Top Gun (1986)

Director Tony Scott's jingoistic action film blockbuster, filmed in the midst of ultra-patriotic Reaganite America and staged as a very loud, feature-length, glitzy music video, melodramatically portrayed the character of hotshot, cocky and arrogant fighter pilot Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell (Tom Cruise in a star-making role). The flyboy was destined to become the "top gun" at the Naval Academy Flight School while competing with rival Iceman (Val Kilmer).

He was engaged in a sideplot in a heterosexual love affair, to the tune of the Oscar-winning Best Song "Take My Breath Away," with pretty civilian instructor Charlotte 'Charlie' Blackwood (Kelly McGillis), a contractor at the Top Gun school who had a PhD. in astrophysics.

The entire homoerotic film was basically about male bonding and machismo (high-fives, fetishistic views of male bodies, shower scenes, etc.), as voiced by Quentin Tarantino's character in Sleep With Me (1994) as he analyzed the film's homosexual subtext: ("You think it's a story about a bunch of fighter pilots... It is a story about a man's struggle with his own homosexuality. It is! That is what Top Gun is about, man... They are this gay fighting f--king force.")

"And if you screw up just this much, you’ll be flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog s--t out of Hong Kong!"

"I feel the need...the need for speed."

"You can be my wingman any time."

The gratuitous shirtless volleyball game, to the tune of Kenny Loggins' "Playing With the Boys."

The sensational aerobatic flying sequences and dogfights of fliers in the US Navy's elite (Top Gun) Fighter Weapon School near San Diego.

Naval pilot and radar officer Lt. Nick 'Goose' Bradshaw's (Anthony Edwards) death scene following a tailspin and botched ejection.

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

This acclaimed war film was Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Gustav Hasford's The Short Timers presented in two parts. It first told about the exploits of a recruited young Marine Corps soldier known as Private "Joker" J.T. Davis (Matthew Modine) who experienced dehumanizing South Carolina boot-camp training on Parris Island (under unrelenting, foul-mouthed drill instructor R. Lee Ermey as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman). The boot camp training scenes were dramatically obscene, as the Sgt. transformed young Marine cadets into killing machines with twisted sentiments, and verbal, psychological, and physical abuse and torment: "You're the lowest form of life on Earth. You are not even human f--king beings! You are nothing but unorganized grab-asstic pieces of amphibian s--t! Because I am hard, you will not like me. But the more you hate me, the more you will learn. I am hard, but I am fair! There is no racial bigotry here! I do not look down on niggers, kikes, wops or greasers. Here you are all equally worthless! And my orders are to weed out all non-hackers who do not pack the gear to serve in my beloved Corps! Do you maggots understand that?..."

In the film's most startling scene, overweight misfit and psychopathic Marine Private "Pyle" Leonard Lawrence (Vincent D'Onofrio) suicidally shot himself in the mouth in the bathroom - thereby blowing his head off. The second half of the film was set on the nightmarish, violent front lines within Hue City - a cool, unemotional look at urban warfare on the eve of the 1968 Tet Offensive at the turning point of the war, as it followed "Joker's" work as a photojournalist for a military magazine and his combat soldiering - with his helmet labeled "Born to Kill".

"You had best unf--k yourself or I will unscrew your head and s--t down your neck!"

"Bulls--t. I bet you could suck a golfball through a garden hose."

The early boot camp training scenes with Sergeant Hartman shouting at the recruits, ending with the chilling, dehumanizing bathroom scene in which Private "Pyle" committed suicide after murdering Gunnery Sgt. Hartman.

Immediately after Pyle's suicidal death scene, the striking entrance of a hip-swiveling, mini-skirted Vietnamese prostitute/hooker (Papillon Soo) in Da Nang (viewed from behind as she walked down the street) to the tune of Nancy Sinatra's feminist song: "These Boots Are Make For Walkin'" - and then propositioned two soldiers at a cafe: "You got girlfriend (in) Vietnam?...Well, baby. Me so horny. Me so horny. Me love you long time."

Lethal Weapon (1987)

And the sequels: Lethal Weapon 2 (1989), Lethal Weapon 3 (1992), and Lethal Weapon 4 (1998)

Richard Donner's action-comedy, 'buddy cop' film opened with a shot of the bare buns of psychotic, borderline alcoholic, depressed and self-destructive Vietnam vet/LA cop Sgt. Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) in his beer can-strewn camper-shell trailer as he strutted into his kitchen for a cold beer and greeted his collie at the door, while a day-time game show played on his television. The popular, multi-part, LA cop adventure series with witty dialogue featured the ingenious, mismatched partnership duo of retiring family man/detective-cop Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) (known for repeatedly saying: "I'm too old for this sh-t") and a suicidally-crazed, depressed Sgt. Riggs. In one dramatic scene, Riggs played Russian roulette with a loaded gun (pointed at this forehead and jammed down his throat) while he wept over a picture of his murdered wife.

