With a nod to Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Jurassic Park, both of which have occupied a similar action/adventure place in the hearts of the impressionable since their release, theres no other film that could take the top spot on this list. Everyone remembers The Goonies. The kiddie adventure flick, a pre-teen Indiana Jones, featured a practical whos who of young actors portraying the courageous children who, in following the clues on a secret map to the location of a 17th century pirates gold, find themselves up against armed robbers, a supposed monster, and all the traps and pitfalls that youd expect from a treasure hunting film like this. Cheerfully zany, the cast of kids frequently talking over each other in their excitement, I hear that The Goonies makes for incoherent viewing if youre watching it as an adult for the first time. If you watched it as a child, however, you understand every single word, and every scene is indelibly printed on your brain: from the Truffle Shuffle to the puke story; from Sloth and his ugly, ugly family to the grinning, skeletal presence of long-dead pirate One Eyed Willy that haunts every other scene. Its exciting, funny, touching and dynamic viewing, a product of the eighties without being trapped in the era. Thats part of the reason why it still holds up today: its not just nostalgia that has forty-year-olds sticking on The Goonies on a Sunday afternoon with the kids. When at the end, the pirate ship finally sails free of the underground cave that held it for two hundred years, its as stunning a moment in 2016 as it was in 1985, the audience as breathless for a moment as the kids on the beach watching.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
