll find all of the sports news that you crave for New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco or Oakland teams!

Jack
SportsNode.com

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