Posts tagged Kate Capshaw

As I stated in yesterdays post, many people regard ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ as the definitive Indiana Jones film. However, in my opinion, it plays second fiddle to ‘Temple of Doom’. I emphasise “in my opinion” though, probably my only reasoning is because I remember much more about watching this film when I was a child than I did the first instalment. I wasn’t even a year old when ‘Temple of Doom’ arrived on our shores in the U.K. but judging by the length of time it used to take to get from the box office to the little screen, the terrestrial television rights probably didn’t occur in the U.K. until at least 1986-88 maybe? (Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, I was young!) So that means I would have been about 4-5 years of age watching this for the first time on television. I loved every minute of it!

The opening scene, a little out of place in an action adventure movie, starts with Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) signing in a Chinese nightclub. Indiana Jones is trying to negotiate the trading of an artefact from Chinese gangsters. Things go horribly wrong, Jones and Willie end up scrambling amongst chaos to find a crystal and a life saving antidote that will cure Indy from a deadly poison fed to him by the Chinese gangsters during the negotiations. They manage to escape with the help of a little friend, 12-year-old Short Round (Ke Huy Quan), a mini Indiana Jones wannabe who adds a lot of comic relief to the film.

As they find their way out of the clutches of the gangsters they board a plane, and are left for dead mid-flight. When hey safely avoid crashing inside the plane, they find their way to a distressed Indian village. The village has been stripped of all it’s life, the people are starving and their children have been taken. The shaman tells Indy that he must recover a sacred stone that belongs to the village, that he believes will restore the village back to its natural thriving state. They discover it is one of the Sankara stones, stones that have a magical effect on whoever possesses them, hense why the village has seen such a depression since it was taken.

As they set out on their journey, they arrive at Pankot Palace and everything seems fine and they are treated like royalty. Until they stumble across the Temple of Doom where rituals of a sacrificial nature are being carried out and we find out that the village children are forced into labour underground in a mine.

Indy sets out to retrieve the stone and to free the children from slavery, in the process he meets some near death experiences including being possessed and almost having his heart ripped out by the Thuggee’s psychopathic high priest – Mola Ram (Puri).

The Chase is on!

In one of the most memorable scenes of my childhood, they break the children free after raising havoc in the Temple, and they set out to escape the clutches of the Thuggee warriors. In a wild chase they race through tunnels within the mine shafts in a small rail carriage. Closely followed by the warriors, as the warriors slowly meet their demise one by one, Mola Ram spills a massive reservoir of water that will no doubt flush Indy, Willie and Short Round out of the mines, in the aim of killing them off once and for all.

Needless to say Indy saves the day in spectacular fashion and returns safely to the village, stone in hand and children by his side. On recent viewing this film stands out as one of my favourite movies of my childhood. There were no effects, like there were at the end of Raiders which made it look its age, just simple fun. I think this film optimises, for me, the way Indiana Jones films still manage to take you out of reality and place you in suspended fantasy for a couple of hours!

For your DVD needs… (click the DVD cover for amazon listing)

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - Special Edition DVD