I can’t get the Youngblood soundtrack out of my head for some reason! I don’t know why but something recently must have triggered an old memory and now my brain is playing “Stand in the Fire” along with the rest of the movie trailer from this 1986 film. I went to YouTube to find the trailer- it so reminds me of watching this film in the 80’s with my brother. Here it is…
The 80’s had a lot of cheese, a lot of big hair and a lot of teen movies. Think the kids of the ‘noughties’ invented teen movies? Nah, we did it first! So as I was going down Memory Lane anyway, I thought I’d list here my favourite 80s movies, as a playlist so I can start working my way through them all again! The classics never die- I bet my teenage daughter would enjoy some of these!
So in no particular order, here are the movies I remember from the 80s:
- Youngblood (“Bring it together, you’re a team, a family”!!)
- The Breakfast Club. (This is just classic. If you haven’t seen it, where have you been?!)
- Teen Wolf (This was Michael J Fox’s best decade!)
- Weird Science (Robert Downey Jnr with a bra on his head!)
- Can’t Buy Me Love (I loved the white suede outfit that Cindy Mancini wears in the film. Also, why did American teen movies all have character names like Cindy Mancini or ‘Blane’?)
- A Nightmare on Elm Street (Still the scariest movie ever!)
- The Goonies (Less ‘teen’ movie, more a good Sunday afternoon film but still worth mentioning)
- Dirty Dancing (Coming of age- I have this on DVD now!)
- Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (Ah, Sarah Jessica Parker before she was cool, and Helen Hunt. I used to love dance movies)
- The Lost Boys (sexy Kiefer Sutherland. This was the first time I became aware of ‘bad boys’!)
- Some Kind of Wonderful (Don’t know why but I loved this film)
- St Elmo’s Fire (A young Demi Moore with big big hair!)
- Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (Inspired many a skiving day at High School!)
- License to Drive (The first time I saw Heather Graham when she was ‘preppy’ before she starred in Boogie Nights and The Hangover!)
- Summer School (This was one of my all time faves! We watched it all summer long!)
- Pretty in Pink (She should have ended up with Ducky!)
- The Karate Kid (Wax on, wax off!)
- Adventures in Babysitting (I would have loved a teen job like this one in the 80s!)
- Mannequin (I loved the character of the window dresser, Hollywood Montrose!)
- Back to the Future (The first one is still the best)
These were my fave teen movies but special mentions have to go to some of the other 80s movies that I watched over and over. Who could forget:
- Top Gun (Val. Kilmer. Nuff said)
- Flashdance (“What a feeling!”)
- Robocop (Really quite violent. I shouldn’t have been allowed to watch this!)
- Beverly Hills Cop (Funny and fast paced.)
- Star Wars (This came out in 1977 but we watched it all through the 80s)
- Labyrinth (My brother & I loved this one with David Bowie)
- ET (“Phone home!”)
- Cocktail (I used to try to twirl the cocktail shakers like they did!)
- Beetlejuice (I first saw this in America, bought it on VHS but didn’t realise their video players were different so I couldn’t watch it at home!)
- Ghostbusters (“Who ya gonna call?!”)
So maybe I’ve reminded you of a movie you used to love. Do you have any other 80s movie recommendations? It would be good to see what I might have missed!