I loved seeing his recognition as an actor emerging after the Body Snatchers remake. He’d been working all along, recognized as one of those guys in that thing, but the remake brought some focus back on his career, making him more recognizable by name from his part in a classic movie. If you watched TV in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and later still you’d probably recognize him from one of his 206 credits in that half a century of work.
I’d been aware of him all along. He had a part in Ed Dmytryk’s film Mirage (sort of the dark cousin to Stanley Donen’s much lighter Charade, also screenwritten by Peter Stone, and with some of the same actors), and I noticed when he appeared in other places (such as several episodes of Twilight Zone (watched in reruns – I wouldn’t have known him the first time through) then in random other TV shows. But the appearance in the Invasion remake did seem to bring him to the notice of both the public and to directors who seemed to seek him out for his associations.
Oh, video boxes. In 1983 (so, pre-John Hughes), Molly Ringwald was in a TV movie called Packin’ It In in which she had short brown hair with, IIRC, a streak of purple or some unnatural color. A few years later, it was repackaged , with La Ringwald now drawn to look, not even like her then-current self, but like Deborah Foreman in Valley Girl. There was a still of her, from the film, on the back of the box, but it was still misleading, because the movie did not center on her, and her character did not Val it up; she was New Wave.
And there was a movie, pre-X-Files, in which Gillian Anderson was a) topless b) in almost her only scene. I don’t like to imagine how she felt when that was re-released with new cover art that featured her smiling slyly while unbuttoning.
Reminds me of Taps (1981). At the time of its theatrical release it was promoted as starring two Oscar winners, George C. Scott and Timothy Hutton. A few years later, the local paper’s TV listings listed it as starring Tom Cruise and Sean Penn, with no mention of the leads. While they both had important supporting roles, it was Penn’s first movie and Cruise’s second, but post Fast Times and Risky Business, they were the bigger draws.
Billy Bob Thornton had an early role (possibly his first) in the Troma fil Chopper Chicks In Zombie Town. After he went on to fame, the movie was billed as starring him. IIRC he’s on screen for about 6 minutes.
It was a rare moral low for Troma.
That’s a film that Troma distributed rather than produced in house. The latter group is actually fairly small and united (since Toxic Avenger, at any rate) by a deliberate shared aesthetic. they were a clearinghouse for a ton of low-budget exploitation stuff, most of it crap but occasionally a Cannibal: The Musical will slip through the cracks. A lot of those films featured up-and-coming actors, like Kevin Costner in Sizzle Beach, USA. In Lloyd Kaufman’s books he goes on quite a length about the stars who got their beginnings in films that Troma picked up for distribution. The only actor I can thnk of offhand who had a role in an actual “produced by Troma, directed by Kaufman” movie is Marisa Tomei, who played a screaming girl in a towel in the first Toxic Avenger movie.
There’s a weird and terribly dull Italian thriller from the early eighties called Corrupt, starring, of all people, John Lydon, along with Harvey Keitel, during the latter’s long career lull. When Keitel had his renaissance in the early nineties (Bugsy in 1991, then the triple whammy in 1992 of Bad Lieutenant, Reservoir Dogs and, uh, Sister Act), the movie was repackaged as Cop Killer, and the distributor used a still from Bugsy as the front cover photograph, despite the movie having a contemporary settting.
God, I miss the days of shoddy video store exploitation. No joking. I worked at a video store for a couple of years, and had already spent ages immersing myself in straight-to-video junk because there were often some hidden gems just waiting to be found among the dross.
Who wasn’t on the poster or VHS box of Valley Girl. They instead used someone that had like (totally!) three minutes of screen time. As if.
Yeah, if “My Stepmother is an Alien” came out on video today, they’d have Allyson Hannegan and Seth Green on the cover (they are both in the movie, but not the stars, particularly when it came out)
To get back on topic, the US and international versions of Army of Darkness had different endings. The 88 minute international cut got Raimi’s original ending, where Ash messes up the spell and oversleeps, waking up in a post-apocalyptic world. The 81 minute US cut has the revised “S-Mart” ending, where Ash wakes up back in his original time.
The 80s were great! Deborah Foreman and Deborah Goodrich were playing the free spirited 80s girl all over the place. The were even in April Fool’s Day together. Then they faded away, too representative of the 80s styles.
Not a re-release, but between the charity world premiere and the general release date for The Phantom Menace, Lucas inserted the shot of Darth Maul’s bisected body falling down the shaft. This was because after hearing audience members speculating about how Maul might have survived being struck down by Obi-Wan, he wanted people to be 100% certain that Maul was dead, dead, dead and absolutely, positively wasn’t going to come back.
(Narrator: He came back)
In the original ending of Pretty in Pink Molly Ringwald’s character went to the prom with Ducky. It was changed because the test audience hated it.
Which was in itself a dumb idea given Maul was a pretty cool bad guy IMHO
And Mac & Me had a very young Jennifer Aniston as an extra during the McDonald’s scene.