For this article I thought it would be fun to look back at the summer movie season of twenty five years ago, 1983. This was a seminal year for this writer as it was my senior year in high school plus I was working as a movie theater usher and I saw each and every one of the movies on this list – all of them for free as was our one perk for working there.
1983 saw a whopping twenty seven movies released that summer. Nine of them were considered big hits while one was an all out blockbuster. Oddly, even more of those films, eight, were flops. Though there were a few family friendly movies that summer the older teenager was the definitive target audience. Walt Disney had abandoned their live action films within the last year or two so they had nothing to offer eager parents hoping to keep their young ones occupied for a few hours.
1983 was the year of the Jedi. Star Wars fans had waited three years since seeing Han Solo frozen and learning Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker’s father and the anticipation was greater then anything I have ever experienced for a film. Back then there was no Internet so secrets and spoilers were rarely, if ever, revealed. Most people went into the theater clueless as to what they were about to see which is just the way it should be. When all was said and done the filmmakers, particularly George Lucas, delivered and the audience was rewarded for their patience.
1983 was also the year of the sequel as no less then eight hit screens that summer. Not one of the films scored a major Academy Award nomination though a few scored minor ones. War Games had the highest honor with a Best Original Screenplay nomination.
Here are the summer movies of 1983 listed in alphabetical order. I hope you enjoy the trip back in time and if you happen to have attended some of these movies in first run I hope this brings back pleasant memories.
BLUE THUNDER (Columbia; Director – John Badham) One of two films directed by Badham to reach screens that summer was this tense and exciting thriller about police officers who patrol from the skies in helicopters and the new prototype helicopter that is introduced that, in the wrong hands, could become a frightening weapon. Roy Scheider and Daniel Stern starred as the partners who discover some frightening truths behind everything and soon realize they are in over their heads. Malcolm McDowell is superb as the villain and Warren Oates gives a terrific performance as Scheider’s captain. For unknown reasons the film sat on the shelf for more then a year after its completion and when it was released Warren Oates had been dead for a year. The film received mixed reviews but was a hit at the box office making over $22 million.
BREATHLESS (Orion; Director – Jim McBride) Richard Gere followed up his smashing breakthrough film, An Officer and a Gentleman, with this mis-guided remake of a classic 1960 French film. In it Gere plays a hood always in trouble who is on the run and finds himself digging deeper holes for himself while cozying up to a woman he barely knows. The film was known most for its steamy sex scenes and frontal nudity (by Gere as well) but is forgotten now due to its ludicrous script. The film was hammered by critics who were aching to dig at Gere and while the film did make $19.9 million it was well under expectations.
CLASS (Orion; Director – Lewis John Carlino) One of the sleeper hits of the summer of 83 was this comedy about two college roommates (Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy) and their adventures in college. Things become complicated when McCarthy starts a passionate affair with a sexy, older woman (Jacqueline Bisset) who we will discover turns out to be Lowe’s mother. Cliff Robertson co-stars as Lowe’s father and this is a lightweight, fluffy piece of entertainment that hit home with its intended audience.
CUJO (Warner Bros; Director – Lewis Teague) One of the most unpleasant of horror films was adapted from Stephen King’s strong (but apparently unfilmable) novel about a woman and her young son who are trapped in a stalled car by a rabid Saint Bernard who is stalking them, waiting for them to emerge so he can attack. Doesn’t that sound pleasant? We get a nice shot of this cute dog being bitten by a bat and then get to see several shots of it dripping saliva and snot. And that’s all there is to it. The film still made a respectable $11.2 million thanks, no doubt, to the popularity of its author and not the quality of the film.
CURSE OF THE PINK PANTHER (United Artists; Director – Blake Edwards) You have to hand it to Blake Edwards. He never let a good thing die as long as he thought you could squeeze something out of it. Two years after the death of series star Peter Sellers, Edwards assembled a Clouseau film without using much of Clouseau. In 1982’s Trail of the Pink Panther Edwards used footage of Sellers that was cut from all of the other films in the series while interjecting new material featuring actors from the original Pink Panther movie including David Niven and Robert Wagner. It failed miserably. Still, Edwards pressed on this time bringing in American actor Ted Wass as a new bumbling detective. As you can imagine Wass was no Sellers. Even worse was that Niven was too ill to dub his lines so they had to be redubbed by impersonator Rich Little who did an average job at best. The film has a few laughs but isn’t in the same league with the worst of the Sellers film. Critics drubbed it and audiences avoided it with a gross of only $3.4 million, making it the least seen of the summer movies.
