If you’ve been shot, stabbed, burned, tortured, or beaten up, these cinematic badasses of yore show you what you have to do.
Back in the heady days of the 80s (ask your parents), action heroes were simpler folk. They didn’t need fancy CGI or colorful costumes or dubstep to be badasses – all they needed was a gym membership, a knife, and some feathered hair and they could take down Bolivian armies. But even the toughest hero suffers the occasional life-threatening boo-boo. Pay attention, class, here are the best responses to serious injury according to 80s action movies:
ACCEPTABLE RESPONSE 1: Make Out
Example:Highlander
Injury: Stabbed in the stomach
Photo: Twentieth Century Fox | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
You think impaling himself on his own sword would quiet the libido of a Highlander? You clearly don’t know any Highlanders. In an effort to prove his immortality, Connor MacLeod hoists himself on his own petard in front of skeptical ladycop Brenda. They almost immediately bone. Note to time travelers: Women of the 80s found suicide attempts super hot.
ACCEPTABLE RESPONSE 2: Make Out
Example:Raiders of the Lost Ark
Injury: Punched, dragged, shot, and nearly drowned
Photo: Paramount Pictures | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
By taking on the entire German army face-first, Indiana Jones has been reduced to an unshaven bruise once he finally gets onboard the tramp steamer Bantu Wind. As his nurturing girlfriend tends to his wounds, our man makes a play for some hot, steamy tramp steamer nookie. He gets a little, and then passes out. Why? Because “man” that’s why.
ACCEPTABLE RESPONSE 3: Make Out
Example:The Terminator
Injury: Sent through time (it’s painful for non-robots), shot at, banged around during car chase
Photo: Orion Pictures Coproration | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
You have your pick-up lines and your tricks, but check out the kind of game that Kyle Reese is running. He gets himself nearly killed multiple times, arrested, and then escapes from police custody all so he can get back to a motel room with the mother of his future friend and proceed to make said friend the old fashioned way. Score.
ACCEPTABLE RESPONSE 4: Make Out
Example: Rambo: First Blood Part II
Injury: Beaten, sliced by his own knife, electrocuted, dipped in shit, sucked on by leeches
Photo: Orion Pictures Coproration | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
We can see only one bad thing about getting locked in a Vietnamese prison camp and tortured by Russians before your hot local contact springs you by posing as a prostitute: It’ll likely be the only way Rambo can get aroused from now on. “Baby, can you tie me to the box spring again…”
ACCEPTABLE RESPONSE 5: Make Out
Example:Lethal Weapon 2
Injury: Severe cranial blunt force trauma
Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures | Licensed to Alpha Media Group 2012
When Martin Riggs first meets South African attaché Rika Van den Haas, the two knock heads while simultaneously reaching for a file she dropped on the floor. Several scenes later, the two have marathon sex. Coincidence? And if you think bumping foreheads doesn’t qualify as a “serious” injury, you’re too short-sighted. Sure, Riggs SEEMS fine now, but fast forward several years later and look at the impact that blow had on Mel Gibson’s sanity.