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Ok so you don’t have to be an expert to know that the masses are going to flock to see New Moon this weekend. I just came back from taking my kids to see Planet 51 and the line for the 9pm showing for New Moon went around the block, TWICE! The experts, by the way, are predicting returns near the 100 million dollars mark. We’ll have to wait until Sunday to find out, so in the meantime I want flashback to 26 years to 1983 when on this very weekend box office pundits had a much tougher race to predict. Usually I stick to one movie per random anniversary but with this line up, I could not resist.

Amityville 3D

A Christmas Story

Yentl

So lets break it down. What did Amityville 3D had to offer? Well a sequel that nobody asked for that followed 1983’s trend of crappy horror sequels in 3D (Jaws 3D and Friday The 13th 3D came out the same year) and a young Meg Ryan putting her As The Wolrd Turns acting training to good use as one of the house’s terrorized victims.

Here’s another Meg Ryan Horror movie you might be familiar with.

Ok, back to the Random Anniversary. A Christmas Story, much like the Wizard of Oz and It’s a Wonderful Life, was largely ignored by moviegoers but became a classic once it became a staple on TV. I tripple dog dare you not take a the memorable scene below!

Ok, so I have nothing much to say about Bab’s directorial debut, except that if you think your childhood was hard, my parents took me to see this in the theater. As I recall my sophisticated 9 year old reaction was something like this: “What the hell is this? A Serious Musical? Where did all the Kids from Grease go to? She’s a He?!!! I think I handled Just One Of The Guys much better two years later. So in honor of my early trauma here’s the scene with the song that will get stuck in your brain FOREVER!

So come on, let me know. Which one is your favorite? Which one did you see in 1983? Which one would you see this weekend? Here’s a little Siskel and Ebert Flashback to help you decide.