1981 review of RAIDERS - look!

Posted by Donovan from ool-18bebba8.dyn.optonline.net on June 26, 2001 at 19:31:37:

Hi, so to celebrate the 20th Anniversary I'm going to try to dig up a
bunch of articles and reviews and what not on RAIDERS from back in the
day.

So to start I took a look through the back issues in our research
library and pulled out the review of RAIDERS from PEOPLE MAGAZINE way
back in July 1981, so here's what they had to say:

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
"An inspired, all-star collaboration of director Steven (Jaws)
Spielberg, producer George (Star Wars) Lucas and screenwriter Lawrence
(Empire Strikes Back) Kasdan, this film is a volcano of creative ideas
in full eruption - the modern high action adventure against which all
others must now be measured.

Lucas wanted to do a film about a daredevil archeologist set in the
1930s and modeled on that era's cliff-hanger serials. With the help of
Philip Kaufman, who directed 1978's The Invasion Of The Body
Snatchers, he sketched a plot that pits his hero, Harrison Ford,
against the Nazis. They're searching for the Ark of the Covenant - a
golden chest, lost since 980 B.C. and said to contain the broken
tablets of the Ten Commandments. Since biblical lore suggests the Ark
will be recovered at the true Messiah's coming, Hitler is hot to have
it. "He's nuts on the subject," a U.S. government agent announces.

Ford, armed only with a bullwhip and his sharp-tongued lady-love
(Karen Allen), sets out to save the Ark for democracy. Historical fact
does not figure prominently in these proceedings, but fun does.
Spielberg has staged the most exultantly good-humored, head-on,
rousing series of traps and escapes since Pauline was eluding her perils.

Cheers, too, for Ford's satirical approach to macho, Allen's Jean
Arthur-ish zest and the venomous villainy of Paul Freeman and Ronald
Lacey. But the show actually belongs to Lucas and Spielberg. They
lavish mint-fresh inventiveness on every frame and raise movie
escapism very near the level of art."

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