A prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is set one year before the original movie and sends Dr Jones off to India via a convoluted double cross, with nightclub singer Willie Scott (Capshaw, beating 120 actresses to the role) and his boy bodyguard Short Round (Quan, now a stuntman) in tow, where they discover the local peasants are being terrorized by a resurrected Thuggee cult, headed up the by the heart-ripping Mola Ram (Purish).

Of the original Indy movies, George Lucas had the most control over Temple of Doom and it’s the episode least loved by everyone, including Steven Spielberg.

Lucas’ desire for a gloomier second instalment came from the success of The Empire Strikes Back, but Indiana Jones lives in a galaxy far, far away from Luke Skywalker and works best with plenty of light and shade.

But, for all the brickbats, this is a breathlessly executed adventure movie; a sequence of set-piece climaxes strung together with such panache it seems churlish to stop and pick holes in the story – like why do the Thuggees kidnap children to mine for the sacred Sankara stones instead of their strong-backed dads?

Spielberg originally envisioned Indiana Jones as a suave James Bond type, and Temple of Doom fits the Bond movie mould: a Shanghai set prologue has a tuxedoed Indy battling Chinese gangsters, Capshaw's career suffered a Bond girl's fate, and Mola Ram’s fortress is a pre-computer age Blofeld hideout.

Despite a temporary ban in India, the film is too divorced from reality for the cries of racism at the Thuggee cult extremists to carry much weight, and the greater disappointment comes from Capshaw’s ditzy blonde screamer replacing Karen Allen’s hard-nosed, hard drinking Marion.

Temple of Doom's gross-out was instrumental in creating the US PG-13 (the film was cut for a PG in the UK), but when Spielberg gets mischievous there is a pleasure in watching how far he’ll push the envelope.

The barf banquet of snake-surprise, sheep’s eye soup and chilled monkey brains is the stuff of giggling schoolboys; more flavourful is the real nastiness – people drugged by supping tainted blood (even Indy goes rotten at one point), hearts ripped out but the victims kept magically alive, and a climax boasting hungry crocs.

And when it comes to action, as the opening song says, "Anything Goes": the Shanghai shootout, the dinghy ride out of a pilotless plane, and the famed minecart rollercoaster (originally written for Raiders) could climax any film of the time, so when the rope-bridge denouement arrives there is a danger of thrill fatigue… but no-one's going to feel short changed.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom sits between ET and The Color Purple in Spielberg’s career and the push-pull of mass-entertainment megahits and the desire for something edgier keeps the film off-kilter.

But, twenty plus years on, the film bullwhips The Mummy, Pirates of the Caribbean and National Treasure into submission, and although Steve isn’t the film’s biggest fan, it got him the girl: Capshaw later became his wife. 

Rob Daniel