April was a month packed with frat pack comedy, but the box office would throw up some memorable sleepers as we approached the busy summer season. One of those was tongue-in-cheek horror compendium Cat’s Eye. Based on short stories by a red hot Stephen King, the film would throw up a mixed bag backed by a plethora of notable stars including E.T.’s Drew Barrymore as a cutesy infant confronting a troublesome demon in ‘The General’ […]
Storming the box office charts for March was Mike Nichols’ comedy-drama Biloxi Blues. Adapted from a semi-autobiographical play by Neil Simon, the movie would star Ferris Bueller’s Matthew Broderick as a young army recruit attending boot camp during the Second World War.
Broderick would create the role of Eugene on Broadway, a character with three goals in life: to become a writer, lose his virginity and fall in love. It would also explore bigotry and racial segregation […]
The month of February would get off with a bang for horror fans. Released on the same day, The Entity would go head-to head with David Cronenberg’s body horror classic Videodrome. Directed by Palm D’or nominated director Sidney J. Furie (The Ipcress File), The Entity was based on the real life Doris Bither case and tells the story of a malevolent poltergeist who purportedly raped and tormented her for years […]
Traditionally, January is a slow month at the Box Office, and 1984 was no different following a busy festive period which included Clint Eastwood’s fourth outing as Dirty Harry and Brian De Palma’s seething gangster epic Scarface. January 13th would see the release of Hot Dog . . . The Movie, a racy, teenage comedy lost in the overabundance of Porky’s clones which saturated the mid-1980’s.
The movie would star An American Werewolf in London’s David Naughton […]
The first week of December would see a limited theatrical release for Golan-Globus thriller Runaway Train. Based on a screenplay by innovative Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, the movie is also notable for the debuts of Heat’s Danny Trejo and Tommy “Tiny” Lister, who would become a professional wrestler for a brief time in the late 1980’s after starring alongside Hulk Hogan in infamous WWF stinker No Holds Barred (1989). So badly received was the World Wrestling Federation’s first foray into the movie business that CEO Vince McMahon . . .
The Cannon Group releases its fourth instalment of the Charles Bronson-led Death Wish series. Titled Death Wish 4: The Crackdown, the movie would lose original trilogy director Michael Winner along with a chunk of its usual budget, resulting in a much more limited release. Winner would refuse to return for the sequel after clashing with Bronson during the filming of Death Wish 3. Cannon had also begun belt-tightening thanks to […]
