Quiz: How well do you know 80s and 90s movies?

Rebecca De Mornay and Tom Cruise in 80s comedy Risky Business. Photograph: Warner Bros

1. What memorably gruesome death meets one of the teen vampires in The Lost Boys?

   1. Death by microwave

   2. Death by lawnmower

   3. Death by stereo

   4. Death by chocolate

2. Which big-haired 80s pop legend sang the theme song from The NeverEnding Story?

   1. Paul Young

   2. Nik Kershaw

   3. Limahl

   4. Midge Ure

3. You wouldn’t get away with it nowadays, but in 80s comedy Risky Business, what does suburban teen Tom Cruise turn his family home into?

   1. A brothel

   2. A drug den

   3. A swingers’ retreat

   4. A sexual health clinic

4. Which annual festival does the heroine of Gremlins refuse to celebrate?

   1. Halloween

   2. New Year

   3. Christmas

   4. Easter

5. Name the crime family in The Goonies, whose name would go on to inspire a Scottish rock band?

   1. The Fratellis

   2. The Del Amitris

   3. The Corleones

   4. The Proclaimers

6. Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi classic Blade Runner is set in Los Angeles in 2019. But the landscape of which town actually inspired the film’s bleak futuristic look?

   1. Tokyo

   2. Detroit

   3. Sao Paolo

   4. Middlesborough

7. Full Metal Jacket follows a troupe of young US marines through the Vietnam war. But where were many of the Vietnam scenes actually filmed?

   1. The Florida Keys

   2. The Philippines

   3. Hawaii

   4. East London

8. After meeting an untimely death at the start of supernatural comedy Beetlejuice, which book do Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis consult when they need help turfing new tenants out of their home?

   1. A Guide for Ghosts and Ghouls

   2. Handbook for the Recently Deceased

   3. The Afterlife - A Beginner’s Manual

   4. The Necronomicon

9. Name the hapless waiter who gets shot through the foot – then the chest – by wild-man mobster Joe Pesci in Martin Scorsese’s gangland classic Goodfellas.

   1. Rizzo

   2. Vinnie

   3. Spider

   4. Jimmy Two-Times

10. Which stadium rock legend gets a bullet through the foot during a botched drug raid in surfing classic Point Break?

    1. Axl Rose from Guns N’ Roses

    2. Tommy Lee from Mötley Crüe

    3. Anthony Kiedis from Red Hot Chili Peppers

    4. Bret Michaels from Poison

11. In The Mask, Jim Carrey finds an ancient supernatural artefact that transforms him into a raving cartoon. But who is The Mask supposed to represent?

    1. Dionysus, the God of wine and madness

    2. Pan, the goat-legged God

    3. Loki, the trickster God

    4. Anansi, the spider God

12. In serial killer thriller Se7en, detectives Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt track down a murderer whose crimes are inspired by the seven deadly sins. But which is the first sin they stumble across?

    1. Wrath

    2. Pride

    3. Greed

    4. Gluttony

13. The cast of Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks reads like a who’s who of Hollywood c. 1996. But which screen icon plays the dual roles of President James Dale and huckster Art Land?

    1. Pierce Brosnan

    2. Danny DeVito

    3. Jack Nicholson

    4. Jim Brown

14. Basketball legend Michael Jordan joins a cast of cartoon characters in daffy sports romp Space Jam. But which comedy superstar joins them on the court – as himself?

    1. Bill Murray

    2. Steve Martin

    3. Richard Pryor

    4. Jim Carrey

15. A huge cult hit on DVD, sci-fi cartoon The Iron Giant was based on a novel by which English poet laureate?

    1. Andrew Motion

    2. Carol Ann Duffy

    3. Ted Hughes

    4. Alfred Lord Tennyson

Solutions

1:C - During the film’s final showdown, vampire hoodlum Dwayne (Billy Wirth) is shot with an arrow and messily electrocuted by a home sound system. , 2:C - Aside from belting out the 1984 fantasy adventure’s irresistible title track, English vocalist Christopher Hamill, aka Limahl, was also known for having been lead singer of synth-pop also-rans Kajagoogoo., 3:A - Young Tom conspires with glamorous sex worker Rebecca De Mornay to get all his high school friends laid for cash. Ewwwww., 4:C - In the movie, Kate tells the tragic story of how her father got stuck up the chimney dressed as Santa Claus, and subsequently suffocated to death., 5:A - Blender-wielding matriarch Mama Fratelli was played by the late, great Anne Ramsay, with Robert Davi and Joe Pantoliano as her bickering sons., 6:D - North-east native Scott took inspiration for the opening shots of a blazing cityscape from the industrial plants of Teesside., 7:D - The film’s climactic battle – supposedly set in the city of Hue, Vietnam – was in fact shot at Beckton Gas Works., 8:B - The book leads them to freelance “bio-exorcist” Betelgeuse, played with maniacal gusto by Michael Keaton., 9:C - Spider was played by Michael Imperioli, who would later star in another major mafia story, playing Christopher Moltisanti in The Sopranos., 10:C - Kiedis’s performance as a drug-dealing surf nazi may not be quite up to Oscar standard, but he’s playing against Keanu Reeves so it’s fine., 11:C - Years before Tom Hiddleston was even a glint in a producer’s eye, Carrey paid screen tribute to this famously unpredictable Norse deity., 12:D - The first body they discover is of a man who has been forced to feed himself to death – on tinned spaghetti, no less., 13:C - Reuniting with Burton after their successful collaboration on 1989’s Batman, Nicholson really let rip with his portrayal of a self-centred, not-too-bright Commander in Chief., 14:A - In fact, Murray has a habit of appearing in movies out of character – he also pops up in indie comedy Coffee and Cigarettes and as an undead version of himself in Zombieland. , 15:C - Hughes’s anti-nuclear fable The Iron Man was published in 1968, at the height of the cold war.

Scores

1. 11 and above.

   To quote Jim Carrey in The Mask… Smokin’!

2. 6 and above.

   A few gremlins to work out, but not bad at all.

3. 0 and above.

   Was ignorance one of the seven deadly sins? You’d best hope not.

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