Cool film heroes of the hot season

BY ELISSA BLAKE

Last updated 05:00 29/12/2009

KING OF THE BOX OFFICE: For three consecutive summers, Peter Jackson's JRR Tolkien Lord of the Rings saga was the cinematic gorilla in the room.

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The opening-night audience ''reacted the way thousands of Americans have'', reported the Sydney Morning Herald in December 1975. ''They screamed, ducked for cover and turned pale ...''

Until the mid-1970s, the word ''blockbuster'' was usually applied to Broadway shows, not to films. Jaws - celebrating its 35th anniversary next year - changed all that.

It wasn't the first ''event'' movie but Steven Spielberg's creature feature-cum-chase flick, based on Peter Benchley's best-selling novel, is a watershed in motion picture history: the daddy of the summer blockbusters.

Before Jaws, summer was regarded as a time for distributors to offload films that had little commercial appeal.

Jaws marked a shift.

In the US, Universal Pictures opened the film simultaneously across screens nationwide, backed by television advertising and what Universal called ''Jaws consciousness'' (programmed media leaks during production, talk show appearances, merchandising and teaser ads).

With its plot reduced to a single image for marketing purposes (pretty girl, big shark), the aggressive campaigning worked wonders in Australia, which was boosted by an obsession with shark attacks and a tinge of national pride (the film's ''live'' shark sequences were filmed by Aussies Ron and Valerie Taylor).

''Don't go in the water,'' the tag line implored. Audiences dutifully filed into the cinema instead - all through December and January - making Jaws the biggest box office hit of 1975.

Since then, New Zealand and Australian families have flocked to the cinemas during the summer holidays in ever-increasing numbers.

So which are the summer movies that have left their mark on us?

The Lord of the Rings trilogy

For three consecutive summers, Peter Jackson's JRR Tolkien saga was the cinematic gorilla in the room, or at least until Jackson unleashed his remake of King Kong in December 2005.

The first installment, The Fellowship of the Ring, smashed box office records on both sides of the Tasman, taking in $14.5 million in New Zealand, making it the biggest-grossing film in the country's history. In Australia the film raked in more than A$27 million in its first month.

The darker, more violent sequel, The Two Towers, made $12.1 million, ranking it the fourth-highest grossing film at the box office in New Zealand, according to the Motion Picture Distributors Association.

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The Return of the King outpaced The Two Towers, vaulting into second position in New Zealand box office returns, at $13.6 million.

Titanic

Leonardo and Kate were nominally the leads but they were distant second to the real star of the show: James Cameron's re-creation of the doomed ocean liner.

And he really loved his leading lady. Sandra Hall, reviewing the film on its release in December 1997 wrote: ''Here he [Cameron] has found his perfect love object. The first two hours or so of this 3¼-hour, A$308 million blockbuster come across as an extended bout of foreplay as the cameras dwell tenderly on the meticulously re-created decks, lounges, cabins and staterooms before the consummation of the affair in an orgiastic blast of popping rivets, splitting timbers and twisted iron, followed by that smooth, eerie glide into the deep.''

A Night to Remember may have done it better but Cameron's roller-coaster ride took A$58 million at the Australian box office. A record yet to be beaten. In New Zealand it raked in just under $13 million, cementing it at number three on the box office chart.

The Bodyguard

Just because a film isn't good doesn't mean we won't queue in droves to see it. Case in point: the summer hit of '93, The Bodyguard, starring Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston. It tells the story of an uptight security consultant who falls for the superstar he's supposed to protect.

The Sydney Morning Herald's Lynden Barber didn't like it: ''The script's first major twist is easily guessable only 20 or so minutes into the action and the second is totally ludicrous.'' Yet it was a monster hit, raking in A$18 million at the box office while I Will Always Love You seemed to ring out from every cassette deck.

Fatal Attraction

The film that introduced the phrase ''bunny boiler'' to our lexicon of love.

We couldn't keep away from Adrian Lyne's discomforting thriller in the summer of 1987-88. The story of a happily married, philandering lawyer Daniel (Michael Douglas) whose one-night stand Alex (Glenn Close) can't or won't let go is a brilliant - if cynical - melding of '70s terror flick with the AIDS hysteria of the time. It was, according to the Sydney Morning Herald's Paul Byrnes, ''the ultimate in safe-sex movies, with Close as the Grim Reaper''.

Mad Max 2

''My life fades. The vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos. Ruined dreams. This wasted land. But most of all, I remember The Road Warrior. The man we called 'Max'.''

So went the introductory narration to George Miller's exemplary sequel. Kinetic in the extreme, Miller himself compared it to a Buster Keaton's The General and many critics noted its antecedents in Hollywood westerns (surly stranger wanders into town for the inevitable showdown with the bad guy on a dusty road). However, for most of us, our senses dulled by leftover turkey curry, all that mattered was 90 minutes spent revelling in a brilliantly edited fiesta of car-crunching mayhem.

Released in Christmas week in 1981, Mad Max 2 left the Sydney Morning Herald reviewer, Louisa Wright, lost for words: ''How to describe 90 minutes of the best stunts ever seen on the screen? How to describe the massive ritualistic violence?''

Superman

By the time it was released in 1978, stories of its monster budget and the casting of a near unknown as the Man of Steel (Marlon Brando earned top billing and the top pay cheque for his 10 minutes as Superman's father) had created much anticipation. Christopher Reeve's bumbling, fumbling Clark Kent and omnipotent Superman were a winning combination of old-school gallantry and innocence. The special effects, though nowhere near the standard of today's CGI blockbusters, were just convincing enough.

Dr Zhivago

The Sydney Morning Herald critic, Craig McGregor, was impressed by Dr Zhivago's old-world virtues (''good story, magnificent location scenery, and two or three fine performances'') but less taken with the film's anti-communist tone and the script's ''persistent lack of intellectuality''.

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

Stanley Kramer's mostly forgotten ensemble chase comedy wasn't great art but it was worth seeing just for its cast of household names, including Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Ethel Merman, Phil Silvers and Spencer Tracy.

South Pacific

''The entertainment world's most wonderful entertainment!'' the poster declared. Who could argue? Adapted from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, this lush, lengthy extravaganza, brimming with amorous activity and well-loved tunes such as I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair , was a dose of Technicolor therapy to audiences for whom the war in the Pacific and the culture-busting US presence in New zealand and Australia were relatively recent memories.

THE NZ BOX OFFICE'S TOP 20 MOVIES:

1. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

2. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

3. Titanic

4. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

5. Shrek 2

6. King Kong

7. Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe

8. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

9. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

10. Forrest Gump

11. Mamma Mia!