The action film included its share of deaths, gunfighting, beatings, car chases, profane dialogue, and some nudity (in the opening scene, 22 year-old topless, drug-poisoned hooker Amanda Hunsaker (Jackie Swanson) died by falling backwards from an apartment balcony onto the hood of a parked car below). In the shower electrocution scene, hostage Sgt. Riggs was tortured (strung up half-naked, doused in water, and prodded with an electric sponge) by vile albino killer/henchman Mr. Joshua (Gary Busey) and his Chinese henchman Endo (Al Leong) - who demanded to know about "The Shipment." In the conclusion, Riggs had Mr. Joshua's neck between his legs with a vice-like grip choke hold.

"Now that's a real badge, I'm a real cop, and this is a real f--king gun!"

"Everybody thinks I'm suicidal, in which case I'm f--ked and nobody wants to work with me. Or they think I'm fakin' to draw a psycho pension in which case I'm f--ked and nobody wants to work with me. Basically I'm f--ked."

- "Have you ever met anybody you didn't kill?
- "Well, I haven't killed you yet."

"What are ya, a fag?"

"Let's do what one shepherd said to the other shepherd...
Let's get the flock out of here!"

The scene of Riggs' unconventional strategy of trickily handcuffing himself to another suicidal man named McCleary high atop a building and convincing him to jump - with him.

The scene of the shootout in a Christmas tree lot.

Predator (1987)

And the sequel: Predator 2 (1990)

In this exciting John McTiernan testosterone-soaked, macho action thriller (similar to The Most Dangerous Game (1932) and the space-themed Alien (1979)), Arnold Schwarzenegger starred as Maj. Alan 'Dutch' Schaeffer, an elite, cigar-chewing Army commando sent by the CIA into the rainforest jungles of Central America to combat an invisible, trophy-collecting force preying on them called the Predator (7'2" actor Kevin Peter Hall in a 200 lb. suit) - skinning its victims and leaving them hanging on high tree limbs. The camouflaged, cameleon-like, mysterious, unseen alien creature used lethal blaster firepower and through the film's special effects, was a morphing, thermal being (using its 'heat vision' point of view to detect bodies to kill).

During the tense hunt, marked by lots of one-liners, gunfire and dozens of dead, Dutch and ultra-braggart Blain (Jesse "The Body" Ventura) tried to out-bully each other and put down the others: ("Bunch of slack-jawed faggots around here. This stuff will make you a god-damned sexual Tyrannosaurus, just like me"), while the one token female in the film, guerrilla hostage Anna (Elpidia Carrillo) displayed no nudity or love relationship. Ultimately by the film's brutal climax and face-off with mud-covered Dutch, the Predator was seen with dreadlocks and large mandibles, as Dutch exclaimed: "You're one ugly motherf--ker!"

"If it bleeds, we can kill it."

"I ain't got time to bleed."

"Knock, Knock."

"This place makes Cambodia look like Kansas."

"There's something out there waiting for us, and it ain't no man. We're all gonna die."

The final battle between Dutch and the monstrous creature.

Die Hard (1988)

And all the Die Hard series sequels: Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990), Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995) (aka Die Hard 3), and Live Free or Die Hard (2007) (aka Die Hard 4)

This thrilling classic action film from director John McTiernan was set on Christmas Eve in 1988, with NY cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) in Los Angeles at the high-rise Nakatomi Corporation Building (on the Avenue of the Stars in Century City) for his estranged wife Holly's (Bonnie Bedalia) office party, where international terrorists had taken party-goers hostage and planned to steal $640 million in negotiable bearer bonds from the corporate vaults. In order to stem the robbery and dispatch with each of the bad guys one-by-one, a battered and vulnerable McClane stealthily hid in the elevator shaft, air ducts, uncompleted floors, and on the rooftop and eventually single-handedly battled angry henchman Karl Vreski (Alexander Godunov) with macho bravado and then overcame the film's cultured German terrorist villain Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) by dropping him from the side of the building.

"Yippee-kai-yay, motherf--ker!"

- "You know my name, but who are you? Just another American who saw too many movies as a child? Another orphan of a bankrupt culture who thinks he's John Wayne? Rambo? Marshal Dillon?"
- "I was always kinda partial to Roy Rogers, actually. I really liked those sequined shirts."
- "Do you really think you have a chance against us, Mr. Cowboy?"

The scene of McClane leaping off the top of the exploding building with a firehose tied around his waist, in order to shoot and crash his way into a skyscraper window below.

The death of villain Hans Gruber, as he was dangling out a skyscraper window - and holding onto Holly's Rolex watch - until McClane intervened, unlatched the clasp, and the bad man plunged backwards.