What a fun trip down memory lane with many of the movies I grew up watching! This book was awesome, as it gave me an opportunity to look back at the memories of my youth!

This is a highly-detailed book discussing historical events and behind-the-scenes of the 80s teen movies that a lot of people, including me, might be not aware of. I appreciate the author's hard work and long researches for gathering all of these incredible details in one place. I also like the fact that the book was started with a background from the 70s, allowing us to get a hint of how everything's started in the first place. However, this book was so full of heavy details, it started to feel like a textbook. And honestly, I expected something more fun and lighter, maybe with a few old photos and scenes from the movies. But overall, it was very informative and useful, especially if you're looking forward to learn about the history of 80s teen movies.

A very immersive history of 80s teen movies. The author showed how the types of teen movies in the 70s directly lead to the teen movies of the early 80s. The historical happenings discussed in each chapter really helped me to gain an understanding of the public consciousness during each year. I learned so much behind the scenes information about my favorite 80s teen movies as well as about lesser known movies which I may have overlooked. The author's footnotes were also very informative.

I really wanted to like this book. Having recently read other nonfiction books about various aspects of the entertainment industry, though, this book just doesn’t hold up.

If you’re looking for an very in depth look into movies of the 80’s beyond just the usual John Hughes/Brat Paxk favorites, this book will do quite nicely. For me, it read a little too much like a textbook. For a book about the entertainment industry, I was really just looking for something more, well, entertaining.

If you love 80s teen movies, this is the trip down Memory Lane for you. A fun, witty look at these classic movies.


Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

super fun book! gave me a new appreciation for some of these movies (like fast times at ridgemont high). this could've been a simple and dry retelling of facts but the author injected humor into his writing that made me laugh out loud a couple of times.

now i gotta go do some rewatches!

Do you love teen movies from the 1980s like me? Then this book is for you.

This book goes beyond the quintessential teen movie, though, often including movies about burgeoning adults, families, and social issues. In addition to Porky's and Adventures in Babysitting, we get the more adult Wall Street and Terms of Endearment.

At the same time. King gives us a full scope of that movie's place and time. For movie lovers like me, it's a treat to delve into this in-depth history.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Diversion Books for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Starts in the late 70's with movies like Saturday Night Fever and then continues throughout the 80's with lots of interesting facts and history of both the movies and the stars of the movies. I had forgotten about so many of the movies I loved until I read this book. I may need a couple of nights to binge 80's movies.

It's certainly a well-researched book--however that's also to its detriment. It's a history-heavy tome that overshadows the "fun" aspect of the 80s teen movie. Too dry and dull to keep the attention of the audience that grew up with these awesome movies. I really wish it had some sense of humor in the writing or any levity whatsoever. A missed opportunity.

Life moves pretty fast. Sage advice of a hallowed teen from the mid-1980’s, when Reaganomics’s voodoo charmed ideologies, a generation of kids were being raised at the shopping mall, and Huey told us to get back in time.

Hollywood noticed these changes and, like John Bender piercing his ear in triumph, transformed pop-culture into the fast times of Valley girls, lost boys, and top guns doing a risky business while taking the day off. Movies were cheap, stupid, and sexy. Except for those that weren’t. The Ultimate History of the 80’s Teen Movie is, ironically, a deep read about what Hollywood got right in its tutelage of Generation X.

Author James King goes deep in this exhaustive, definitive, look at teen films from the 1980s. This is not a top 10 list. Nor is it a superficial revisit of nostalgia. Instead, The Ultimate History of the 80’s Teen Movie is an historical accounting of that decade, an indexed telling of those artists who had tales to tell, and the audience they found. How Coppola and Scorsese broke ground for Heckerling and Crowe, Hughes and Schumacher. About DeNiro and Pacino’s unlikely inspiration for the Brat Pack. The elevation of Bueller, McFly, and two loveable jokers from San Dimas into cinematic icons. The Ultimate History… is filled with so much teen angst you need Clearasil on stand-by. This is more than nostalgia. This is a Gen X love letter, blasting from a raised boom box, romancing us all

