Initiation's over, Michael. Time to join the club!

On Saturday night Ka and myself cracked open the bottle of Spanish Cava, a gift from her Mum and Dad from Salou, pulled open the Curry flavoured Sensations and sat and watched the classic eighties flick, 'The Lost Boys'. What a classic. Eighties films were just great. Great atmospheres. Fantastic, over the top effects. Brilliant music. It's great to watch one of these old movies and still enjoy it fiftieth time around. Think of how many classics the eighties spawned? Especially if you're around the age of thirty and these movies were the first, great experiences of the video recorder and big screen. You had so many kid classics like 'The Goonies', 'The Karate Kid', 'Labyrinth', 'Wargames' and 'Flight of the Navigator'. Then you had the slightly older, teen, aimed movies like 'Weird Science', 'Gremlins' and 'The Lost Boys'. All the 'classic' dance movies to which Ka has a penchant, "Dirty Dancing' and 'Flashdance' all have that quintessential eighties quality about them.
'Blade Runner' is one of my favourite all timers and that was made in '82. The first of all the dystopian future science fictions but a film I did not discover till well into my teens. And the rest! The Indiana Jones movies, the Star Wars sequels, The Terminators, The Predators, the Alien movies, the Lethal Weapons, Robocops, Beverly Hills Cops, Ghostbusters, Poltergeists, The Nightmare on Elm Streets, the Chevy Chase comedies and the brilliant Back to the Futures. There's just too many to mention. Okay, not all of them were classics. A lot of them were quite cheesy in places, a bit too American corn in others but all stir so many memories for me.
Robocop for instance was the very first eighteen certificate movie I was officially allowed to watch, thanks to my cousin Craig and his pals. I think it was a sleepover and when we were going to watch this VHS that Craig had hired out my Aunt Ann advised me to phone up the parents to ask permission to watch it. This crazy, violent, futristic thriller about a man that gets half slaughtered and then tranformed into a kind of Frankensteins monster cop machine to roam the streets of LA (at least, I think it was LA?) seemed like such a big deal at the time. Looking back I'm realising it may well have been this one film that got me hooked on science fiction. The way it could be crazy, terrifying, horrific and somehow based in the 'real world'. However, I've not watched it in many years and suspect that if I ever did go back to Robocop I would probably switch it off after half an hour either bored or embarrassed, completely disillusioned.
This did not happen on Saturday though as Ka and myself sat through 'The Lost Boys'. We quite enjoyed the dog attacks, the flying camera work, Kiefer's early acting skills and Granpa's car horn whilst eating our curry Sensations. Not to mention the exploding vampire in the bathtub. Fantastic. They don't make 'em like they used to! Gawd, the eighties were twenty plus years ago?! That realisation is a bit of a horror story in itself. I'm off to watch Ashes to Ashes.