Hello World

Welcome to the Wayback Movie Machine, where I intend to take a look back at movies that were released exactly 25 years ago and see how they have fared the test of time. The design is still under construction, so don't be shocked if things get shuffled around as we move along the time stream.

Why am I doing this? Why not.

Actually, I stumbled across another blog called 10yearoldmovies.com where they “look at random films on the occasion of their 10th Anniversary.” It's a brilliant concept and I recommend it to everyone. I guess that means I'm copying them. But their selections really are random, and going back only 10 years hasn't allowed the films to age as well as they could. Besides, look at all the great movies that are 15 years older than those! So, here we are, traveling back 25 years to that magical time: 1985.

Maybe we should try to remember what 1985 was like, in order to get into the mindset of what these movies were dealing with.

Well, Margaret Thatcher was still Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the year was kicked off by Ronald Reagan being sworn in for his second term as President of the United States. Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and de facto leader of the Soviet Union. The Cold War continued.

A few musicians got together and formed a collaborative group called USA for Africa to record a little diddy titled “We Are the World.” Which just celebrated its 25th Anniversary by rebranding itself for Haiti earthquake relief. The United States was touched for the very first time by Madonna dancing across the country in her first tour called The Virgin Tour. And while Whitney Houston released her first album, David Lee Roth quit Van Halen to embark on his own solo career.

Wrestlemania debuted at Madison Square Garden. Mike Tyson made his professional debut in a match he wins with a first round knockout. Coca-Cola attempted to rewrite its formula under the creative new name New Coke but it failed within three months. In the meantime, the FDA approved a blood test for AIDS that is still used today to screen all blood donations in the U.S.

Commodore released the Amiga 1000. Originally meant as a gaming platform, the result was powerful enough to become a favorite of graphic artist and computer animators, revolutionizing the way computers are branded. It's no longer just for work or just for play. For further reference, Windows 1.0 was not released until November of 1985.

Brøderbund released the game “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” and The Learning Company released the first commercial version of “The Oregon Trail” on the Apple II. Carmen never died of dysentery. Nintendo began a limited test release of the NES game system in the United States. Let this sink in for a moment: this is the age before Mario!

A couple books worth mentioning that were released this year:

• Carl Sagan – Contact
• Isaac Asimov – Robots and Empire
• Bret Easton Ellis – Less Than Zero
• John Irving – The Cider House Rules

A great many others but I chose to list those due to three of them eventually becoming high-grossing movies. The Asimov title is in a series that contains a future high-grossing movie.

So, here we are. Almost at the end of May in the year 1985. There's a couple movies hitting the cinemas this weekend. Anyone wanna go see a movie?