While on vacation in Hawaii in 1977, filmmakers Steven Spielberg and George Lucas came up with the idea for a movie based on the serials they had loved as children: action movies set in exotic locales with cliffhangers every second. Recalled Spielberg: "I wondered why they didn't make movies like that anymore. I still wanted to see them." Apparently, so did millions of Americans, as Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the fruit of the filmmakers' labors, grossed more than $200 million domestically in its first box-office run and re-established the adventure movie genre in U.S. film.

Harrison Ford in a scene from the film Raiders of the Lost Ark.

With Spielberg as director and Lucas as executive producer, Raiders of the Lost Ark follows the adventures of Indiana Jones (played by burgeoning screen icon Harrison Ford), a mild-mannered, bespectacled archeology professor...