DOCTOR DETROIT (Universal; Director – Michael Pressman) Dan Aykroyd’s first foray into leading man roles after the death of longtime screen partner John Belushi was the tired and silly story of a college professor who gets caught up in a scheme to pose as a pimp for four high class hookers and then gets into trouble with a mobster. Aykroyd shows he is game but doesn’t have the material to carry a full movie. The reviews were generally poor and the film flopped making only $10 million. Aykroyd began work on a sequel but abandoned it once the box office results came in.
EASY MONEY (Orion; Director – James Signorelli) Another unexpected box office hit was Rodney Dangerfield’s first starring role as a slob who has lived a life of debauchery and now finds he must give up all his vices including smoking, drinking and gambling for one year in order to gain his mother in-law’s $10 million inheritance. Dangerfield carries the movie and makes it fairly entertaining and despite a critical drubbing the film took in almost $20 million at the box office.
JAWS 3-D (Universal; Director – Joe Alves) One of two movies to open that summer in 3-D and this was one of the two reasons why the resurgence of 3-D was short lived. An absolutely needless sequel to a needless sequel finds a great white shark terrorizing people at Florida’s Sea World. It’s hard to decipher which is worse, Lou Gossett cashing in on his Academy Award win for An Officer and a Gentleman with a role here or the cheap special effects that make some B movies look good. The film did make $27 million at the box office but its budget was just over $20 million.
THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS (Warner Bros; Director – Carl Reiner) Steve Martin continued to try and find the success of his first starring film, The Jerk, but again came up short in yet another highly amusing but oft silly project. In it Martin plays a world renowned brain surgeon who is recently widowed. One day he accidentally hits a woman with his car and he operates on her and saves her life. Soon we realize she is nothing but a money hungry black widow and marries the doctor to get to his fortune. And that’s just the start. The film is filled with loads of ideas and many of them hit the target while some don’t. Martin is ably supported by Kathleen Turner as his new wife and David Warner as a scientist. The reviews were mostly negative and the film only made $10 million.
MR. MOM (20th Century Fox; Director – Stan Dragoti) Another unexpected box office hit was this light but enjoyable comedy featuring Michael Keaton in his first starring role as a man who suddenly finds himself a stay at home dad after he is laid off as he wife goes out to work. Teri Garr, Martin Mull, Christopher Lloyd and Ann Jillian co-star in this film written by soon to be breakout director John Hughes. The film received mixed reviews but made $32 million at the box office.
NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION (Warner Bros; Director – Harold Ramis) Chevy Chase’s first true hit in 5 years was the first in what would be a four film adventure featuring the Griswold family. In this film Clark (Chase), his wife Ellen (the beautiful Beverly D’Angelo) and their two kids head from Chicago to California for a trip to Walley World or, a fictional Disneyland. John Candy, Eugene Levy, Randy Quaid and Imogene Coca all make appearances in this entertaining saga which happened to also be written by John Hughes. The reviews were mixed but the film grossed $30.4 million.
OCTOPUSSY (United Artists; Director – John Glen) Roger Moore’s sixth (and second to last) outing as James Bond was a tired action film in a series showing wear and tear along with its lead actor. Still the series proved popular and critic proof as the film would gross $34 million. Interestingly that fall would see the release of Sean Connery’s return to the role of Bond in Never Say Never Again. The film was almost unanimously praised and fans of the series clamored to see it but it still only grossed $28.2 million which showed that the in the day teenager was not going to be swayed to see something or someone they were unfamiliar with.
PORKY’S II: THE NEXT DAY (20th Century Fox; Director – Bob Clark) This was not exactly the film the movie world needed but this sequel to the enormously popular teenage sex comedy hit proved to be successful enough that a third film would come along two years later. Even fans of the original found this film lacking and borrowing the best bits from the original.
