List of 1984 box office number-one films in the United States

ugh not a great year

but I'm stunned at how MANY of these I actually saw in the theater, I guess I had nothing better going on

The Natural was a #1 movie!

I voted Breakin' because that's what six-year-old me would have voted for. I saw Splash, maybe Footloose, Temple of Doom, and The Search for Spock that year in theaters as well.

I just remember Purple Rain as being a sucky movie... whatever Prince's strengths were, leading man was not among them

as a kid it would have been Ghostbusters, now it's The Terminator. obv Temple of Doom is great, and I think Search for Spock is a pretty underrated Trek film that has the misfortune of being released between the two best Trek films.

I had no idea there was a Dud-starring remake of Unfaithfully Yours, almost certainly it sucks great gobs of suck

In spite of the lukewarm critical reception, the film was a minor commercial success.[8]

'Wolverines!'
I remember kinda liking Red Dawn in the theater, can't imagine I could sit through it now

good year to have been on SCTV. gotta be ghostbusters but splash a close second.

Ones I would ideally rewatch before voting: Silkwood and All of Me.

.38 Special title track from Teachers.

Ghostbusters and Beverly Hills Cop had the most deleterious effect on movie comedy going forward. I watched the still-sorta-funny Ruthless People (from 1986) again a few days ago and it was instructive to see just how much the conventions of the "action comedy" had calcified in such a short time.

Almost voted for the actually funny and thrilling action comedy Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but going with the even funnier All of Me instead--probably the most revered of the Steve Martin/Carl Reiner collabs, even if I might regard the previous year's The Man With Two Brains slightly higher.

I realize how fucking racist Temple is but it does realize the "Sat afternoon bullshit cliffhanger" than Raiders does. I love the "Anything Goes" opening sequence. The heart-opening sequence is spectacularly edited. I even have patience for Kate Capshaw's airhead.

*more than Raiders does

.38 Special title track from Teachers.

all I remember about this film is my dad dropping me off and then sneaking off with my buddies to drink peppermint schnapps in a creek or something like that

did you have awful mullets

god no, even then I knew the mullet was wrong wrong wrong... but I'm sure we looked like idiots nonetheless

It was a good year for skipping the film and just listening to the soundtrack on your Walkman.

I hope All of Me holds up, it struck me as funny at the time.

It's not Tootsie but when Martin walks possessed by Tomlin it cracks me up.

listening to the soundtrack on your Walkman

oh the 'Axel F Theme' was everywhere! And certainly Purple Rain as well

This is The Terminator and it's not even close. A tough and nasty horror movie.

Oh, God, You Devil! (1984, 1h37m)

I've seen ... 16 of these? I suspect only two or three in the theaters, but a ton on video. It's either Ghostbusters or The Terminator, at least as far as legacy goes. A bunch of them I haven't seen in decades, and while I remember enjoying them at the time, I do wonder how something like Splash holds up. For sure the last time I saw Beverly Hills Cop is was kind of generic, but it's also a template of sorts, so not fair. Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter is the best Friday, Police Academy probably the, er, best Police Academy. Silkwood, All of Me, The Natural ... sort of auteur legacy films? Don't recall disliking any of those. For that matter, don't recall disliking any of the 16 or so I've seen, but I bet of those Missing in Action holds up the worst.

I can pretty much picture the TV print ads and showtimes for all of these.

xp John Denver's film career was kind of a feather in his cap.. not what he's generally known for, but had a fair amount of success nonetheless, maybe like Sinatra

rando selection of other notables of 1984, for context:
Repo Man
This Is Spinal Tap
Children of the Corn
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes
Moscow on the Hudson
Sixteen Candles
Firestarter
Streets of Fire
Gremlins
Under the Volcano
The Karate Kid
Bachelor Party
Conan the Destroyer
The NeverEnding Story
Revenge of the Nerds
The Philadelphia Experiment
Amadeus
Irreconcilable Differences
Paris, Texas
The Killing Fields
Dune
1984

I remember Amadeus & The Killing Fields being bigger than I guess they actually were

I've seen 16 of those, too! Four in the theatre?

