What Were We Renting? 11/7/85

This week's New Music Friday releases failed to bring me ten songs I felt like recommending, but while digging through the Billboard archives to set up our weekly Old Music Friday chat at the Jefitoblog Discord, I stumbled across a chart I don't recall seeing before: Top Videocassettes Rentals. I'm not sure how long Billboard kept track of this stuff — although I aim to find out, don't worry — but for at least this week, it left me thinking it'd be fun to look back at what folks were grabbing from their neighborhood video store this week in 1985.

And when I say "neighborhood video store," I mean it — at this point, Blockbuster was just a single store in Dallas, the home video industry was still in its relative infancy, and folks were as likely as not to rent their movies at a Fotomat. (If you were alive back then, I want you to pause for a minute and remember the smell of those places, and see how strongly you do or do not still associate it with the feeling of a Friday night.)

The theatrical window was a hell of a lot longer back then, so a "new release" meant something different on home video. For example, this week in 1985, the No. 1 title was The Breakfast Club, a movie that arrived in theaters in February of that year; coming in second was Amadeus, which went wide in September of 1984. And hardly anybody was buying these titles, either — back in those days, the list price of your average VHS title was still upwards of $100. If you were like my parents and had cool/criminal friends, you'd build a library with ill-gotten copies of movies that were probably filmed by some dude with a camcorder during a matinee showing; otherwise, you were stuck forking over a couple of bucks for the privilege of watching yesterday's hit in the comfort of your living room.

As always, ur area of primary interest lies not in what was most popular, but what has since been mostly forgotten and/or fallen out of print. For example: Porky's Revenge, the lamentable tail end of an '80s T&A franchise whose surprisingly thoughtful first installment should have been the end of it. While you can stream Porky's via something called Hoopla, you can only buy its first sequel on physical media, and you can only stream Revenge in Canada. Having only seen the first, I can't speak with any actual authority on what came next, but... c'mon, we all pretty much know, don't we? Aren't we all just a little bit surprised that Porky's Revenge came in tenth on this chart?

And then there's Turk 182, starring Timothy Hutton as a guy who mounts a sort of public prank war against the mayor after his firefighter brother is denied worker's comp for an injury sustained officially yet vaguely out of the line of duty. Like The Legend of Billie Jean, this is one of those mid-'80s fights for justice that didn't really resonate with audiences at the time and is rarely talked about today; unlike The Legend of Billie Jean, Turk 182 lacks the advantage of having a Pat Benatar hit on its soundtrack. Just as with Porky's Revenge, you may not stream this film, nor are you allowed to purchase it in any sort of high-definition format. Is this a great loss? I couldn't tell you. I was 11 when this movie came out, and after experiencing an initial flash of intrigue due to a title that made me think droids might be involved, I decided this was something I could skip. Maybe this trailer will change my mind:

The crown jewel of this week's chart, at least for our purposes, is Mischief, which is like Porky's in that it's another T&A-fueled comedy set in the '50s, although it swaps out that movie's light social commentary for a Norman Rockwell vibe and a lot of Kelly Preston and Catherine Mary Stewart. For whatever reason, this fairly innocuous movie has languished in the DVD-only category for years, to the point that it's become a little bit of a white whale for some folks — perhaps more because of its poster than the movie itself.

Skipping on down the chart in search of less-remembered movies, we are quickly led to... oh look, another teen sex comedy! Fraternity Vacation is a title I don't remember ever encountering, but I'm positive it must have aired late at night on HBO or Showtime or Cinemax at various points. It's kind of immaterial, because you don't need to have actually seen a movie like this to have seen it — as promised by the title, it's about college students on vacation, specifically spring break, and you know what that means. (If not, here's the movie's Wikipedia page to help: "The most memorable part of the movie occurs early on with the nude scene with Barbara Crampton and Kathleen Kinmont.") If that isn't enough to sell you, the cast includes Tim Robbins, Amanda Bearse, John Vernon, Max Wright, Britt Ekland, and Charles Rocket (rest in power). You're all in now, aren't you? Good news: You can stream it for free on the Roku Channel as well as something called Fawesome. If you'd rather own it, even better news: It's available (used) as a double feature with Reform School Girls. Someone at the film distributor truly knew their audience.

Last and fascinatingly least, we have Certain Fury. This muddled wonder was directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal — yes, Jake and Maggie's dad — and starred Tatum O'Neal (billed in the trailer as "Academy Award winner Tatum O'Neal") as a street urchin whose hardscrabble life includes prostitution, selling dope, and ending up in court alongside Irene Cara (billed in the trailer as "Academy Award winner Irene Cara"), only to hit the streets when chaos erupts after a fellow defendant slashes the bailiff's throat. Even more unbelievable than all those plot points? Peter Fonda (billed in the trailer as "Peter Fonda") also starred in this thing. If you're a Prime subscriber and at all familiar with the level of entertainment that comes along with that service's free film library, it will not at all surprise you that Certain Fury is available to you right now. Watch, if you dare: