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The Nutcracker Prince
Kiefer Sutherland provides the voice of the main character in this animated fairytale about a man who is cursed to be a toy for a little girl, voiced by Megan Fellows. Peter O’Toole and Phyllis Diller provide additional voices. Reviews were poor and the movie opened with less than a million dollars from 906 theaters. It only grossed $1.7 million during its run.

Robot Jox
In a future devastated by nuclear war, nations resolve disputes by blah blah blah... It’s about robots. Robots that fight each other. Robot Jox was written by sci-fi author Joe Haldeman and completed three years earlier but held up by bankruptcy. As is typical of these situations,the movie received weak critical and audience attention. Robot Jox opened with less than half a million dollars from 333 theaters and tapped out with $1.2 million. The movie has become better known in recent years thanks to repeated rentals by Barney Stinson and general interest in fighting robots surrounding the release of Pacific Rim.

30 years ago - November 22, 1985

King Solomon’s Mines
I love this terrible cash-in on Indiana Jones fever! Richard Chamberlain stars as the adventurer Allan Quartermain, 100 years after the character first appeared in print in the novel on which this movie is based (nice alibi, guys, but it’s still clearly a knockoff of Indiana Jones). John Rhys-Davies, who had co-starred with Chamberlain in Shogun, co-stars in this movie four years after having appeared as Sallah in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Sharon Stone provides the sex appeal as she and Quartermain race against the Germans on a quest to find legendary riches in Africa.

Critics dismissed the movie as an obvious and inferior copycat and it even earned two Razzie award nominations for Jerry Goldsmith’s score and Herbert Lom’s performance as the German antagonist. Still, audiences were obviously interested, making King Solomon’s Mines the #1 movie for the weekend with $5 million from 1,122 theaters. This movie made $15 million in the U.S., a fraction of the $175 million earned by The Temple of Doom in 1984. A sequel, Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold (filmed back to back with the first movie), was released just over a year later and bombed at the box office. Sean Connery didn’t do much better with the Quartermain role in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but I think that just means it’s ripe for a refresh.

One Magic Christmas
This family-oriented drama from Disney stars Mary Steenburgen as a mother who is given the It’s-A-Wonderful-Life treatment by an angel played by Harry Dean Stanton. The cast includes a lot of unknowns at the time in early roles: Elisabeth Harnois (now known for playing Morgan on the TV series CSI) plays one of the children in her first role; Michelle Meyrink appears in the cast a couple months after Real Genius was released; Elias Koteas (later seen in Some Kind of Wonderful) appears in his first role; and Sarah Polley appears in her first role (she’d go on to become known as a director, for Take This Waltz and others). One Magic Christmas opened at #2 with $2.6 million from 824 theaters and eventually took in a total of $13.6 million.

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