A 1980s Childhood
Page 6
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.
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
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.
Top Gun
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!
The NeverEnding Story
Our hero in this film is a young boy called Bastian who escapes bullying by reading a magical book that transports him to the world of Fantasia; here, the Empress pleads with him to save them from a terrible force that threatens the whole world called The Nothing. Bastian is assisted by Atreyu, a young warrior, and a luckdragon named Falkor (who looked a lot like my parents’ Pekingese dog called Ming). The terrible Nothing spreads through the world, destroying it piece by piece as Bastian travels across the mystical land encountering numerous bizarre creatures and challenges along the way. We discover that Fantasia represents humanity’s hopes and dreams and that The Nothing represents apathy, cynicism and the denial of childish dreams. Ultimately, Bastian makes it to the Empress’ ivory tower, but by the time he arrives the whole of Fantasia has been destroyed. After concluding his mission by giving the Empress her new name of Moonchild, the Empress then tells Bastian that he can restore all of Fantasia just by wishing it and using his imagination. The film ends with Bastian flying on the back of Falkor over the restored land of Fantasia, before making a sneaky detour to terrify the bullies back home in the real world.
War Games
Back in 1983 when the film War Games was released, many British homes had recently purchased a BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 computer and were just beginning to understand the power and potential of home computers. What they didn’t realise, though, was that their home computer had the potential to inadvertently start a Thermonuclear War. In this cold war suspense film, Matthew Broderick plays young computer hacker David Lightman who accidentally accesses a US military supercomputer programmed to predict possible outcomes of a nuclear war.
Lightman begins by trying to impress his friend Jennifer (Ally Sheedy), showing her how he can hack into the school computer and change her failing grades. As he demonstrates his hacking skills, he comes across an unidentified computer which he believes contains various games he can play, including Theaterwide Biotoxic, Chemical Warfare and Global Thermonuclear War. What he doesn’t realise is that this is actually a back door into a military computer that controls America’s automated missile silos using a kind of artificial intelligence which learns from the outcomes of the various hypothetical ‘war game’ scenarios it runs. As they begin a ‘game of Global Thermonuclear War’, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) control centre believes that actual Soviet missiles have been launched and are heading for strategic targets in the US, although it soon becomes evident that this has not actually occurred. Although no Soviet missiles have been launched, the NORAD supercomputer thinks that missiles have been fired and automatically prepares retaliatory action that will lead to World War III.
Lightman discovers what has happened from a news broadcast and although he tries to cover his tracks, he is quickly arrested by the FBI and taken in for questioning. Lightman realises the severity of the situation and escapes, tracking down the original programmer of the NORAD supercomputer to ask for his help in preventing a nuclear holocaust.
Disaster is averted at the very last moment after Lightman directs the computer to play tic-tac-toe against itself, resulting in a long string of draws and thereby teaching the computer the concept of futility. Just before launching the nuclear missiles, the computer runs through all the possible outcomes of the thermonuclear war and realises they all result in stalemates,
at which point the computer decides that nuclear warfare is ‘a strange game’ and offers to play a nice game of chess instead.
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
This is without doubt one of the greatest science fiction films of the 1980s, telling the story of a lonely boy called Elliott who discovers an alien living in the woods near his home. Some visiting alien botanists had been exploring the woods together but were scared off by US government agents; in their haste to escape, they accidentally leave behind E.T. the extra-terrestrial. Fortunately, this alien is not one of the laser-wielding, blood-sucking varieties and instead prefers watching movies and getting drunk while his new friend Elliott is at school. Everything goes well for a while, although E.T. seems to be missing home and attempts to communicate with his home planet using a makeshift transmitter cobbled together from odds and ends wired to a Speak and Spell toy. E.T. demonstrates some remarkable talents, including reanimating a dead flower, healing an injured finger and using a psychic connection to transfer his emotions to Elliott.
Things start to get a bit edgy when E.T. falls ill; due to his psychic connection, Elliott also gets sick and it becomes evident that the pair are dying. At this point, government agents raid the house and quarantine both Elliott and E.T. in a rather intense and frightening scene which terrified me as a child. It appears as though E.T. dies and Elliott begins to recover, but when Elliott is left alone with E.T., he reanimates and reveals that his alien buddies are coming back to retrieve him. Now all they have to do is escape from the government agents and get to the alien landing site as quickly as possible, giving rise to a heart-pounding BMX bike chase sequence with E.T. in a basket on the front of Elliott’s bike. Trapped in a dead-end, E.T. conveniently demonstrates another of his skills by levitating the bicycle in the air leading to the often-parodied silhouetted-bicycle-in-front-of-the-full-moon shot.
Of course, E.T. makes it back to his spaceship just in time and disappears back off to his home planet, leaving Elliot and his sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore) staring up at a rainbow in the sky. At the time, E.T. was the second most financially successful film ever, after Star Wars, taking a whopping $792,910,554 at box offices worldwide, as well as generating vast revenues from related merchandise.
While I would dearly love to continue reminiscing about all the other films I enjoyed in the 1980s, I’m going to have to wrap it up because there’s simply not enough space in this book to cover them all. Instead, I’ll leave you with a nostalgic list of some of my personal favourite films and TV shows of the eighties. Please note that I have been careful to only include films that were actually released in the 1980s, but you may notice that some of the TV shows span more than one decade. Of course, a lot of what we watched on television in the eighties was a continuation of existing TV shows that had started back in the seventies.
