List of 1982 box office number-one films in the United States

Yeesh

Overlapping somewhat with the films on the 1981 box office poll:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBMfMopSj3Q

Kinda wild that a (terrific) Richard Pryor concert film would hit #1 at the box office.

right?

Actually gonna vote Khan here — the best Star Trek movie and as such the best single representation of the Star Trek mythos.

Thought about first blood and tootsie (a well made movie i never need to see again) but yeah it’s ST2

a few i really like, but the richard pryor special contains some of the most transcendent stand-up ever put to tape

The Wrath of Khan has one of the great villain performances of all time -- by playing it straight Ricardo Montalban somehow avoids camp and earns the Ahab comparisons -- and I'm tempted to vote for it. First Blood's incoherent politics still results in one of Stallone's best punch-ups.

tootsie (a well made movie i never need to see again)

Tootsie's a well0-made movie I need to see every four days.

E.T. and Tootsie beautifully represent the best of what Hollywood could do in the early 80s.

Thia is a hard choice until the last film on the list, and then it's easy

Not going to vote for it, but I remember liking Sharkey's Machine a lot. Henry Silva is scary as hell in it.

Btw "Sharkey" looks more correct to me too, but it's "Sharky"

directed by Burt Reynolds!

E.T. -- Spielberg's best?

I think I saw ET at the exact wrong age to love it — I was 12 and it already felt a little too cute to me. Four years younger or eight years older, I probably would have appreciated it more. But for that reason it's never quite sunk in for me. I do love the way he uses the suburban setting to evoke mystery and menace.

I was four. I still have my original ET doll from 1982. It's my all-time favorite movie. I watched it recently and it's still so wonderful.

For some reason we had the toy on vhs and I watched it repeatedly as a kid. See also Mr Mom but that's not on the list.

wait what the fuck - we also had wrath of khan and best little whorehouse in texas on VHS. Was that the year VCRs came out? Was everyone just copying movies for each other? Weird.

Oh totally. I remember dubbed copies of Pete's Dragon and a lot of the other early Disney VHS releases making their way into our library via whatever network my parents had set up with friends and relatives. Also, National Lampoon's Vacation, Stroker Ace, Psycho II, and for some reason the 1963 Lord of the Flies.

First Blood's incoherent politics still results in one of Stallone's best punch-ups.

First Blood basically just says America hates the unhoused and the police are its main enforcers. This becomes incoherent if you look at the rah rah sequels or even its scriptwriter's own politics but internally I think it's pretty coherent.

Well, no, because the police act as if Rambo's a dirty hippie who loathed the war. Why would they hate a Vietnam vet? This is John Milius we're talking about here, who loves these kinds of stews.

See also Mr Mom but that's not on the list.

1983.

Don't think I could make a choice but kinda delighted to learn Creepshow hit number one -- it's a remarkably effective film (and an anthology film at that, though with just one director in Romero), aiming for and nailing those EC horror comics vibes they explicitly set out to capture. Without overstating the case, it almost felt like the gleeful long term vengeance of the all the fans of those original comics who were kids loving them in the 1950s, even while the gelling of Satanic panic vibes were starting to emerge to start the cycle anew.

xps i was about 11 when i saw e.t. not long after release (on pirate video, at school!) and, while i remember being into it at the time and had an e.t. plushie, it never stuck with me the way star wars had done.

The last segment of Creepshow remains one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen in a movie.

Well, no, because the police act as if Rambo's a dirty hippie who loathed the war. Why would they hate a Vietnam vet?

As I said, he's an unhoused person with possible mental health issues, you think the cops are gonna worry about his service record?? That's buying into the right's propaganda imo.

wild to see how the addiction to sequels had already started, way back then

Brian Dennehy and his squad code as right wing cops, so their instant revulsion towards Rambo is implausible to me. We'll just disagree.

This is John Milius we're talking about here, who loves these kinds of stews.

Not a Milius movie?

Was that the year VCRs came out?

VHS was officially launched in 1977 (IIRC), but really took off in the early '80s when cheaper players hit the market and catalogue titles on tape started having lower MSRPs--plus the sudden ubiquity of paperback movie guides by critics like Ebert, Maltin etc.

