One of the things I loved about growing up in the 80′s was the focus on child-like playfulness and adventure. This playfulness even radiated off more teen and adult oriented movies in titles like Caddy Shack and Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Back then it wasn’t about high-budget digital effected action scenes, it was about the characters, story and feeling good.
My movie choices are based around this playfulness along with their special geekiness since that’s what this blog is all about.
Adventures in Babysitting
Adventures in Babysitting
What do you get when you mix one babysitter, two kids, the annoying kid next door and a runaway best friend? Adventure, that’s what!
The story revolves around Chris (played by Elisabeth Shue), an atypical teenager and her babysitting charges Sara and Brad as they innocently try and rescue a friend from a sketchy Chicago bus station. Unfortunately after her car breaks down she and the kids – including the annoying neighbor played by a young Anthony Rapp – are thrown into a bizarre escapade of trying to get Chris’ friend, getting home before the parents and running away from a group of gangsters. Phew, that’s a lot of pressure on a 17 year old.
Quote:
Gang Leader: Don’t fuck with the Lords from Hell!
Chris: Don’t fuck with the babysitter!
Geek Worthy: Little Sara Anderson has an obsession with Marvel comics Thor. She wears a Thor helmet through the majority of the movie.
The Monster Squad
Monster Squad
This is probably one of my favourite movies as a kid since it played to both my love for horror and the fact that I was a kid. Yes, even as a wee child I was huge into horror movies. This movie also made me want to start a monster fighting club and in all honesty, still makes me want to start a monster fighting club.
Anyway, on to the synopsis. Dracula comes to town and begins to raises the great villains of horror movie legend to help in his goal of finding and destroying and ancient amulet to throw the balance of light and dark into chaos. Luckily for the world a group of kids have joined together to form the Monster Squad and to fight for the side of good. Now if only they can find a virgin to help open up a magical vortex to suck all the bad guys away.
Quote:
Horace: The Wolfman’s got nards!
Geek Worthy: The cast of the most notable monsters from literature and film – Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, Wolfman, Creature from the Black Lagoon… etc, etc.
Wizard
The Wizard
This movie, and Tron, should be mandatory for all current video gamers so they can appreciate where it all started.
Jimmy, a young, but slightly challenge, video game prodigy decides, along with his older brother Corey (Ben Savage) to run away to California to find happy memories long gone and of course play video games along the way. With the children’s disappearance the divorced parents set out to find their children in their own way – the dad with his truck and oldest son (Christian Slater) and the mother via bounty hunter.
On the road Jimmy and Corey find themselves teamed up with Haley – another young wanderer – as they attempt to dodge the bounty hunter, swindle unsuspecting video gamers out of their money and make their way to Universal Studios for the big Nintendo Competition. They also manage to make enemies with another local gamer who’s looking for the win in the competition. Plus, it’s got the premiere of a) the Power Glove and b) Super Mario Bros 3. You even learn the one of the warping secrets.
Quote:
Lucas: I love the Power Glove.
Geek Worthy: The entire movie is a Nintendo commercial, that’s geeky and great marketing.
