Stand By Me (1986)

In director Rob Reiner's coming-of-age film - an adaptation of a Stephen King story (The Body):

• the opening voice-over narration by the Writer (Richard Dreyfuss) - later identified as adult-aged Gordie Lachance - introducing a flashback: "I was 12 going on 13 the first time I saw a dead human being. It happened in the summer of 1959 - a long time ago"
• the quartet of young boys: Gordie Lachance (Wil Wheaton), Chris Chambers (River Phoenix), Teddy Duchamp (Corey Feldman), and Vern Tessio (Jerry O'Connell) - and their adventures, including the train-dodging sequence
• the conversation between Vern and Teddy about Mighty Mouse vs. Superman as they walked along the tracks: Vern: "Do you think Mighty Mouse could beat up Superman?" with an obvious conclusion proposed by Teddy: "Mighty Mouse is a cartoon. Superman is a real guy. No way a cartoon could beat up a real guy"
• the tall tale (told by Gordie at nighttime campfire) about a pie-eating contest when chubby competitor Davie 'Lard Ass' Hogan - who had finished off a bottle of castor oil, consumed a raw egg and five whole blueberry pies, and then sought revenge against the tormenting bullies in his life by vomiting a projectile of half-digested food onto them: "Diving into his fifth pie, Lard Ass began to imagine that he wasn't eating pies. He pretended he was eating cowflops and rat guts in blueberry sauce....Slowly, a sound started to build in Lard Ass's stomach. A strange and scary sound like a log truck coming at you at 100 miles an hour. Suddenly, Lard Ass opened his mouth and before Bill Travis knew it, he was covered with five pies worth of used blueberries"; a contagious barfing-fest soon broke out: "...when the smell hit the crowd, that's when Lard Ass's plan really started to work. Girlfriends barfed on boyfriends. Kids barfed on their parents. A fat lady barfed in her purse. The Donelley twins barfed on each other. And the Women's Auxiliary barfed all over the Benevolent Order of Antelopes. And Lard Ass just sat back and enjoyed what he'd created. A complete and total barfarama"
• the interesting question posed between them: "Mickey's a mouse, Donald's a duck, Pluto's a dog, so what's Goofy?"
• the long, poignant scene between the two twelve year-old schoolboy buddies Chris and Gordie regarding how Chris was always labeled a 'low-life' due to his family's 'black-sheep' reputation: ("It's the way they think of me") in their town of Castle Rock in Oregon; he described how he had been blamed for a theft of milk money: " No one even asked me if I took the milk money that time. I just got a three-day vacation.... Yeah, I took it. You knew I took it. Teddy knew I took it. Everyone knew I took it. Even Vern knew it, I think. Maybe I was sorry, and I tried to give it back....Maybe, just maybe. And maybe I took it to Old Lady Simons and told her, and the money was all there. But I still got a three-day vacation, because it never showed up. And maybe the next week, old Lady Simons had this brand new skirt on when she came to school...So let's just say that I stole the milk money, but old Lady Simons stole it back from me. Just suppose that I told this story. Me, Chris Chambers, kid brother to Eyeball Chambers. Do you think that anyone would have believed it?...And do you think that bitch would have tried something like that if it had been one of those douche bags from The View, if they had taken the money? No way. Hell, no. But, with me, I'm sure she had her eye on that skirt for a long time. Anyway, she saw her chance and she took it. I was the stupid one for even trying to give it back. (He started crying) I just never thought, I never thought that a teacher... - Who gives a f--k anyway? I just wish that I could go someplace where nobody knows me. I guess I'm just a pussy"
• the stand-off scene after the discovery of the body, when Gordie pulled a gun and threatened gang leader "Ace" Merrill (Kiefer Sutherland) and his three buddies who wanted to claim credit for finding the corpse: "You're not taking him. Nobody's taking him...Don't move, Ace. I'll kill you, I swear to God...Suck my fat one, you cheap dime-store hood"
• Gordie's last hopeful words to Chris who felt trapped, as they said goodbye: "You can do anything you want, man"; followed by the Writer's voice-over summary of everyone's fate: "Chris did get out. He enrolled in the college courses with me. And although it was hard, |he gutted it out like he always did. He went on to college and eventually became a lawyer. Last week, he entered a fast-food restaurant. Just ahead of him, two men got into an argument. One of them pulled a knife. Chris, who had always made the best peace, tried to break it up. He was stabbed in the throat. He died almost instantly"
• the film's last line (accompanied by Ben E. King's title theme song) in which The Writer lamented as he typed on his computer monitor: ("Although I hadn't seen him in more than ten years I know I'll miss him forever. I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anybody?")