Not a Milius movie?

― Kim Kimberly,

Yeah, oops! I don't know why I thought he co-wrote it with Sly.

Absolutely could be a Milius movie.

Ted Kotcheff also directed the following year's Uncommon Valor, a decent Vietnam film starring Gene Hackman.

Creepshow for me. Ned’s choice of efficient is exactly right - I saw it with a packed audience on its first run and we all had a blast. Still one of the few comic book movies that does actually feel like a comic - and having a Berni Wrightson graphic novel adaptation to go with it was a real coup at the time.

In the UK there was a pretty long wait to see ET after its US release and it was probably the most anticipated blockbuster since Star Wars. It was also at the start of video rental culture in Britain so soon every dodgy Brit video shop had a bootleg copy under the counter. So my memory of it is tied up with Fulci, Argento and all the other video nasties I was renting at the time. It was never the same seeing it visually unblemished. And because of all the piracy I think it was quite a while before there was a legit video issue here.

Per wikipedia, seems crazy today:

E.T. was eventually released on VHS and LaserDisc on October 27, 1988.

The VHS cassette was also rented over six million times during its first two weeks in 1988, a record it held until the VHS release of Batman the following year.[97]

Most of these titles I remember from gazing longingly at the video box in the rental store in the early 80s, but my parents would never let me rent the rated R ones, which seems to be the majority of these. I guess I must have seen ET in the theater though, because I definitely saw it before 1988.

E.T. might have been the last film I saw at our neighbourhood big-screen theatre, the Odeon Weston, a screen apparently then and probably always without stereo sound:

https://photos.cinematreasures.org/production/photos/422753/1697762312/large.JPG?1697762312

I def saw Conan, ET, and Tootsie in the theaters, we went a lot. maybe a few others but I don't think so. def none of the horror stuff or Porky's, and for some reason I was not into ST at that time, just D&D so I did not see Khan.

Brian Dennehy and his squad code as right wing cops, so their instant revulsion towards Rambo is implausible to me. We'll just disagree.

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, June 23, 2025 11:40 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

You don't think this serves as a pretty on-the-nose metaphor for how the American bureaucratic system treats veterans after they return?

I'd think so NOW. Also: Rambo's the guy every police force in America would be proud to hire as a hippie killer.

In the book the cops think Rambo is hippie.

My first reaction to E.T. is not that it's cute: shit is *relentless* in that middle section. I'm still bruised by it, tbh.

First Blood's politics are confusing. I think Dennehy is a small-minded cop, protecting his town; he's worried about hippie vagrants and Rambo's veteran status means little to him. Overall, it's pro-military; Troutman's pride is played straight, and Rambo's whole schtick is 'can we do it again so we can win this time?'. The series picks up that thread and runs with it.

Assuming Pryor will get plenty of votes, I'm leaning towards the trash here; I need to decide between First Blood, Conan, and Rocky III.

First Blood is the only one I've rewatched recently. I thought it held up pretty well as an action thriller. It feels kind of morally and politically ambiguous by design. I'm not even sure how much we are supposed to sympathize with Rambo unleashing hell on that little town because the cops were assholes.

Per wikipedia, seems crazy today:

E.T. was eventually released on VHS and LaserDisc on October 27, 1988.

Also kind of crazy that if you didn't catch it in the cinema, your first exposure to some of these movies would likely have been a flickering VHS copy, watched on a 21" screen (or maybe even 14")

What a different era. A bunch of comedies, a few trashy horror movies, a few oscar-bait pictures, and the closest thing to a special effects blockbuster is a Star Trek movie. I remember the 80s being action movies aimed at children (Conan, Rambo) but a lot of other shit was still popular.

I'd think so NOW. Also: Rambo's the guy every police force in America would be proud to hire as a hippie killer.

Hmmm yeah, exact opposite for me: Rambo is a veteran of the Vietnam war, during which there was a draft, so the cops can't automatically assume he's a true believer or ideologically aligned with them. Today the same plot wouldn't work as well I don't think.

E.T. was eventually released on VHS and LaserDisc on October 27, 1988.

