I see these threads come up from time to time and dvdtalkers seem to be good at helping out. These are few movie memories from my childhood that have been nagging me:

1) It is likely from the mid 80's to early 90's. The little I can remember involved a group of kids who team up with an adult. One of the kids has a remote control helicopter. They may (or may not) have attached a camera to it. It had a Monster Squad like vibe. Not that it had monsters in it, but in that kids were teaming up with an adult against someone (something). The main thing I recall is a part where they use a remote control helicopter. I think the helicopter is destroyed shortly after - either by the "bad guys" or by crashing into something.

I posted this on retroland and was given the 1993 film Remote as a possible answer. I do not think that is it.

2) This one involved a talking snowman and a kid who wants to buy some ice skates. The film is live action and it is set in a town (perhaps in Canada) during the winter. I believe the snowman's nose or eyes glowed red. As in most snowman tales, he melts at the end.

3) A kid runs away to live in the woods. He builds a shelter and befriends animals as pets. From time to time, he sneaks back into town and visits the library. I saw this one at school in 5th grade.

4) A family finds that their house is haunted. They hear noises in other rooms, etc. At one point they find their pet bird dead in its cage. A member of the family may have had cancer.

Sorry I don't have many clues to go off of. I saw all of these in the 80's or early 90's. Thanks!

Is this movie about kids trying to rescue a dog or something from a pound? If so, Ive been trying to remember that film as well. Its a black kid who has the remote control helicopter and when it crashes he says something like "That took me 350 corn flakes box tops to get....and I hate corn flakes"

Is that the one? I want to say its similar in name to "The B.R.A.T. Patrol". Maybe like "The Goon Squad" or something like that.

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I think I found it... "Little Spies".

Synopsis
Originally telecast as a two-hour episode of ABC's Wonderful World of Disney anthology, Little Spies gets under way when a bunch of kids lose their adopted dog to the mean owner of a puppy kennel. Enter Jimmy the Hermit (Mickey Rooney), a reclusive WW2 hero who takes a shine to the youngsters. Harking back to his wartime experiences, Jimmy organizes the neighborhood kids into a "commando raid" of the kennel to rescue the pooch. The main characters are direct from the standard Disney stereotype manual, right down to the nerdish kid with glasses and the funny fat one. Little Spies first aired on October 5, 1986. - Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This one sounds like My Side of the Mountain.

I remember one from the 80's.. a group time travels...one scene they end up on the Titanic as it's going down. I thought I remember there were some "little people" in the cast as well. Was this "My Science Project"?

THANKS!!! Amazing work enderwiggin & BlueCC, correct on both counts. Enderwiggin I can't tell you how long I've been trying to find out the name of that one - years. Makes sense that it was a disney movie, I wonder if its available on any format?

Not sure what this one is, but I am sure that it is not My Science Project. I actually just watched MSP this weekend, and that scene does not sound familiar.

This might be Kid Colter.

This is Time Bandits.

Number 4 could be Poltergeist, but I can't imagine that you wouldn't know that.

4 sounds similar to Grave Secrets: The Legacy of Hilltop Drive.

And a freaking awesome movie!

Incorrect. This is Sparta. Please correct your post.

That's it! Thanks, J. Farley! When I read the "toilets flushing by themselves" in the imdb description, I knew it was the one.

If someone could help me out with #2, my day would be made. My Side of the Mountain looks like its out on DVD and Grave Secrets is on VHS. Not sure where I could find Little Spies though?

Thanks a lot to all who have contributed!

The Magic Snowman: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093473/

...with Roger Moore as the voice of the snowman!

Wow, thanks!

Do you guys know this stuff off the top of your head or did you research? I swear, I've spent a long time trying to track down all of these on my own with no success. Thanks again to everyone.

Instead of starting a new thread I'm going to piggy back on this one if nobody minds - this has bugged me for years and it may be a TV movie. It was a large cast movie - maybe even a race movie - and one buy one the heroes in the movie get picked off by the bad guys but they all happen to reappear at the end of the movie with an explnation about what happened to them - I remember one character got caught on top of a hot air balloon and I believe 2 cowboy characters got cement poured on them - they later explained that they were able to replace themselves with saw horse work benches (what!?) before the cement got poured on them - this is all very foggy and pretty lame but it has been bugging me for years!

It's Murder Can Hurt You, a TV movie from around 1979-80 that parodied famous TV detectives. The hot air balloon guy was John Byner as Hatch from "Studsky & Hatch" and the cement guy was "McSky", the parody of McCloud. It also starred Victor Buono, Jimmie Walker, Tony Danza, and Jamie Farr. Hilarious when I was a kid.

Just thought I'd post a general hint about finding movies. Use IMDB's keywords. I was trying to remember a movie for the longest time, I remembered something a horror film with hypnotism and knew it was from the 80's, so I searched for keyword hypnotism, then chose horror for genre, then sorted by release and looked at the 80's movies. In case anyone's curious, the movie was Angustia.

I feel like a cloud has been lifted ! thank you !

Hi Jack,

I had to sign up to this forum specifically to reply to your question. Did you ever find the answer to number 1? i have looked at both B.R.A.T Patrol and Little Spies as suggested, but whilst they ring a bell, i couldn't spot either of them having the remote control helicopter, and i am sure it played a main part in the film. i seem to remember the kids talking to the camera as well, as if they were testing the cameras. This film has been bugging me for years!

update, i found the film i was after, and i am pretty sure it is the same one you were looking for,

Zits, aka Spy Trap (1988).

"A group of middle school students start selling fake military plans to the KGB to pay for their music teacher's eye operation."

full film is at youtube /watch?v=AciL0IoTQVM (i can't post URL's yet)

Wow – this is one that had completely erased itself from my head until it was brought up here, and then it wasn't. And the whole thing's on YouTube. Handy thread!

​​​​I'll second this, though it was a bit tricky in the past on occasion. For years – decades! – I was trying to remember a movie I saw on TV as a kid, in the late 70's or early 80's, but all I could remember was a speedboat chase at the end set to a peppy earworm disco score that never left my brain, that the chase ended with one of the boats crashing through a truck being lowered between two big ships, and that the movie possibly aired on the one of the World of Disney-style shows of the era. But even the IMDb keyword search couldn't help for ages because the film's listing must not have included the words 'boat chase' or 'speedboat chase' or whatever. A more recent search a few months ago finally caught THE LONDON CONNECTION in the results. It debuted on TV in the states, but was one of those Walt Disney productions (with a rare story credit for Martha Coolidge, among others) that played theatrically in Europe and elsewhere. And, thankfully, someone had uploaded it to YouTube just weeks before I found the title.

Detienne - thanks so much for providing the correct answer to this riddle. I don’t come here as often as I used to, but you definitely got the right movie.

However - yikes - after looking into this a bit I’m surprised that the remote controlled helicopter is the part that stuck out in memory. This seems closer to Larry Clark’s Kids than Goonies or Monster Squad:


Still, many thanks and glad to know that DVDtalk is still alive.

You've got to get me over that mountain!!!