25 Years Ago This Month: May 1985

I'm now at that age where I have memories of things that happened 25 years ago. And to realize that those things were 25 (!) years ago is sometimes startling.

Events not connected with movies are at the end.

2010 Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan (An Education) turns 25 this month.

Deaths of 25 years ago include actress Margaret Hamilton - best known as The Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz - at age 82.

Also Disney animator and director Wolfgang Reitherman at age 75. He was one of Walt Disney's "Nine Old Men" (original core group of animators). He worked as an animator for Disney starting in 1934, eventually directing 6 animated features from One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) to The Rescuers (1977).

The 37th Cannes Film Festival was held with Milos Forman serving as President of the Jury. Amir Kuristica's When Father Was Away on Business won the Palme d'Or. Alan Parker's Birdy won the Grand Prix while William Hurt took Best Actor for Kiss of the Spider Woman (he would later win the Oscar for the same role) and Cher won Best Actress (in a tie) for her role in Mask.

May 1985, the month I turned 7, saw the U.S. release of Gotcha! starring a very young Linda Fiorentino and Anthony Edwards. This would have been Fiorentino's film debut had it not been for February's release of Vision Quest starring Matthew Modine. Fiorentino would have a hell of a debut year with a role in Martin Scorsese's After Hours released in October. She would make little impression for the next 9 years until her starring role in the neo-noir The Last Seduction. Edwards was hot off the success of 1984's Revenge of the Nerds. And wouldn't you know it, this movie about a college student and champion of a campus paintball assassination game who gets caught up with a strange Czech woman and some East German Cold War intrigue is having its DVD debut next month! It made a paltry $8.9 million at the domestic box office.

Also released in May that year was Rambo: First Blood Part II which provided an unnecessary sequel to a fairly decent parable on the social exclusion of the Vietnam veteran. Rambo II is little more than a revisionist history tale in which the lone American soldier goes back to single-handedly win the Vietnam War and bring home his lost comrades. It was the number two box office draw of the year raking in $150 million.

These were two movies I recall watching fairly often when they played on what I imagine was HBO because I don't think we had any other pay cable station back then.

Roger Moore's final turn as 007 in A View to a Kill opened in May, eventually taking in a middling $50 million to place it at 13 on that year's box office list, just behind...

Chevy Chase's comedy, ahem, classic Fletch. Admittedly I've never seen this oft-quoted film. Along with Caddyshack it's one of my comedy classic holes. Somehow I don't think I'm likely to find either very funny at this stage in my life. Surely high school is when you have to see Fletch and, for better or worse, I'm well beyond that era.

The John Candy/Richard Pryor comedy Brewster's Millions (also unseen by me) was released in May 1985, as well ($41 million and number 20 on the list).

So was Chuck Norris's Missing in Action follow-up Code of Silence, ranked 44 on the box office list with $20 million.

Non-movie-related:

-Michael Jordan was named the NBA Rookie of the Year.
-Israel trades 1150 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners for 3 Israeli soldiers yet continues to be responsible for all the ills in that region.
-Britain agreed to return Hong Kong to China in 1997.
-Madonna had her second #1 hit in "Crazy for You" from the soundtrack of the aforementioned Vision Quest.
-Olympic gold medal figure skater Sarah Hughes was born
-Juventus defeated Liverpool 1-0 in the European Cup Final but not before a wall in Heysel Stadium in Brussels collapsed, killing 39 and injuring 600. They felt that not playing the match after the tragedy would create more problems, so they went ahead with a bit of footy anyway.