1980s Adventure Films In Which Children Get More Than They Bargained For

The 1980s saw a slew of fantasy-adventure films featuring children as the main protagonists. Some of the attraction to such stories by execs was inspired by the critical and commercial acclaim afforded to Steven Spielberg’s E.T. which arrived at the beginning of the decade, prompting a number of studios to consider how they could mimic its success.

It did, of course, lead to the terrible Mac and Me, a cheap imitation E.T. that made more money in product placement than box office receipts. But as this selection shows, the 1980s was also blessed with a number of fun childhood adventures that told wildly imaginative tales made possible by increasingly impressive special effects.

Why is the adventure story so attractive to younger viewers?

Unsurprisingly for a child, the adventure story is one that instantly attracts. The sense of journeying into the unknown; the mystery, the characters along the way, good versus evil, triumph over hardship.

The adventure story takes you away from the living room into the fantastical where dreams can come true. The 1980s saw some of the greatest adventure films ever made, particularly depicting children and teenagers from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Back To The Future to The Goonies and BMX Bandits.

1980s kids’ adventure took on many guises. There was the science-fiction approach in The Last Starfighter, Flight of the Navigator, and Explorers, pure fantasy in The NeverEnding Story and Labyrinth, and swashbuckling serial adventure of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

The beauty of these films for the studios was that they also worked for adults. It meant the whole family could enjoy these movies, resulting in films such as Back To The Future and Honey I Shrunk The Kid becoming some of the decade’s biggest blockbusting box office hits.

Here’s ten of my favourites…

SpaceCamp

Dir. Harry Winer (1986)

Kelly Preston in 1986’s SpaceCamp.

SpaceCamp was panned by critics and left high and dry by audiences in 1986. It isn’t surprising – the film was released shortly after the Challenger disaster killed all seven on board the spacecraft. No one wanted to see a film about NASA space flight malfunctions.

But, as time is a great healer. And SpaceCamp is ultimately about the resilience of NASA engineers and ground crews as well as the courage and expertise of its astronauts.

It’s a simple tale that always endeared itself to me as a child. Despite it having two-dimensional characters and a cliché-ridden script, its sense of realism – that these kids were learning to fly a NASA space shuttle not a George Lucas X-Wing was interesting.

Joaquin Phoenix is the young kid who joins a group of teens (including Lea Thompson, Kelly Preston and Larry B. Scott) who accidentally end up orbiting Earth’s atmosphere when the space shuttle they are testing malfunctions and has to deploy its boosters launching it into space. It is silly and predictable but affectionately told.

Flight Of The Navigator

Dir. Randal Kleiser (1986)

Flight of the Navigator sees twelve-year-old David Freeman head off to fetch his brother from a friend’s house. When walking home through the woods the two boys get separated, David falls and loses consciousness. When he awakens he pulls himself together and walks home. But when he gets home he finds his parents aren’t there. Someone else lives in his house and they call the police.

At the police station the officers in charge are astonished to learn that David has been missing for eight years. He is taken back to his family and he finds they have aged eight years while he still looks twelve. No one knows why but NASA, who have discovered an alien spacecraft, want to take the boy in for research.

Flight of the Navigator, 1986 - Sarah Jessica Parker

Sarah Jessica Parker’s classic 1980s hair in Flight of the Navigator.

Unsurprisingly, the boy and the spacecraft have plenty in common. Flight of the Navigator is one of many family-based science-fiction films of the 1980s but distinguishes itself thanks to a great premise and some excellent special effects.

Adventures In Babysitting

Dir. Chris Columbus (1987)

The title says it all really. Babysitter Chris, played by Elisabeth Shue, ends up having the night of her life when the two children she is looking after accompany her into the city to save her stranded friend. Everything that could go wrong does go wrong as the kids get into many tight scrapes as the city descends into night.

Firstly, their car breaks down and they become stranded on the expressway. Then the tow truck driver who eventually picks them up gets a call that his wife is cheating on him and the kids have to escape a hail of bullets by jumping into a car that is in the process of being stolen and driven to the chop shop.

Getting away from the car thieves isn’t easy as they pursue the children after one of them steals a Playboy magazine containing incriminating evidence. It doesn’t get any easier as Chris gets separated from the group and ends up scaling a high rise building to escape. The Chris Columbus-directed film is a lot of fun that certainly targets a younger audience but has plenty of laughs for those adults willing to immerse themselves in the adventure.

