As you may be aware, the podcast is on hiatus until September. But just because we’re spending time building out our next season of episodes doesn’t mean we’re going to not be around to celebrate 80s movie history. So today, we’re launching a new feature on the website, This Day in 80s Movie History. And today, we’re going back to July 23rd, 1982.
On this date in 80s movie history, four new movies would see moderate to wide releases in American movie theatres:
This is the rare movie that was both a big hit upon its original release, and somehow still a disappointment. Perhaps moviegoers still weren’t ready to accept Burt Reynolds in a musical, although they didn’t reject this the way they rejected Peter Bogdanovich’s At Long Last Love several years earlier. Perhaps moviegoers didn’t want to see Dolly Parton as a brothel operator. Maybe they were confused when both regular Reynolds sidekicks Dom DeLuise and Jim Nabors both appeared in the film. Perhaps some filmgoers just wouldn’t be caught dead buying a ticket for a movie with the word “Whorehouse” in the title, even if it was for a movie starring Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton, although Universal Studios would “rename” the movie The Best Little Cathouse in Texas in some newspaper ads. But for whatever reason or reasons, the film’s $69.7m total domestic gross was considered a major disappointment at the time.
Fun fact: The movie would feature a short scene of Dolly Parton singing her “I Will Always Love You,” which was a #1 country hit for the singer in 1974. a re-recorded version of the song would be released in 1982 in conjunction with the release of the film, and it too would reach the top of the country charts.
When one looks at the pedigree of this movie, directed by the same person who made The Birdman of Alcatraz and The Manchurian Candidate, co-written by the writer of The Return of the Secaucus 7, and starring Scott Glenn and Toshiro Mifune, one wonders how something that, on paper, should have been so very good ended up being so very, very bad.
Glenn plays Rick, a down-on-his-luck American prizefighter who is hired to return an ancient Katana to its rightful owner in Japan, only to find out after he’s been kidnapped by some bad people who want the Katana for themselves that the blade he has is a fake and that he was nothing more than a decoy to sneak the real blade into the country. Rick is then pitted in a power struggle between two brothers with a rightful claim to the blade.
Fun fact: a number of the aikido-based action sequences were choreographed by Steven Seagal, while he was still living in and operating a dojo in Japan, before the start of his acting career.
The Challenge would open on 239 screens in New York City, Philadelphia, Portland OR, San Francisco and St. Louis, and gross $804,512 in its opening weekend. It would never enter into a wide release, and would end it’s theatrical run with only $3.6m in ticket sales.
I spoke a bit about Garp in this 2019 episode about 1982 movies, and I will more than likely end up doing an episode specifically about the movie. Suffice it to say, I adore this movie. It introduced me to so many great actors (Glenn Close, Hume Cronyn, Mary Beth Hurt, John Lithgow, Amanda Plummer, Jessica Tandy, Jenny Wright), and it introduced me to one of the authors whose novels would change my world outlook (John Irving). It also gave Robin Williams one of his best-ever roles, and would open his career up to become something more than just Mork from Ork. And it’s kinda scary to think that he was only thirty years old when he made the movie. It’s also terribly sad the film didn’t find much of an audience when it opened in theatres. As you will see below, the film opened to barely a third of what Whorehouse grossed in their opening weekends, and the film would never play in more than 560 theatres at its widest point of release. Its final theatrical gross was $27.6m.
If you’ve never seen Garp before, or it’s been a while since you’ve watched it, do yourself a favor and give it a watch. If you have HBO Max, you can stream it right now (as of this date in 2022).
One of the creepiest sex “comedies” to come out of a decade partially defined by its never-ending stream of cringe-worthy sex “comedies,” Zapped featured the first pairing of Scott Baio and Willie Aames. One of the worst movies to come out of the 1980s, Zapped would open in a Southern regional release, in Charlotte, Dallas, Memphis, Minneapolis, New Orleans and Oklahoma City. The film would gross $823,548 from 200 theatres in those six cities. Eventually, Embassy would send Zapped out into 777 theatres nationwide on September 3rd, where it would come in fourth place nationally, grossing $3.01m from 777 theatres, on its way to a $16.9m final gross.
For the weekend of July 23rd, 1982, the top ten movies in America were:
1) The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (Universal)
$11,874,268 from 1400 theatres.
$11.87m gross to date after three days.
2) E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (Universal)
$11,089,490 from 1493 theatres.
$151.02m gross to date after seven weeks.
3) Young Doctors In Love (Fox)
$3,097,504 from 777 theatres.
$9.94m after two weeks.
4) The World According to Garp (Warners)
$2,902,088 from 357 theatres.
$2.90m after three days.
5) Raiders of the Lost Ark (Paramount)
$2,827,413 from 1330 theatres.
$219.08m after fifty-nine weeks.
6) Rocky III (United Artists)
$2,804,020 from 1231 theatres.
$91.31m after nine weeks.
7) Tron (Disney)
$2,200,282 from 842 theatres.
$15.44m after three weeks.
8) Poltergeist (MGM)
$2,125,435 from 926 theatres.
$51.29m after eight weeks.
9) Six Pack (Fox)
2,049,972 from 681 theatres
$4.98m after two weeks
10) Annie (Columbia)
$1,683,007 from 770 theatres.
$38.53m after eight weeks.