mental_floss magazine
SUBSCRIBE >
GIFT SUBSCRIPTIONS >
DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTIONS >
subscriber services >
Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix
Today we’re celebrating the best of the worst 80s movies with a quiz from Brett Savage. How well do you know the genre’s most memorable plots? If you can match the correct movie title to the paraphrased synopsis preceding it, you probably wasted more time than you should have watching movies during the Reagan years.
Take the quiz: All The Right Movies
Brett will be back with a Shakespeare quiz next week. The guy hits to all fields.
Comments (31)
Comment
- Follow mental_floss
I got 7 of 8.
I feel dirty…
posted by Anthony on 11-8-2007 at 11:36 am
8/8 I had a lot of time to go to the movies back then. (sigh)
posted by Lebetho on 11-8-2007 at 11:42 am
6 out of 8. Of course, I’ve never actually seen any of these, I just picked the titles I liked.
posted by natlynn on 11-8-2007 at 11:47 am
I’ve only seen half of these, but got a couple of the other ones based on just picking the name that was obviously an 80s movie.
posted by Ryan on 11-8-2007 at 11:48 am
5/8.
Spacecamp is the best movie EVAR. My sister and I used to rent it every chance we could.
posted by jen on 11-8-2007 at 12:02 pm
6/8 pulled out of the dusty dark recess of my brain cavity.
posted by Tom on 11-8-2007 at 12:12 pm
Nailed it.
Made me want to go to Amazon and add to my already stellar collection.
posted by KP on 11-8-2007 at 12:42 pm
7 out of 8. I missed the one about the pizza.
Sadly, I’ve seen many of these. I loved Spacecamp as a kid.
posted by mrihel on 11-8-2007 at 12:44 pm
Is it bad that I got 7/8 of these within the first line? The 8th, Some Kind of Wonderful, I guessed correctly.
All I can say is I want my two dollars.
posted by Jack on 11-8-2007 at 12:48 pm
7/8 — I never even heard of the first one. And I am an ’80’s movie junkie. Or I thought I was.
posted by Ella Blue on 11-8-2007 at 1:06 pm
7 out of 8 and, if I remember correctly, Spacecamp should be Space Camp. It was set and done at the actual site of Space Camp, a NASA camp for kids who want to be astronauts one day.
posted by Jennifer on 11-8-2007 at 1:07 pm
5/8
I vividly remember Just One of the Guys and Loverboy.
posted by Bob on 11-8-2007 at 1:18 pm
It was actually SpaceCamp. But we didn’t want to get all fancy with the capitalization, for fear of making that one too easy. (94% of you got that one right, so I guess it didn’t matter.)
posted by Jason on 11-8-2007 at 1:29 pm
I totally did awesome on this.
Ahhh 80’s… your cheese never gets old!
posted by Stuffanie on 11-8-2007 at 1:29 pm
6/8 not too bad I suppose. I missed the first two. And wow. I thought I was the only person in the world who loved Space Camp!
posted by Joseph F. on 11-8-2007 at 1:49 pm
7/8 – Missed the Tommy Howell movie. I’ve seen most of those movies several times… except for that Coreys movie.
BTW – I’m glad someone with the last name of “Savage” created a quiz with at least one Savage Steve Holland movie on it! :)
posted by Debi on 11-8-2007 at 2:21 pm
7/8 – not bad.
Absolutely loved “Just One of the Guys” and “License to Drive” as a kid. Loved it? No, I lived it.
posted by Mudi-B on 11-8-2007 at 2:27 pm
6 out of 8. :-( There were actually a couple of those movies that I hadn’t seen.
posted by Scott on 11-8-2007 at 2:39 pm
88%
Missed License to Drive. SpaceCamp is absolutely the best of this selection.
posted by Dusty on 11-8-2007 at 2:42 pm
Oddly proud and embarrassed that I got 8/8 on this quiz. I never saw Side Out or Loverboy but I spent so much time in the video store in the 80’s I’m sure I read the covers of the bad one’s enough for it to imprint in my mind.
I LOVED Some Kind of Wonderful – I actually saw it twice in the theatre and it spawned by very confusing attraction to red-haired and freckled men (love me some gingers.) Ahhh, anyway…
posted by Popsi_zen on 11-8-2007 at 2:53 pm
100%, I so wanted to be a Pizza boy after watching Loverboy. It took along time to get Demi’s singing from One Crazy Summer out of my head and with this test it just came back…thanks
posted by D on 11-8-2007 at 4:05 pm
8 of 8! Damn…I sure was bored back then!
posted by Phunk on 11-8-2007 at 4:13 pm
100% Bay-bee!
Whoo!
Although I’m not quite old enough to have seen them in theaters…we had HBO in the 80’s, and they showed most if not all of these…a lot!
posted by RosiePerez on 11-9-2007 at 7:55 am
Brett,
I blew up your quiz. Clearly Juice didn’t tell you that you need to make these ridiculously hard, as his audience is well informed.
I appreciated two C. Thomas Howell references, but I have to get a little nerdy now. Side Out is only an 80’s movie in spirit. It is a 1990 film. If only there was a fact checker to take care of problems like this before they surfaced.
Good topic though.
posted by JE on 11-9-2007 at 7:57 am
100%, go me!
technically, 1990 was part of the ’80’s in a purely mathematical sense…
posted by mri on 11-9-2007 at 8:26 am
100%
I apparently have way too much time on my hands.
posted by mandy mo on 11-9-2007 at 8:34 am
88%! Space Camp??? Where was I when that came out?
posted by kate on 11-9-2007 at 10:08 am
Am I the only one that feels a profound sense of disappointment at the lack of of inclusion of the movie Explorers?
Yeah…that’s what I thought.
posted by rexology on 11-9-2007 at 6:54 pm
Child’s Play (this quiz, not the movie)
posted by Keith on 11-10-2007 at 5:23 pm
100%, though the only one I’ve ever seen is Some Kind of Wonderful (oh, and bits of Soul Man– I had a C. Thomas Howell thing for a while).
posted by NYCGirl on 11-29-2008 at 11:54 pm
7/8 … though about 1/2 were guesses, even though I was a teen during most of these (saw only about 2 or 3 of the ones I knew, familiar w/ the rest of those)
posted by Amy on 8-19-2009 at 5:29 pm