It may feel like just yesterday, but in reality it’s been three decades since five students with seemingly nothing in common spent a memorable Saturday morning together in the Shermer High School library. Yes, 2015 will mark the 30th anniversary of wrier/director John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club, and to mark the occasion Universal Studios Home Entertainment is re-releasing the seminal teen seriocomedy in a commemorative edition DVD and Blu-ray due out in March. Along with the bonus features–audio commentary by co-stars Anthony Michael Hall and Judd Nelson, 12-part “making of” documentary, and a “Brat Pack” tribute–contained on the 25th anniversary versions (Gosh, has it really been five years since the 25th anniversary?), these new editions also come with a special “trivia track,” which will no doubt be packed to the max with behind-the-scenes information and other awesome ’80s facts.
Along with The Breakfast Club, such memorable films as Back to the Future, The Color Purple, The Goonies, Witness, and Best Picture Academy Award-winner Out of Africa will also celebrate their pearl anniversaries in 2015. For those of you out there with an interest in Hollywood history (or who just want to feel a little bit older), here’s a look at other milestone dates, some of the significant motion pictures which came out that year, and the recommended anniversary gift for each:
1990 (25 years–Silver Anniversary): Dances with Wolves, Goodfellas, Home Alone, Pretty Woman, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
1980 (35 years–Coral/Jade Anniversary): Airplane!, The Empire Strikes Back, 9 to 5, Ordinary People, Raging Bull
1975 (40 years–Ruby Anniversary): Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Shampoo
1965 (50 years–Golden Anniversary): Cat Ballou, Doctor Zhivago, Help!, The Sound of Music, Thunderball
1960 (55 years–Emerald Anniversary): The Alamo, The Apartment, Ocean’s 11, Psycho, Spartacus
1955 (60 years–Diamond Anniversary): Marty, Mister Roberts, Oklahoma!, Rebel Without a Cause, The Seven-Year Itch
1945 (70 years–Platinum Anniversary): The Bells of St. Mary’s, Brief Encounter, The Lost Weekend, Mildred Pierce, Spellbound
1940 (75 years –Diamond/Gold again): The Bank Dick, Fantasia, The Great Dictator, The Philadelphia Story, Rebecca
1935 (80 years–Oak Anniversary): Bride of Frankenstein, Captain Blood, Mutiny on the Bounty, A Night at the Opera, Top Hat
1925 (90 years–C’mon, whatever they want!): Ben-Hur, The Big Parade, The Gold Rush, The Lost World, The Phantom of the Opera
And marking their 100th birthday this year are such 1915 films as D.W. Griffith’s groundbreaking–and controversial–The Birth of a Nation; silent vamp Theda Bara’s A Fool There Was; the early Charlie Chaplin short The Tramp; and The Lamb and Pool Sharks, which featured the screen debuts of Douglas Fairbanks and W.C. Fields, respectively.
There’s a good chance that, like The Breakfast Club, several of these movies will have special commemorative versions come out in 2015 (Are you listening, 20th Century-Fox? The clock’s ticking for that 50th anniversary edition of The Sound of Music!), so keep checking with MovieFanFare for the latest news.
If you have a favorite film from 1985–or one of the other spotlighted years–that we didn’t mention, we’d love to hear about it in the comments section below.