Give me the whip!

While you squabble over whether The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull lives up to the hype, jog your memory with the original Indiana Jones trilogy, now out as special edition DVDs

Temple of Doom (1984)

 Also known as the movie in which our very own Amrish Puri plays the baddie, Temple was inevitable, given the runaway success of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Apparently located somewhere in India, Jones is begged by a village elder to find a set of magical jewels that have disappeared, along with all the children in the village.

Jones obliges, and tracks them to the vast underground dungeon of an evil maharaja (Amrish Puri, of course). We know that he succeeds. But the fun bit is watching him do it.

The Last Crusade (1989)

The last of the Indiana Jones movies—at least for then—was also the one that filled in Jones’ back story. We see how as a kid he stumbled upon his first adventure and got that famous fedora. And if Jones had a father, then he would have to be Sean Connery. 

Connery puts in a superb performance as Indiana’s equally intrepid daddy. The action starts when Jones Sr is kidnapped by a bunch of thugs, who try to get the secret out of him.

So, Jones sets off on two simultaneous quests—his father and the Holy Grail. What follows is typical Indiana Jones fare—chases through catacombs and mountains with unlimited thrills and spills.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

This is the movie that started it all. Mixing cheap pulp fiction comics, throwing in a dash of Alain Quatermain and Humphrey Bogart and tying it all up with some brilliantly-filmed action, Raiders was a trendsetter. The two men in charge, producer George Lucas and director Steven Spielberg, had proved with Star Wars and Jaws, respectively, just what they could do with B-grade plots. In Raiders, they topped themselves.

Harrison Ford starred as Jones, an intrepid archaeologist and adventurer, who seemingly can’t get through a normal working day without tumbling off horses, hanging by his fingernails from a cliff-top or fighting giant spiders.

Recruited by the US government— in 1936, which is when the movie is set—to unearth the Biblical Ark of the Covenant and beat the evil Nazis to it, Ford does it all with smart aplomb, witty one-liners and a graceful swish of his kinky whip. One of the best adventure movies ever.