Of course you cannot talk about 80s films without mentioning this iconic masterpiece. Set in a school this film focuses on a group of five teenagers facing 9 hours of detention at the weekend. At first the teenagers appear to have nothing in common however as the day goes on they discover they have more in common than they realise.
You have the basket-case, the princess, the criminal, the brain and the athlete. All with their own problems and secrets one of which is the reason why they are in detention which plays out throughout the film, each reason is discovered at different points and not by always by everyone keeping you guessing and wondering the true reason.
Judd Nelson’s portrayal of John Bender or ‘the criminal’ is one of my favourites out all of the 80s films I’ve seen and he pulls all sorts of emotions from you with his performance. Some of these are actually negative emotions toward the character himself which is even more difficult for Nelson to pull off successfully.
In one scene the teens participate in different dance routines but originally this scene was supposed to consist of only Molly Ringwald who plays Claire Standish (the princess). But she was too shy to do it alone so the other actors joined in to make her feel at ease and this was the scene that ended up in the final cut.
The number of life lessons crammed into this film is phenomenal and for the more emotional among us (like myself) you may need some tissues.
The deliberate choice to make sure each main character has an obviously different personality means that everyone can relate to at least one of them which is one of the reasons why it is truly iconic.
Here is a link to the IMDB page – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088847/
Films of the 80's 