Also kind of crazy that if you didn't catch it in the cinema, your first exposure to some of these movies would likely have been a flickering VHS copy, watched on a 21" screen (or maybe even 14")

generational thinking, I dunno. think it's misleading more than useful. leads us to assume that people are dragged forward into new ways of thinking based on the year they were born when a plurality of them simply are not. the last few elections have shown there are large pockets of American society that have not changed a bit since the 1860s.

my big-city suburban high school in the early 90s I had long hair, and my peers were definitely angry about it. they assumed I was gay, or I wanted to be a girl, or I used long hair to GET girls, but I don't know how invested they were in these theories or if it just pissed them off one some non-verbal level that sometimes got poorly translated into words but usually was expressed by body-checking me in the hallway, pushing me down the stairs, or pouring Coke into my locker vents.

being asked "are you a boy or a girl" was rarely a genuine inquiry unless it was like a 75-year-old lady who was in fact more curious than anything else, it was a way of fucking with you. in simplest terms, long hair was strongly feminine-coded and so any man with long hair was marked - they cannot just have long hair, there had to be a reason. so you cannot leave them alone until you know why. naturally the police response was to treat it as disrespect for authority and be angry about it.

(My hair is curly and grows upward, so my long-haired 80s/90s period drew Eraserhead comparisons.)

Steve Shasta, do you remember if the voiceover was in that BR cut you saw?

Some people thought it was pandering, but I sort of like it as a hardboiled, cornell woolrich kinda vibe

I like the voiceover but Harrison Ford clearly did not

Never not great, this scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnHqiipcw6g

SANDY

Well, good night, Michael. It was a wonderful party. My date left with someone else. I had a lot of fun. Do you have any Seconal?

MICHAEL

Come on. I’ll walk you home.

generational thinking, I dunno. think it's misleading more than useful. leads us to assume that people are dragged forward into new ways of thinking based on the year they were born when a plurality of them simply are not. the last few elections have shown there are large pockets of American society that have not changed a bit since the 1860s.

"generational" i guess is the wrong word. it's more that when someone learns something, right or wrong, it can be difficult to unlearn it, to change those ingrained views. my oldest brother, for instance, who's two years younger than me, he had more internalized homophobia than me, and it's been a struggle for him.

my big-city suburban high school in the early 90s I had long hair, and my peers were definitely angry about it. they assumed I was gay, or I wanted to be a girl, or I used long hair to GET girls, but I don't know how invested they were in these theories or if it just pissed them off one some non-verbal level that sometimes got poorly translated into words but usually was expressed by body-checking me in the hallway, pushing me down the stairs, or pouring Coke into my locker vents.

― fluffy tufts university (f. hazel)

yeah that's the thing that's interesting to me, the whole... they used to call it "the third sex", the idea that homosexual guys were a different _gender_. and the reality is more complicated than that.

what hoffman says connects with me because of the way gender and sexuality are intertwined. in ancient rome the stigma wasn't about being "gay" but about _bottoming_, which you can see if you read catullus 16, and i think a lot of that patriarchal thinking is still with us. gender essentialism is in some way sexual essentialism. there's this division of labor, so to speak, in which men's purpose is to desire, and women's purpose is to be desired. what i like about cis male homosexuality is that it confounds those expectations. if a guy is gay, it's ok for him to be desirable. it's ok for him to be hot. and it makes sense that even if someone's a man, that they might express that through effeminacy.

Michael Dorsey learns to be a better man after playing a woman -- that's the candy-coated message for Academy voters.

― hungover beet poo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

i am impressed by that line at the end: "I was a better man with you as a woman than I ever was with a woman as a man." it's not for me so much about the binary, about looking at things from the "other side", but it is about empathy and understanding people different from you. which, because gender _isn't_ presentation, is possible for guys. it's why i'm in favor of guys wearing dresses, not just because a guy can look good, as a guy, in a dress if it's the right style and color for him, but because it's a pretty radical act of opposition to patriarchy, one of the most radical things a guy can actually do. and i understand why guys don't do that, because that has such hugely negative social consequences.