PSYCHO II (Universal – Director – Richard Franklin) One of the most eagerly awaited films was this 22 years later sequel to one of the great thrillers of all time. Here Norman Bates (again played by the nervous Anthony Perkins) is released from the mental institution and comes back to his hotel and tries to get back to a normal life. Naturally things don’t exactly follow that plan. Meg Tilly, Dennis Franz, Robert Loggia and Vera Miles (reprising her role from the original) co-star in a film that on its own isn’t half bad but compared to its predecessor it can’t hold a candle to it. The reviews were respectful but slight but the film was a minor hit and would lead to two more sequels.
RETURN OF THE JEDI (20th Century Fox; Director – Richard Marquand) The final chapter in the original trilogy of the Star Wars saga was the box office champion of 1983 and the only film to gross over $100 million that year. Most critics were kind to the film though some were less then thrilled with the overly obnoxious Ewoks. Of course reviews matter not with a film like this and its box office take was $168 million.
RISKY BUSINESS (Warner Bros; Director – Paul Brickman) On the surface this little film that became an unexpected box office hit seems like just an ordinary teen sex comedy. But to witness it is to first witness a smart and well written script with depth, insight and loads of laughs and also to see a star born in the guise of Tom Cruise, whose smile lights up the screen and steals the show. The film, in which a crew member told a visiting Roger Ebert would be a worthless pile of sh** went on to gross over $30 million and received mixed but some very strong reviews.
SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FOBIDDEN ZONE IN 3-D (Columbia; Director – Lamont Johnson) One of the worst films of the summer and of the year was this futuristic adventure that hoped to ride on the coattails of the success of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Television actor Peter Strauss plays the film’s hero as he tries to rescue three women from certain death while enlisting the aid of a precocious teenager (pre John Hughes’ Molly Ringwald). The story is ridiculous, the actors are forced to recite terrible lines and the visual effect are amateurish at best and that doesn’t even count the 3-D effects which were so bad glasses were necessary only because the screen was blurred otherwise. In some cases it made for an improvement. The film was a huge bomb at the box office and, thankfully, planned sequels never saw the light of day.
THE STAR CHAMBER (20th Century Fox; Director – Peter Hyams) In my humble opinion this was one of the best films that summer which starred Michael Douglas as a judge who gets caught up in some violent cases he is forced to dismiss due to legal technicalities. As time wears on and his patience wears thin he is brought into a secret circle of judges who pronounce the guilt of those who are free and make sure that a death sentence is passed on to them. Douglas’ conscience starts to get to him after he has set up the execution of two men who now may not be guilty. Hal Holbrook and Yaphet Kotto co-star in this tense and well directed thriller that, unfortunately, no one went to see. Despite some mixed reviews the film flopped making only $5.6 million.
STAYING ALIVE (Paramount; Director – Sylvester Stallone) John Travolta revisits the role that made him famous as Tony Manero from Saturday Night Fever in this needless sequel which finds Tony now working on Broadway in a new musical hoping to become the star he has always dreamed of being. Things get complicated when he falls for the new vamp that stars in the show while still dating the good girl of his dreams. Stallone’s only directorial effort in which he doesn’t appear relies too much on musical numbers that are overblown and only make the viewer believe the musical Tony is in is really, really bad. Stallone also makes a big mistake in not enlisting The Bee Gees for the soundtrack and relied on his brother Frank to furnish a lot of the songs. The film never really comes alive and the absence of Tony’s friends, father (his mother appears briefly) and Stephanie (his love from the original) only highlight how weak the new character are. The only good moment in the film is its last when Tony struts down the street as he did in the opening of the original. In that moment, and that moment only, we see the Tony we saw from the first film. The Tony portrayed here is another character altogether. Despite mostly negative reviews the film grossed an impressive $33.6 million which should dispel the rumor that the film was a flop.
STRANGE BREW (MGM; Directors – Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas) Moranis and Thomas take their popular Second City characters, Bob and Doug Mackenzie and bring them to the big screen in a surprisingly uproarious comedy that has unfortunately been long forgotten. Bob and Doug are two brothers from Canada, “hosers” who do nothing but drink. They’re dreams come true when they get hired to work at a brewery but soon find that not everything is on the up and up. The film features many hysterical sight gags and witty lines but somehow the film got lost in the shuffle and grossed just over $8 million.
