tek's nostalgia: movies

This is mainly for movies I saw in the 1980s (regardless of when they first came out), but there may be a few from the early 90s that I'd consider to be within the tail end of the period of my youth for which I feel some nostalgia. (Note: many of the movies listed here are obviously made for kids, and many are obviously not.)

I didn't get to go to the theater a lot when I was a kid, so most of the movies I saw, I saw on TV. Some of them I must have thought were original TV movies, though mostly I knew when something had been in the theater first. Though there were several Charlie Brown movies I definitely thought originated on television, for example. I should also say that now I'm not sure about some movies, whether I saw them on TV, VHS, the theater (though this would be quite rare), or some other way. For example, my grade school would sometimes have a movie day, where they projected a film on a screen in the classroom. I don't remember what movies I saw that way. And... there are lots of movies I consider nostalgic that came out long before I saw them, of course. Anyway... I'm sure there are far more movies I saw, one way or another, when I was a kid, than I could possibly hope to remember now (even with Wikipedia's help). Some movies that hold nostalgic value I've already seen again and reviewed, and I hope to review more, eventually. Here's what I've got so far:

Adventures in Babysitting / Alice in Wonderland / Aliens / All Dogs Go to Heaven / An American Tail / Babes in Toyland / Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend / Back to the Beach / Back to the Future / Batman / Bedknobs and Broomsticks / Beetlejuice / Big / Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure / The Black Hole / Blade Runner / The 'burbs / Charlotte's Web / Chitty Chitty Bang Bang / Cinderella / Condorman / "Crocodile" Dundee / The Dark Crystal / Dirty Dancing / The Dream Team / Dumbo / Enter the Dragon / Escape to Witch Mountain / E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial / Ferngully / Field of Dreams / Flight of the Navigator / Ghostbusters / The Goonies / Grease / Grease 2 / The Great Muppet Caper / Gremlins / Honey, I Shrunk the Kids / Hook / The Jerk / Journey Back to Oz / The Journey of Natty Gann / The Karate Kid / Labyrinth / Lady and the Tramp / The Last Starfighter / The Legend of Sleepy Hollow / Little Shop of Horrors / The Lost Boys / The Love Bug / The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh / Mary Poppins / Mickey's Christmas Carol / The Million Dollar Duck / The Misadventures of Merlin Jones / The Monster Squad / The Muppet Movie / Oliver & Company / Overboard / The Parent Trap / Peter Pan / Pete's Dragon / The Phantom Tollbooth / The Princess Bride / Raiders of the Lost Ark / Real Genius / Return to Oz / Sea of Love / The Secret of NIMH / Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs / Somewhere in Time / Stand by Me / Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home / Star Wars (ESB / ROTJ) / Swiss Family Robinson / Switching Channels / Teen Witch / Teen Wolf / ¡Three Amigos! / Top Gun / The Transformers: The Movie / TRON / Uncle Buck / Who Framed Roger Rabbit / Willow / The Wizard / The Wizard of Oz.

And here are some movies for which I don't have reviews yet. And some I'll probably never see again, and therefore never review, but many I probably will. (Note, some of these movies hold great nostalgic value for me, while others are more like "oh yeah, I saw that, I guess.") For now, I'll just provide links to Wikipedia:

Hello Again / Indiana Jones (first three movies) / Innerspace / The Money Pit / Mr. Mom / My Best Friend Is a Vampire / The NeverEnding Story / One Hundred and One Dalmatians / The Peanut Butter Solution / Robin Hood / RoboCop / The Shaggy Dog / Short Circuit (and Short Circuit 2) / The Sword in the Stone / Three Men and a Baby (and its sequel)

Some movies I clearly identify with The Wonderful World of Disney include:

The Apple Dumpling Gang (and its sequel) / Bedknobs and Broomsticks / Blackbeard's Ghost / Candleshoe / The Journey of Natty Gann / The North Avenue Irregulars. Though it is pretty much a certainty that many of the other movies listed above I must have seen on Wonderful World of Disney, I also feel like I very well could have seen them randomly played on TV on their own, on a different channel than the one where I saw the anthology series. (But of course, I could be wrong about that, in some cases.)

Some movies I clearly associate with network TV (even though the majority of those listed above I also only ever saw on TV) include:

Chances Are / Cocoon / Dead Poets Society / The Dream Team / Field of Dreams / Fletch Lives (I don't know if I knew it was a sequel) / Her Alibi / The Jerk (which I must have watched at the house of a friend who got cable) / Ladyhawke / (possibly) Lassiter / Leonard Part 6 / Police Academy (first four films?) / The Presidio / Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown (and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown) / Roxanne / Runaway / Sea of Love / So Fine / Somewhere in Time / Uncle Buck / The Wizard of Oz

Some movies I know I saw at a theater include:
Return of the Jedi and Song of the South (actually, at a drive-in; I only remember the animated bits).


See also: movies I'd like to see
Films Index
tek's nostalgia index