A 1980s Childhood (8 page)

Not only does the film have the perfect mix of comedy, action, drama and romance, but there are some great skateboarding sequences, an unforgettable soundtrack and some memorable acting from Michael J. Fox. Two sequels were made a few years later where Marty travels into the grim future of 2015 and then back to an 1885 cowboy town.

Steve Guttenberg stars as Cadet Carey Mahoney in this classic comedy set in a police training academy. Mahoney is a repeat offender sentenced to join the academy as punishment under a new scheme proposed by the mayor, whereby the police department must accept all willing recruits. Mahoney is joined by an assortment of misfits, including gun-loving Eugene Tackleberry, superhuman ex-florist Hightower and sound-effects specialist Larvell Jones, among others.

Cadet Mahoney tries his best to get himself expelled from the academy through a series of pranks aimed at Captain Harris, his superior, but under the terms of his punishment he is compelled to stay and serve his time. As it happens, he ends up enjoying his time at the police academy thanks, in part, to the presence of sexy female cadet Karen Thompson, played by Kim Cattrall.

Of all the characters in the seven
Police Academy
films that were made, my favourite character was that of Tackleberry whose profound love of firearms often led to his naive overuse of weaponry to solve simple problems; for example, he helps an old lady who has lost her coin in a payphone by shooting it open, holding out a handful of coins and asking, ‘Can you identify your quarter, ma’am?’

Bill Murray (Venkman), Dan Ackroyd (Stantz) and Harold Ramis (Spengler) star in this 1984 supernatural comedy about three parapsychologists who set up a business in New York to catch ghosts in a similar manner to pest controllers. After catching and containing their first ghosts, the team become celebrities and are hired to clean up the city from the increasing number of ghosts, eventually hiring a fourth Ghostbuster, Winston (Ernie Hudson), to assist them. Everything seems to be going pretty well until the Ghostbusters are called to investigate a demonic spirit called Zuul which appears to be living in Sigourney Weaver’s fridge. As it turns out, the fridge is a portal to a spiritual realm where the demigod Gozer the Gozerian lives, who is planning to visit New York and bring about the end of the world.

As the Ghostbusters plan their strategy for preventing the appearance of Gozer, a visit from the US Environmental Protection Agency, who suspect the use of dangerous chemicals, leads to the Ghostbusters’ facilities being shut down. The ghost containment machine is deactivated which releases all the ghosts back into the city, causing mayhem, and the Ghostbusters are arrested for operating an unlicensed nuclear device in their basement.

With the Ghostbusters in captivity, Gozer appears, and the mayor has to release the men when he realises they are the only people who can prevent the impending disaster. Gozer arrives in the form of a woman and declares that the ‘destructor’ will follow and he will take the form of whatever the Ghostbusters first think of. Unable to keep his mind blank, Stantz tries to think of ‘something that could never, ever possibly destroy us’, whereupon the ‘destructor’ emerges as a giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. The giant Marshmallow Man starts to destroy the city but is eventually stopped by the Ghostbusters, who dangerously cross their energy streams in order to blow him up.

After watching this film, my friends and I decided to become Ghostbusters ourselves and spent many playtimes on the hunt for ghosts in the school playground. My best friend at the time tried to convince me that he had actually seen a ghost at home and had even collected some of its ectoplasm. The next day he brought in a little bottle with some green slime in it that looked convincing but smelled of shampoo.

In the 1988 romantic comedy
Big
, Tom Hanks plays a young boy, Josh Baskin, who is magically aged to adulthood overnight. After being refused entry to a fairground ride for being too short, 13-year-old Josh tries his luck with the Zoltar Speaks fortune-telling machine and makes a wish to be big. The machine magically responds, despite not being plugged in, and Josh backs away.

The next morning, Josh awakes to discover, to his horror, that he has become an adult overnight and is now a 30-year-old man, terrifying his mother who thinks that he is a crazed kidnapper that has abducted her son. Josh flees and with the help of his best friend Billy gets himself a data entry job at the MacMillan Toy Company. Josh’s childlike enthusiasm for the toys they produce results in his promotion to a dream job which involves testing toys all day long and getting paid for it. It’s not long before Josh attracts the attention of the beautiful 27-year-old Susan and a romance begins to develop. As Josh becomes increasingly involved in his adult lifestyle, he begins to forget his friend Billy and tensions mount between the pair. Eventually, Josh concludes that he would prefer to revert to his childhood life and returns to the Zoltar machine where he makes a wish to be a child once more.

There are plenty of gags to be had in this movie and many memorable scenes, including Hanks playing
Chopsticks
on the giant foot-operated keyboard in the toy store, and singing the secret ‘shimmy shimmy cocoa pop’ song to his best friend to convince him that he really is who he says he is. The very same year
Big
was released, the film
Vice Versa
also appeared in cinemas, bearing an uncanny similarity, with a young boy and his father magically trading bodies so that the child becomes an adult and ‘vice versa’.

Everybody knows the catchphrase ‘Nobody puts Baby in a corner’ and everyone remembers that dance move where Baby jumps up above Patrick Swayze’s head, arms outstretched. In fact, you still hear the catchphrase in use today and you still see people attempting the dance move in countless wedding dance videos on the internet. Released in 1987,
Dirty Dancing
was the last of the big eighties’ dance movies, following on from the likes of
Fame
(1980),
Flashdance
(1983) and
Footloose
(1984). Patrick Swayze played resident dance instructor Johnny Castle at the Kellerman’s holiday resort in the Catskill Mountains and Jennifer Grey played Frances ‘Baby’ Houseman, the 17-year-old New Yorker who falls in love with Johnny while vacationing with her well-to-do family. The film is essentially a coming-of-age drama, with Baby secretly dating the working-class dancer while learning to dance herself so that she can be a substitute dancer at the annual performance. Despite opposition from her parents, she continues her relationship and ultimately performs an impromptu final dance of the season with Johnny in front of her parents, climaxing with the famous dance lift move to the music of
(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life
. To this day, every time I hear that song, I grab the nearest woman I can find and lift them up over my head.