(My hair is curly and grows upward, so my long-haired 80s/90s period drew Eraserhead comparisons.)

― the way out of (Eazy)

lol, my first email handle was literally "eraserhead"... people used to confuse me with david lynch a _lot_.

Steve Shasta, do you remember if the voiceover was in that BR cut you saw?

Some people thought it was pandering, but I sort of like it as a hardboiled, cornell woolrich kinda vibe

― Andy the Grasshopper, Tuesday, June 24, 2025 12:50 PM (one hour ago)

YES! sorry that was the first indication that things were awry.

In 1987, a friend and I were sitting in a theater for the preview of an as-yet-unreleased comedy and talking about the state of film comedy at the time.

We lamented how few really funny comedies had come out in recent years--the last one we could come up with was Tootsie.

Then the light went down and we watched Raising Arizona.

Between 1982 and 1987, my favorite comedies (or what could be classified as comedies) would've been:

Local Hero
It's a Good Life (from the Twilight Zone movie)
Stranger Than Paradise
Sherman's March
Lost in America
After Hours
Down by Law

Except for It's a Good Life and maybe Lost in America, I'm not sure if any of these would've been distributed outside of arthouse cinemas (e.g. the local multiplex, shopping malls, etc).

I guess you're not a John Hughes fan? Those years cover his imperial phase.

Some key Woody Allen in there too (Broadway Danny Rose, Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah & Her Sisters).

...and, ya know, Repo Man.

And continuing with Woody (and I understand not wanting to) Zelig is also in that window.

This looks like a good thread!

One of the things I miss most about this era is when especially blockbusters were re-released, so movies like ET, Raiders, at least the first two Star Wars movies, I remember seeing them multiple times in the theater, months apart.

Stranger Than Paradise was my favorite then too, but Trading Places and Ruthless People were the all-out comedies I loved.

Bill Pullman is a hoot in that one, iirc

I think we already discussed this a bit upthread, but E.T. really did take its time making its way to home video. I think I first saw it during one of its several theatrical re-issues, around '86 or '87.

Disney took advantage of this as well: I saw Snow White, The Jungle Book, Lady and the Tramp, and 101 Dalmations in theatres, back when (I think) they were still unavailable on VHS, plus I saw Song of the South during which I'm almost certain was its last official release in '86.

Trading Places and Ruthless People were the all-out comedies I loved.

^^Fantastic examples of two rising '80s trends: the ZAZ team and the SNL extended family.

I'm still amazed my parents took us to see Ruthless People in theatres.

I'm still amazed Mick Jagger, Daryl Hall, and Dave Stewart coughed this out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cohCR3rUh0

Are animated opening credit sequences another thing that died with the 80s?

The whole Ruthless People soundtrack is prime coke-era CBS Records deal-making: Jagger solo theme; exclusives from Springsteen & Joel etc.

^^Apparently the Joel wasn't an exclusive, but it's single release was tied into the film.

lolz at the quaintness of the wealth lusted after in Ruthless People:

Beverly Hills fashion tycoon Sam Stone despises his wife, Barbara, having married her for her family wealth, and plans to murder her so he can inherit her $15 million fortune and retire with his mistress Carol.

---

...Ken and Sandy to take revenge by blackmailing him for his entire personal fortune worth over $2.2 million.

https://i.imgur.com/J2LiAeh.png

unironically believe Rocky iii to be the best movie that ive seen from these

tootsie is actually bad-bad once he starts playing tootsie tbh

luckily nobody has ever done a crime for a figure as paltry as 15 mill

tootsie is actually bad-bad once he starts playing tootsie tbh

― tuah dé danann (darraghmac),

Alright, you just shut your mouth. When you talk to me, you talk to me professionally. I’m very proud of being a woman. But I’m also proud of this hospital.

Missed the above but I do like Broadway Danny Rose, one of Allen’s best. The others from then are okay, but not favorites for me.

I was never a big fan of John Hughes but some I think are okay.

Actually looking at Hughes’s filmography now, I can’t say I’m a fan at all. After he stopped directing, he went on to write one dismal film after another.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

No one's even mentioned the big prestige Oscar bait drama and critical favorite of that year, On Golden Pond. Now that I mention it, it wasn't very memorable or compelling.

