Film Flashback September 18, 1983

This week's film flashback lands us in the Eighties with Michael Keaton becoming a star with the John Hughes written Mr. Mom playing at the Cinema_One in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The always awesome Teri Garr co-stars with him in this tale of a laid off husband becoming a stay at home dad.

I'm not Batman yet...but I will be. I'm not kidding.

Mr. Mom was in its 3rd and final week and the Martin Twin also has held over movies. Nightmares was an anthology horror film based on urban legends which I do not remember at all. It was not a hit, barely making its budget back (most of which was spent on the computer game sequence), but it appears Murfreesboro enjoyed it. The video game portion looks interesting. Lee Ving of the band Fear appears in one segment and Emilio Estevez listens to Fear in the "Bishop of Battle" part of the film. 

Jennifer Beals was dancing her way into America's heart with Flashdance. I think every girl that attended Riverdale High School went out and bought leg warmers after this movie hit the screen. The soundtrack was all over the pop radio that was played during my school bus ride every morning and evening. It was one of those movies that you couldn't escape even if you didn't go see it. There was also the cool fact that Cynthia Rhodes who played Tina Tech was from Nashville.

Her name was Alex, she was one hell of a welder and a decent dancer.

She's a maniac!

Nightmares trailer

The good ol' Marbro Drive-In has the Susan Anton film Spring Fever which on the surface and in the trailer looks like your standard Eighties teen sex comedy, but is actually a strange little dramedy/sports film about a girl going to Florida to compete in a tennis tournament while her mother, played by Anton, acts promiscuously with random guys.  

Airplane II: The Sequel is part of a double feature on this date. If you liked the original Airplane, then you might like this one too. Since it's set on a space shuttle I guess you could say it's out of this world. Robert Hayes, Julie Hagerty, and Lloyd Bridges are all back along with lots of other stars including William Shatner. This movie was not a huge smash, but it did okay box office.

Cutting loose, growing up

Airplane II: The Sequel trailer

That's it for this week. Come back next week for another journey back in time to Murfreesboro, Tennessee and just might recall that night you went to Jackson Heights and snuck into a movie, or perhaps told your mother you were going to the movies, but walked up to Family Billiards instead.