Child Of The 1980’s

Released in 1989, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure follows the adventures of two school friends from San Dimas, California, who travel through time in a phone booth. They are Bill S. Preston Esq. (played by Alex Winter) and Ted “Theodore” Logan, (Keanu Reeves).

The pair are not the brightest academically, spending most of their time practising for their rock band Wyld Stallyns, despite neither of them being particularly great musicians either. Unfortunately, their lack of book smarts means that unless they get an A+ in their history exam they will be forced to drop out of high school. If this were to happen, the pair would be split up as Ted’s father has threatened to send Ted to military school if he fails.

One evening, whilst sat outside a Circle K convenience store bemoaning their situation, a solution arrives in the form of Rufus, a man from the future who appears in a phone booth fitted with a time machine. He explains that the Wyld Stallyns must not be split up, as in the future they are the saviours of the Earth (though it is never really properly explained why, other than the fact that their motto “Be Excellent To Each Other” is actually a nice sentiment). Rufus lends them the time machine so they can go and research history in person, but whilst sceptical at first they are convinced when the future versions of themselves appear and are able to guess the number they are thinking of!

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Five years after the first Ghostbusters film, in 1989, the sequel was released. Reuniting us with all the characters from the first film, it was a good film, though as with many sequels, not as good as the original, or at least I didn’t think so. This film fell into the trap of trying to reproduce too much of the first film, a good example of this being when the Ghostbusters mobilise the Statue of Liberty by spraying it with feel good goo. I can imagine some Hollywood executive saying, hey, we need to have the Marshmallow Man back, and since this would have been a ridiculous idea given how the Marshmallow Man came into being, the Statue of Liberty was suggested instead.

This film opens with us seeing major changes to the make up of the Ghostbusters. Egon now works at a research lab for child studies, while Pete Venkman now has is own TV talk show about weird stuff. Ray owns an occult book shop, and he and Winston are the only two who remain as Ghostbusters, but as little more than childrens party entertainers now.

Of course, things don’t stay this way for long, and the Ghostbusters are soon back in action when they discover a large underground river of pink goo flowing under the streets of Manhatten. It seems this river is the outcome of New Yorkers bad feelings towards each other manifesting as some kind of ectoplasmic residue, and it is being tapped into by long dead evil dude Vigo the Carpathian, who is imprisoned in a photograph that is being renovated in a museum where Dana Barrett has been volunteering. Vigo has his eye on Dana’s baby son Oscar (and no, Venkman is not the father!) as a means of re-entering our world. He intends to use Oscars body to bring his own soul back from wherever it is currently trapped.

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Picking up where the first part left off, Back To The Future Part II was released in 1989, four years after the first film. Both this film and Part III were filmed back to back as there were concerns that Michael J. Fox might start to look too old to play Marty McFly.

Part II is my personal favourite, although it is probably also the most confusing of the trilogy since it involves the most actual time travel of the three films. At the start of the film, Marty and his girlfriend Jennifer are whisked into the future by Doc Brown to “do something about their kids”, Marty Jr. and Marlene (both played by Michael J. Fox). Marlene isn’t in any real trouble but Marty Jr. falls foul of Griff Tannen (Biff’s son) who is going to involve him in a robbery, which leads on to the break up of the McFly family. Doc Brown wants to prevent this, so brings Marty to the year 2015 to pretend to be his son.

Marty angers Griff, which leads on to the well loved hoverboard seen, a recreation of the skateboarding scene from the first film. This alters the future, saving the good name of the McFly party, as Griff smashes into the town hall and the robbery never takes place. Unfortunately, Marty gets a little greedy, and buys a sports almanac from a shop that contains the results of sporting events from the last thirty years. Doc Brown discovers this, and throws the book in a rubbish bin. Trouble is, the elderly Biff Tannen overhears Marty and Doc Brown talking and claims the book for himself, stealing the DeLorean time machine and travelling back to 1955 to give the almanac to his younger self.

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Since it’s Halloween I figured we ought to have something spooky on the site today and what better than the Tim Burton directed film Beetlejuice. It might not be particularly scary, but it is very funny.

Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara Maitland (Geena Davis) are a young couple who live in a small American backwater town. One day, whilst driving home across one of those weird bridges with a sort of building on that they only seem to have in these small US towns, they swerve to avoid a dog and crash through the side of the bridge. In the next scene we see them arriving back at their house. They don’t initially realise they died in the car crash, but soon the penny drops when Barbara’s hand catches fire and it is not burnt, they no longer seem to have reflections and when Adam tries to retrace his steps to the bridge he finds himself in a strange desert land populated by giant sand worms. Final confirmation is provided when they find a book called The Handbook for the Recently Deceased.

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For all computer geeks of a certain age (in which I include myself) one of the most fondly remembered films of the 1980’s is Tron, mainly because whilst it may well be a complete flight of fantasy from the real world of computers, it’s use of computer jargon and terminology was fairly accurate.

The story revolves around a young computer programmer named Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) who used to work for a software corporation called ENCOM. Dreaming of running his own computer games company, he would design games on the ENCOM computer system after hours. Unfortunately another programmer, Ed Dillinger (David Warner) steals his designs and presents them as his own. This leads to Dillinger eventually becoming boss of ENCOM, whilst Flynn gets fired and ends up running an amusement arcade.

Obviously Flynn is annoyed by this, and he sets out to dig up the dirt on Dillinger. He hacks into the ENCOM computer system but is detected by the Master Control Program (MCP), an AI program developed by Dillinger from a chess computer program he had written. This results in all employees with the same security clearance as Flynn being locked out of the system. This affects another programmer named Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) who is working on a program named Tron that is intended to keep an eye on what the MCP program is doing, among other things.

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Lt. Tuck Pendleton (Dennis Quaid) is your typical sterotype American movie soldier, full of bravado and a little maverick, but at the end of the day a good guy. Tuck volunteers to test pilot a new scientific breakthrough - a pod named the Kraken II that can be shrunk to microscopic size and injected into living things to aid in medical procedures and the like. Unfortunately, on the day of the test, a group of terrorists attack the lab where the research is happening, and instead of being injected into a rabbit, Tuck finds himself accidentally placed inside unwitting civilian Jack Putter (Martin Short).

Tuck makes contact with Jack by hooking the Kraken’s radio up to his ear drum, as Tuck realises he will need to get out before he runs out of oxygen. Jack is a massic hypochondriac and initially believes he is going mad hearing voices, but soon calms down enough to accept the situation. Just in time, in fact, to be kidnapped by the terrorists who insert their own shrunken pod into him in order to try and flush out Tuck.

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Ghostbusters was released in 1984, and to this date remains one of my personal favourite films of all time. It’s sequel isn’t bad either, but no where near as good as the original. The film is about three New York scientists, Dr. Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), Dr. Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) and Dr. Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) who after getting thrown out of their research positions at the university decide to go into business as Ghostbusters, or as it’s more technically put, Professional Paranormal Investigations and Eliminations.

Things don’t start off too well for the guys however, until a call comes in from the Sedgewick Hotel asking them to get rid of a ghost that has been up to mischief. The Ghostbusters turn up at the hotel, and track down the class 5 free roaming vapour, otherwise known as a Slimer! Venkman has a close encounter with said ghost (”he slimed me!“) before they finally manage to capture the ghost using some unlicensed particle accelerators (proton packs) and a custom designed ghost trap. They also end up destroying the hotel ballroom in the process. After this work picks up for the Ghostbusters, and they end up hiring a fourth member, Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson), to help them out.

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The plot of The Goonies may not win any awards for originality, but that doesn’t stop it being a great example of the classic case of the evil business man who will bulldoze the homes of a group of kids and their families in order to build a golf course, or shopping mall or something, unless the parents can come up with an unfeasible amount of money to stop him. I forget exactly what the developer wants to build in this case, but it doesn’t matter as you’ve no doubt seen this plot a thousand times before. The kids, who call themselves the Goonies, find a treasure map supposedly leading to the horde of pirate One Eyed Willy. They decide to follow the map in a last ditch effort to save their homes.

Where The Goonies excels in telling this story is the wide variety of the misfit characters who work together to save their homes, the convincing back story, and the second set of evil comedy villains, the Fratellis, who follow the Goonies trying to claim the treasure for themselves. Everything gels together perfectly, as you would expect from a film that had Steven Spielberg, Richard Donner and Chris Columbus (no, not the explorer) behind it.

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