Forget Romeo and Juliet, this to my young self was the ultimate tale of star-crossed lovers. It’s set during medieval times that could have come right out of a Bergman drama, with great valleys, stony ruins near mountains and cavernous, oppressive cathedrals. Navarre (uber-awesome Rutger Hauer) and Isabeau (Michelle Pfeiffer, never more beautiful) are passionately in love with each other, yet can never be together due to a curse put on them by the Bishop (John Wood), who wanted Isabeau for himself. Now, Navarre will turn into a wolf during the night and Isabeau will be a hawk during the day, so that they’re never both human at the same time. The fairy-tale is the kind you love to hear from your grandparents, save within yourself, and then pass it along to your own children. Another thing I loved, too, was the brazenly anachronistic humor injected by Gaston (Matthew Broderick), a scampering character known as “Mouse” who tags along with the couple and talks as if he’s just time-traveled from 1980s New York. (Unfortunately, the score also sounds like it has just come from that decade, too.) This was a special movie for me, utterly romantic, tragic, thrilling and funny. Only later did I realize that the director was Richard Donner, the Lethal Weapon guy. Well, if nothing else, at least hacks were versatile back then.

The first James Bond flick I ever saw was Diamonds Are Forever, which was made in 1971 but played regularly on TV throughout my childhood in the 1980s. I had no idea the movie was merely another installment in one of the world’s most lucrative franchises, or, for that matter, why 007 was supposed to be a big deal. All I knew at the time was that this was the most badass thing I had ever seen. In a way, it taught me about how to be a man. It showed a world that was utterly untrustworthy, full of traps and betrayals and people who want you dead, and for a kid who had been weaned on afternoon cartoons this was a shock. And yet there was Bond (played once more by Sean Connery, after George Lazenby failed to attract much attention in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service), sidestepping every danger with suavity (even being almost burned alive, for crying out loud!), inflicting violence when needed, and delivering a killer bon mot in the face of certain death. And then there was Tiffany Case, the delicious double-dealing agent who is by Bond’s bed one moment and parading bikinis for Blofeld the next. Wherever you are, Miss Jill St. John, I thank you profoundly for making me realize for the first time that I really liked girls. I’d watch many other Bond movies afterwards, including several that are better than Diamonds Are Forever. But the first time is forever.

As far as doomed family-vacation comedies went, I was forever torch as a young moviegoer between Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Vacation and John Candy in this 1985 flick, which tells pretty much the same plot (harried family man does his best to make sure his clan has a good time, with often disastrous results). If I lean more towards Candy here, it’s because he actually seemed like the benevolent guy he played, as opposed to Chevy, who had this sarcastic hipster thing going (sort of an I’m-too-cool-to- -play-a-nice-family-without-irony humor that is in itself quite funny). Anyhoo, the big guy plays a stressed-out air traffic controller who’s given some time off and decides to take the missus and the kids down to the beach. Of course, very little goes right. They move into the wrong condo (the right one at one point finds itself filled with beach bums), Dad falls asleep while sunbathing and wakes up red as a lobster, and then there’s the movie’s resident a-hole, a rich, obnoxious yachtsman played by Richard Crenna. It’s more of a “nice” comedy than a hilarious one (director Carl Reiner is usually quicker and raunchier), and formulaic as hell. On the plus side, there’s Rip Torn as a salty dog who runs a restaurant dressed like a pirate, kind of like the old captain from The Simpsons. Come to think of it, this often seems like a live-action episode of the show, with Candy particularly dandy as Homer Simpson.