I included Under the Volcano because I love the book and I love Albert Finney, but I think it bombed... I watched it awhile back on Criterion or somewhere and it's not bad at all, just maybe not what Americans were looking for that year

Not one of my favorites from 1984, but All of Me is solid - Martin and Tomlin do some of their best work here, so it gets my vote.

rando selection of other notables of 1984, for context:

What a year for soundtracks.

Not big box office by any means, but '84 also had Choose Me, Stranger Than Paradise, Blood Simple, Body Double, The Brother from Another Planet...

I remember Amadeus & The Killing Fields being bigger than I guess they actually were

Well those two films grossed much more than, say, Supergirl, they just weren't number ones.

Low bar, I know, but is Splash Ron Howard's best film?

Not big box office by any means, but '84 also had Choose Me, Stranger Than Paradise, Blood Simple, Body Double, The Brother from Another Planet...

Absolutely. I don't like the direction Hollywood took as the '80s wore on, but it's the decade where independent films really began to flourish - a lot of the best and boldest work in the U.S. was done in the margins.

There's also Love Streams, Stop Making Sense (which he Demme did after Goldie Hawn ruined what would've been her best movie) and I'll add a few international productions connected to North America:
Next Of Kin [Atom Egoyan], Once Upon a Time in America [Sergio Leone, the "long version" and not the butchered one demanded by the U.S. distributor] and Paris, Texas [Wim Wenders]

(whoops, Paris, Texas already mentioned)

Its hard not to look back at these through the lens of 13 year old me, which liked Footloose and Temple of Doom, neither of which I'd enjoy on a rewatch. I don't think I've even heard of a few of the #1s in that list!

1984 began the dreariest streak of BP winners

A lot of these movies remind me of my earliest cable TV experiences more than anything. Like, I remember next to nothing about Teachers or the '84 Unfaithfully Yours other than their constant presence on cable for a year or so.

xp Never mind winners, there's barely a nominee I'd watch again from the rest of the decade.

a lot of the best and boldest work in the U.S. was done in the margins

This rings true. There were a number of lower budget films from '84 that I remember fondly: Angel; Night of the Comet; Alphabet City. This was also the year of Ken Russell's Crimes of Passion.

Razorback!

The Terminator just over Ghostbusters, both great imo. Purple Rain and Breakin' are obviously classic but not quite good movies. Rewatched Beverly Hills Cop with the kids not too many years ago, it was better than I remembered it being. Eddie Murphy was just such a live wire, and the rest of the cast is good too. All of Me is good. Splash is OK. The Indiana Jones and Star Trek movies are steps down from their predecessors. As a lefty teen I boycotted Red Dawn and haven't seen it to this day. Silkwood I only sort of remember, it's solid. The Unfaithfully Yours remake is late-period Dudley Moore, redundant and not a patch on the original.

I'm stunned at how MANY of these I actually saw in the theater, I guess I had nothing better going on

Yep! I was 14/15 in 1984, none of my friends had driver's licenses yet, one thing we could do was get someone to take us to movies. So I saw a bunch of these in theaters. I remember my mom came in with me and my friends to get us into Purple Rain, and the woman at the ticket counter wouldn't let her just vouch for us, she had to buy a ticket. My mom was like, "I'm just going to leave immediately," and the woman said she'd come throw us out if she did. (Ticket office people were super nazis about R-rated movies in those days.) My mom did leave immediately, so I spent the whole movie half expecting the ticket-booth lady to come grab me and my friends and toss us out. She didn't though.

Its weird, I dont recall seeing any of these films in the cinema at the time. Not the #1 ones anyway. Other stuff peeps have mentioned I did. like Never Ending Story, and Gremlins. But much of the rest - later on TV, or a rented VHS as a later teen.

I realize how fucking racist Temple is but it does realize the "Sat afternoon bullshit cliffhanger" than Raiders does. I love the "Anything Goes" opening sequence. The heart-opening sequence is spectacularly edited. I even have patience for Kate Capshaw's airhead.

