Top 25 Movies of Summer 1984
Few summers were blessed with the range of classic and influential movies like those that came out during the hot months of 1984.
Our list of the Top 25 Movies of Summer 1984 is so overstuffed that we even had to omit some fan favorites, like Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. When Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Karate Kid are part of the lineup, things like that tend to happen.
And it's not just big box-office hits that still matter after all these years – though there are plenty of those here. Smaller indie movies by the likes of John Huston, Alan Rudolph and John Sayles also make our list. So does the first movie in more than a decade, and final over all, by one of the cinema's all-time greatest directors, Sergio Leone.
Still, summertime is all about popcorn, big stars and massively huge budgets. And by 1984 the movie business was in full swing with event pictures starring the A-list (Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford and various Saturday Night Live vets were all on the big screen). You'll find everything from science-fiction films and comedies to action movies and sequels ... plus the feature debut from Prince, whose Purple Rain was conquering all sorts of media in 1984.
In some ways, summer 1984 was a bellwether of seasons to come. Everything that was thrown at audiences during those months – our definition of "summer" includes movies released between May 4 and Sept. 7 – is still thrown at audiences more than three decades later, as you'll see on our below list of Top 25 Movies of Summer 1984.