Most importantly, King promotes the modern teen movie into a viable genre. For every Porky’s and Revenge of the Nerds there is an Outsiders and Karate Kid. From Flashdance and Footloose to Red Dawn and Lost Boys, King breaks down the definition of a teen film and explores the relations of such to the average teenager. How Dirty Dancing’s Patrick Swayze and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’s Alan Ruck were in (or close to) their thirties yet embodied the youthful desires of want and acceptance. How a John Hughes production simultaneously raised and destroyed the cliquish life of Chicago Suburbia.

There are, naturally, omittances, particularly of other genres. The rise of teen-oriented horror escapes with the merest of glancing blows; perhaps due to the stay-away Restricted MPAA rating. Sci-fi and fantasy are also mostly ignored as are, surprisingly, films that had massive crossover appeal such as horror-comedies and action-comedies that were specifically targeted at that beautifully-ambiguous PG-13 market.

King’s tome successfully breaks down each year counting the hits, questioning the misses, ultimately concluding the treatise by analyzing the decade’s progressive end. He examines the cultural impact – and the surprising similarities – between the melancholy Say Anything, the brutal sarcasm of Heathers, the joyful comedy of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and the hopeful yearning of Dead Poet’s Society. For a generation that was shown life conjoined within the known classroom, those final films explore that unknown next step. Life continues. And as we were once told, if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.


Thanks to NetGalley and Diversion Books for this truly fantastic read. And hey, while I understand that I received an un-proofed copy, I am astonished at the amount of spelling and grammatical errors presented throughout the entire book. I wonder what John Keating would have thought, carpe diem notwithstanding.

The Ultimate History of the 80s Teen Movie is exactly as the title says: the ultimate history of the 80s teen movie. It's full of fun and interesting facts about how the 80s teen movie got started and everyone that was a part of it. Starting in the late 70s, we learn about early movie stars like John Travolta in movies like Grease and Saturday Night Fever. We also learn about different directors during that time as well like John Hughes and Don Simpson. I really enjoyed reading this book and learning about the history behind 80s movies.

Thanks to #NetGalley for the advance copy

A fascinating trip through the 80s! Brought back so many memories from the films of this era.

What James brings is such a delightful in depth view of the films, adding so much texture and facts that I was totally unaware of.

For film aficionados this is a must read, truly enjoyable.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I'm an 80s girl through and through. Raised in the 80s and love all things 80s ESPECIALLY TEEN MOVIES. Although side note, they sort of destroyed reality for me. I thought all boys would be Jake Ryan.
I love how James King went back a little bit and gave references to those from the 70s who paved the way for the 80s teen movies.

This is not a gossip book. There are no "behind the scenes" gossip. What there is through is a look on what goes on behind the scenes when it comes to making a movie and the work that goes in to it.

Great read for a film buff like myself.

The title says it all. This is the most in-depth book on the teen movie you'll read. Most books just hit the Hughes films, this one casts a much wider net. In addition to the films it explores the culture of the time; can you really talk about the films without talking about the fashion or music?

Where the book didn't work for me is the films covered are so broad there were several I never heard of and King dedicates a lot of time to them. At times the book also jumps around in a confusing way; it will compare two movies and I lost track of which one was being discussed.

Overall, again it is very in depth and well written but it may not be the fun read some people want.

As a lover of anything 80's I was super excited to read this book. I love all the movies and have watched them so many times that I could quote all of them from start to finish. I liked this book and was happy to learn the stories behind the movies I have loved for so long. I liked knowing what the process was in making them, casting them, who was suppose to be cast and how the movies would have been different if they had gotten the role. I also like the quotes from the actors and directors about their thoughts on their movies, before and after they were finished. I thought it was incredible to learn all of these facts.

However, it was not everything that I wanted, I was hoping for photographs and more from the actors about the movies. I didn't necessarily need some of the background information, it was good information to learn, but some of it felt like too much.

