UFOria: Obscure 80s Film Deep Dive & Review (Release Year Debated)

[00:00:00] From Los Angeles, California, the entertainment capital of the world, it's The 80s Movie Podcast. I'm your host Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today. Before we get started, I wanted to give you loyal listener a heads up about the future of this podcast.

[00:00:22] As you may or may not be aware, my wife is 24 weeks pregnant with our first daughter. She's due to be born in late February and when she is born, I will be taking an eight

[00:00:32] week hiatus from the show as I will be the one making sure both mother and child have their time they need to recover. So if you're not done so already, please make sure that you are following the show on the

[00:00:42] podcast or your choice so you don't miss a new episode once I return. Now that we're done with that bit of housekeeping, let's get back to the show. On this episode, we visit an oldie, a goodie and an obscurity from a decade that gave us

[00:00:57] many of each but rarely all at the same time. We're talking about John Binder's only featured directing film, UFOria. As always before we get to the movie, we need to get into the backstory. This story begins in Indianapolis in the late 1950s.

[00:01:16] Melvin Simon was a real estate developer based in Indianapolis who after getting his start as a leasing agent for a rather new concept at the time called a shopping mall. He formed his own leasing company with his younger brother Herb.

[00:01:30] By 1967, Melvin Simon and associates owned and operated more than three million square feet of space at a number of malls in Middle America by following a simple and successful strategy. Whenever they were planning on opening a new mall, they would entice a major

[00:01:45] anchor tenant, usually the department store, to sign on to the planned ball by offering a lower per square foot rent than the average going rate. Then take that commitment to the bank who would agree to loan them the money to

[00:01:57] make them all based on that anchor tenants agreement. The Simon brothers, which now included older brother Fred, would have little to no personal money involved in the construction and would cover their costs on the anchor tenant by charging higher rents to the smaller tenants

[00:02:11] looking to get foot traffic from shoppers going to that anchor tenant once the mall opened. By 1976, Melvin Simon and associates were operating several dozen malls all across the country. And he would notice that one of the more successful tenants in his malls

[00:02:26] with a two to four screen movie theaters typical of that time. He was the largest landlord for general cinemas and united artists theaters then. While in Los Angeles checking up on some of his malls, Simon would get into a friendly game of golf with Harry Saltsman,

[00:02:43] a film producer who with Cubby Broccoli co-produced all of the Bond movies from Dr. No to the man with the golden gun. On the greens, the two men would start talking about the film industry when Saltsman mentioned that he was trying to finance a movie based on

[00:02:57] the popular toy line the Micronauts but was short some of the funding. Simon agreed to cover the gap and Saltsman put his British home up as collateral. The movie didn't get made and Saltsman had to sell his house to cover Simon's investment.

[00:03:12] But the real estate magnet had been bitten by the movie making bug. Within two years, he had created Melvin Simon Productions and had more than $20 million invested in 16 movies, including Joan Rivers' first and eventually only directing effort, a comedy

[00:03:29] called Rabbit Test that is the first lead movie role for Billy Crystal. And somebody killed her husband, the first major movie role for Farrah Fawcett majors since leaving Charlie's Angels. He also had a hand in making the Brook Shields comedy

[00:03:42] Tilt, the George Hamilton comedy Love at First Bite, and When a Stranger Calls, the Carol Cain thriller that grossed nearly 14 times its $1.5 million budget just in America alone. Impressed with his early track record, 20th Century Fox would sign Melvin Simon Productions up to a two-year deal worth

[00:04:03] $10 million in September of 1979. Some of the movies made under the deal would find different levels of success, including Richard Rush's The Stuntman, which will be getting an episode of its own in the future, the Tony Bill comedy My Bodyguard, and all three Porkey's films.

