Marquee History
Week 7 - 2016
By Max Braden
February 15, 2016
25 years ago - February 15, 1991
The Silence of the Lambs
In 2003, the American Film Institute announced their list of “100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains” and beating out The Wicked Witch of the West, Darth Vader, and Norman Bates as the greatest villain of them all was this film’s star, Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Lecter was the product of author Thomas Harris and the novels Red Dragon (which was adapted for the 1986 film Manhunter and featured Brian Cox in the role) in 1981 and The Silence of the Lambs in 1988. Prior to the events of the film, Lecter was a renowned psychiatrist and serial killer who ate his victims. The film begins with a pursuit of another serial killer nicknamed Buffalo Bill (played by Ted Levine) who is targeting women, the most recent of whom is a Senator’s daughter. Rookie FBI profiler Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is brought in by her supervisor (Scott Glenn) to see what insight she can gain about Buffalo Bill from Lecter, who was his doctor.
The iconic moments in this film, directed by Jonathan Demme, are seemingly endless: the intimidating first encounter with Anthony Hopkins as Lecter; the Death’s Head moth featured on the film’s poster; Starling’s recounting of the lambs in her childhood; the brutal murders of the police; Buffalo Bill’s basement pit and dance sequence; and the chilling night-vision climax that had audiences jumping out of their seats. The film might not have been expected to be the hit that it became, but this one gripped audiences and critics.
At the Oscars a year later, it was nominated for seven awards and became only the third movie in the history of the awards to win Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor, and Actress. Opening on Thursday, February 14th (Happy Valentine’s Day, Clarice.), The Silence of the Lambs took the #1 spot over Sleeping With the Enemy with $13.7 million from 1,497 theaters and just kept going for a total gross of $130 million, the fourth highest total of the year. It took 10 years for the sequel, Hannibal (covered in last week’s Marquee History) to be released, and then a prequel based on the Red Dragon novel was released in 2002.
King Ralph
John Goodman stars in this comedy as Ralph Jones, a down and out musician in Las Vegas who is discovered to be the next living heir to the British crown, brought to London to be the new king. Of course his blue collar brashness conflicts with the stuffy traditionalism of his new surroundings, and a rival, played by John Hurt, seeks to depose him. Camille Coduri plays a love interest, and Peter O’Toole plays the king’s private secretary. Reviews were weak. King Ralph opened at #3 with $8.3 million from 1,617 theaters and grossed a total of $34 million.
Nothing But Trouble
This is one of those movies that is so bad that the participants should count themselves lucky that it wasn’t career-ending. It was, in fact, the first and last time that Dan Aykroyd directed a film; he also wrote the screenplay. In it, he plays a grotesque judge who hates rich people and has complete control over his rural community. Chevy Chase and Demi Moore play a rich couple who accidentally detour through the town, are arrested for speeding, and held prisoner in the judge’s comedic house of horrors. John Candy plays the arresting officer and also plays a woman who the judge forces Chase’s character to marry. Aykroyd also plays a second character, a bizarre subhuman named Bobo who Moore’s character befriends in an attempt to escape. The hip-hop group Digital Underground (with Tupac Shakur) shows up in a cameo sequence. The film was nominated for Worst Picture, Actress, Supporting Actress, Director, Screenplay, and Supporting Actor (Aykroyd, who "won") among the Razzie Awards for that year, and had equally awful reviews at release. At the box office, Nothing But Trouble opened at #8 with $3.9 million from 1,671 theaters and only made $8.4 million overall against a $40 million budget.
30 years ago - February 14, 1986
The Delta Force
Chuck Norris stars in this R-rated action film as a former Special Forces operator who is reactivated to help a Delta Force team, headed by Lee Marvin, rescue plane hijacking hostages from held by Lebanese terrorists. Robert Forster plays the leader of the terrorists and George Kennedy plays a priest. Kennedy and Marvin both famously starred in The Dirty Dozen in 1967. The Delta Force was Marvin’s last film before his death at age 63 in 1987. The movie makes use of some buggy combat vehicles and a rocket-launching motorcycle, and notably draws on recent terrorist incidents such as Operation Eagle Claw, the failed attempt to save U.S. Iranian hostages in 1980. Reviews were mixed but audiences responded to the film as much as other Chuck Norris action flicks. The Delta Force opened at #3 behind Down and Out in Beverly Hills and The Color Purple with $5.9 million from 1,720 theaters and went on to gross $17.7 million.
Wildcats
~It’s the sport of kings / Better than diamond rings / Football~ Goldie Hawn stars in this high school sports comedy as the privileged former head of a girls track team who takes on the rough boys of an urban high school football team. The tone is mostly comedy, but Hawn’s character, Molly McGrath, also deals with being a single mom and the drama of teen pregnancy issues. This film was the debut of both Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson, who would go on to make multiple movies together. Hawn had a big $69 million hit with Private Benjamin in 1980, and though Wildcats didn’t reach that height, it was one of several consistent box office performers for Hawn throughout the 1980s. Wildcats opened at #4 with $5.4 million from 1,054 theaters and took in a final gross of $26.2 million.
Quicksilver
Kevin Bacon stars as a successful former stock trader who busts and becomes a bike messenger. Jami Gertz plays the love interest he saves from a gang, Paul Rodriguez plays a budding small businessman, and Laurence Fishburne plays a rival messenger named Voodoo. The film makes use of the hills of San Francisco streets for bike maneuver action, and is also a film that highlights the stock market frenzy of the mid-1980s (Wall St. was released at the end of 1987). Cycling movies were a little more popular in the '80s than they are now - thinking back to Breaking Away, American Flyers, BMX Bandits, and Rad - but the freedom and action of the bike messenger genre, if there is such a thing, was seen again recently with Premium Rush starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt in 2012. Quicksilver opened at #7 with $3.1 million from 1,251 theaters and went on to gross $7.6 million - a fraction of the $80 million gross for Footloose, Bacon’s breakthrough role two years earlier..
Come back next week for another installment of Marquee History!
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