Ah, the art of dance: elegant, beautiful, expressive, and greatly enhanced by the presence of biker gangs, awkward high school assemblies, giant platform shoes and hunchbacks.
Our recent release of Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo on Blu-ray got us thinking of the many ways dance has been successfully incorporated into classic movies, so we conducted a definitively unscientific poll of Shout! Factory employees and fans to come up with this list of 7 irresistible movie dance scenes that will always lift your spirits and put you in a good mood.
Napoleon Dynamite
This scene lives forever in our hearts by virtue of being one of the most unexpected movie moments we've seen — it's so funny, so awkward, and yet he's legitimately got the moves. Too bad he doesn't have comparable nunchuk skills.Rocky Horror Picture Show
This perennial cult favorite has one of the most famous dance scenes of all time, but it also has a little something extra that most films don't: an accompanying dance that anyone can learn. There aren't too many movies that can boast that feature; just see how many people do the Saturday Night Fever dance together at your next party, for example. Speaking of which...Saturday Night Fever
John Travolta has been in his fair share of great dance scenes, but none are more iconic than Saturday Night Fever. Travolta is disco. Bonus points: it's inspired some other great dance scenes as well, from Airplane! to The Office.Singin' in the Rain
Some dance scenes are memorable because they're silly. Some are memorable because they're straight-up iconic. Such is the case with Singin' In The Rain, a movie that, like Saturday Night Fever, has so many great dance moments to choose from it's hard to pick the best one. So we'll just go with the scene where Gene Kelly is literally singing (and dancing) in rain. Seems fair, right?Dirty Dancing
t's a movie set in the '60s featuring an incredibly-'80s-sounding song as the centerpiece of its final dance climax. No one ever seemed to notice, or at least seemed to care, as the film has now brought in over $200 million worldwide. Two hundred million freaking dollars! Maybe movie studios should try putting Baby in a corner more often.Pee-wee's Big Adventure
We love Pee-wee Herman here at Shout! Factory, but so do the many people who made a point of voting for possibly the most memorable scene in the excellent 1985 movie Pee-wee's Big Adventure. If there's one thing we can take away from the Pee-wee "Tequila" dance, it's that any time you're about to be murdered by a biker gang, drop a quarter in the jukebox and start smashing everything in sight. You'll win 'em over soon enough.Breakin' + Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo
"Oh, but you're biased because you just put out both Breakin' movies on Blu-ray" you're saying right now because your hobby is disagreeing with online lists. But am I really biased, or do these films simply combine to make the most amazing cinematic dance experience in history?
I mean, I'm a little biased obviously, but I think the other thing is true, too.