August 5, 1983
GET CRAZY is a goofy let’s-put-on-a-show comedy directed by Allan Arkush, with a tone similar to his earlier, more popular ROCK ’N’ ROLL HIGH SCHOOL. It’s another broad comedy and celebration of punk culture, oddly mixed with some blues this time.
Daniel Stern (BLUE THUNDER) stars as Neil Allen, stage manager for the historic Saturn Theater, where legendary promoter Max Wolfe (Allen Garfield, NASHVILLE) is putting on his 15th annual New Year’s Eve concert. But there’s a villain trying to steal his thunder. Younger, more competitive promoter Colin Beverly (Ed Begley Jr., CAT PEOPLE) of Serpent Sounds lands his helicopter in front of the theater, causing various women’s clothes to blow off, and struts in with his two henchmen (Bobby Sherman and Fabian), all three of them dressed in silver. He threatens to take over the lease on the Saturn, causing Max to have a heart attack and his shitty nephew Sammy (Miles Chapin, THE FUNHOUSE) to kiss Beverly’s ass. (read the rest of this shit…)
This year for my traditional summer movie retrospective I’ve decided to look back at the summer movie season of 1983. If you know your basic math, you can figure out that this is the, what, 40th anniversary of that summer? Sounds right. I was in the single digits at the time and from what I can remember only saw two of these in the theater that summer. So as always it will be fun to watch them in order of release and try to get a picture of what that time was like from an adult perspective.
June 7, 1991. Despite the notable release of another odd Spike Lee movie, this week was won by more middle-of-the-road culture. It was the week that the original run of Twin Peaks ended. The #1 and #2 songs on the Billboard charts were “More Than Words” by Extreme and “I Wanna Sex U Up” by Color Me Badd. And the #1 movie was a nice normal comedy about wisecracking Billy Crystal birthing a cow to cope with the boredom of middle aged, middle class existence.
Like 
Frankenweenie is a 26-minute long black-and-white Disney live action short that was not quite, as far as I can tell, a Summer of 1985 release. It was made in 1984, planned to play with a re-release of THE JUNGLE BOOK that summer, then production was delayed, moving it to PINOCCHIO in December, but when it received a PG rating they couldn’t play it with a G-rated movie, so it got shelved until playing with only the U.K. release of BABY: THE SECRET OF THE LOST LEGEND. I couldn’t find proof of a date, but if it was the same as the U.S. then it was in March of ’85.
But I decided it was an important backstory to fill in, because it keeps coming up. It was one of the projects then-25-year-old Disney artist Tim Burton switched to after the company didn’t use any of his designs for 
I’ve never had HBO or Showtime, including in the ’80s, so I only know C.H.U.D. as a reference. But we still have a video store here in Seattle and I was looking at the box one day and these glowing-eyed cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers looked pretty cool so I figured it was time I learned what all this is about.
