PopHorror Let's Get Scared
In 1980, director Robert Zemeckis (Death Becomes Her – 1992) and writer Bob Gale (Bordello of Blood – 1996) teamed up to make a fun science fiction movie involving time travel. Only problem was, raunchy comedy was in at the time. Films such as The Hollywood Knights, Animal House, Meatballs, Stripes, The Blues Brothers, Caddyshack and pretty much anything associated with National Lampoon, Second City and/or Saturday Night Live were the “in” thing. It wasn’t until Robert Zemeckis scored with Romancing The Stone in 1984 that Universal Pictures relented and let the duo have their project. That project would be BACK TO THE FUTURE.
Without spoiling too much, here’s a general plot. Teenaged Marty McFly grew up in a blue collar household full of losers. His sister Linda (Wendie Jo Sperber – Babes 1990) can’t find love, his brother Dave (Marc McClure – Superman 1978) works in a fast food joint, his mother Lorraine (Lea Thompson – Red Dawn 1984) is an alcoholic, his uncle Joey is in jail and his father George (Crispin Glover – Friday The 13th Part 4) is a nerdy pushover constantly bullied by his work supervisor Biff (Tom Wilson – The Heat 2013).
His best friend is a crazy scientist named Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd – One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest 1975) and one day Doc invites him to a local mall to test out an invention at 2 in the morning. Doc pulls up in a 1981 DeLorean DMC-12 and a surprised Marty finds out THAT is the time machine. Equipped with a flux capacitor and needing plutonium to run, Doc explains how it works and demonstrates by sending his dog Einstein one minute into the future.
Just as Doc is about to leave to travel through time, Libyan terrorists that he ripped off for the plutonium show up to shoot him to death and chase Marty. Marty hops in the time machine and guns it, accidentally triggering it to send him back 30 years into the past. Marty stumbles and bumbles though Hill Valley, California before finding a younger Doc Brown to help him get back to the future. I won’t spoil the rest, although if you haven’t seen the movie already, that’s a shame.
Production of the movie began with its incredible casting, and a last second change that might have saved BACK TO THE FUTURE. Christopher Lloyd played the loveable Doc brown to perfection while director Robert Zemeckis tabbed Red Dawn‘s Lea Thompson and Friday the 13th Part 4‘s Crispin Glover to play Lorraine and George.
In a 2018 interview at Fan Expo Boston, Tom Wilson explained how he came to be Biff. He grew up a short, chubby kid in the late 70’s that was bullied by older kids. Like most other portly boys, he turned to humor to fit in better, becoming the class clown to avoid getting beat up. Suddenly in high school he hit a growth spurt and grew to over 6 feet tall. Due to that, he was cast as a lackey in the movie LA Streetfighters which caught the eye of Zemeckis.
When auditioning for Biff, he didn’t think he’d get the part but he was confident Crispin would when they read lines together. Tom Wilson not only got the part, but he ended up playing one of the best bad guys of the late 20th century. He claimed he channeled the character by piecing together every bully he ever knew. The best part was his gang of lackeys in 1955 included Billy Zane (Demon Knight – 1995) and Casey Siemaszko (Young Guns 1988), the former of the two utterly stealing the show in Tales From The Crypt’s Demon Knight.
Originally, Robert and Bob wanted 24 year old Michael J Fox to play Marty McFly but he was too busy shooting the hit television show Family Ties. Instead, they went with Eric Stoltz, fresh off filming the iconic movie Mask to play Marty. Wait….that’s not what you remember?
Well here’s a story for you. Eric was what many in the industry call a method actor, meaning you’re only supposed to address him by his character name and he’s in character 24/7 during filming. That kind of style can rub people the wrong way and Eric did. Worse yet, according to the same 2018 interview, Eric got really rough with Tom Wilson during filming. Tom had to tell Eric that its only acting and not to grab or hit him too hard. Eric didn’t listen and ended up breaking Tom’s collarbone.
Tom had his revenge plotted, though. They still had to film the scene where Biff pulls Marty out of the car with Lorraine, and Tom claims he was going to really manhandle Eric in the process. Fortunately for Eric’s health, his brand of acting didn’t sit well with Robert and Zemeckis let him go before the scene was filmed. Look on Youtube and there’s still footage of Eric as Marty existing. Tom was disappointed that he didn’t get his revenge, but at least his replacement would be a lot easier to work with.
Somehow Zemeckis struck a deal to get his original choice, Michael J Fox, to film BACK TO THE FUTURE and Family Ties at the same time. No doubt Michael was tired as all hell after filming as over, but he helped create a masterpiece by accepting the role. After filming wrapped up, everyone moved on to different projects as the movie’s premiere was due. In that 2018 interview, Tom Wilson knew they had a hit when he was at a private screening in Los Angeles before the national release and the crowd cheered almost everything going on. Usually crowds were laid back even for good movies, but this one had the crowd into it.
Tom turned out to be right. BACK TO THE FUTURE was released on July 4th weekend in 1985 and grossed 3.6 million dollars the first two days, and 11.3 million by the end of the weekend. Adjusted for inflation that’s 33 million today. It finished ahead of other iconic movies such as Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider, Rambo First Blood Part 2 and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.
Ironically it was National Lampoon’s European Vacation that knocked it out of the number one spot when it hit the theaters, but viewers quickly realized it didn’t have the same zip as the original Vacation. A week after dropping to number 2, BACK TO THE FUTURE was number one again. Not only that, it was the highest grossing movie of the year when all was said and done, grossing 210 million. The legendary Rocky 4 and Best Picture nominated The Color Purple made 221 million combined that year in comparison.
