Explorers (1985)

A Valley girl, a Hollywood punk, and a teen sex comedy that turned out gentler than its backers demanded.Valley Girl follows a preppy teenage girl from the San Fernando Valley who falls for a punk rocker from Hollywood, to the displeasure of her friends. Andrew Lane and Wayne Crawford wrote and produced the film and Martha Coolidge directed, with her friend and cast member Colleen Camp playing a major role behind the scenes. Nicolas Cage and Deborah Foreman lead the cast. Conceived to exploit the hit single by Frank Zappa and Moon Unit Zappa, and financed by Atlantic Releasing Corporation, the film came with a quota on naked breasts, Coolidge says. She delivered, adding a stellar young cast and a New Wave soundtrack ripped from the KROQ playlist of the time, with Modern English, The Plimsouls, Men at Work and The Psychedelic Furs among the artists. Shipped quickly to theaters, Valley Girl has aged into one of the decade’s best teen romances.Find transcripts, screenshots, and source links at videocassettedays.com.

Six strangers in one Seattle apartment building, a soundtrack that broke the film out of release limbo, and a movie the "grunge rock" craze almost overwhelmed.Written and directed by Cameron Crowe, Singles follows a group of twentysomethings circling the question of whether to commit to someone or stay single. Kyra Sedgwick, Campbell Scott, Bridget Fonda, and Matt Dillon lead the ensemble, with Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, Soundgarden's Chris Cornell, and much of Seattle's music scene woven into the cast and score. Finished in 1991 and shelved by Warner Bros., Singles remained in limbo until Nirvana's album Nevermind turned the Seattle sound into a national phenomenon. Struggling against misconceptions about its intentions, and against its own problems of structure and casting, the romantic comedy has since aged into a time capsule of the exact moment it was accused of exploiting.Find transcripts, screenshots, and source links at videocassettedays.com.

Six suspects, one house, three different killers — depending on which theater you walked into. Jonathan Lynn directs a board-game adaptation built on a gimmick so bold it nearly sank the film, only for that same gimmick to become the reason it never really left theaters.Written and directed by Lynn from a story by John Landis, Clue reimagines the Parker Brothers game as a fast-talking whodunit, trapping six guests, a butler, and a body count inside one stormy mansion. Tim Curry leads an ensemble that includes Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, and Michael McKean, produced by Debra Hill. The film's signature stunt — three different endings, randomly assigned by theater — split audiences and critics at the time, and Paramount's marketing struggled to explain a joke that wouldn't fully land until home video let viewers see all three. What played in 1985 as a box-office disappointment has spent the decades since becoming exactly the cult object its ending-swap always seemed designed for.Find transcripts, screenshots, and source links at videocassettedays.com.

Three boys build a spaceship the studio never let them finish. Joe Dante directs an autumn tale where childhood wonder meets adult ambition, only to have that conflict play out behind the camera.Written by Eric Luke, Explorers imagines three suburban kids who build their own spaceship from junk and dreams, only to discover the universe is stranger and lonelier than they'd imagined. Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix lead the young cast in their earliest screen roles, backed by Rob Bottin's creature effects work and a score from Jerry Goldsmith. The production's real story runs parallel to its plot. A regime change at Paramount installed new executives over the film mid-production, and Explorers arrived in theaters incomplete, rushed out before Dante or his collaborators considered it finished.Find transcripts, screenshots, and source links at videocassettedays.com.

Road trip comedy too soulful to sell, too scattered to stick its landing. Kevin Reynolds writes and directs a coming-of-age story about five Texas college graduates on one last drive before the real world catches up with them. Trace how Reynolds' death-defying student film Proof caught Steven Spielberg's attention and how Warner Bros. never figured out how to sell Fandango, the feature-length version that followed. Find transcripts, screenshots and source links at videocassettedays.com.

A creature feature that runs two tracks — straight monster thriller and tongue-in-cheek comedy — without ever losing its footing. Trace how Brent Maddock and S.S. Wilson's screenplay, Ron Underwood's direction, Gale Anne Hurd's production, and Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr.'s creature effects built one of the era's most entertaining horror-comedies. Find transcripts, screenshots, and source links at videocassettedays.com.

A teenage horror-comedy that couldn't decide what it was—and is timeless for it. Follow how director Joel Schumacher and Richard Donner's competing visions, Warner Bros.' ambitions, Santa Cruz locations, and cutting-edge makeup effects resulted in the most memorable vampire film of its generation. Find transcripts, screenshots, and source links at videocassettedays.com.