TOP 10 U.S FILMS OF 1982
(Number I saw at the cinema then: 1. Number I have seen now: 7)
- ET – The Extra Terrestrial
- Tootsie
- An Officer and a Gentleman
- Rocky III
- Porky’s
- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
- 48 Hrs
- Poltergeist
- The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
- Annie
I remember almost nothing about the year 1982, but I do remember seeing E.T. I mainly remember being terrified.
I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my first trip to the cinema. I had only just turned five at the start of the year but I’d already seen Snow White and the Seven Dwarves by this point and Doctor Dolittle (for some reason) on a very early school trip. Neither of these were new films even then, of course, so neither made the top ten in any of the years during which I have been alive. Or ever in Dolittle’s case.
Snow White scared me too: it’s not surprising really. I was a nervous child admittedly, but the Evil Queen seems quite terrifying to me even now. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way either. Her most chilling moment is when she disguises herself as an old hag so as to trick Snow White into eating the poison apple. It’s a bit odd really: this was the one moment when needs to win her over and she adopts a disguise which makes her look far more horrifying than she looks the rest of the time.
That said, Snow White is at least a classic film. While I think I enjoyed it at the same time, Doctor Dolittle struck me as fairly awful when I saw some of it again a few years later. I may be being harsh here. That said, I remember reading later about how the notoriously difficult Rex Harrison’s high jinks on set essentially ensured that his career was ruined as a result.
Despite my fear, I did manage to enjoy Snow White. Not so, E.T. The alien’s first appearance when E.T’s braying torchlit face appears briefly on screen gave me such a shock that I was so nervous that I was unable to enjoy the rest of the film for fear of it or something happening again.
I’m not sure why I had such an extreme reaction to that bit. Many people are reduced to tears by the film. This has never happened to me. If I cried then it was only out of fear.
Probably about twenty years later, I saw Poltergeist, also on this list, on TV. It’s a good horror but I don’t think it scared me as much then as E.T. did when I saw it in 1982.
The films are, in fact, not dissimilar. Both feature little blonde girls who encounter an alien presence. Steven Spielberg was also heavily involved in both directing E.T. (which was written by the late Melissa Mathison, then about to become the second wife of Harrison Ford) and co-wrote Poltergeist.
I saw nothing else on the list at the cinema but have to date seen seven of the top ten listed above. I never bothered with Annie or Porky’s or the Whorehouse one. I suspect these last two would not have made the top ten in the UK.
48 Hours and Rocky III made little impact on me. Like most people I generally only remember it as “the one with Mr T in.” I did enjoy Tootsie though and on finally watching An Officer and a Gentleman in the 2000s was pretty impressed. Like Saturday Night Fever, it’s a much tougher, grittier film than its reputation suggests.
Incidentally, The Wrath of Khan is also probably the best of the original Star Trek films. Even as a Star Trek fan, I can appreciate this isn’t necessarily very high praise.
1982 was famously the year when many films bombed. Tron, Conan The Barbarian, The Thing. Blade Runner and Cannon and Ball’s The Boys in Blue all flopped, all crushed by the box office juggernaut of E.T. currently the seven biggest blockbuster of all time.
Sadly, although I am certainly no longer scared of it, my early mild trauma has perhaps diminished my appreciation of the film over the years since. In short, I can appreciate it is a classic film but its certainly never been one of my favourites.
And why on Earth does it have such a cumbersome title? “The Extra Terrestrial?” I’ve never met anyone who didn’t just call it “E.T”.
Chris Hallam's World View 