[00:04:22] But there were a lot of failures within that deal too. The runner Stumbles, the final film from iconoclastic filmmaker Stanley Kramer, stumbled despite starring Dick Van Dyke in a rare dramatic role. As did Scavenger Hunt, a late 70s sort of remake of one

[00:04:38] of Kramer's biggest hits, it's a mad, mad, mad, mad world. No one cared about the man with Bogart's face, nor George Hamilton's follow-up to Love at First Bite, the unfortunate Zorro, The Gay Blade. The smallest of the films made under the Melvin Simon

[00:04:55] 20th Century Fox deal at the time was a sci-fi comedy called Escape. Escape had been written by John Binder, a 40-year-old screenwriter who had just seen his first produced screenplay, Honey Suckle Rose, become a hit at Warner Brothers with Willie Nelson. Binder had another script, Endangered Species, written

[00:05:14] with director Alan Rudolph that was about to go into production at MGM, and he was looking to make his directing debut himself. At $2 million, Escape was a sci-fi comedy about a drifter and small-time con man, Sheldon Bart, who catches up with an old friend, brother Bud, a big-time

[00:05:33] con man who travels the country with a revival tent, selling himself off as a faith healer. Except Bud actually can heal people, although he doesn't know how this ability came to be. While working in the circuit with brother Bud, Sheldon falls in love with Arlene, a supermarket clerk

[00:05:50] in one of the towns they stop in, who is more than a bit loony and very much believes in unidentified flying objects. Arlene, who thinks flying saucers brought Jesus Earth, and that Adam and Eve were interstellar astronauts, has a vision of an impending UFO landing.

[00:06:08] And brother Bud starts to twist Arlene's vision into a new religious cult for his own benefit. Binder had been inspired to write the screenplay back in 1975 after reading a newspaper article about a true life couple who had arrived in a small town

[00:06:23] in Oregon and proclaimed spaceships were on route to take quote, enlightened believers, unquote, back to their home world. The article says 20 of the town folk had become the followers of the couple. But then a funny thing happened on the way to production.

[00:06:40] Cindy Williams, one of the two leads in the very popular ABC TV sitcom Laverne and Shirley, got ahold of the script and contacted the filmmaker about playing Arlene. Williams had also starred in one of the most popular movies of the 1970s, American Graffiti

[00:06:55] and this role would represent her first starring role in a movie since that best picture nominee eight years earlier. And in getting Cindy Williams to sign on to the lead would attract a better range of talent for the two male leads.

[00:07:09] Fred Ward, who was starting to build up a strong resume thanks to his co-starring role in the 1979 Clint Eastwood drama Escape from Alcatraz would sign on to play Sheldon while Harry Dean Stanton whose resume included such diverse films as Cool Hand Luke,

[00:07:24] The Godfather Part Two and Alien came aboard to play brother Bud. Because of the cast, Melvin Simon would up the budget for the film from two million to five million dollars and the film would be scheduled to begin eight weeks

[00:07:38] of filming in Los Angeles as well as in Lancaster and Palmdale, California starting June 2nd, 1980 under a new title, Euphoria. And like many smaller film productions in the 1980s even one with a star like Cindy Williams was at the time production was not very well documented.

[00:07:58] In fact, the most exciting thing that seemed to happen during the production was the SAG actor strike that began six weeks into production on July 21st. 67,000 actors went on strike shutting down all but 14 motion pictures whose producers had signed an interim agreement

[00:08:14] with the Guild to continue filming in case of a strike. Euphoria was one of those 14 films that could continue production. Binder would work on editing the film with his cutter Dennis M. Hill for the remainder of 1980 and into 1981. The director would screen his final cut

[00:08:33] for the production company in the studio in the summer of 1981 and the film would be shelved. Cindy Williams, Fred Ward and Harry Dean Stanton were released from their promotional duties for the film and it would sit on that proverbial shelf for two years.

[00:08:49] Some rumors at the time had that the film was unwatchable others that Fox had no idea how to sell it. But in July 1983, it was announced that Universal Studios had picked up the film for distribution from Fox for an undisclosed sum.

[00:09:06] After some test screenings in the fall of 1983 Universal would change the title of the movie to hold on to your dreams and give it a test released at a drive-in theater in Salem, Oregon on March 9th, 1984. After a week of low grosses the film would be replaced.