If you had to choose the best film of the 1980s, chances are you would pick this one. Matthew Broderick plays the cooler-than-cool Ferris Bueller, the popular kid you always wanted to be, who fakes illness to take a day off school with his highly strung friend Cameron and his beautiful girlfriend Sloane.

Ferris and his friends enjoy the illicit freedom from school, enhanced by ‘borrowing’ Cameron’s father’s Ferrari 250 GT California for the day. But not everyone is convinced by Ferris’s fake illness; his jealous sister Jeanie uncovers the deception and sets out to blow his cover, while the evil school dean of students, Edward Rooney, also believes Ferris to be a truant and attempts to catch him out. Everyone else thinks Ferris is unwell and since he is so popular, he gains a huge amount of sympathy and attention, much to the annoyance of his sister.

Matthew Broderick starred as Ferris Bueller in this 1986 classic movie.
(Paramount)

Mr Rooney visits Ferris at home but is greeted by a recorded message when pushing the intercom button. Smelling a rat, Rooney tries to break into the house, losing a shoe in the mud in the process, and is met by Jeanie who high-kicks him in the face and runs upstairs to call the police. Later at the police station, Jeanie ends up making out with Charlie Sheen who plays an arrested drug addict.

Meanwhile, Ferris, Cameron and Sloane have a whale of a time at the Von Steuben Day parade in town, with Ferris dancing atop one of the floats and lip-syncing to
Twist and Shout
. On returning to the Ferrari they discover it has been used by the parking attendants and has hundreds of miles on the odometer, sending Cameron into a panic attack. After unsuccessfully trying to take the miles off the clock by jacking up the car and running it in reverse, Cameron realises that he is going to have to face up to his father about what he has done. As he comes to terms with this situation, he leans on the Ferrari, knocking it off the axle stands and sending it reversing at high speed out of the garage, whereby it crashes into the ravine beyond.

After an eventful day of high jinx, Ferris heads home, just ahead of his parents as they return from work, to pretend he has spent the whole day in bed. The hateful Mr Rooney is attacked by the Buellers’ dog and ends up having to hitch a ride home, dishevelled, shoeless and sore.

Next time you watch the film (and you will watch it again, I’m sure) check out the license plates of the various vehicles used and you’ll spot abbreviated references to other films made by the same director, John Hughes. Katie’s = VCTN (
National Lampoon’s Vacation
); Jeanie’s = TBC (
The Breakfast Club
); Tom’s = MMOM (
Mr Mom
); Rooney’s = 4FBDO (
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
). The exception is Cameron’s dad’s Ferrari (seen when Ferris first pulls out of the garage), the license plate of which reads NRVOUS.

They still show this film every Christmas, and I still watch it every Christmas. I know all the jokes and anticipate every event, but it still makes me laugh. Chevy Chase plays Clark, the highly strung father of the Griswold family nearing nervous breakdown due to his usual over-enthusiasm about making Christmas perfect. His long-suffering but supportive wife Ellen accompanies him on a trip into the forest to find the perfect Christmas tree; they return with a vastly oversized tree that barely fits in the house and is home to a well-hidden squirrel that wreaks havoc later in the film. Clark decorates his house with 25,000 Christmas lights, along with an assortment of animated seasonal characters, but struggles to get the power on much to the disappointment of his assembled family. After fixing the lighting problem he eventually switches on, causing a power drain at the nuclear power plant and ends up blinding the neighbours. Things seem to be going well until Clark’s cousin Eddie and his family turn up unexpectedly and all the Christmas plans go awry. After Clark discovers that he will not be getting the Christmas bonus that he was expecting, his helpful cousin kidnaps the boss and brings him back to the house to ‘persuade’ him to change his mind. As you would expect, the movie concludes happily with Clark getting his bonus and everybody enjoying a family Christmas together, despite the mayhem.

In a strange and somewhat disturbing parallel universe somewhere, there is another version of the 1986 film
Top Gun
, the only difference being that when Maverick steps out of his fighter aircraft and takes off his pilot’s helmet, you see the goofy smile of Jim Carrey rather than the good looks of Tom Cruise. How weird would that be? But bizarre as that may seem, Jim Carrey really was considered for the lead role, along with John Travolta and Robert Downey Junior. In fact, Tom Cruise wasn’t even the first choice since the producers had already asked Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estevez, Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, Matthew Broderick, Sean Penn, Michael J. Fox and Tom Hanks, who all turned down the role. Thankfully, Tom Cruise accepted the part and became the star of one of the most successful films of all time which has grossed over $344 million worldwide to date.

Cruise plays the hotshot fighter pilot Maverick, who rises to the top of the class at the Top Gun Naval Flying School and vies for superiority with his nemesis, Iceman, played by Val Kilmer. A sexy naval instructor (Kelly McGillis) arrives on the scene and falls in love with Maverick, adding a much-needed romantic dimension to the otherwise tedious plot of the film. After being involved in a fatal flying accident, which kills his best friend Goose, Maverick loses his nerve and nearly leaves the air force altogether; but he manages to keep it together in order to fight off some enemy MiG fighters. That’s about it really. Not the most engaging storyline in the world but this is more than made up for by the fantastic soundtrack and awesome aviation action sequences.

One of my school friends became so enthralled by the film that at the age of 10 he decided that he would one day become a fighter pilot himself. And some years later, that’s exactly what he did. In fact, after the release of the film, the US Navy revealed that the number of young men enlisting to be navy aviators went up by 500 per cent!