1989 Summer Movies: The Best Ever!

Here we are once again near the end of another terrible movie year. Tired sequels that have long since spent their welcome and comedies that hardly result in more than laughter are filling our movie screens. 3-D has been giving life a new lease of life with very little interest and, sadly, very little emotion. This tired process was first created to combat television in the 1950s and then resurrected in the early 1980s. This trick just meant we were bored in not just one dimension but three!

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m in my mid-40s that makes me disillusioned with modern pop culture, or that I’ve just lived through too many summer movie seasons to be more interested. After all, it is the 18-24 year olds who make up the majority of the movie theater audience. Perhaps I am too ingrained in my youth to care much about today’s movies and their place in history.

I do not believe it. Movies today lack everything that movies of my day seem to have had in abundance. A magical and exciting mix of honesty and special effects made ’80s movies feel like childhood friends. This brings me back to a certain summer movie season that was incredible for its number of blockbusters and a healthy dose of quality comedies and dramas. It was the year 1989.

You first need to understand the main reason why so many budgeted blockbusters were released in a 4 month period. In late 1987 there was a writers’ strike in Hollywood that wreaked havoc on television and feature films. Productions stopped at film projects and television was littered with endless reruns. The strike caused the premature death of many series, such as the popular “Moonlighting”, which never saw its audience again.

Yet as a result of that strike, the 1989 summer movie season was shaping up as a landing strip for so many great movies caught midair from production delays. Bad news for the studios, but good news for movie fans who couldn’t imagine what awaited them in their local theaters.

The film that led that barrage of blockbusters was also one of the most anticipated films of the decade. Batman with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson as a joker was the movie everyone was talking about. Keaton’s casting was unnerving for fans, but Nicholson as the prankster got everyone excited. Not since Marlon Brando in Superman has an actor elevated a popcorn movie to legitimate theatrical thrill.

At the same time, several studios had tickets to long and successful movie series waiting behind the scenes. Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade and Star Trek V were released just a few weeks later, with Lethal Weapon 2 and Ghostbusters 2 right behind them. If that wasn’t enough, a man named Bond, James Bond appeared just 7 days later in “License to Kill”. Think Indiana Jones, Captain Kirk, Batman, and James Bond playing at the same time! If you needed a break from this frenzy, Mel Gibson and the Ghost Hunting Boys were down the hall.

Standout dramas like Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” and “Dead Poets Society” provided a welcome seriousness, while the romantic comedy “When Harry Met Sally” had audiences roaring and ordering “what I had.”

Some original movies also took a bite out of the audience. “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” and Sam Raimi’s “Darkman” were surprise hits.

The memory of that summer of movies will live with me for the rest of my life. Not only did I watch all the movies on opening night, I had a different point of view on the excitement that was happening around me. I was a film usher in the then illustrious and now defunct Amboy Cinemas Theater in Sayreville, New Jersey.

I look back on those three months as a special moment not only in terms of box office history, but also in the excitement and joy I shared with my many popcorn co-stars. There has never been a summer movie season like that since and most likely never will be again. Releasing all those potential blockbusters in such a short time would never fly today.

But back then it did, and I enjoyed every moment. I thought that I had experienced the most exhausting job I had ever had. Each show sold out and hundreds, if not thousands, of sodas were sold every day. This was the true meaning of show business.

Little did he know that a few months later, a studio called Disney would be reborn with a dark movie called “The Little Mermaid.” That Thanksgiving I learned the most valuable skill of my adult life; scrapping gummy bears from a concrete floor.