It is the pulpiest pulp Indiana Jones film for sure. And its highlights are some of the most iconic moments of the series. The spike room, mine cart escape, and bridge cutting scenes are probably my favorite action sequences in the entire series, and probably the most iconic to boot (after the Raiders opening sequence, of course)

Gremlins didn't hit #1 box office? Surprising

The Natural is such a weird movie, I remember as a kid wondering if I was supposed to find it inspiring or totall depressing. Redford isn’t even playing a human being in it afaict.

Glenn Close has joked often that she got her undeserved Oscar nomination purely on how Caleb Deschanel lit her.

Gremlins didn't hit #1 box office? Surprising

― sookie stackhausen (Jon not Jon), Friday, August 14, 2026 10:13 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Released on the same day as Ghostbusters.

I probably saw both that weekend at Har Mar Mall

Heh, I definitely saw Ghostbusters at Har Mar opening weekend (wasn't too into it, haven't rewatched) and Gremlins at Burnsville Center later that summer.

Ghostbusters works better if you watch it 100 times.

really want the 'Purple Rain' voters to stand and be counted, that is objectively not a good film unless you're a superfan or something

I wanna know who else voted for Friday the 13th.

Purple Rain is not a good film, but it's a cultural treasure imo. So it's kind of hard to weigh its merits, although I agree that they aren't cinematic.

Like if I could only save five movies on this list from being deleted from the world, Purple Rain would be one of them.

but we can delete Under the Cherry Moon, right?

Under the Cherry Moon, I'll maintain, is a bad film that's more interesting than PR. But PR owned its cultural moment and no way I'd say he shouldn't have made it.

Yeah Cherry Moon is only for the heads. It's kind of amazing it exists, but it's not exactly essential.

Has anyone actually ever seen Graffiti Bridge? I owned the CD but the movie is, I believe, only available for screening as a double bill with The Day The Clown Cried.

Definitely not. I liked the album fine, but also probably haven't listened to it this century.

The actual best Prince film is the Sign o the Times concert movie.

I just played the soundtrack to Graffiti Bridge after seeing it was released on this day in 1990. It's not one of his greats, but it's surprisingly enjoyable. You can kind of pretend it's a Paisley Parks Records sampler, an hour's worth of music from all the acts Prince signed and produced for his label. The only real dud for me was the title track, and there's near the end.

Shortly after Prince died, this guy who worked on Graffiti Bridge did some kind of group interview/discussion with other people who worked with Prince, and he attests that Prince was a workaholic who wouldn't go to sleep. So the biggest stress was keeping up with Prince because at this point it was just him and Prince working on the film. (I thought it was editing, but Rebecca Ross is credited as the editor and I don't think that was the person doing this interview.) I think he said they were up for two days straight working on the movie, and when Prince came in to talk about the movie, Prince literally falls asleep in mid-sentence because he's completely beat. The guy looked around and as it sank in that he was the last man standing, he went "I win!"

*that's near the end

Ah, found the story! (got a few details wrong)

Prince worked with the filmmaker-trained ["Purple Rain” assistant director and tour manager Craig Rice] on many movie projects after “Purple Rain,” including the rather incredible to hear about project for NKOTB around the height of their teenybopper fame. “He didn’t want every movie he made to be about him,” Rice explained. As for a movie that did get made, he recounted the boss telling him to toughen up as they stayed up for four nights straight to get through the editing process of “Graffiti Bridge.” But it was Prince who finally caved. Said Rice, “Mid-sentence, he fell asleep, and I said, ‘I did it!'”

NKOTB is New Kids on the Block

The actual best Prince film is the Sign o the Times concert movie.

Yeah, it was streaming not too long ago and then came out on Blu-Ray. Definitely worth watching if you've never seen it.

During a Prince binge I decided to treat myself to a Prince movie marathon. Purple Rain is not a good movie but it's a fun bad movie and the performances are great. I was pretty stoked about Under The Cherry Moon because Parade is the best, but it was a drag. Interesting, but a drag. Prince does not know how to be funny. I bailed halfway into Graffiti Bridge. What if you crossed the worst parts of Purple Rain with Joel Schumacher's Batman aesthetic, with a soundtrack that's 80% shit? That's Graffiti Bridge.