[00:09:24] The next screening for the film would be on July 10th where it played at the Los Angeles International Film Exposition better known as Film X. Sheila Benson, the number two critic for the Los Angeles Times would highlight the film which had returned to the title Euphoria.

[00:09:41] In her column that day about the festival Kevin Thomas, the number three critic at the Times would note in a short review about the film that it was a modest and appealing little sci-fi comedy that deserved to be taken off the shelf by Universal,

[00:09:55] that all three lead actors were at their best and that the film was a tasty slice of contemporary Americana that was an oasis amid so much somber fare. There would be another screening in San Francisco on September 20th as part of a one day tribute

[00:10:12] to Harry Dean Stanton and his films. But it wouldn't be until Wednesday, July 3rd, 1985 that Universal would finally give Euphoria a proper theatrical release, opening it at the prestigious New Arts Theater in Los Angeles for a one week run.

[00:10:30] The Los Angeles Times would run a full text review of the film the day before it opened and Kevin Thomas would expand on his mini review from a year earlier and it was about as glowing a review as the notorious prickly Thomas had ever given any film.

[00:10:46] But without any kind of ad in any Los Angeles newspaper that week, Euphoria would get buried under the hype for another sci-fi comedy that Universal had opened on the same day, back to the future. Universal did not report grosses for the film

[00:11:02] nor did the trade papers track the New Art that week. The following Wednesday, the New Art would open a double feature of 1982's Return of the Soldier and 1984's The Bostonians and the film would not move over to another theater in town,

[00:11:16] save a two day run at the Brialto Theater in Pasadena on July 24th and 25th. Strangely, the next play date for the film in Boston would be a Tuesday opening, August 20th, where it would play for more than a month. It would still be playing in Boston

[00:11:32] when the York Theater in San Francisco opened the film for a four day run from September 26th to the 29th. There'd be a one week run at the Broadway Theater in Vancouver, British Columbia, starting on October 18th, a five day run at the Camera One in San Jose

[00:11:47] from October 20th to 24th and a single show of the film at the San Diego Film Festival on November 16th. While grosses for all of these screenings were not made public by Universal, J.D. Pollock, the programmer of the esteemed New York City Art House Theater

[00:12:03] The Bleaker Street Cinemas, saw the film during its one week run in Los Angeles and booked the film to play at his theater starting January 6th, 1986. To ensure the best possible opening for the film, Pollock would hire his own outside publicist, Lauren Hyman, to promote the film

[00:12:21] to the film critics in New York City and pay for daily ads in the New York Times, something Universal had not done for the film in any previous play date. It was a tiny ad to be certain, one column by four inches

[00:12:34] with a tiny picture of Cindy Williams reading a magazine. So poll quotes from the Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle could dominate the ad. On opening day, on the page just before the ad, a review of the film from the Times's

[00:12:50] number one critic Vincent Canby would feature review even more glowing than Kevin Thomas' review from the other times on the other side of the country six months earlier. Even the headline for the review would note it's delaying being released. Euphoria, a comedy, finally arrives.

[00:13:08] Canby's review was full of the kind of pullable quotes publicist would kill for, exuberantly nutty, the most enjoyable movie of its kind since Repo Man, perfectly cast. All the people connected to the film should be pleased with their contributions. And on the heels of that review,

[00:13:27] Euphoria would gross an amazing $17,682 in its first weekend at the Bleaker. That would be a sell out for every show, five shows a day, plus a rushed added midnight show on Friday and Saturday night. Impressed with the performance, Universal Reimbursed Pollock, the $2,500 cost for the ads

[00:13:48] and funded an additional $2,500 a week for another two week of ads. For weekend number two, the ad dropped the picture of Cindy Williams in the poll quotes from Adatown Critics giving full weight to Canby's quotes as well as two other local critics. The weekend's ticket sales would be $15,101,

[00:14:09] only a 14 1 1⁄2% drop from the first week. But weekend number three would see an increase, 11.1% in ticket sales from the previous weekend with $16,817 in the till, in part because the theater added a sixth the regular daily showtime alongside the Friday and Saturday late night shows.

