Monday, September 12, 2011

25 Years Ago This Month: September 1986

I have been remiss in keeping regular posts going and I completely forgot to get this entry together for the start of the month. Nevertheless, it is still September, so I haven't really missed my deadline.

Sort of oddly, the source I use for finding movie release dates has only a small handful of movies that opened in September 1986.

The most significant release of the month must have been David Lynch's weird and wild Blue Velvet, a story which begins by showing us a nice normal suburban American neighborhood with white picket fences, and then has our hero discover a severed ear in a grassy field. That ear only hints at the thematic darkness beneath the surface that would become a hallmark of Lynch's work. It contains one of the late Dennis Hopper's greatest performances, as well as excellent work from Isabella Rossellini, Laura Dern and Kyle MacLachlan.

Blake Edwards released That's Life!, starring Jack Lemmon and Julie Andrews. It eked out an Oscar nod for an original song, which also garnered a Razzie nomination. Hmmm.

There was also Michael Dudikoff starring in Avenging Force, basically a low-rent Steven Seagal movie about an Army officer who goes on a revenge hunt for the deaths of his parents. My God!

Sean Connery and a young Christian Slater starred in the Umberto Eco adaptation of The Name of the Rose

The biggest release, however, was 'Crocodile' Dundee, which introduced the world to Paul Hogan, whose short-lived career in movies can be entirely attributed to the smashing success (it was number 2 for the year) of that fish-out-of-water romantic adventure.

In other news for the month...

2nd - Cathy Evelyn Smith was sentenced to 3 years (she served 15 months) for involuntary manslaughter in the death of actor John Belushi. She was the one who injected him with the speedball that ultimately killed him.
7th - Desmond Tutu became the first black bishop of the Anglican Church of South Africa.
- five bodyguards are killed in an assassination attempt on Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
- instant replay is used in the NFL for the first time.
8th - "The Oprah Winfrey Show" has its world premiere.
17th - The Mets clinched the NL East on their way to winning the World Series.
- William Rehnquist confirmed by the Senate as the nation's 16th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
19th - Captain Eo, the 3D movie directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Michael Jackson, premiered at Disney theme parks where it would play continuously, making people foolishly grab at the air in front of them, for the next decade.
26th - Antonin Scalia confirmed by the Senate for the Supreme Court. American jurisprudence has never been the same since. And not for the better IMO.

Birthdays...
12th - Actress Emmy Rossum, current star of TV's "Shameless." She had roles in the films The Day After Tomorrow and Mystic River.









Deaths...
27th - Cliff Burton, Metallica's bass player died when their tour bus crashed. He was 24.

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