Prince does not know how to be funny.

I do always chuckle at his reaction shot in the "Kiss" clip, when his love interest mimes the baritone "Yeah!"

He reminds me of Madonna, in that they both seem to think they are funny and they have an affection for old Hollywood madcaps that they aspire for but it doesn’t fit.

Madonna and Prince are funny in video, not in feature films; they work in moments.

He was pretty good in that episode of New Girl iirc

Camaraderie: ha, fair enough! i still think of myself as one of the youngsters around these parts, sometimes.

I voted Purple Rain, on the basis of "which movie would I want to watch now". Honestly, that and Terminator are the only ones that struck me as worth a repeat viewing, and the only one's I've given a repeat viewing in this century. And I enjoyed both immensely. The love here for All of Me is making me think it holds up and I'd probably actually watch that next. I've been a hater on Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop since they came out.

Oh, God, You Devil! 3

lol come forward, voters

I’ve only seen the one with the little girl (Oh God, Book 2)?

alls i'm gonna say is it got 3 votes and maybe we have some very special lurkers

Prince does not know how to be funny

bullshit, his muppets tonight episode is hilarious (as is under the cherry moon)

and he was reliably a trip on late night shows

Okay I’m wrong, but UTCM was so painfully unfunny I am not willing to rewatch it with fresh eyes. I will take Ivy’s word that there are treasures there I can’t see, you could liken it to the ultraviolet spectrum even.

Prince can be funny in the moment IRL (“I live in my heart Matt Damon”) but I don’t think that ever translated into him writing a funny movie on his own. His few guest appearances on other comedies were almost entirely written by those show’s writers even though he approved or contributed a few ideas.

Prince was capable of being funny, or humorous at least, in songs, on stage, with facial gestures, etc, but not in movies, not while acting. Esp not when writing his scripts. The fan revisionism on UTCM is that it's a better representation of prince as he was in real life, which may or may not be true, but if true, that means he was unfunny, totally enamored with himself, and constantly posing/mugging/hamming it up - hard to get much out of the Christopher Tracy character or prince himself really. Dirty rotten scoundrels did the UTCM premise way better. I can't think of anything good to say about graffiti bridge. Apparently Madonna was asked to be in it but she hated it. It's a shame rep cinemas show PR fairly regularly but not SOTT.

The prince outtake movie star from around the same time as UTCM is basically the Christopher Tracy character better encapsulated in four mins than the whole film. Really though, Morris day should have starred as CT in UTCM, not prince. He might have redeemed it.

i’ve always wanted someone to do an edit of purple rain that took out most of the script, all of the misogyny and just kept the crowd scenes, the incredible performances and maybe a couple of sick shots of prince riding up on his motorbike, like 45 mins long, would be perfect

All of Me was during Steve Martin’s imperial phase, and he and Lily Tomlin are simply tremendous in it, but i’m going by my memory of having seen it in the cinema aged 10. It’s been pretty completely memory holed which is weird right? Big movie, big stars, unique premise? A few years ago I looked for it on torrent sites, the only copy I found was like 480p!

in fact I’d go so far as to say it’s probably the performance of Steve Martin’s life?

I won't argue. Roxanne and Pennies from Heaven vie for second place.

He's great in those Reiner collabs, even though it took until The Man With Two Brains and All of Me for the films to match his energy and invention.

'Course, I'm enough of a fan that I'd put Planes Trains and Automobiles and L.A. Story among his best as well.

"Amusingly, I suspect that that final (spoiler) 15 or so minutes is what is going to stick with me!"

I'm reminded of the old Sergio Leone quote about Clint Eastwood, which was something to the effect that "Michaelangelo looked at a block of stone, and saw David, where I looked at Clint Eastwood and saw a block of stone". He probably said it in Italian. Ho visto un blocco di granito. Except that in the case of The Terminator, James Cameron looked at Arnold Schwarzenegger and saw a hyperalloy combat skeleton.

And I mean technically he looked at Lance Henriksen first, because the original plan was to have Henriksen as The Terminator, which makes a certain amount of sense because he was supposed to be a sneaky infiltration unit. But on the other hand the plot worked better if the good guy was a scrawny weed and the baddy was a giant bodybuilder, so they cast Schwarzenegger as the baddy and hired Michael Biehn as the hero instead.

