Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made

I first watched Raiders of the Lost Ark when I was in 9th grade. Given that I was born in 1989, that is actually a long ass time after the movie came out. And by watched the movie, I mean only watched like half of it because it was in a class. And by Raiders, apparently I meant one of the other two Indiana Jones movies. Because a few days ago I figured I should re-watch the entire movie before checking out this documentary, and hey, I was surprised that I totally never saw Raiders before.

Now now, I know what happened in the movie. Almost from beginning to end. So much of the film has become parodied, redone, and referenced that I could tell you most of the major plot points like a basic wikipedia article. I just never sat down and saw the dang thing until two days ago.

So why the hell am I watching Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made? Good question. It’s because I am a movie reviewer and I want to watch everything, damn it. If I only watched films I had a history in some way with, this would be called Gorgon Biased Views instead.

Yes, that last joke and this picture are brought to you by teenage levels of humor.

Raiders of the Lost Ark came out in the summer of 1981 and changed many lives. In particular, it changed the lives of Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala, and Jayson Lamb. Chris knew after watching it that he had to recreate the movie. He found Eric, who was a year older, another Raider fan and asked him to join in. He became the director and story board guy. He basically drew out the entire storyboard from the movie after just one viewing. And then they found Jayson, who ended up being key to all of their special effects and production team.

And then from 1981 to 1989, over summer and winter vacations and Holiday weekends they began to recreate Raiders of the Lost Arc. They didn’t film it in order, so scenes show them grow up and descend in age at random. Most of their first two years of shots were bad and had to be redone. They had to close down sets for fire issues and falling outs between friends. They basically used every Christmas and Birthday present to get more prop work done to authenticate the movie. But damn it, in 1989 they finished it, showed it to their town, and moved on with their lives.

Pictured: Not Harrison Ford and Not Steven Spielberg.

Moved on with their lives, for a short time period. They didn’t actually recreate the entire film. They could not do the “plane” scene near the end, with all the explosions, blood, fights, and planes. So they just never tried to because they’d be too disappointed. But their movie got famous again by 2002. It was seen by people throughout the film industry, passing around bad copies of a VHS tape. Eli Roth found it, yes that Eli Roth, loved it, showed it at a Butt-A-Numb-A-Thon run by Harry Knowles and the crowd went bananas.

This got them re-famous. This got them on tours. This got them to meet their idols. And so of course, with all this behind them, they set out to finally film that one last scene. With Kickstarter backers and real cameras and everything. And of course, their life stories, the film, and trying to film the last scene is really what this documentary is about.

As a reminder, I did not grow up with Indiana Jones being a major player in my life. Blame my parents, they showed me what they wanted to when I was young. Despite not having an emotional connection to the film, I had an emotional connection to these kids and their adult final forms as well. It is incredibly inspiring. It is about overcoming all the odds, showing what kids and people can do with limited resources and a whole lot of heart.

It made me long for my own childhood of freedom and time, making me a bit jealous I didn’t do more with it like these kids. I regret not going to the double screening of this documentary with the final cut of their film, but hopefully I will now see it one day in the future. And uhh, probably those other Indiana Jones movies as well.