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25 years ago

Hot Shots! - August 2, 1991
Writer-director Jim Abrahams sends up Top Gun in this spoof starring Charlie Sheen as hot shot Navy pilot Topper Harley. Valeria Golino plays his love interest, and Lloyd Bridges plays Rear Admiral Tug Benson. The comedy was a hit, landing at #1 ahead of Terminator 2 with $10,8 million from 1,929 theaters and going on to a total of $69 million. The country-vs-city comedy Doc Hollywood opened opened at #3 with $7.2 million. Its $54 million gross paled compared to Michael J. Fox’s Back to the Future franchise, but Doc Hollywood is one of those movies that remains easy to watch when it shows up on cable TV. At #8, the horror flick Body Parts took in $3 million, and at #16 Milla Jovovich starred in the sequel Return to the Blue Lagoon ($1.2 million against a $2.8 million total - barely a quarter of its budget).

Double Impact - August 9, 1991
What’s better than one Jean-Claude Van Damme? Jean-Claude playing his own brother! The result was Van Damme’s best box office performance to date, opening at #2 with $7.5 million and grossing $30.1 million. Also new this weekend: Martin Short and Danny Glover in Pure Luck (#5, $5.0 million), the family friendly dog adventure Bingo (#10, $2.1 million), and John Candy’s Delirious (#13, $1.8 million).

Hot Shots! held on to the #1 spot for the third weekend in August with $6.3 million, while the only new wide release, Mystery Date starring Ethan Hawke, opening down at #8 with $1.9 million. Hot Shots! again was #1 for the August 23rd weekend, while Kenneth Branagh’s Dead Again was the highest debuting film at #5 with $3.4 million from just 450 theaters. Dead Again spread to 745 theaters for the Labor Day weekend and was able to take the #1 spot with $6.3 million. Child’s Play 3 managed #3 over the holiday weekend with $5.7 million. The Coen brothers’ Barton Fink opened in limited release at 11 theaters and never spread higher than 200, but managed to bring in $6.1 million and eventually earned Oscar nominations for supporting actor Michael Lerner, Art Direction, and Costume Design.

30 years ago

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives - August 1, 1986
Though the Crystal Lake serial killer is definitely killed off in The Final Chapter (Part IV of the series), Jason Voorhees is resurrected by electricity in this sequel and becomes an undead serial killer. This horror sequel opened at #2 for the weekend behind Aliens in its third week ($7.0 million) with $6.7 million from 1,610 theaters and only brought in a total of $19.4 million, falling below the series’s previous low point set by Part 2 in 1981. The series continued in 1988 and through an 11th entry in 2003 before being rebooted in 2009.

Howard the Duck - August 1, 1986
Howard the Duck first appeared as a Marvel comic in 1973 but that probably didn’t matter to many teens who saw the trailer for this live action/animatronic version. Howard (voiced by Chip Zien) is transported from his home planet Duckworld to Ohio, where he is befriended by Beverly (Lea Thompson). Together with Tim Robbins’s character Phil, they try to transport back to his home planet while facing off against the Dark Lord of the Universe (manifested in the body of Jeffrey Jones; Ferris Bueller’s Day Off fell out of the top ten in its eighth week this weekend). Reviews were terrible and the film received Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Picture, Worst Screenplay, Worst Special Effects, and Worst New Star (the duck suit worn by half a dozen actors), with nominations for Worst Director (Willard Huyck), Worst Supporting Actor (Robbins), and Worst Original Song (“Howard the Duck” by Thomas Dolby). It managed to open at #3 with $5 million and grossed a $37 million, roughly equal to its production budget. Despite (or perhaps in honor of) his notorious reputation, a version of Howard appears in the end credits of 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy.

Nothing in Common - August 1, 1986
Tom Hanks stars as an advertising exec on the rise who must suddenly balance work demands with the needs of his parents (Jackie Gleason and Eva Marie Saint), who have recently divorced. For Hanks, this drama was a transition from his previous comedies Splash and Bachelor Party. Gleason’s character suffers from diabetes in the film while in real life he was suffering from cancer. He passed away a year later, making this his final film role. Director Garry Marshall recently passed away last month. Nothing in Common opened at #8 with $3.2 million from 618 theaters (for the best per-theater average of this weekend’s box office) and finished with $32.3 million.

Flight of the Navigator - August 1, 1986
Child actor Joey Kramer stars in this family-friendly sci-fi adventure with a plot similar to E.T.: a 12-year-old boy named David is contacted by an alien ship (with a cockpit device voiced by Pee-Wee Herman, as “Max”) with a mission to collect various species from the galaxy. The ship needs David in order to navigate home, while David wants to get back to his family, while both are dogged by NASA (co-stars Howard Hesseman and Sarah Jessica Parker). Despite far better reviews than Howard the Duck, Flight of the Navigator opened in a third fewer theaters and landed at #9 with $3.1 million theaters, ultimately grossing a total of $18.5 million.

One Crazy Summer - August 8, 1986
John Cusack plays an artist and woos rocker Demi Moore in this comedy that culminates in a Nantucket regatta. For me, Bobcat Goldthwait steals the movie due to a scene in which he gets trapped in a Godzilla costume and accidentally stomps through a scale model resort during a fancy dinner party, making it hard to choose between this film and Better Off Dead as the funnier of Cusack’s '80s romantic comedy double header. Also new this weekend: Ted Danson in A Fine Mess (#9, $2.6 million), and the Transformers movie (#14, $1.7 million). Opening in limited release at 16 theaters.

Stand By Me - August 8, 1986
Opening in limited release at 16 theaters, Rob Reiner’s adaptation of Stephen King’s story “The Body” stars Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman, River Phoenix, and Jerry O’Connell. Reviews were excellent - Reiner would later receive a Directors Guild nomination, and the screenplay by Raynold Gideon & Bruce A. Evans received an Oscar nomination. Stand By Me also did well at the box office, earning a total of $52 million from a wider release of just under 800 theaters.

The Fly - August 15, 1986
David Cronenberg’s remake of the 1958 sci-fi thriller stars Jeff Goldblum as scientist Seth Brundle, inventor of a teleportation pod. Unfortunately a simple fly gets caught in the mix and things get hairy. Geena Davis co-stars as his love interest; they married in real life after The Fly and worked together again in Earth Girls are Easy in 1988. The Fly thrilled critics and audiences, who put it at #1 for the weekend with $7 million from 1,195 theaters. It grossed (so to speak) $40 million which led to a sequel (starring Eric Stoltz and Daphne Zuniga) in 1989. Coming in at #2 this weekend was the John Candy / Eugene Levy / Meg Ryan comedy Armed and Dangerous with $4.3 million. It earned a modest $15.9 million overall.

The last two weekends of August 1986 were led by The Fly and Stand By Me, while Top Gun was still going strong in the top 5 four months into release. New films closing out the month with box office in the $2-3 million range: the Hannibal Lecter thriller Manhunter, fantasyThe Boy Who Could Fly (limited release), horror sequel The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Farrah Fawcett in Extremities, horror-comedy Night of the Creeps (limited release), Michael Keaton in Touch and Go (limited release), Renny Harlin’s Born American, and Madonna and Sean Penn in Shanghai Surprise (limited release).

Come back next week for another installment of Marquee History!

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