When the subject of Generation-X films comes up, everybody remembers the John Hughes classics The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, and Pretty in Pink, and Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything and Singles, and Kevin Smith’s Clerks and Chasing Amy. A more attentive movie buff might also remember Repo Man or Kids or Blue Velvet, or there’s even the possibility that a few of you wandered naively into The Crying Game or Paris is Burning or The Pillow Book and never have been able to forget what you saw. Or maybe you went out on a limb once or twice back in the ’80s and ’90s and tried to watch those cool new movies people were talking about, like Videodrome or Slacker or Wild at Heart. But there’s much more, and I keep thinking of movies that I didn’t include in the first ten I offered, or in the second ten that followed, then in a supposedly last one after that, so here’s yet another round of ten more that might have gotten lost in the shuffle.

Gas Food Lodging (1992)

This film stars Ione Skye in the years after River’s Edge and Say Anything and Fairuza Balk in the years before The Craft, American History X, and The Waterboy. It’s the story of two teenage girls living with their single mother, who manages a gas station and motel in the middle of nowhere. They’re trying to grow up and realize lives that are bigger than the mundane existence they have in the desert. As an aside, J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. also has small role.

Over the Edge (1978)

Matt Dillon became truly famous with the 1983 double-whammy of SE Hinton’s The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, followed by The Flamingo Kid in 1984. This one was his first feature film. I’d say, back in late 1970s and early 1980s, there were three young actors who played the best teenage tough guys: Sean Penn, who was Mick in Bad Boys; Jackie Earle Haley, who was Kelly Leak in Bad News Bears, and Matt Dillon. All three dudes just had it— bad attitude for no good reason. In this movie, Dillon plays the unruly, dangerous friend of a well-to-do junior high school kid. They live in a wannabe-idyllic suburb, but the problem is that the teenagers and kids in the community are terrible. Then, after Dillon’s character Richie gets killed by the hard-nosed cop who is always hassling them, the teenagers go crazy!

Gleaming the Cube (1989)

Christian Slater could do no wrong the 1980s – The Legend of Billie Jean in 1985, The Name of the Rose in 1986, and Heathers in 1988 – but then there’s this clunker in 1989. (Thankfully for him, he redeemed himself in 1990 with Pump Up the Volume and again in 1993 with True Romance.) Gleaming the Cube was a painfully obvious effort to capitalize on Slater’s indie image by casting him as a skater, but if the studio folks were going to put a cool actor into a cool scenario, the least they could have done was make a cool movie, not some TV action-show ’80s cheese. In the movie, Slater’s character is trying to find out who killed his Vietnamese (adopted) brother, and of course, has to confront the bad guys. They did throw Tony Hawk in there to give it some street cred, but still no.

One on One (1978)

It was impossible to grow up in the 1980s and avoid Robby Benson.  In this movie, he played a basketball player who has trouble adjusting to life in college. Before that, Benson was Billy Joe McAllister in 1976’s Ode to Billy Joe. Later he was the lead in Chaim Potok’s The Chosen and played George Gibbs in a TV movie of Our Town.  Either this guy was versatile as hell or some executive in Hollywood decided that Benson was the teenage/young adult Everyman du jour. About this movie, we’ve got the underdog story of a small town kid who goes bigtime and is in over his head, but of course, there’s a pretty girl to help him get through. Remember, in the ’80s, it was always a love story . . .

Crossing Delancey  (1988)

This movie about being young and single . . . and pressured to marry might age out of being a GenX film, since those in our generation were between ages 8 and 23 in its release year 1988. Only the oldest GenXers, those born in the mid- to late 1960s, were old enough to get married, but this film’s GenX vibe comes from its ’80s-ness. New York City in the 1970s and ’80s was a mythical place, and leading actress Amy Irving was very recognizable at this time, most notably from 1984’s Micki + Maude. (And of course, we recognize actor Peter Reigert as Otter from 1981’s Animal House.) While not many of us were young, happily single Jewish women working in a New York City bookstore, the vibe of our generation is still there.