[00:14:30] That week's ad would include two new poll quotes from local critics, including one from the Phantom of the Movies, an infamous and anonymous critic who had named the movie the best movie of 1986. It would eventually come out that the Phantom was author and journalist Joe Cain

[00:14:46] whose 1989 book, Running the Amazon would be a firsthand account of the only expedition ever to travel the entire 4,200 mile Amazon River from its source in Peru to the Atlantic Ocean which took place between August 1985 and February 1986. So how Joe could watch and review a movie

[00:15:06] released in New York City in January 1986 while he's supposed to be on a boat in the Amazon River in another hemisphere is a mystery for the ages. That three week run would be extended to fourth week and it would gross $11,050.

[00:15:25] That was good enough to get the film a fifth week and a $9,000 gross would be good enough to get it a sixth week. All the while, Universal continued to support the film with ads in the paper, although by week five

[00:15:37] it would shrink to one column by two inches just enough to list the title, the theater and the showtimes. After a $6,500 sixth week gross the film had in its run at the Bleecker Street on February 13th but that six week run

[00:15:53] would be enough to give the film a second chance. Much like how the unexpected successful run of Ripo Man in New York City two years earlier gave Universal the confidence to give that film a second chance. While finishing its final week in New York City

[00:16:09] Euphoria would open at my beloved Nickelodeon Theater in Santa Cruz on February 7th but that's not where I saw it. I was still living in Los Angeles in February 1986 and wouldn't return to Santa Cruz until mid June. The film would play at the Nick for two weeks.

[00:16:24] The following weekend on Valentine's Day, 1986 the film would make its return trip to Los Angeles opening at two of the more prestigious theaters in town the Man Westwood Four and my beloved Cineplex Beverly Center 13. That's where I saw Euphoria and while I don't believe in UFOs

[00:16:43] I found the film to be funny, charming and a joy to watch. Supported by a third page ad with poll quotes exclusively from New York critics the film would gross a decent $8,800 at the Beverly Center and a not so great $5957 in Westwood.

[00:17:00] In week two the sales at the Beverly Center would drop to 4,000 while in Westwood it would fall to $3,000 but to be fair, Westwood cut down the show times from five shows a day to two. In its third week the film would be gone from Westwood

[00:17:15] but the Beverly Center would see a miraculous 90% increase in grosses to $9,000. Despite the fact that it was only playing in one theater Universal supported the film with a display ad in the times that was equal in size to their ad for Terry Gilliam's Brazil

[00:17:31] which had been nominated for two Academy Awards the previous week. Euphoria would continue to play at the Beverly Center until May 1st, its longest single play date at any theater. The film would also play in Boston and Miami starting February 21st, Madison, Wisconsin,

[00:17:49] Palo Alto in San Francisco on February 28th and in Austin on March 14th. Remember at this point of our story the movie had been given its first theatrical release two years earlier this very week and it was this weekend of March 14th, 1986

[00:18:08] that Siskel and Ebert would review Euphoria on their nationally syndicated show at the movies or at least they were supposed to. In newspapers all across the country readers of the local television guides were told that Siskel and Ebert was going to be reviewing the Glenda Jackson

[00:18:26] Ben Kingsley romantic drama Turtle Diary the Walter Hill film Crossroads with Ralph Macchio and Euphoria. Except instead of Euphoria they reviewed Salvador and Smooth Talk. The film would continue to open in more markets nationwide. Philadelphia on March 28th, Atlanta on April 11th Pittsburgh on April 18th

[00:18:49] Chicago and Phoenix on April 25th Denver on May 2nd Salt Lake City on May 23rd Atlanta and Green Bay on June 13th Buffalo on June 27th Lansing, Michigan and Rochester, New York on July 11th Sacramento on July 18th St. Louis on July 25th and Baltimore on August 1st.

