My cinema year: 1987

A-Ha! They did the theme tune, I mean.

TOP 1987 MOVIES AT THE WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE

I saw one of these at the cinema in 1987. I have seen nine of them now.

1. Fatal Attraction
2. Beverly Hills Cop II
3. Dirty Dancing
4. The Living Daylights
5. 3 Men and a Baby
6. Good Morning Vietnam
7. Lethal Weapon
8. Predator
9. Moonstruck
10. The Untouchables

The Living Daylights was the first of Timothy Dalton’s two outings as 007. Dalton is not usually considered to have been the best Bond by most fans and nobody seems to consider this to have been the best James Bond film. I am not a big Bond fan and maybe it was the novelty of seeing the character on the big screen for the first time. But I’m sure I have never enjoyed any James Bond film as much as when I saw this as an excited ten-year-old. I was consistently entertained throughout. The bit where he hangs off the back of a plane. The beautiful blonde cellist. The chase through the snow. I loved it.

Sadly, Dalton’s next outing as Bond, Licence to Kill flopped, perhaps in part because it was given a ’15’ certificate preventing twelve-year-olds like me from seeing it. The first ’12’ certificate film, Tim Burton’s Batman was released a week after Licence to Kill in August 1989, which presumably didn’t help. Dalton was dropped and the franchise was ‘rested’ for five years as filmmakers contemplated how to respond to the end of the Cold War and films like Die Hard driving up budgetary expectations.

Another reason for Licence to Kill’s failure? Unlike The Living Daylights, it was rubbish.

“Replacing me?…What?…Pierce who???”

The Living Daylights didn’t actually make the U.S top ten, so am pleased I got a list for the global 1987 box office here. Aside from that and one other film, I’m pretty sure I saw all the other films on either video or TV by the end of the 1990s, the decade where I truly became a film buff.

The Lethal Weapon and Beverly Hills Cop franchises never impressed me much and Fatal Attraction (directed by Adrian Lyne, who like me, was born in Peterborough) always seems a bit overrated, perhaps because of the famous bunny boiler sequence. Presumed Innocent was better. I liked Moonstruck when I saw it. Cher’s in it. John Mahoney crops up in it too. What was it about? I’ve no idea now. Is Nicholas Cage in it too?

The Untouchables is a mixed bag. On the one hand, there are a number of memorable sequences: De Niro and the baseball bat, the exploding suitcase girl, Costner pushing the guy off the roof (“he’s in the car”) and the copied Odessa Steps gunfight. Connery’s ‘Irish’ accent is all over the place though. He basically won an Oscar because he was shot about a million times and still took an hour to die.

I quite liked Dirty Dancing (the film I mean, not the activity). When I was about 18, it seemed to be every girl’s favourite film.

The Untouchables: no inhibitions about enforcing prohibition.

A friend showed me all the violent bits of Predator on video. I hadn’t asked him to. This came in handy when I later saw the heavily censored version on ITV. It’s a classic sci-fi. Good Morning Vietnam also made an impact.

I’ve never seen 3 Men and a Baby. I suspect I never will now. I don’t think I’ve missed much. For a while rumours circulated that a ‘real-life’ ghost appears briefly in one scene of this comedy, supposedly a boy who died in the apartment where the movie was filmed. Stills of the supposed phantom apparently standing in the background and ‘looking’ towards the camera do genuinely look quite creepy. Some have claimed the rumours were deliberately encouraged to boost sales and rentals of the video on its release in 1990.

Slowly, the truth emerged. The ‘boy’ was revealed to have been a cardboard cut-out of Ted Danson’s character (dressed in a top hat and tails) which had been left in the background after being used in a scene which was subsequently deleted. Danson’s character in the film was apparently an actor and the cut-out would have been related to a commercial the character was filming. Director Leonard ‘Mr Spock’ Nimoy seems not to have noticed the prop was still in shot, or at least was unable to remove it for whatever reason.

An odd explanation? Perhaps, yet still more plausible than the alternative, especially when you remember ghosts don’t actually exist in real life. Also, no boys died in the apartment. There wasn’t even an apartment. The film’s ‘apartment’ scenes were not even filmed in an apartment at all but on a sound stage.

One man, one woman, one cardboard cut-out. And a baby. But which is which? Find out next time.

Myths and legends of the movie world: resolved! No 1

Numerous myths and legends have crept into the mythology of the film world over the decades, something the creation of the internet has done little to dispel. But what is true and what is false?

Myth: The ghost of a child appears very briefly in the film Three Men And A Baby (1987)

Speculation about this spooky image reached a pitch when this lame comedy was released on video, substantially boosting its level of rentals and sales.  Some rumours claim is of a boy who died in the apartment in which the Tom Selleck/Steve Guttenberg/Ted Danson comedy was filmed, some going as far as to say the father of the boy recognised him while watching the film in the cinema.  Others see it as an omen, signalling the imminent demise of Steve Guttenberg’s career. Some even claim the phantom agreed a pact with Danson ensuring only he and he alone would have a career in the year 2015 but at the price of his hair going completely white. I may have made up the last two things. See how easy it is for these myths to start?

In fact, it is a cardboard cut-out of Ted Danson’s character, which was going to be used in a scene from the film which was eventually cut. When viewed close up, it is wearing a top hat and tails and is clearly the star of TV’s Cheers rather than a dead boy. Danson’s character, like Danson himself, was an actor and the prop was intended for a scene in which he auditioned for a TV advert. The director Leonard Nimoy judged the scene to be “illogical” and so removed the scene from the otherwise flawless movie.

It does look creepy though even when we know the facts. It should also be pointed out Three Men In A Baby was not filmed in a flat at all, but on a sound stage. And ghosts don’t actually exist really. Grow up!