I mean, they could have had Henriksen as the hero... and I suppose technically he was a hero in that film, and so he was playing against type. You know, I remember watching Millennium when it was new, and there was a mass of hype about it, and I've had no desire to re-evaluate it in the thirty years since it was on television. And yet it wasn't bad, it was just very much of its time, which was not 1984.

No, 1984 was a happy time. An upbeat, sunlit year of endless possibilities. Women in bikinis on roller skates! The Space Shuttle! The only war was the Cola War, which sadly led to the destruction of Challenger two years later when a Tab Clear can ruptured, but that was two years away.

and Henriksen has a supporting role in The Terminator -- compensation!

I'd love to at least briefly visit that universe where Henriksen played the Terminator - even better than the Stallone scenario presented in Last Action Hero. I can totally see it for a lot of the scenes, and maybe even working better for the atmosphere of methodical, sinister dread. Cameron basically got the good-guy version of that performance in Alien, like that great shot of Henriksen inching through a pipe, and it's great.

But in practical terms, his smaller frame might have put pressure on the design of the puppets and prosthetics; having a huge guy makes it a lot easier to accept that this robot skeleton is hidden inside him. And of course, we know now that Arnold's visible, muscular unstoppability is as crucial to the film's dreadful tone as the soundtrack and the bleary always-nighttime setting. Henriksen would give the Terminator the fixation of a brilliant serial killer or blank-eyed sociopath, and it'd probably be a pretty cool movie. Schwarzenegger gives it the mute and overpowering purpose of a diesel train engine, and it's a magic classic.

Sad to have missed this thread even though I've only ever seen about three or four of these films. Temple of Doom was a fun one to return to as an adult. I only ever saw the heavily cut British PG as a child and the uncut/PG-13 version does open up the brutality a lot more. Gremlins may have been hacked the same way had the BBFC not decided that tonally it was not possible to bring the rating down (hence the conservative 15 mentioned upthread).

Last night we were looking for a ~90-minute comedy; thinking of this thread, I flagged All of Me in our streaming options and we had a mostly good time with it. To be clear, at dead center of the plot is a brownface performance by Richard Libertini as the Wacky South Asian Mystic who sets the whole thing in motion. There's hints of homophobia in the comedy of effeminacy that comes out of Martin sharing a body with Tomlin. And the whole last act at the mansion is just kind of dull and light on laughs.

The main pleasure to be had here - and it's a real one - is Martin's off-the-charts physical comedy, especially in the sidewalk scene when Tomlin first possesses him, and the showstopper courtroom scene where he's supposed to be "asleep" and she's puppeteering him in a parody of "acting like a man." Jim Carrey, eat your heart out! Tomlin gets way less to do, by the nature of the premise, but still cracked me up with a couple of her overwrought poor-me scenes.

We recently had a Steve Martin weekend, rewatching The Jerk, Three Amigos, and All Of Me. Three Amigos was fine, definitely the least of the bunch. The Jerk is always going to win but All Of Me is the better movie. Tomlin & Martin are a great pair.

Three Amigos may not be great, but this scene still makes me laugh as much as it did when I was 10:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlhwKixtW08

It definitely has its moments. I love the scene with the very fake sunset and all of the critters grooving along.

It definitely has its moments. I love the scene with the very fake sunset and all of the critters grooving along.

Was The Incredible Shrinking Woman the only big Tomlin production?

9 to 5! Nashville! Big Business!

I don’t know Big Business, but those others shared some serious co-billing. I’m talking like what The Jerk
was for Martin.

Big Business is essentially a two-hander with Bette Midler - they each play a pair of twins, separated at birth and raised as country mice and city mice. So I take the ensemble point - though if anyone's the centerpiece of Nashville, she is, and it's her sole Oscar nom.

Hollywood sexism has to be part of the picture here... I think Shrinking Woman would have needed to do much, much better business to convince execs that audiences would reliably turn out to see a funny lady who wasn't Goldie Hawn.