What do John Hughes, Big Bird, Tom Holland and Nic Roeg all have in common? Today! They all were featured in, or directed, movies that were released on August 2nd, 1985. Let’s take a look back…
On this date in 80s movie history, three new wide releases would join two single market exclusives openings in theatres.
This was Sesame Street’s attempt to try and emulate the movie success of their cousins The Muppets, and going with Big Bird as the anchor for your first feature would have been a no-brainer move. And then adding a bevy of then-current comedy stars to appear in the film, much like how The Muppets utilized comedy stars in their movies.
But for whatever reason, Follow That Bird just didn’t connect with moviegoers, despite some very strong and positive reviews from critics. In its first three days, the film would only gross $2.42m from 1129 screens, which would only put them in ninth place in the box office race. The film would hang on for a few more weeks, before school returned in early September, but the film would come nowhere to being as success as any Muppet movie, with a final box office gross of only $13.9m.
Fright Night. A teenager discovers his new next door neighbor is a vampire, and recruits the host of a local horror movie show (who once played a vampire hunter in a series of movies) to help him defeat this new neighborhood scourge. Now, when I said “Tom Holland” previously, I meant the writer and director of Fright Night, Tom Holland, who, after writing such films as Class of 1984, Psycho II, and Cloak & Dagger, was given a chance to direct his screenplay for this movie. In fact, it would be during the writing of Cloak & Dagger that Holland would come up with the idea for the movie. He though it would be funny if a horror movie fan discovered his neighbor was a vampire, but it would take Holland another year to find the second half of the movie, thinking “What’s a kid to do when everyone thinks you’re crazy? You get Vincent Price!” Holland wouldn’t be able to get Vincent Price to play Peter Vincent, but he would be able to get another beloved genre actor, Roddy McDowell. When the movie was finished, McDowell would show it to Price, who ended up loving the movie.
Of the three new wide releases this weekend, Fright Night would be the highest grosser, earning $6.12m in ticket sales, but it would place third overall, behind Back to the Future and European Vacation, and it would do fairly well for a summer horror movie release, finishing its run with a $24.9m gross, higher than more highly touted Summer 1985 horror films like Day of the Dead ($5.8m), Lifeforce ($11.6m), Return of the Living Dead ($14.2m) and The Stuff ($1.8m).
Insignificance, based on a play by Terry Johnson, follows four characters (The Actress, The Ballplayer, The Professor, and The Senator) as they all converge on the same New York City hotel room over the course of one evening and morning sometime in 1954. It is rather clear who the characters are supposed to be, although none of this pretends to be anything resembling the truth more than the start of the film, when The Actress has her white skirt blown over her head while filming a scene for a movie, while her Ballplayer husband watches on with disgust.
The play was written after Terry Johnson learned that an autographed picture of The Professor was found in the possessions of The Actress when she died.
Now, here’s the funny thing. It is acknowledged the movie opened in one theatre on August 2nd, 1985, and that it would gross $29,500 in its first three days, but damn if I cannot for the life of me figure where it played. It wouldn’t open in Chicago or Los Angeles or New York City or Seattle for another couple weeks, but with a gross that high, it had to be in some metropolitan area. It would play in major markets for about three months, and finish with a box office gross of just under $900k. There is a very good Blu-ray version of the movie available from The Criterion Collection.
Nelson Pereira dos Santos was one of Brazils’ most celebrated filmmakers, and Memories of Prison is considered one of his best. But like many Brazilian filmmakers, even if his movies did open in America, they would do okay in cities like Los Angeles and New York, but would not find much support elsewhere. This film told the story of Brazilian writer Graciliano Ramos’ period in prison after being considered a subversive element by the government, based on Ramos’ biography. And while the political situation in Brazil in 1984, when the movie was made, was slightly better than in 1935, when Ramos found himself in jail for his alledged participation in the Communist Uprising of 1935. The film would get great reviews from the major Los Angeles film critics, and would get a decent $10,500 worth of ticket sales when it first opened at the Fox International Theatre in Los Angeles, but it doesn’t seem to have played in New York outside of a couple screenings at Lincoln Center as part of the 1984 New York Film Festival.
Peril (Péril en la demeure in France) tells the story of a struggling guitar teacher in Paris who finds himself involved with the mother of a young woman he’s been hired to teach, and involved in a possible contract hit against the father of his student/husband of his lover. It’s all so very complicated, very French, very sexy, and very twisted to the end. If you don’t know French cinema very well, any movie featuring Richard Bohringer or Michel Piccoli is worth watching, and getting both of them in the same movie is a treat.
The film would open at the Cinema 1 in New York City, and gross $13k in its first three days. But weeks after its opening, the French production company and distributor Gaumont, a 50% owner of Triumph Films, decided to leave the partnership they had created with Columbia Pictures, which left this and three other French films then in distribution in America in limbo. No future bookings were made for the film, and it would get any further advertising support in the markets it will still playing in. When it finally left theatres at the end of September, the final gross was just under $175k.
Weird Science. When I was 17, I loved this movie. Now that I’m 54, I now just how problematic the movie is on so many levels. There are some good moments in the film, and I believe this was the first time I became aware of the awesomeness that was Bill Paxton, but the whole premise is bad bad bad, and the dive bar scene should just disappear off the face of the universe. My excuse for my previous enjoyment of it was that I was a young, dumb, horny virgin, and I would have killed to be able to spend time with a woman like Kelly LeBrock.
Opening on 1158 screens, Weird Science would open to $4.9m in ticket sales, and it would become one of the biggest hits of the summer, grossing $38.9m after sixteen weeks.
As for the national top ten, here’s what topped the list:
1) Back to the Future (Universal)
$8,687,291 from 1516 theatres.
$81.94m after five weeks.
2) National Lampoon’s European Vacation (Warners)
$7,365,477 from 1546 theatres.
$27.39m after two weeks.
3) Fright Night (Columbia)
$6,118,543 from 1542 theatres.
$6.12m after three days.
4) Weird Science (Universal)
$4,895,421 from 1158 theatres.
$4.90m after three days.
5) The Black Cauldron (Disney)
$3,072,085 from 1252 theatres.
$11.51m after two weeks.
6) E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial [re-release] (Universal)
$2,767,240 from 1427 theatres.
$25.41m after three weeks.
7) Cocoon (Fox)
$2,561,039 from 948 theatres.
$56.48m after six weeks.
8) Silverado (Columbia)
$2,512,627 from 1040 theatres.
$19.18m after four weeks.
9) Sesame Street Presents Follow That Bird (Warners)
$2,415,626 from 1129 theatres.
$2.42m from three days.
10) Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (Warners)
$2,274,280 from 1139 theatres.
$29.95 after four weeks.