July 1985 concludes with Tom Hanks, Disney's rock bottom, and the return of Clark Griswold
We wrap up July 1985 with new films from Tom Hanks, Disney animation, and Chevy Chase, as well as a re-release of E.T.
Hopefully, this feels like it was quicker than the gap between the last two entries in this month of the '80s project.
July was definitely a big month for the studios in 1985, but by the last couple of weekends, they were starting to run out of gas. You've still got big studio movies, but these are the films they were less sure about, and you've got some of the year's big whiffs here. Small wonder Universal saw an opportunity to drop a big re-release here, one that actually did pretty well for them even against some brand-new titles...
JULY 19
E.T. The Extraterrestrial
Dee Wallace, Henry Thomas, Peter Coyote, Robert McNaughton, Drew Barrymore, K.C. Martel, Sean Frye, C. Thomas Howell, Erika Eleniak, David M. O’Dell, Richard Swingler, Frank Toth, Robert Barton, Michael Darrell, David Berkson, David Carlberg, Milt Kogan, Alexander Lampone, Rhoda Makoff, Robert D. Murphy, Richard Pesavento, Tom Sherry, Susan Cameron, Will Fowler Jr., Barbara Hartnett, Diane Lampone, Mary Stein, Mitch Suskin
cinematography by Allen Daviau
music by John Williams
screenplay by Melissa Mathison
produced by Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy
directed by Steven Spielberg
Rated PG
1 hr 55 mins
A boy meets an alien trapped on Earth and, with the help of his brother and sister, devises a plan to send his new friend home.
Spielberg was determined, after the overwhelming success of E.T. in the theater, to keep the film off of home video for as long as he possibly could. He looked at the way Disney was handling its biggest animated classics and the way they re-released them to theaters to keep them fresh in the minds of families and children. When E.T. was first released, it played for over a year in many places. It was that big a sensation. This re-release was treated with the same fanfare as a new release, and theaters were once again packed. It was a comforting presence in movie theaters, even though there were plenty of new films I was scrambling to see at the time. It would take another three years before Spielberg finally gave in and put the film out officially. Until then, we had these re-releases, and we went.