You gotta love (or hate) any decade in which a dwarf in a rubbery duck suit is put forth as the hero in a wannabe blockbuster. Where to begin with this legendary 1986 turkey? How about the pre-credits sequence, in which we meet our feathery, pint-sized hero, an ill-tempered humanoid duck who’s shanghaied from his home planet and sent to Earth? (I think I speak for a generation when I say naked duck boobies is one of those things that, once seen, cannot be unseen.) Howard isn’t happy to be stranded in our world, though he stays with rocker-chick Lea Thompson, so things can’t be that bad! I had a huge crush on Thompson when I saw this as a kid, but I must admit that the bliss of seeing her in her panties was substantially dented by the fact that she’s coming on to a duck alien. (In the too-much-information department, we get a peek into Howard’s wallet and find a condom. Oookaaay.) Then there’s young, gangling Tim Robbins as the wacky nerd-scientist who tries to figure out what brought Howard here (it’s painful to see Robbins taking Rick Moranis’ sloppy seconds, but hey, everybody has to start somewhere) and Jeffrey “The Ferris Bueller Principal” Jones as a government agent who gets possessed by an evil alien. Howard the Duck is the sort of disaster you watch in awe, gripped by curiosity about what new way the movie will go wrong next. Willard Huyck directed it, though I remember seeing executive producer George Lucas’s name plastered all over the posters. Maybe the studio thought that kids who swallowed Star Wars will swallow anything.

The 1980s, the cradle of the high-concept pitch. I bet it went something like this at the studio meeting for Young Sherlock Holmes: “So it’s like a kid’s movie, with lots of adventure.” “Not like The Goonies, I hope.” “No, no, much better. This time we got tons of class, because they’re English.” “Hey, I don’t want this to be an artsy-fartsy movie. It’s got to bring in crowds.” “Don’t worry, we’re totally ripping off Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Temples, sacrifices…” “That’s more like it.” “And brace yourself: The main characters are Sherlock Holmes and Watson!” “Who?” Speculation aside, however, as a preteen I really dug this Victorian Era-set swashbuckler from the Spielberg factory. (Barry Levinson directed, from a screenplay by Chris Columbus.) At the time was I so enraptured by the idea of a youngster beating the adults at their own clue-sniffing game that I didn’t even notice what a snobbish little snot the great-detective-to-be really was. In any case, I felt closer to the chubby Watson, who’s basically the nerd of the story but who nevertheless gives it its heart. Nicholas Rowe and Alan Cox play the teenage versions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous characters, and do so very appealingly. (I don’t think I’ve seen them in anything else.) I was also fascinated by special effects like the computer-generated stained-glass knight or the tiny gargoyles that come to life. And while there’s no denying that the hidden Egyptian temple is a shameless steal from Indiana Jones, it’s still an entrancing sequence. Decades later, I still can’t get that chanting out of my head.

Last week I admitted that I saw (and dug) The Last Starfighter before I saw Star Wars. Well, this week I admit that I saw (and dug) Orca before I saw Jaws. The story is that killer whales, widely known to be some of the most peaceful marine creatures, really are killers, even if honorable ones. Maybe not a matter of honor, but it’s certainly a matter of vengeance for the movie’s remarkably intelligent and resourceful orca, which is devastated after its pregnant mate gets the harpoon treatment from some old-salt hunter (Richard Harris). The captain gets the death’s eye from the whale, and pretty soon boats are being mysteriously sunk and parts of the coastal town are being torn down. It’s as if the orca is calling its mate’s killer out to square things out, and Harris, cheerful overactor that he is, takes the bait. (He even yells back to the sea: “You want revenge? Well, you’ll have it! I’ll come out and fight you! You revengeful sumbitch!”) Jaws is by far the greater movie; if anything, this 1977 thriller from director Michael Anderson is closer to Jaws: The Revenge, with its hilariously smart shark. Still, Orca is so ridiculous in its intensity that it gives most movie versions of Moby Dick a run for their money. People laugh at it now, but this totally freaked me out as a kid. I mean, Bo Derek having her gams chewed? And the less said about the infamous orca-fetus bit the better. It’s not “campy” at all, but a solid Nature-strikes-back entry in a decade full of them.