Reform School Girls (1986)

I hadn’t thought about this movie in a long time until I was re-watching Lost Boys recently and saw the poster on Sam’s wall. This is an exploitation film from the girls-behind-bars sub-genre, which is really just a cheesy excuse to make a nudie movie with a few girl-fights in it. The villain here is Miss Edna, an ugly, mean woman with a scratchy voice who runs the juvie dorm for girls as her own private hell. The other villain in the story is ’80s sexy mean girl Wendy O. Williams, who is something of a gang leader.  The acting is bad, the sets are cheap, all the things— but it was the ’80s, so audiences put up with it because they knew two things: there would be gratuitous nudity, and the villain would be defeated in the end.

Pretty Smart (1987)

This movie is probably the most obscure one in this list. Its story has two rival factions of teenage girls in a boarding school on a Greek isle coming together when they realize that the headmaster is secretly videoing them and selling drugs. I added it in part because of the plot line’s general similarity to Reform School Girls. And also because it was one of Patricia Arquette’s first films. Arquette would later become much more well-known in 1990, playing Alabama Wurley in True Romance.

The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977)

I loved the original 1976 Bad News Bears movie. This one came out the following year and ranks up there with the first one. They made one more of these, The Bad News Bears Go to Japan, which came out two years later in 1979, but . . . they were basically trying to keep the motif in this movie going. Two were enough. This sequel to the original is a mixture of underdog comedy and road movie, with most of the same characters and actors. This time, though, the story is not about the young pitcher Amanda and the drunkard Buttermaker. This time, the remaining Bears get an opportunity play another team in Houston, even though they have no coach— so they go anyway. Its story is highly unlikely and requires some willing suspension of disbelief, but it’s still charming to watch. Especially the end, when Tanner Boyle gets chased around the outfield in the Astrodome as the crowd cheers, “Let them play! Let them play!”

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993)

Adapted from a Tom Robbins novel, this movie stars Uma Thurman as Sissy Hankshaw, a hitchhiker with incredibly large thumbs. The film’s release date in 1993 settles it right in between her earlier performances in Dangerous Liaisons and Henry & June and her big hits that followed: Pulp Fiction and Beautiful Girls. Its director Gus Van Sant had also just made 1989’s Drugstore Cowboy, 1991’s My Own Private Idaho, and a whole bunch of music videos for popular bands. This movie is quirky and odd, to some degree magical realism. It features a has-been model and an all-female dude ranch, and the conflicts in the film are set in motion by a transsexual advertising genius in New York who abhors vaginal odor and thus operates a re-beautification ranch that doubles as a sanctuary for whooping cranes. Other notable actors in the cast are Pat Morita (Mr. Miyagi), Keanu Reeves, Angie Dickinson, and two of my favorites: Crispin Glover and Victoria Williams.

Corvette Summer (1978)

I feel certain that Mark Hamill had no idea how big Star Wars was going to be when he signed on to do this movie, which came out the following year. Corvette Summer is about a high school senior who is the main machine-head in his auto-shop class, and they take a half-wrecked Corvette from the junkyard and rebuild it. When they get done, the thing is ultra-tricked out, and they’ve made it even more unique by putting the driver on the right side (like cars in Europe). Everything is cool until one kid (played by The Partridge Family’s Danny Bonaduce) leaves the keys in it and goes to buy Cokes. Of course, the car gets stolen, and Hamill’s character hits the road to find it. While he’s bumming around Las Vegas, sleeping in a U-Haul trailer and finding ways to stay fed, he meets a pretty young woman (played by Annie Potts) who is trying to start as career as a prostitute. With these kooky characters in place, the two become an unlikely duo with conflicting aims. Yet, our protagonist is singular of purpose: get that car back. Though this is not a very good movie, it is also not typical and formulaic like a lot of high school films from the time. (A bit of trivia: director Matthew Robbins wrote the screenplays for 1974’s Sugarland Express and 1981’s Dragonslayer, then directed The Legend of Billie Jean in 1985.)

Read the Whole Big List: 50 GenX Movies that You’ve Probably Forgotten (or Never Seen)