Justin's Childhood Movie Girlfriends

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: April O'Neil (Judith Hoag)

The Three Aprils: Cartoon, TMNT1, TMNT2/3

THEN: I'm pretty sure that I wasn't in the minority of teenage boys who found themselves irresistably attracted to April O'Neil of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When the movie came out in 1990, we were crossing our fingers, hoping that Movie April would be as cute as the yellow-jumpsuited Cartoon April. While three dimensions didn't exactly stack up to two, TMNT1's April (Judith Hoag) was a definite cutie, while TMNT2 and 3's April (Paige Turco) brought the pretty but left any feeling of "April" at home. Overall, I think this crush had to do with a crossover between my childhood love of fantasy, cartoons and games, and the newer world of dating and girls. Here, we had both! A girl in a fantasy movie based off a cartoon! Life couldn't really top this moment.

NOW: The only question that still floats around in my mind is... which turtle does April end up with? I mean, sure, they gave her Casey Jones in the movie as a love interest, but we all know that the TEENAGE turtles had serious crushes of their own, so it boils down to which one she'd choose. My money's on Raphael; girls always like the rebel with weird knife thingies. Of course, the question of how a girl can kiss a turtle who's mouth is big enough to swallow her head still remains.

The Breakfast Club: Allison (Ally Sheedy)

Pathological Liar and Pathological Cutie

THEN: Call me crazy ("Hey, Crazy!"), but I like to be realistic in my teen crushes. Sure, sometimes I would get all glassy-eyed (and then crash and fail my driver's test) over an unobtainable model, but more often than not, I would be attracted to the screen version of the girl next door. In The Breakfast Club, Allison (Sheedy) was the weirdo reject, but she couldn't have been cuter. I liked her no-nonsense attitude and her shaggy hair, because the quiet girls are always the ones I really wanted to get to know.

NOW: Considering that Ally is now in her 40's, my childhood dream of a star-crossed meeting has drifted away on the sea of forgetfulness. I still think she's cool in TBC, but no longer does my heart do tiny flip-flops when she shakes the dandruff from her hair.

Return of the Killer Tomatoes: Tara (Karen Mistal)

H. O. T. Hot!

THEN: Part of my childhood fantasies were concocting plausible ways in my mind for really gorgeous girls to hook up with me. About as plausible as I could get was the whole concept of a woman coming to life from a manniquin or tomato and having absolutely no idea how pretty she really is, thereby falling head over heels for my sweet, sensative side. [Pause as the MRFH readership picks themselves up off the floor after sixteen consecutive minutes of howling laughter] Tara was indeed so hot that the sun looked like an ice cube next to her. But the genius of her character was that she was basically a newborn alien in our world, and thus attainable by anyone.

NOW: Tara, aka "Karen Mistal" in real life, still holds a special place in my hubba-hubba memories. Despite having a rather vacant expression reminiscent of a befuddled puppy, she is ten degrees of sexy and cute. Her scenes in Return of the Killer Tomatoes (particularly when she's dripping wet) are such that any mortal man would be brought to their knees in happy tears that they are alive to witness such splendor. Yup. Also, Karen was just in Space Cowboys as a female astronaut, so that makes her smart AND beautiful!

Honey, I Shrunk The Kids: Amy (Amy O'Neill)

French class! HAHAHAHAHA!

THEN: I pretty much explained my fawning over Amy in my review of Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, but here's a brief recap. As the peach-shirted teen love interest, Amy was as chaste as Disney could make her, yet the Mouse Ears managed to titilate young males by (1) getting her soaking wet, and (2) having two mouth-to-mouth scenes that remain some of the most memorable on-screen kisses from my youth. I dug Amy. She was literally the girl next door, and boy how! It also taught me that if I rescued a girl from drowning, she became obligated to suck face at a later point in the script right before the giant fake scorpion attacked.

NOW: As I age and movie characters stay the same age, it's now become rather disturbing to be attracted to any character under the age of 20, and thus Amy has long since become just another example of how kiss-starved I was as a teen. It's okay. I have a dog and a girlfriend now, I'm fine in that department. Also, while many of my childhood crushes were on blondes, I don't usually fall for them any more. Weird.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure: Joan of Arc (Jane Wiedlin)

Marry Me!

THEN: Here's my take on the two main types of beauty. There's hot beauty, which gets you (as Garth says) "all tingly, like when you climb the ropes in gym class"; and there's cute beauty, which sticks with you forever and ever. When I first saw Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure at a church lockin, I fell head-over-heels for Joan of Arc. She barely said anything, she wore a lot of chain metal, but those doe eyes and radiant cuteness stole my heart. This is why BaTEA became my most-watched movie that year. Alas, she never came through the screen to meet me.

NOW: Yes, about the entire population of Brazil has e-mailed me to inform me that Joan of Arc is Jane Wiedlin from the Go-Go's, so I'm pretty aware of that now. I had no idea who the Go-Go's were when I was a kid. She's also the singing telegram girl in Clue, and had some role in Star Trek IV. As she's moved into her mid-forties and is apparently into the corset fetish scene, I'll have to just put her on the memory mantle and remember only that cute warrior-aerobic chick of my childhood.

Star Trek II and III: Saavik (Kirste Alley and Robin Curtis)

Hunka Burnin' Vulcan Love

THEN: Yes, there were two actresses (Kirstie Alley and Robin Curtis) who played Saavik, the spicy Vulcan sweetheart who became part of the Enterprise crew in Star Trek II, and kept Spock alive by mating with him in Star Trek III. While both actresses were suitably cute, my crush derived from the novelizations of the films, which went into a lot more of the sex (Saavik and David, Saavik and Spock), which in turn made me view the on-screen Saaviks in a new light. Okay, maybe there was a hint of Oedipus complex in there (Saavik being an older girl who is capable of taking care of everything), but I think having a character who really IS hot-blooded and a strong female makes her darn near irresistable to any teen boy. Girls are too cold nowadays. You get frostbite if you just hold their hands.

NOW: Here's the lesson I learned from this crush. Never... ever... be so honest that you share with your girlfriend your childhood fantasies, particularly when they stem from a Star Trek character. She'll NEVER LET IT GO. I mean, we'd be in the middle of some insane fight that made sense only to her, and suddenly she'd whip out my Saavik crush from her memory banks and somehow use it against me. Let this be a warning to you. Some things are much better when you keep them to yourself. Which is why, I suppose, I'm sharing this list with the entire internet. In retrospect, neither of the Saaviks are that incredibly pretty, and having outgrown my older-woman fascination, Saavik fades away into a fond memory.

The Karate Kid: Ali (Elisabeth Shue)

Career Girlfriend

THEN: Elisabeth Shue is one of those actresses that survived the transition with grace between a childhood crush and an an adult... um... appreciation. As a red-blooded teen, Shue was impossible to miss or dream about. She got all the desirable "girlfriend" roles, from Karate Kid to Adventures in Babysitting to the last two Back to the Future films. Karate Kid is what nailed it for me, tho, as Ali personified the perfect 80s beauty: blonde, shapely, big socks, and Californian. As some actresses focus on certain parts of their anatomy to keep their pinup status alive, Shue's has always been her legs. I can't say more for fear of descending from my clinically detached observation post into a drooling lust monkey. And nobody wants that.

NOW: As Shue has worked in films steadily over the past few decades, we got to see how she's grown up into a beautiful woman who keeps taking strong and smart girl roles (The Saint, Hollow Man). Hey, when I saw the dreck that was Hollow Man, Shue was by far the best thing in there. I'd still be persuaded to give her my number... if she asked nicely.