The Year in Movies

Its that time of year again. After miles of aisles, we sat down to recall our favorite moments spent in dark theaters during the past 12 months. There was the air-bike ride through the forest in Return of the Jedi. There was the return of Sean Connery. One critic labeled The Right Stuff the best collection of male talent since The Magnificent Seven. The Big Chill and Terms of Endearment showed the power of big names' making small roles perfect. It was a year when women got tired of asking where the good parts were and played men (Linda Hunt in The Year of Living Dangerously, Anne Carlisle in Liquid Sky). If you believed that Streisand was a boy in Yentl, you've got problems. It was the year Clint Eastwood became the number-one box-office star. It was all that and more. For further highlights, turn the page.

Money-Makers

Despite evidence (below) of a thriving box office, Hollywood pissed and moaned about losing money to VCR owners. One bumper-sticker retort: They'll get my Video-Cassette Recorder when they Pry my cold dead Finger off the eject button. Still, Eddie Murphy (below) won't have to beg, as he did in Trading Places.

Reel People

This year, Hollywood muses seemed to go on strike. Many movies were remakes of classics: Breathless, To Be or Not to Be, Never Say Never Again (a recycled Thunderball), Scarface. But even more were based on real life or a reasonable facsimile thereof: The Right Stuff, Star 80, Heart Like a Wheel, Silkwood, Cross Creek, The Grey Fox, Daniel and our favorite, Never Cry Wolf, from a book by Farley Mowat. Of course, in the book, the hero doesn't fall through the ice; the wolves don't get shot; there is no bush pilot turned guide; and Ootek, the wise old Eskimo, is a young man. The hero does eat field mice, but only after being warned, "They will make your parts small." Well, anyone who saw Charles Martin Smith (right) run with the caribou knows that isn't so. Smith definitely had balls to do that scene.

Lip-Sync or Swim

Just take those old records off the shelf. In 1983, Hollywood seemed to abandon dialog for music. Tom Cruise lip-synced a Bob Seger tune in Risky Business (left). Richard Gere lip-synced Jerry Lee Lewis in Breathless. And Flashdance and Staying Alive were just marathon MTV bits.

Still Wanna be a Star?

Playboy would like to give Monty Python a special Popcorn Award for the most inventive effect. You think life at the top is all fish and chips? Nola Safro, on the set of The Meaning of Life, grabbed the candid shots of magic in the making at right.

Before and After

It was a year of transition. From the top: John Travolta had a close shave and a stomach operation (surgeons implanted Sylvester Stallone's abs) for Staying Alive. Mariel Hemingway had breast surgery for reasons of her own. George Lucas based a munchkinlike character called the Ewok on his own likeness. Shades of Alfred Hitchcock. Lucas also pulled a fast one with Jedi's title. Promos were sent out for Revenge of the Jedi. The posters are worth up to $500 to some collectors.

"Will you do a Leotard Scene?"

"Yes, if it's for Art"

Hollywood left a lot to the imagination in 1983. Instead of nudity and celebrity breasts, we were treated to adventures in the Danskin trade. There were leotard scenes in WarGames and Never Say Never Again. Meg Tilly (above right) gets a Popcorn Award for her workout in The Big Chill. It was a clear-cut case of immediate, undying love. The dance outfit at right belongs to either Jennifer Beals or Marine Jahan from Flashdance. Only their hairdresser knows for sure. And for the boys, below, we have John Travolta and Cynthia Rhodes in a scene from Staying Alive. Tights! Camera! Action!

Bruce Williamson's Hit List

The Ten Best

The Big Chill: Larry Kasdan on a hot roll back to the Sixties.

Fanny & Alexander: Ingmar Bergman warms up with a bawdy family comedy.

Gorky Park: Finely honed thriller; scenes (inset) not for the squeamish.

Heart Like a Wheel: Bonnie Bedelia scores as real-life race-car champion Shirley Muldowney.

Local Hero: Canny Scots villagers vs. Big Oil. No contest.

The Man with Two Brains: Maybe 1983's funniest.

Monty Python's The Meaning of Life: Outrageous, irreverent, the best yet from those English madcaps.

Never Cry Wolf: Something completely different from Disney.

