30 YEARS AGO: HOUSTON NEWSPAPERS REVIEW ‘BACK TO THE FUTURE’
It’s the July Fourth weekend in 1985, you have $2.50 burning a hole in your pocket and it’s been weeks since you’ve been to the theater.
What are you going to see? Maybe you already saw “The Goonies,” “Rambo: First Blood Part II” or “Pale Rider.” “Cocoon” and “Prizzi’s Honor” also look good, but maybe it’s worth waiting till both come on HBO.
Then there’s this new movie called “Back to the Future.” Doesn’t sound too bad. It’s got that Alex P. Keaton kid from “Family Ties” and that spaced-out dude from “Taxi.”
If your decision to see or pass on a film was based on what critic Jeff Millar wrote in the Houston Chronicle, you were in for a little bit of a wait. The paper didn’t review it until nearly a week after it was in Houston theaters. Even then, it ran with a review of “Red Sonja.” (“Schwarzenegger’s fans will be disappointed with his screen time in this one,” Millar wrote.)
“About five minutes after the beginning of ‘Back to the Future’ the film plastered a big grin on my face. There the grin stayed, varying only from wide to wider, until the end credits,” Millar said in his review. “It’s a sweetheart of a movie.”
The Houston Post didn’t waste much time publishing its review for holiday film goers. In his write-up, critic Joe Leydon gave the movie three-anda-half stars, calling it “bright and larky popcorn entertainment.”
“Once it gets past the hurdle of some overplayed exposition, ‘Back to the Future’ zips along at a brisk pace, fueled by high spirits and boundless imagination,” Leydon wrote.
Personally, I distinctly remember the audience laughing at two scenes in the movie.
The first was when an incredulous Marty McFly observes that Doc Brown made a time machine out of a DeLorean. By the time the movie had come out, the DeLorean Motor Company was defunct and maverick founder John DeLorean had been acquitted on cocaine trafficking and fraud charges. I wonder if the comical absurdity of the gull-wing sports car becoming the uncredited star of the film is lost on audiences today.
The other is when Marty, at his grandparents’ house, sees his infant uncle Joey in a crib. Knowing that Joey grows up to be a jailbird, Marty tells him, “Better get used to these bars, kid.”
This movie left an incredible impression on me when, as an 8-year-old, I saw it that August at the Galleria’s General Cinema theater. I thought it was the best movie ever. It doesn’t get any more cool than a guitar-playing, skateboard-riding time traveler, right?
But there’s another reason this movie holds a special place in my heart.
At the time my grandfather was essentially living out his final weeks at the old Veterans Administration hospital off Holcombe and Almeda.
I remember that place being quite depressing. As kids, my cousins and I weren’t allowed into the rooms so we spent a lot of time in waiting rooms or running around the hospital’s expansive front lawn. That was late July and August 1985 for me.
Eventually Dad got the idea to take me and my cousins to see “Back to the Future.”
Famed Welsh entertainer Ivor Novello said going to the movies “is a little outing in itself. It breaks the monotony of an afternoon or evening; it gives a change from the surroundings of home, however pleasant.”
My grandfather would pass away by the end of the month. Of all the bad memories of that time, that “little outing” remains a pleasant memory that still sticks with me 30 years later.