One of the best things about growing up in the 1980s was watching cool movies. The supernatural themed films of today, with very few exceptions, don't even come close to the memorable fantasy adventures like The Last Starfighter, The Dark Crystal and The Neverending Story. Here are my personal favourites in no particular order.

The Last Starfighter - 1984. Remember this one? Very few people would recall this tale about a young man named Alex Rogan (Lance Guest) who is living in a trailer park and is probably going to be stuck there for quite a long time. He plays a video game and always gets the highest score, and the rest of the park's residents admire him for it. Then one day he meets a man named Centauri, who claims to be from the company which constructed the game. Before Alex knows it, he is whisked off to a distant sector of the galaxy and must put his skills to the test when he is asked to join an alien defense force. This is an intergalactic classic, one which has faded into relative obscurity.

The Neverending Story - 1984. The first time I saw this it was in the cinema! A boy named Bastian whose mother just died (Barrett Oliver) gets hold of a magical book which is a portal to a land full of strange and wonderful creatures. Bullied at school and ignored by his father, he loses himself in the realm of Fantasia which is being ravaged by an unstoppable force known simply as "The Nothing." It is up to one young boy named Atreyu (Noah Hathaway) to find a cure for the ailing princess of Fantasia before the Nothing destroys everything. During the film we meet Morla, The Ancient One in the Swamps of Sadness, Falcor the Luck Dragon and G'mork, the evil servant of the Nothing who is sent to kill Atreyu. This otherworldly adventure was and still is immensely appealing and will quite likely be a favourite to people my age who recall the 80s with nostalgia.

Something Wicked This Way Comes - 1983. This movie starring Jonathan Pryce was adapted from the story by Ray Bradbury. Delightfully spooky, it tells the story of two boys, Will Holloway and Jim Nightshade who are living in a small Midwestern U.S. town in the 1930s. Will's father, Charles Holloway, was played by Jason Robards and in my opinion it was one of his best roles. Old and frail, the elder Holloway is the community's head librarian. Then, literally out of nowhere, a carnival comes to town and its proprietor is a man named Mr. Dark (Pryce). Nothing seems out of the ordinary until the audience

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