Time Bandits

Dir. Terry Gilliam (1981)

Written by Monty Python members Terry Gilliam and Michael Palin, Time Bandits is, as you can imagine, a unique, offbeat and darkly comic experience.

It brings that great Pythonesque quality to the time travel and fantasy genre as it celebrates history through the adventures of a small boy named Kevin. The special effects have a low-budget feel about them but that adds to the film’s obscure charm as it makes its way through mythical lands featuring Robin Hood and Napoleon Bonaparte and a few noteworthy stops on the historical calendar including boarding the Titanic.

It is a mixture of outlandish humour, a celebration of mythology and history, and special effects that come together to make a great, exceedingly dark adventure story.

The NeverEnding Story

Dir. Wolfgang Petersen (1982)

This German film was, at the time, the most expensive to be produced outside the USA or USSR. It is unsurprising given the amount of special effects present in the film. It tells the story of a young boy named Bastian (Barret Oliver) who becomes the central character of a book he begins reading which tells the tale of a fantastical world called Fantasia and its impending destruction at the hands of The Nothing. The tale features an assortment of characters including the terrifying wolf-like beast Gmork (one of the scariest monsters ever created for a family film).

Honey I Shrunk The Kids

Dir. Joe Johnston (1989)

In Joe Johnston’s fantasy-adventure, a group of children are accidentally miniaturised when a struggling inventor’s latest contraption is unwittingly activated. The special-effects are excellent – especially for the imagination of a young child. The battle between the ant and the scorpion is a particular highlight – the two insects appearing to be the size of houses to the centimetre-high kids.

Explorers

Dir. Joe Dante (1985)

Joe Dante was another director – like Steven Spielberg and John Hughes – who had this innate ability to regress back to childhood. In Explorers, he examines the limitless possibilities of the imagination in a group of young teenagers who create a spaceship out of a fairground ride and fly off into space to meet a bunch of aliens they have been dreaming about.

River Phoenix shows up in a role far removed from his cocky tough kid in Stand By Me. A very young Ethan Hawke joins him for their fantastic adventure. Despite a disappointing final third, this story of friendships and spaceships is classic fantasy from the 1980s.

Labyrinth

Dir. Jim Henson (1986)

Memorable for David Bowie’s music as much as the grand array of mystical creatures assembled by director Jim Henson’s puppet factory (probably best known for The Muppets), Labyrinth takes its cues from Lewis Carroll, swapping Alice for teenage babysitter Sarah (Jennifer Connolly) who, instead of falling down the rabbit hole, is transported to the eponymous labyrinth by its overseer the Goblin King. Here she must solve the riddles and an assortment of other challenges to find her baby brother before he is turned into a goblin forever.

Return To Oz

Dir. Walter Murch (1985)

An unapologetically darker follow-up to the classic family film The Wizard of Oz, Return To Oz offers no respite between its so-called good guys and the malevolent forces targeting poor Dorothy (a very young Fairuza Balk). Both parties are so weird, crazed and disturbingly eerie-looking that it makes it difficult to discern the helpers from the hinderers.

The film was criticised for being too scary for children but adults are likely to have as much trouble with it: after all, it begins with our pint-sized hero being committed to an asylum as a result of her recollections of Oz. Dorothy’s hospital stay makes One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest seem like a Butlins holiday camp.

It’s here she also meets Nurse Wilson (Jean Marsh) who becomes the terrifying, head-collecting Princess Mombi in Oz, the character responsible for the film’s most disturbing scene involving a curious fashion trait that allows her, on a whim, to whip off one head for another from her trophy cabinet.

And we mustn’t forget the profound disquiet afforded by the bearded Nome King wearing high-heeled ruby slippers or the group known as Wheelers who wouldn’t look out of place as a rape gang in Kubrick’s dystopian A Clockwork Orange.

The Goonies

Dir. Richard Donner (1985)

The opening sight of a skull and crossbones sets us up for swashbuckling adventure. Richard Donner mixes the search for buried treasure with teens coming of age as they try to find the loot that will save their homes from demolition.

Aside from the great set pieces (including every kid’s dream – a water slide into pirate One-Eyed Willy’s secret hideaway), The Goonies is a lot of fun thanks to director Donner’s ensemble of characters, from the assortment of kids (a collection of jocks, princesses, oddballs and misfits) to the bumbling bad guys led by the brilliant Anne Ramsey.

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