Overall, I liked the book, and I would recommend it to anyone who loves movies of the 80's.

Thank you for the early copy!

It was great look into some of my favorite films from the 80s! I recommend checking out if you want to learn more about films like The Breakfast Club or others.

I really enjoyed this account of eighties teen movies. It brought back lots of memories and had me searching out old favourites.

I was not a teen until the late '90s and I'm also not a huge movie watcher, but with Fandom Running Club starting a "Cult Classic" medal series, well maybe I should see what the 80s had to offer so I can try and guess on some of the clues to come. (The first one is "Dont You 4K About Me" - The Breakfast Club - which is an 80s movie I have seen!)

The book starts in... 1978? With talk about John Travolta. It compares some of the story lines from the 80s with how they would not fly in a movie today. The book is quite long and touches on a TON of movies... most of which of course I had never seen (but have heard of, at least!) And a lot of details on them. It is a history, after all.

I was hoping for a check list of sorts of all the movies in the back of the book so I could see what I had seen and what I haven't, but let's be honest, my number would probably be able to be counted on one hand.

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review, I was not otherwise compensated. This book is being released March 19, 2019 by Diversion Books.

The title accurately sums up what you will find here: a very thoroughly researched biography of 80s teen movies. Author King takes pains to put all the information into perspective of the era: the power players, the movements, the politics, the movie themes, and the changing social climate.

The book is wonderfully informative and with copious annotations and footnotes that take side information/tangents out of the main text nicely but still provide informative tidbits. It's all there, with intelligent conclusions and less bias than I typically see in this type of work. Perhaps what I appreciate most, this isn't a 'gushing' ode to the genre by a super fan who can no longer be impartial; rather, it's an academic assessment well worth the time for making sense of all the factors that combined to create the environment in which those movies could flourish.

The book is chronological and starts with John Travolta and Saturday Night Fever in the 1970s. From Grease and Porkys, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and the beginning of the 1980s and the atmosphere into which the teen movie phenomenon begins to develop. From Reagan's political changes to other factors including style over substance, the rise of MTV and music tie-ins, low budget straight to video profitability, rise of Blockbuster, low brow comedy, jingoistic leanings, and more. But it all starts with Saturday Night Fever and the story of outcast teens.

There is a big picture to every movie - King puts the puzzle together nicely. The movies that were money winners, the ones that weren't, and why. From Absolute Beginners' misfire to the huge success of Top Gun just a few months later. But just as important, we get background on the directors, actors, and producers. Why they made the choices they did: from Coppola needing money and making Captain EO to Sean Penn's failing marriage with Madonna and how that affected his choice of movies after finding success in e.g., Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

For me, the value of this book is that there is so much more behind every movie than just box office. There is a wide set of variables and influencers on whether they even get made, if they were successful or not, and whether the audience was ready for the underlying themes of the movies. What you don't get here is a lot of gossip or unsubstantiated facts. This isn't an opinion piece but instead is an engaging but intelligent biography of the teen movie movement that started in the 1970s and continued through to the early 1990s. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

I love the 80’s and anything 80’s related. I was born in the 80’s and between my husband and I, I think we’ve seen and own a large majority of the movies mentioned in The Ultimate History of the 80’s Teen Movie by James King and could quote most of the movies by heart. I was so excited to receive an e-copy of the book and read all about the movies I remember growing up with as a young girl - and how differently I view the movies now as an adult! The book starts in the late 70’s with the first few chapters setting the scene for how the late 70’s shaped the 80’s teen movies. I really enjoyed the history and detail in the book, but that’s what this book is - a journey back to my childhood and a history of all the films I remember watching as a girl, and the actors and actresses that appeared frequently on our screens during that time. It’s not a book with Hollywood gossip but a book packed full of movie history spanning over a decade. It could be a little long winded and dry at times, but I loved learning about the history behind some of the iconic movies in my life.