What’s the date? May 18th. The summer blockbuster season must be upon us. As an avid moviegoer from the age of 5, I have almost a biohoroscopic feel in my well worn behind that tells me I should be sitting in a movie theater seat, shoving popcorn and cherry coke into my face. Each year, that rush of anticipation and ultimate disappointment rushes through me like the sun rays telling my body to start perspiring like a pig. But, having just been the least useful partner in the birth of a child, I know that those trips to the multiplex will be fleeting this season. Already weeks into this, and I’ve yet to see Spiderman 3 and Shrek 3 – although I hear I’m not missing much.
In my contemplative state I turn to the one summer, where that pang of excitment that comes every May first started. I’m talking about the summer of 1986. If summer means anything, it means action, and 1986 delivered more action frame by frame than any other summer before or since. Taken individually, some of these movies may not like much, but imagine a summer in which each week brought the pain and the pyrotechnics in unrelenting car cash after punishing exploding building.
May 16, 1986 brought
Top Gun. Honestly, I didn’t even want to see Top Gun when it first came out. Tom Cruise was that guy only girls liked. He definitely didn’t carry a machine gun, and if he told you ‘he’d be back,’ you’d likely just look confused. Also, the only gun fire came from jet planes – not a single revenge-minded, muscle-bound action star. This made the action seem somehow ephemeral and less hair raising. But I stood corrected. The moment the jets launch from the carrier, and Kenny Loggins sings Danger Zone, I had to give it up for captain hairdo - this rocked.
May 23rd brought
Cobra. Like Raw Deal, which came a few weeks later, Cobra was a major crossroads for the box office powerhouse that once was Sylvester Stallone. For Stallone, Cobra marked the beginning of the end of a ride that included Rambo and Rocky IV, both released within that year. It wasn’t the career suicide that was his arm wrestling opus From the Top, but Cobra just didn’t quite live up to expectations. That was then, of course, now it’s the finest movie featuring a dude named Marion, a co-starring role by Brigitte Nielsen, and a villain named “Supermarket Killer.”
Raw Deal, on the other hand, was the beginning of the beginning for Schwarzenegger. This was before he rediscovered his niche in the sci-fi/action realm with Predator, The Running Man, Total Recall, and Terminator 2. It’s a basic, low-grade mob action movie, and it feels something Chuck Norris may have passed up. He was riding high after Code of Silence after all. It’s the least memorable movie I’m bringing up here, but any Schwarzenegger movie of this era is hard not to bring up when talking about 80s action movies.
Later in June, on the 27th,
Running Scared was released. I happen to hold the controversial view that this Billy Crystal/Gregory Hines vehicle is a better action cop/high concept comedy than Beverly Hills Cop. It’s grittier, has better one-liners, and definitely has better action. The subway car cash and the final lobby shoot-out blow away anything in BHC. And although its one of Crystal’s least forced and funniest movies, Gregory Hines outperforms him in every scene.
Next, on July 2, came
Big Trouble in Little China, which was, in a way, the Grindhouse of its day. This Great mix of chop socky exploitation and parody features one of Kurt Russell’s signature roles. Poor guy has never had much luck away from John Carpenter. To this day, its pure entertainment.
Which brings me to the coup-de-gras of the summer of 1986-
Aliens. John Cameron’s masterpiece of sci-fi and action was a watershed moment of 80’s action, setting the stage for a rush of great sci-fi action to come in the years ahead. But, stick with the original theatrical version. Much like the directors cut of Terminator 2, the extra scenes do nothing but throw the momentum of the action completely off. Aliens proved that you could introduced complex psychology and drama into an action movie. Concepts are difficult to weave into adrenaline based action, and if done poorly, and throw everything out of whack – See The Hulk.
Finally, the summer of action ends on August 15, 1986 with the release of
Manhunter. This is the only movie I didn’t see in the theater that summer, but it bears mention, just cause any season that contains a movie of this one’s brillance bears mention. The original Hannibal Lector, almost as good as Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs, far and away better than Anthony Hopkins in all the Silence of the Lambs sequels.
So there it is, the summer of 1986. I kept this action movie-based, but I’ll just mention that this summer also included Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Back to School.