The Right Stuff: Imaginative epic of the Mercury-seven astronauts, still not the stratospheric hit it deserves to be.

Terms of Endearment: You'll laugh until you cry.

The Ten Worst

Deal of the Century: I'll pass on unfunny gunrunners.

Hanna K.: Still another Jill Clay-burgh dud.

The Keep: Quick, raise the drawbridge.

A Night in Heaven: Pure hell on the male go-go circuit.

Psycho II: The best recent argument against sequels.

Querelle: What German New Wave? One of the last--and worst--films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Romantic Comedy: It was neither.

Rumble Fish: Francis Coppola's near-terminal case of the zits.

Stroker Ace: This flat tire tossed Burt Reynolds off the track (and out of first place at the box office).

Two of a Kind: It is probably mere rumor that John Travolta is attempting to buy all existing prints of this and his other (albeit profitable) 1983 turkey, Staying Alive.

News Makers

In 1983, movies made headlines. TV's The Day After was really made for the covers of Time and Newsweek. Some thought Ed Harris' performance in The Right Stuff might get John Glenn elected President. On the contrary, we thought his crazed mercenary in Under Fire might get Reagan re-elected

Best Lines

Where would the English language be without Dirty Harry, who, as usual, gave us the year's best line? Who can forget his famous soliloquy delivered in Dirty Harry and repeated in Magnum Force and on the record Sudden Impact and the Best of Dirty Harry? To refresh your memory, it goes, "I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement. But bein' this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and it could blow your head clean off, you have to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do you, punk?"

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Other memorable lines from 1983: L. Q. Jones, as a Texas Ranger, to his fellow Ranger Chuck Norris on seeing Barbara Carrera on horseback: "How'd ya like to bite that in the butt, develop lockjaw and be dragged to death?" (Lone Wolf McQuade)

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Valerie Kaprisky: "Do you know William Faulkner?" Richard Gere: "Who is he? Some guy you fucked?" (Breathless)

Best Lyric:

"Every sperm is sacred, /Every sperm is great. /If a sperm is wasted, /God is quite irate." (Monty Python's The Meaning of Life)

The Man who would be King

A couple of years ago, we invented the Lawrence Kasdan Award for screen-writing and gave it to Lawrence Kasdan for giving us The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Continental Divide and Body Heat in quick succession. This year, we give the Lawrence Kasdan Award to Stephen King, and from the looks of it, King will cop it next year, too. Last year saw films made from Cujo, The Dead Zone and Christine. Due soon is Firestarter and in the works are Children of the Corn and something called Creep-show II. King is currently adapting The Stand for George Romero. And screenplays apparently aren't enough. King has also taken to writing reviews of the movies made from his books. For example: "Christine is fast, funny, scary and raunchy.... I like it just fine. I think of all the film adaptations of my stuff, John Carpenter's Christine comes closest to capturing the spirit of the book." We guess King's laughing all the way to the bank.

Sex and Violence

Hollywood should be put in charge of the arms race. Face it: It was a great year for weapons. Scarface had a chain-saw scene so bloody it ended up on the cutting-room floor. Sean Connery, in Never Say Never Again, killed a villain with a urine sample. Is that what "bottled in Bond" means? Mere knuckles sufficed for Silkwood's Kurt Russell and Craig T. Nelson. Sean Penn gets a Popcorn Award for his novel use of pop and pillowcase in Bad Boys. A second award goes to the ghetto-blaster bomb (above right) from the same movie. Videodrome sported a lethal tube (above left). Our favorites were the women (below) hounding Graham Chapman to death in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. If you gotta go....

Popcorn Surprise

It was a big year for X-rated movies and video cassettes. It seemed that every adult movie ever made was suddenly available at your local video store in 1983. The best sellers, in no particular order, were Erotic World of Angel Cash, Roommates, Taboo II, All-American Girls, Inside Seka, I like to Watch, Blonde Goddess, Behind the Green Door, Taboo, Talk Dirty to Me Part II. We asked Bruce Williamson to choose ten top all-time erotic movies. His choices: Bad Girls, Behind the Green Door, The Devil in Miss Jones, A History of the Blue Movie, Insatiable (shown in inset), Nothing to Hide, The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann, Roommates (at left), School Girl and Sensations.