One of the things I miss most about this era is when especially blockbusters were re-released, so movies like ET, Raiders, at least the first two Star Wars movies, I remember seeing them multiple times in the theater, months apart.

I was 7 the first time I saw Star Wars, and subsequently went to see it again (all in theaters) for both my 8th and 9th birthdays.

From what I remember - I too have read First Blood's Wikipedia article - the backstory is that Brian Dennehy's character was a veteran of the Korean War, who despised Rambo for being a slovenly, self-pitying waste of space. He was also annoyed that Korea had completely forgotten. It's one of those classic 1980s-but-not-quite-the-1980s films, like Videodrome.

ET was the first film I saw at the cinema. I was six! It's one of those films that burned brightly for a while but seemed to fade out of the collective cultural consciousness after a while. There was a sequel novel, from what I remember. But no franchise. The next time I saw it was in 1990, when it was first shown on UK television. It was the BBC's big Christmas film that year. I remember thinking that the film still held up but wasn't as good as Robocop (which had squibs) or The Hunger (which had pubic hair).

Unbelievably the BBC's 1990 showing was apparently the world television premiere. It wasn't show on television in the United States until 1991. Obviously by that time everybody had seen it on videotape, but the thought of a film taking nine years to go from the cinema to home viewing is strange. Imagine if Captain America: Civil War was making its TV debut this year.

I have to admit that I lost touch with mainstream terrestrial television many years ago. I have no idea if terrestrial film premieres are still a thing or not. Presumably mainstream TV still gets millions of viewers, but the thought of people waiting nine years to watch Avengers: Endgame at home is mind-boggling.

Went for First Blood, just ahead of Conan..

1982 was right around the time my parents separated, so we went to a lot of movies with my dad on the weekends. I definitely saw Conan the Barbarian, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, First Blood and Tootsie in theaters. Also The Road Warrior, which I guess wasn't a #1 hit but which was the greatest thing an 11-year-old could ever imagine.

Conan and First Blood are the two from this list that I would willingly re-watch right now, so I'm torn between them.

Nice discussion of First Blood's politics:

---
First Blood's politics are confusing. I think Dennehy is a small-minded cop, protecting his town; he's worried about hippie vagrants and Rambo's veteran status means little to him. Overall, it's pro-military; Troutman's pride is played straight, and Rambo's whole schtick is 'can we do it again so we can win this time?'. The series picks up that thread and runs with it.

― I would prefer not to. (Chinaski)

True, though in First Blood its a v diff product. You have the finest military product, made with US tax dollars, totally breaking down to waging war on its own people. That's what marks this film as really interesting. He was never going to kill any civilians, but there's a few hours of terror, which feels anti-military. Might be a watch at a time when the National Guard and military is called in and you see the prospect of serious violence between the government and the people.

Dennehy ofc didn't know Rambo was an ex-military war hero until Rambo escaped and ended up killing a cop. They would never have checked unless their own brand of small town brutality backfired xp

Conan and Modern Problems are the only two on the list I haven't seen. Tempted to amend that right now, but neither are streaming anywhere I can access at the moment.

the dreamlike incoherency of conan adds an awful lot to it imo

the dreamlike incoherence of modern problems doesn't add as much to it iirc

Nell Carter does tho

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

We didn't discuss Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan enough.

aka Star Trek II: Ricardo's Pectorals

love this interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxxSzt49cYw

Power to the three stealth Porky's voters

xp Nice interview. Good shout-out there to Nicholas Meyer too. He had a pretty good little run from writing The 7 Percent Solution to writing/directing Time After Time and then making STII.

I like Khan well enough, but better than E.T. or Tootise?!

I think I forgot to vote in this. I was stuck between ET and Sunset Strip. Probably would have gone for ET.

I've seen it with both kids as they turned 7 and it's the perfect movie. There's not a whole lot of cuteness in there, almost everything is suffused with some sort of dread or awkwardness. ET is not conventionally attractive in any universe; it blows my mind how much merchandising was centered around a cross between a ham and a vermicious knid.