Film Flashback April 17, 1985

It was a Wednesday in Murfreesboro on April 17, 1985. My senior year of high school was in its last furious full swing. We'd dodged having to move graduation until the middle of June by having our spring break taken after January and February snows caused us to miss almost 4 weeks of school. Those were glorious frozen days, but the spring thaw had come and fresh movies had arrived along with one film that was in its second to last night after playing for 19 straight weeks.

The Cinema Twin offers up the biographical story of the The Killing Fields. It's about a journalist trapped in Cambodia during the dark and terrible reign of Pol Pot. The trailer is very intense. The other movie is Stephen King's Cat's Eye. I haven't seen it, but the trailer is interesting. It's an anthological horror film with a stray cat linking each story. Both of these movies played for just one week so they were near the end of their stay in Murfreesboro.

 

The Martin Four has got you covered with fantasy, cop comedy and drama, and one of my favorite films ever made.

Ladyhawke directed by Richard Donner stars Matthew Broderick, Rutger Hauer, and Michelle Pfeiffer and is a megadose of fantasy. This movie would stick around for an additional week.

Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment continues in the dumb humor style of the first movie. Bobcat Goldthwait steals the show as the evil Zed. I didn't see this one in the theatre, but I saw it on VHS back in the day. Guttenberg and company would play at the Martin Four for 9 weeks. This was its 3rd week.

Beverly Hills Cop was in its 19th and final week at the Martin Four. Somehow I never went to see it, but I caught it later on video. Eddie Murphy is great as Axel Foley. It really is a deft fish out of water comedy mixed with just enough drama to have you on the edge of your seat. There's a reason it played so long and that reason is it's a darn good movie.

The last movie is the one dearest to my heart. The Breakfast Club was the perfect movie for a high school senior to watch. I'm not going to delve into the plot because if you've read this far I'm sure you know it yourself. I did love how the movie was more like a play and the actors were all fantastic. I bought a movie poster of it from Collector's World even. Most intriguing for me was when I thought back to when I had seen it because after delving deeper into the past I discovered a mystery. There were a couple of things I knew for a fact. 

I saw the film one week before seeing Vision Quest which is another essential 80's movie and I saw the film with teammates of the Riverdale Quiz Bowl team. We had been at a competition at Martin College in Pulaski on a Friday. We drove back to Murfreesboro that evening and I insisted we needed to see the movie so myself, DD Blank, Radargirl, the Katman, and perhaps Rob P also went to see it. I remember Radargirl loving the Bowie quote from "Changes" used at the beginning of the film. Since The Breakfast Club general release was on February 15th that had to be the night we saw it, right? Wrong. Boy was I wrong. It's not your heart that dies when you get older it's your memory.

So I did some research. It turned out that Vision Quest came out on February 15th also and unlike The Breakfast Club it did play in Murfreesboro on that date. It played for two weeks. I definitely went to see Vision Quest on February 15 because I met my cousin Freddy in town and he had brought along a couple of girls. We saw the movie and then drove around town in my old Plymouth Fury II with the ladies. That was a bit unusual as I didn't see my cousin as much in those days as I had when we were younger. So why had I remembered seeing The Breakfast Club the week before? Had I really seen it then and then seen it again with my Quiz Bowl teammates? I had. And here's how:

February 8, 1985 DNJ

I was there that night for this sneak peek. I had seen a trailer and the movie looked interesting to me. So I had seen it before Vision Quest. Note, I had not even seen Sixteen Candles at this point. I vaguely recognized Molly Ringwald as having been in the movie Spacehunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone which I had seen at the theatre outside Hickory Hollow a year or so before and I remembered her from the first half season of The Facts Of Life as she was part of the original cast. She was not yet the icon that The Breakfast Club made her. Seeing her in The Breakfast Club made me want to see her in other things and ABC was about to air a TV movie about teen suicide titled Surviving. This aired on February 10, 1985. There was even a blurb about it in that same issue of DNJ. Of course, I watched this movie when it aired. 

I had already seen The Breakfast Club long before I saw it again with my Quiz Bowl teammates. The movie began its regular showing at the Martin on April 12th. So that was the day of our competition at Martin College. I insisted they see it because I had seen it and knew it was great. I was going to see it again with or without them. But seeing it with them made it all that much better. There was a core group of us on that Quiz Bowl team that had gone to all of the early morning practices and had gone to every competition and we had a great time together. I loved all of then and love them all still. A good friend of mine once said the best thing about being in the marching band was being part of something bigger than themselves and that's the way I feel about Quiz Bowl too. My senior year of high school was pretty darn cool and the last few months were close to being outright magical. The whole world seemed to be opening up for me and everything seemed to be in on it....if you get my drift. Writer and director of The Breakfast Club John Hughes definitely was in on it. Oh, and in case you are wondering The Breakfast Club only played for one week in Murfreesboro.

When I helped deejay the student council dance I brought The Breakfast Club soundtrack.

Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. What we did was wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain... ...an athlete... ... a basket case... ...a princess... ...and a criminal... Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.