San Antonio is the star in 1984’s ‘Cloak & Dagger’
The 1984 thriller “Cloak & Dagger” would be hard to distinguish from TV shows of the era such as “The A-team” and “Magnum P.I.” if it weren’t for its star, a kid named Henry Thomas known to everyone back then as Elliott from “E.T. the Extra-terrestrial.”
Thomas, in his first movie since Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster made him famous, plays Davey, an 11-year-old boy who loses himself in an Atari video game called “Cloak & Dagger” after his mother’s death. He not only plays on his Atari 5200 console, he makes up a roleplaying game based on “Cloak & Dagger’s” secret-agent plot and makes believe he’s a spy with his friend Kim (Christina Nigra).
He even talks to an imaginary friend named Jack Flack — aka Agent X, the game’s hero — who looks a lot like his dad (Dabney Coleman), also still reeling from losing his wife. All of which explains why no one really believes Davey when he says he witnessed an FBI man being murdered by spies — or maybe it was Nazis. He’s not really sure.
The crime was real, though, and the dying man left Davey in possession of a video game cartridge — very coincidentally his favorite, “Cloak & Dagger” — that contains stolen plans to a secret weapon. So Davey is pretty much on his own — with some help from Kim and occasional advice from Jack Flack — as the bad guys chase him through his hometown, San Antonio, with stops at the Alamo, Brackenridge Park and the River Walk, the site of a tense showdown.
San Antonio isn’t merely the movie’s setting, it’s written into the script, which drops place names such as the Tower Life Building, Windsor Park Mall and Kelly Field.
“It is the embodiment of a lot that America stands for in its myth,” screenwriter Tom Holland
told The San Antonio Light in 1984. “The Alamo, specifically, was appealing as a symbol for the American myth of heroes.”
A long stretch set on a barge floating down the San Antonio River includes audible snatches of the pilot’s spiel about the Arneson River Theatre, the Hertzberg Circus Collection and more. That’s the scene Thomas remembers when asked about the movie.
“There was a stunt where my character jumps from a barge to a paddle boat to the River Walk — and the stunt coordinator was trying to walk me through the stunt,” he said in a recent interview with the Express-news. “And anyway, I fell into the San Antonio River.
“It was only like 3 feet deep. I was only in for a few seconds. That was good enough for me.”
There also are postcard-worthy scenes of the lush greenery at the Japanese Tea Garden, the Tower of the Americas against a cloudless blue sky, the Sky Ride at Brackenridge Park and a horse-drawn carriage on a downtown street. To someone unfamiliar with the city, San Antonio must have looked like a pretty exotic place.
Of course, it looked like home to Thomas, who was born here.
“Being able to film in San Antonio was so nice,” he said. “I had dinner at my house every night after work, which was amazing.”
“Cloak & Dagger” opened in August 1984, the summer “Ghostbusters” ruled the box office and Prince became a superstar with “Purple Rain.” A modestly budgeted family film was easy to overlook among such company, and “Cloak & Dagger” finished seventh at the box office on its opening weekend.
The movie is based on a Cornell Woolrich story called “The Boy Cried Murder,” which also was made into a 1949 movie called “The Window.”
“Cloak & Dagger” is reasonably suspenseful, more than reasonably violent for a family film, and for the adults in the room, not much more. But because of its young hero and the pivotal role played by video games, it’s the kind of movie kids will watch over and over.
And it gave Thomas bragging rights as the Alamo City’s first, but not last, spy kid. jkiest@express-news.net
• “E.T. the Extra-terrestrial,” Thomas’ breakout movie, is streaming on Peacock.
• Thomas is one of the fortunate child stars who continued working into adulthood. His more notable credits include “Legends of the Fall” (IMDB TV), “All the Pretty Horses” (Hulu) and “Gangs of New York” (HBO Max).
• For the past five years, he has been a regular cast member in projects by horror director Mike Flanagan, including the “Shining” sequel “Doctor Sleep” (HBO Max) and the miniseries “The Haunting of Hill House” (Netflix).