Confession time: As far as sci-fi space operas went, my heart had already gone out to The Last Starfighter long before I had ever heard of Star Wars. To be fair, the George Lucas juggernaut was too rich to play in the movie matinee shows I used to catch on TV while growing up, while Nick Castle’s 1984 considerably less successful space adventure used to pop up on the telly at least once a month. Still, I feel no shame in my fondness for it. I was going through my brief yet intense obsession with video-games, so I could relate to the main character, a youngster (Lance Guest, whose stardom never really took off) who uses his expertise at an arcade game to escape the frustrations of having to live in a God-forsaken trailer park. All the same, my young self would often squirm through these early, earthbound sequences. “Where the hell are the aliens and the spaceships,” I would ask. As if on cue, a visitor from outer space (Robert Preston, who’s delightful) materializes to inform Guest that he’s been recruited to join an alien force and defend the galaxy against slimy invaders. So we’re off into the stars along with the hero’s girlfriend (Catherine Mary Stewart, another one of those ‘80s whatever-happened-to mysteries) and a reptilian sidekick (the great Irish actor Dan O’Herlihy, hidden under scaly latex). Crammed with action, jokes, and not-bad special-effects, this one is still a blast. And, yeah, I still prefer it to any of the pricier, more humorless Star Wars movies.

To grow up in the ‘80s is to learn about life from Arnold Schwarzenegger in a loincloth as he punches out a camel. Am I right? Well, I know at least one youngster back then who got a taste of maturity from watching John Milius’s great 1982 adventure yarn. Before anything, there’s the music. Basil Poledouris, the composer, knocks it out the ballpark with thunderous music that made my heart leap—afterwards, Wagner and all the other guys had a lot of catching up to do in order to impress me. Then, there’s the killing of the people in the village where young Conan lives, and the main villain removing his helmet to reveal James Earl Jones himself, slaughtering the hero’s mom in a moment that was much more traumatic to me than the death of Bambi’s mother. Then, of course, the adult Conan played by Arnie in the role he was born to do. Silent and tough, he was a role model of masculinity and honor. (Never mind his own evil reign as the California governor, that’s another movie.) The journey to rescue the king’s daughter provided the structure for a bunch of exciting, stirring vignettes and characters, including Sandahl Bergman as the Amazonian babe, Gerry Lopez as the sidekick, and Mako as the cranky old wizard. The bit with Earl Jones turning into a snake freaked me out, and the climax atop the mountain suggested disturbing things beyond my youthful comprehension. Would the same movie that so moved me as a kid strike me nowadays as downright fascist? Or would I still melt when Lopez wipes his tears as says, “He is Conan. He won’t cry, so I cry for him”? (Oh, and Conan the Destroyer is also pretty cool.)

“Fair is fair!” I remember shouting the war-cry from this 1985 rebellious-teen drama around the schoolyard as if it were Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death.” The whole thing is probably pretty laughable today, but back then I was totally stirred by the movie’s take on youthful revolt, to say nothing of my crush on Helen Slater. She’s cute and spunky as the titular Billie Jean, a young Texas chick who takes no guff from guys and watches over her brother (Christian Slater, no relation, in an unfortunate blonde moptop that makes him look like Corey Feldman’s stunt double). When her bro’s scooter is mauled by some punks, Billie goes to demand compensation from one of the punk’s dad, who’s basically an old perv and tries to do some mauling of his own on her. My girl Billie shoots the coot on the shoulder and takes to the road as fugitives, hounded by the police, snoopy journalists whipping up a media frenzy, and other kids who see them as, like, totally cool outlaws. It wants to be sort of a junior-high Bonnie and Clyde, but it’s hard to be a rebel when you have to be home at seven for supper. But about Slater—she’s terrific in a potentially ridiculous role (teenage Joan of Arc?), and later on, when she dons a punkish, short-cropped ‘do and a defiant single earring when confronting those who wronged her, she rocked my preteen self pretty hard. Whatever happened to her, or to all those ‘80s starlets who would grace cheesy movies? Say, there’s an idea for a top-10 list…