sent from: Waterloo Station, London, UK. destination: Barnes, London, UK

When Raiders Of The Lost Ark was released in 1981, I was too young to see it, but I would hear people’s descriptions of the horror of the melting faces and my eyes must have been wider than a Muppet’s. I saw it eventually on TV in various edited forms. Temple of Doom, again I think I didn’t see it in the cinema – although I have a memory of seeing it I think it was a bit of historical revisionism. The Last Crusade, however, was perfectly timed. The anticipation I felt in summer of 1989 to go see it was intense – I can still recall the excitement with which I devoured every tidbit, every production still, the first teaser that came out in 1988 showing some behind-the-scenes footage of the tank chase, the first thing they filmed. It may just have all been canny marketing, manipulating me into the perfect franchise consumer, but it didn’t feel that way, it felt like pure fan-love, a sense of true anticipation of the spectacle, unsullied by the years since of more cynical marketing campaigns and strategies (cf. Transformers et al.)