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30 years ago

Raw Deal - June 6, 1986
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s sixth action film has him playing a disgraced FBI agent who is offered a chance at a comeback if he goes undercover to take down a mob leader played by Sam Wanamaker. Raw Deal opened at #2 with $5.4 million between holdovers Top Gun and Sylvester Stallone’s Cobra. Raw Deal’s $16.2 million total was far less than the $49 million for Cobra and Schwarzenegger’s weakest lead performance of the 1980s.

Space Camp - June 6, 1986
Lea Thompson stars in this adventure as an ambitious teen at NASA’s youth summer training program. A sequence of events triggered by a robot named Jinx leads to the program’s group of teens being launched on a Space Shuttle along with only one adult astronaut played by Kate Capshaw. Together they have to work together to return safely to Earth. Tate Donovan, Larry B. Scott, Kelly Preston, Joaquin Phoenix, and Tom Skerritt co-star. Critics were not impressed. I attended the real Space Academy five years later and can confirm that there was no joystick control system as depicted in the movie. Space Camp opened at #6 behind Short Circuit with $2.9 million from 979 theaters and eventually grossed $9.6 million.

Invaders From Mars - June 6, 1986
This sci-fi horror was a remake of the 1953 film of the same name about an alien invasion. Despite involvement of Oscar-winning special effects artists Stan Winston and John Dykstra, the film received a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Visual Effects. The film opened at #7 with $2.0 million and only made $4.8 million in total.

My Little Pony: The Movie - June 6, 1986
This adventure based on the Hasbro toy line was animated by Toei Animation in Japan. That studio had a long history of prior animated works but this was the first of four Hasbro Toy movies that included Transformers and G.I. Joe. This film featured voices from Danny DeVito, Rhea Perlman, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, and Tony Randall. Opening at 421 theaters, My Little Pony placed #10 for the weekend at the box office and eventually earned $5.9 million overall.

Jake Speed - May 30, 1986
I feel like I’m one of the few who have fond memories of this adventure movie, though I only caught it on video later on. Screenwriter Wayne Crawford stars as a hero who is called on to rescue the sister of a character played by Karen Hopkins from a white slavery ring in Africa. John Hurt plays the antagonist. Basically it’s a cheap knockoff of Romancing the Stone. Lacking similar star power or support from critics, Jake Speed opened at #6 with $1.0 million and fell quickly, earning only $1.9 million.

Come back next week for another installment of Marquee History when we celebrate the 30th anniversary of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off!

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