STROKER ACE (Universal; Director – Hal Needham) The beginning of the end of Burt Reynolds’ status as a superstar was this horrible, God awful movie about stock car racing. In this dreck Burt overacts, laughs constantly like a hyena and even dresses up like a chicken. Burt’s drive to make movies with his friends for fun and money would eventually turn off even his most ardent fans. Two things positive came to Burt from this piece of trash, an enormous paycheck and a future wife in co-star Loni Anderson. Unfortunately Burt happened to turn down the role that would win Jack Nicholson the Academy Award later that year in Terms Of Endearment. This film was destroyed by the critics (several of whom suggested the negative be destroyed) and flopped at the box office. How wise people were to stay away.
SUPERMAN III (Warner Bros.; Director – Richard Lester) This film looked like a sure fire hit with the addition of Richard Pryor to the familiar cast but Pryor turns out to be under utilized and is comic foliage and not villainous. This film tends to be more lighthearted in the vain of director Lester’s Three and Four Musketeers but there are still some effective moments, particularly in Christopher Reeve’s portrayal of both Superman and an evil Superman. The films reviews were mostly negative but it did manage to earn $37.2 million which is far below the first two films.
THE SURVIVORS (Columbia; Director – Michael Ritchie) Perhaps the most disappointing film from the summer of 1983 was this pairing of manic comedian Robin Williams with Walter Matthau in the story of two losers who become friends through some odd (and a few funny) circumstances which leads them to being stalked by a hired killer before retreating to a resort of survivalists. With these two talents and a good director in Ritchie (The Candidate; Smile; The Bad News Bears) the film should have been a can’t miss but it constantly misses its mark. Ritchie doesn’t supply the film with a constant tone going from farce to slapstick to black comedy instead of maintaining one and concentrating on the script. The film made $14 million, well below expectations.
TRADING PLACES (Paramount; Director – John Landis) The inspired teaming of Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy makes for a first class comedy about the manipulations of two rich old codgers (Ralph Bellamy, Don Ameche) who make a bet which causes their rich nephew to become poor and homeless while a homeless con man becomes rich. The two leads are well supported by the veterans Bellamy and Ameche along with Jamie Lee Curtis and Denholm Elliot. The reviews were strong and the film made just over $40 million.
TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE (Warner Bros; Directors – John Landis, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, George Miller) This was a great idea turned bad because of an unexpected tragedy. Four hot directors each pick a favorite episode of the classic series and update it for one movie. Landis decided he wanted to make an original story and chose one of a bigot’s comeuppance. Sadly, Vic Morrow was killed during filming thus putting a pall on the whole movie. Spielberg’s story was a gentle telling of people in an old folk’s home finding the fountain of youth. Dante’s (The Howling, Gremlins) story picks the film up as a woman gets caught in a world totally controlled by a boy who can read minds. Miller’s (Mad Max, Road Warrior) story is last and the best as a nervous airline passenger sees a gremlin of some sort trying to tear the engine of the airplane he is on apart while in flight. The film opens with a bang of a prologue and each story is better the one before it and it turns into a mild experience but nothing compared to the show. The film received mostly negative reviews but did manage to make over $29 million but with the talent involved it should have made more.
WAR GAMES (United Artists; Director – John Badham) Director Badham’s second film of the summer (after Blue Thunder) was this sleeper about a computer whiz who inadvertently connects into Norad’s defense system and makes it appear that the United States and Russia are about to start World War III. Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy and Dabney Coleman starred in this thriller that was extremely well written and truly exciting. This is one of those films that won over just about everyone and made just over $38 million.
YELLOWBEARD (Orion; Director – Mel Damski) This was one of those all-star comedies where every actor in it tries to get a few minutes of screen time to do their shtick and then move off to let the next person in. Unfortunately it results in a script that meanders every which way and leads nowhere. This awful comedy was conceived by one of the stars of Monty Python, Graham Chapman. Chapman appears along with Peter Boyle, Cheech and Chong, Peter Cook, Marty Feldman, Eric Idle, Madeline Kahn, James Mason and John Cleese. There is nary a single funny moment in the whole show as it just sits there and lies. Sadly this was the final film for both Feldman (who died during production) and Mason. It was blasted by the critics and made just barely over $4 million.
Until later this year when I come back with retro looks at the Christmas movies of the same years just written about, I hope you enjoyed.