TV Shows of the 1980s
A Bit of a Do
Airwolf
Alexei Sayle’s Stuff
All Creatures Great & Small
’Allo ’Allo
Are You Being Served?
Auf Weidersehen, Pet
Bananaman
Battle of the Planets
Baywatch
Beadle’s About
Bergerac
Blankety Blank
Blind Date
Blue Peter
Blue Thunder
Brookside
Brush Strokes
Button Moon
Byker Grove
Cagney & Lacey
Cannon & Ball
Catch Phrase
Challenge Anneka
Charlie’s Angels
Cheggers Plays Pop
Chip ’n Dale Rescue Rangers
Chish ’n Fips
Chockablock
Citizen Smith
Clive James on Television
Colin’s Sandwich
Columbo
Come Dancing
Coronation Street
Countdown
Crackerjack
Crimewatch UK
Crossroads
Dallas
Danger Mouse
Dear John
Degrassi Junior High
Des O’Connor Now
Diff’rent Strokes
Dogtanian & the Three Muskehounds
Doogie Howser, M.D.
Dr Who
DuckTales
Dynasty
EastEnders
Emmerdale Farm
Eurovision Song Contest
Family Fortunes
Finger Mouse
Fraggle Rock
French and Saunders
Friday Night Live
Give Us a Clue
Grandstand
Grange Hill
Hale & Pace
Hardcastle & McCormick
Hawaii Five-O
He-Man & the Masters of the Universe
Henry’s Cat
Hi-de-Hi!
Howards’ Way
Inspector Gadget
It Ain’t Half Hot Mum
It’s a Knockout
Jackanory
James the Cat
Jamie and the Magic Torch
Jem and The Holograms
Jimbo and the Jet-Set
Jim’ll Fix It
John Craven’s Newsround
Jonny Briggs
Jossy’s Giants
Juliet Bravo
The Kenny Everett Television Show
The Kids of Degrassi Street
King Rollo
Knightmare
Knight Rider
Knots Landing
LA Law
Last of the Summer Wine
Let’s Pretend
Little House on the Prairie
London’s Burning
Lovejoy
M.A.S.H.
M.A.S.K.
Magnum P.I.
Manimal
Married with Children
Mastermind
Match of the Day
Max Headroom
Mike Yarwood in Persons
Minder
Miss World
Monkey
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
Mork & Mindy
Mr & Mrs
Multi-Coloured Swap Shop
Munch Bunch
Murder She Wrote
My Little Pony ’n Friends
My Two Dads
Naked Video
Neighbours
Noggin the Nog
Not the Nine O’Clock News
Only Fools and Horses
Open All Hours
Opportunity Knocks
Pebble Mill at One
Pigeon Street
Play Away
Play School
Play Your Cards Right
Points of View
Police Squad!
Popeye
Porterhouse Blue
Prisoner (Cell Block H)
Puddle Lane
Punky Brewster
Quantum Leap
Quincy M.E.
Rainbow
Rainbow Brite
Record Breakers
Red Dwarf
Remington Steele
Rentaghost
Roseanne
Rumpole of the Bailey
Russ Abbot’s Madhouse
Sale of the Century
Sapphire & Steel
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Superstore
Saved by the Bell
Screen Test
Sesame Street
She-Ra: Princess of Power
Simon and the Witch
Ski Sunday
Smith & Jones
Sons and Daughters
Sorry!
Spitting Image
Stig of the Dump
Stoppit and Tidyup
Street Hawk
Super Gran
SuperTed
T.J. Hooker
Taggart
Take Hart
Take the High Road
Tales of the Unexpected
Tenko
Terrahawks
Terry & June
That’s Life
The Adventure Game
The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin
The Amazing Adventures of Morph
The A-Team
The Basil Brush Show
The Benny Hill Show
The Children of Green Knowe
The Comic Strip Presents
The Dick Emery Show
The Dukes of Hazzard
The Flumps
The Flying Doctors
The Golden Girls
The Goodies
The Jetsons
The Keith Harris Show
The Krankies Elektronik Komik
The Krypton Factor
The Late Late Breakfast Show
The Laughter Show
The Les Dawson Show
The Les Dennis Laughter Show
The Littlest Hobo
The Magic Roundabout
The Moomins
The Morecambe and Wise Show
The Muppet Show
The Mysterious Cities of Gold
The Onedin Line
The Paul Hogan Show
The Price is Right
The Real Ghostbusters
The Rockford Files
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾
The Simpsons
The Smurfs
The Snowman
The Sooty Show
The Sullivans
The Thorn Birds
The Tripods
The Two Ronnies
The Val Doonican Music Show
The Waltons
The Wide Awake Club
The Wind in the Willows
The Young Ones
Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends
Three of a Kind
Through the Keyhole
Thundercats
Tiswas
To the Manor Born
Tomorrow’s World
Tom’s Midnight Garden
Top Gear
Top of the Pops
Transformers
Treasure Hunt
Tucker’s Luck
Ulysses 31