[00:19:12] And now some theaters would get crazy with their bookings one theater in San Francisco paired Euphoria with a repo man for a return run in early August another theater in Cincinnati would sandwich it in between a late afternoon show of Brazil

[00:19:26] and a midnight show of the Toxic Avenger. And in newspapers all across the country readers of the local television guides were told that Siskel and Ebert were going to review the Anthony Michael Hall drama Out of Bounds the Helen Shaver lesbian romance drama Desert Hearts

[00:19:42] and Euphoria on the weekend of August 1st. Except instead of UFO they reviewed Belize the Cajun and Heartburn. Siskel and Ebert would never review Euphoria on their show although Ebert did give the film four stars in his April 25th review for the Chicago Sun-Times.

[00:20:02] My favorite part of his review reads as such. This is one of those movies in which you walk in not expecting much and then something great happens and you laugh and you start paying more attention and then you realize that a lot of great things

[00:20:15] are happening and this is one of those rare movies that really has it. Euphoria is not just another witness Hollywood laugh machine but a movie with intelligence and a slice aridonic sense of humor. You don't have to shut down half of your brain in order to endure it.

[00:20:33] By August the film would start reappearing in markets that are already played in often paired with Repo-Mand and or other seemingly fitting movies. At the UC Theater in Berkeley it would play the weekend of August 8th paired with Repo-Mand and a midnight show of Stop Making Sense.

[00:20:49] In Lexington, Kentucky it would be paired with Martin Scorsese's After Hours. In Louisville, it'd be Euphoria with Pink Floyd the Wall. In Rochester, New York, it would be Euphoria with the British UFO comedy Morons from Outer Space. By September, most of the American play dates were done

[00:21:08] and the film started to make its way through Canada. And just after Thanksgiving the film would start to appear on the Cinemax cable channel. In early 1987 the film was released on VHS by Universal Home Video. And that's about the last time

[00:21:23] the film would have any kind of public release but we'll get there in a moment. Universal never publicly announced any grosses for the film certainly an oddity for a studio released film. And it never gross enough after April 9th to appear on the Variety Top 50 chart.

[00:21:41] But spending some time going through every issue of Variety between April and October 1986 and seeing which theaters and which markets were still being tracked I was able to come up with an estimate gross of $304,830. Considering the number of theaters that were never tracked

[00:21:57] I would presume the real gross is more about half a million dollars which to be honest is not bad for a film that literally died twice in its first eight months of release. As I mentioned a moment ago Euphoria has never been released on DVD or Blu-ray

[00:22:14] and has never appeared on any streaming service. And there is a somewhat legitimate reason why. Back in the early 1980s when Euphoria was made filmmakers and studios didn't consider much about the post theatrical life of a film. Cable wasn't that big yet

[00:22:30] and the VCR revolution was still in its infancy. So rights to things like song licenses were only negotiated to cover the movie up to a certain point. There are songs in Euphoria that are written by and or produced by artists like Emilew Harris, Waylon Jennings,

[00:22:46] Brenda Lee, Roger Miller, John Prine and Hank Williams Jr. More than one song in the film was only licensed for theatrical release. So when it came to releasing the movie on VHS and cable television the studio could not reacquire those rights from the artist in question.

[00:23:04] Director John Binder in the studio had to work together to either find new songs to put on the home video release or get other artists to perform the songs since one can get a synchronization license from the copyright owner of a song without getting a master use license

[00:23:19] from the specific recording for that song. But again, the rights for some of those songs were only negotiated for a home video and cable release and by the late 1990s when DVD started becoming a thing the movie was too obscure to spend any kind of money

[00:23:34] updating it again. So how the Quad Cinema in New York City was able to show the one remaining 35 millimeter print of Euphoria once in October of 2017 during a tribute to Harry Dean Stanton a few weeks after his passing I have not been able to figure out.

[00:23:51] If you wanna see the movie it's fairly easy to find on both YouTube and Vimeo. The ones I sampled were all copies made from the VHS release including the FBI warning at the start of the tape and a preview for the 1980 movie Melvin and Howard after the film.

[00:24:08] They all looked good for VHS copies. Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon. Remember to visit this episode's page on our website the80smoviepodcast.com for extra materials about the movie we covered on this episode. The 80s Movie Podcast has been researched, written,

[00:24:26] narrated and edited by Edward Havens for idiosyncratic entertainment. Thank you again. Good night.