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Rolling Stone Top 25 movies of the 80s
25. 'Weird Science'Two nerds make the girl of their dreams on
their computer. This film paved the way
for Mannequin, Mannequin Two: On The Moveand the mid-1990s
television show Weird Science, starring
Vansesa Angel.
24. 'Big Trouble in Little China'Kurt Russell rescues a damsel
in distress from a bunch of goons in San Francisco's Chinatown.
Paved the
way for Overboardand Captain Ron.
23. 'St. Elmo's Fire'The Brat Pack graduates college and faces
an uncertain future. Paved the way for Singlesand Reality
Bites.
22. 'Pretty in Pink'Working-class high schooler Molly Ringwald
falls in love with a rich guy and doesn't realize her dorky
best
friend is madly in love with her. Paved the way for She's All
Thatand many of the funniest scenes in Not
Another Teen Movie.
21. 'Scarface'
Cuban refugee Tony Montana emigrates to Miami and becomes an
incredibly wealthy drug lord. Paved the
way for Blow, countless rap songs and a particularly amazing
episode of South Parkwhere Cartman
peddled outlawed KFC chicken like cocaine.
20. 'Full Metal Jacket'Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece about the
Vietnam war shows a U.S. Marine go through a particularly
hellish boot camp before shipping off to an even more hellish
war. Paved the way for a million sketch
comedy bits about abusive drill sergeants.
19. 'Die Hard'New York City cop John McClane has a pretty tough
night when terrorists take over a Los Angeles
skyscraper where his wife works. Paved the way for Speed, Under
Siege, increasingly unwatchable sequels
and just about every other action movie to hit theaters in the
last quarter century.
18. 'The Shining'In this highly disturbing adaptation of the
Stephen King classic, a father goes completely insane when
he's trapped in a Colorado hotel for the winter with his family.
Paved the way for countless crackpot
theories about what the film reallymeans and the drastically
inferior six hour 1997 miniseries starring
Stephen Weber.
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17. 'The Outsiders'The Brat Pack was born in this 1983
coming-of-age drama starring Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe,
Emilio Estevez, Patrick Swayze and Ralph Macchio. Paved the way
for Risky Business, The Karate
Kidand The Breakfast Club.
16. ------no entry------
15. 'The Lost Boys'Corey Haim and Corey Feldman team up to fight
a gang of teenage vampires in Los Angeles. Paved the
way for License to Drive, horrid straight-to-DVD sequels and a
whole lotta cocaine.
14. 'Purple Rain'
Prince plays a fictionalized version of himself in this 1984
cult classic that forever proves he's a muchbetter singer than
actor. Paved the way for Under the Cherry Moonand the
mostly-forgotten Graffiti
Bridge, a 1990 sequel to Purple Rain
13. 'The Goonies'A group of adolescent friends find themselves
on a quest for 17th-century pirate's gold as struggle to save
their town from greedy developers. Paved the way for Super 8and
endless fanboy dreams about a sequel
that's never going to happen.
12. 'Sixteen Candles'Eighties teen queen Molly Ringwald endures
a horrible 16th birthday, a crush on a hunk and an Asian
foreign exchange student named Long Duk Dong straight out of an
old Jerry Lewis routine. Paved the way
for Sixteen Candles, Cluelessand racism.
11. 'Repo Man'Michael Nesmith (the Monkee in the green wool hat)
produced this shockingly great science fiction
comedy starring Harry Dean Stanton and Emilio Estevez. Paved the
way for Repo Chick, a disastrous
straight to DVD quasi-sequel in 2009 and the Monkees reunion
tour.
10. 'Amadeus'18th century Vienna never seemed more like 1980s
Los Angeles than in this supremely bizarre 1984
Milos Forman movie about Mozart and Salieri. Paved the way for
Rock Me Dr. Zaius, perhaps the greatest
parody song in the history of The Simpsons.
9. 'Ghostbusters'Four men wage war against an increasingly
haunted New York City. Paved the way for Ghostbusters IIand
more Internet articles about a possible third movie than just
about any other topic in the history of
mankind.
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8. 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High'Rolling Stone's Cameron Crowe
wrote this 1982 classic about a bunch of high school seniors
enduring
endless humiliations in San Diego. Paved the way for a
short-lived TV spinoff, the entire career of Sean
Penn and millions of teenage boys rewinding the famous Phoebe
Cates bathing scene over and over until
the tape burst into flames.
7. 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'The most popular kid in the history
of the world takes a day off school with his girlfriend and his
emotionally fragile best friend. Paved the way for Parker Lewis
Can't Loseand a recent Honda commercial
that's the closest thing to a sequel we're ever going to
get.
6. 'Raiders of the Lost Ark'An archaeology professor travels the
world in 1936 and battles Nazis as he peruse the mythical Ark of
the
Covenant. Paved the way for one awesome sequel, one sequel we
loved as kids and another one we'd
rather forget.
5. 'Stand By Me'Rob Reiner adapted this Stephen King novella
about four friends who discover a dead body while going on
a long hike. Paved the way for Shawshank Redemptionand Apt
Pupil, which were also adapted from
King's 1982 novella collection Different Seasons.
4. 'Blade Runner'Harrison Ford hunts down human-like robots in a
dystopian Los Angeles in the distant year of 2019.
Paved the way for Johnny Mnemonic, The Matrixand The Terminator
and endless debate about whether or
not Ford himself was a robot. (Most people think he was.)
3. 'Star Wars Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back'Many fanboys
consider this Star Warssequel to be the single best movie of the
franchise. Paved the way
for Spaceballsand Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
2. 'Back to the Future'A teenager from 1985 travels back to 1955
and fights off aggressive advances from his mother as he tries
to return to his own time without distorting the timeline. Paved
the way for one great sequel, an unfairly
maligned third movie, a cartoon series, a pretty sweet ride at
Universal Studios and a hundred billion
late-night dorm room discussions about time travel.
1. 'The Breakfast Club'A mismatched group of high schoolers are
forced to deal with each other when they're locked in the
school for a Saturday detention. Paved the way for Simple Minds
to play shows in America to this day.
