Today, we are going back 33 years, to look at the movies released into theatres on July 28th, 1989, and how the box office top ten looked that week.
On this date in 80s movie history, two new moderate to wide releases would join one New York City exclusive (opening on Wednesday 7/26) and one Los Angeles exclusive opening in theatres.
Distant Voices, Still Lives was the movie that would establish director Terrence Davis as an important voice in world cinema, and would be some film lovers’ first encounter with the incredible acting talent that was Peter Postlethwaite years before his appearances in Alien 3 or In the Name of the Father.
Distant Voices, Still Lives would first screen at the New York Film Festival in September 1988, where it would get rave reviews. But it would take ten months after starting the festival circuit for Avenue Pictures to bring it to American theatre screens. Opening on one screen at the Samuel Goldwyn Westside Pavilion, Distant Voices would gross $10,021 in its first three days of release. It would open in New York City at the Cinema Third Avenue on August 13th, a rare Sunday opening, where it would gross over $20k in its first eight days of release. After eight months of a limited release, the film would finish its American theatrical run with a gross of $693,563, which would be only slightly less than what the film would make in the UK (£480,000, or $787,200).
The worst Friday the 13th movie of the original series, which is really saying something. A movie so bad, they couldn’t release it on a Friday the 13th, even though there was one coming in October, and what wouldn’t be more baller than releasing a Friday the 13th movie on Friday the 13th in the month that has become synonymous with horror movies? Despite the film having the highest budget of any F13 movie to date, the film feels like the absolute cheapest. The vast majority of the film takes place on a cruise ship, and Jason barely makes it to Manhattan in the final reel of the film before he is… uhm… melted down to being a child thanks to some toxic waste, or some crazy stuff like that.
How quickly did Paramount rush this through production? They started filming the movie in Vancouver in April 1989 and had it in theatres by the end of July. That’s three months, from the beginning of shooting to having a completed product showing in theatres for paying audiences.
Except most audiences didn’t pay for it.
They outright rejected it.
Every other F13 movie had opened to at least second place on the box office charts, if not first. This one? Fifth place, with $6.25m from 1683 theatres. A few weeks later, it would be out of theatres with only $14.3m in ticket sales, the lowest for any of the F13 film, and it would effectively kill the franchise off for nearly twenty years.
The Magic Toy Shop. This British drama is so obscure, you can only find a few images from the film and no actual movie poster. The image above is from, as best I can tell, an early 2000s British DVD release.
The David Wheatly-directed film is about a teenage girl and her younger brother and sister who are sent to London to live with their uncle, Philip, after their parents are killed in a plane crash at the Grand Canyon. There, she meets his mute wife, who is mistreated by and terrified of her husband and only converses through notes. The uncle is a toy maker who secretly has the power to make his toys come to life, but also maintains dictatorial control over his family and intends to exercise the same control over the new arrival.
The film would be somewhat well received by New York City critics, including positive reviews from David Edelstein of the New York Post, Caryn James of the New York Times, and David Sterritt of the Christian Science Monitor. But there would be no advertising for the film in any of the major New York newspapers, and would only gross $19,252 during its two-week run at the Film Forum in lower Manhattan. It also appears to have never played in any other American movie theatre. It’s not available for streaming anywhere in the world, and has apparently never been released on home video anywhere outside of an early 1990s VHS release in the UK and the early 2000s DVD release mentioned above.
It’s hard to remember a time when Tom Hanks was just Tom Hanks and not… you know… American Treasure Tom Hanks!!! In the second half of the 80s, Hanks was starting to become more selective about his movie selection, and for every Dragnet or Big or Punchline, good movies he was starting to show his range in, there was a Volunteers or Money Pit or Turner and Hooch, where Hanks was expected to lean hard into his exasperated white man routine. It was tired by 1989, and he would become a far bigger star once he stopped relying on that shtick. And while the film is not great, there’s a nice little love story between Hanks and the always great Mare Winningham as a local vet.
Filmed in and around Monterey, CA, Turner and Hooch would be the #1 film in the nation during its opening week, earning $12.2m from 1877 theatres. After five months of showings, the film would close its box office run with $71.1m.
As for the national top ten that weekend:
1) Turner and Hooch (Disney)
$12,211,042 from 1877 theatres.
$12.21m after three days.
2) Lethal Weapon 2 (Warners)
$10,401,958 from 1830 theatres.
$88.85m after four weeks.
3) Batman (Warners)
$8,952,993 from 2201 theatres.
$202.87m after six weeks.
4) When Harry Met Sally (Columbia)
$4,596,286 from 1411 theatres.
$113.27m after eight weeks.
5) Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (Paramount)
$6,251,310 from 1683 theatres.
$6.25m after three days.
6) Honey I Shrunk the Kids (Disney)
$4,577,894 from 1481 theatres.
$95.44m after six weeks.
7) License to Kill (United Artists)
$3,410,486 from 1508 theatres.
$24.28m after two weeks.
8) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Paramount)
$2,283,538 from 1203 theatres.
$177.00 after ten weeks.
9) Dead Poets Society (Disney)
$2,609,319 from 993 theatres.
$74.66m after nine weeks.
10) Peter Pan [reissue] (Disney)
$2,329,615 from 1422 theatres.
$19.45m after three weeks.