So what made BACK TO THE FUTURE so popular? EV-ERY-THING! Not just the acting and the humor but the catchy score, the famous theme song, the DeLorean, the sound effects, the chemistry between Doc & Marty, the chemistry between Marty and Lorraine, the antics of Biff and who could forget the soundtrack? Huey Lewis & The News provided the song Power of Love which was nominated for Best Original Song and they made a cameo as music judges. And let’s not forget Marty’s performance of Johnny B Goode near the film’s climax.
It’s also the little things that you have to look for to appreciate. For example, the name of the mall that Doc meets Marty in is Twin Pines Mall. Doc Brown explains Old Man Peabody had a farm in this area years ago with the dream of breeding pine trees. When Marty goes back in time, he runs over one of the pine trees by accident. When Marty comes back from 1955 to save Doc from the terrorists, the mall is now named Lone Pine Mall. From beginning to end, BACK TO THE FUTURE has something to make you laugh, feel or cry as it takes you on an hour and 56 minute thrill ride.
If that was it for BACK TO THE FUTURE, one movie and done….people would still be talking about it today. As it was, it was meant to have a sequel. Without spoiling the ending, it set up a sequel. What fans didn’t know was this was to be a trilogy. In a move that hadn’t been done before, the cast of BACK TO THE FUTURE re-united in 1989 to film back to back movies, Back To The Future 2 and Back To The Future 3. Both of those movies deserve their own write-ups so I won’t go into them apart from the fact that this was now a franchise. Still, Zemeckis and Gale felt that the story concluded with Part 3 and leave it at that. As of this writing in 2025, there hasn’t been another movie although they made a mock trailer for a Part 4 that felt very, very real. Don’t believe me? Watch this fake trailer and try not to get goosebumps.
On a personal note, everyone knows the Academy Awards are full of schmidt to begin with, but the fact BACK TO THE FUTURE wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture was a crime against humanity. It did win Best Sound Effects Editing and it was nominated for Best Sound, Best Original Song (Huey Lewis – Power of Love) and Best Original Screenplay, but the actors, actresses and Zemeckis himself were all snubbed.
Put it this way, take 30 people over the age of 35 and put them up against the wall. Tell all of them to name one line from BACK TO THE FUTURE and I guarantee you at least 25 could do it. Now take the same people and ask them for a line from Best Picture winner Out of Africa. You’ll be lucky to find five of them that could. Out of Africa may have won Best Picture, but it doesn’t have a 40 year legacy, video games, merchandise or sequels. No disrespect to Meryl Streep or Robert Redford, but I doubt Fan Expo and Comic Cons are knocking on their doors to have Out of Africa panels like BACK TO THE FUTURE does.
So what about the legacy? Anytime someone sees a DeLorean, BACK TO THE FUTURE comes to mind. Christopher Lloyd was already known for his roles in Best Picture winner One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and the TV series Taxi, but this launched him to any role he wanted. He’s been in a million things since BACK TO THE FUTURE. Lea Thompson went on to re-unite with Eric Stoltz in Some Kind of Wonderful in 1987 and went on to have a good career as well. Tom Wilson never again reached the heights he did with Back To The Future but he didn’t need to, his portrayal as Biff was enough to get him steady work to this day.
Michael J Fox was already a big name with Family Ties but Back To The Future launched him to other iconic movies such as Teen Wolf, Mars Attacks and The Frighteners. Crispin Glover is also known to horror fans as he played the lead role in the 2003 remake of Willard. Prominent 80’s and 90’s actor James Tolkan was also in BTTF and Jason Hervey went on to become Wayne in The Wonder Years. Numerous TV shows and movies have parodied or referenced BACK TO THE FUTURE and Christopher Lloyd would reprise his role as Doc for a DirectTV commercial and he and Michael J Fox would reprise their roles for a Jimmy Kimmel skit in 2015. Christopher also guest starred on Michael’s 1996 TV series Spin City with a wink wink tip of the hat to BTTF.
Unfortunately, we also have to address the elephant in the room, the video games. As great as the movies were, the video games are considered some of the worst in history. LJN produced Back To The Future the Nintendo game in 1989 and it was hot garbage. Marty goes around in a sleeveless black shirt throwing bowling balls at bumblebees. Also if you get to the final stage and miss hitting the lightning bolt, you have to do the entire game over….yes of course I’m serious.
Back To The Future 2 and 3 was also released shortly after and in those days, games didn’t really get detailed writeups and reviews like they do today. Nintendo Power was more concerned with selling games than they were saying if a game was good or not. The second game didn’t tell you, but you were supposed to collect historical items and return them to their proper time. The problem was, the items were badly pixelated by 1989 standards and you had no idea what they were supposed to be. It all added up to a mess.
Then in 1991, the Sega Genesis released Back To The Future 3 which was a straight western where you had to ride a horse dodging projectiles, shoot targets at a range, throw pies at Buford’s men and get the train up to 88 miles per hour to finish it. The problem was, the programmers screwed up by making the first level so brutally hard that gamers quit after a few minutes, not knowing what the rest of the game was about.
The only good BACK TO THE FUTURE game at the time was Super Back To The Future 2 released in Japan on the Super Famicom. In 2015, for the 30th anniversary of the first movie, a video game for the PS4 and X-Box came out which featured Michael J Fox, Claudia Wells, Christopher Lloyd and Tom Wilson reprising their roles. Sad that it took 26 years to get it right when they screwed up so badly when the franchise was hot.
That’s quite a legacy and a ride for a singular franchise that was popular in the 1980’s. For the last 40 years, people still talk about BACK TO THE FUTURE in a variety of ways. Thankfully a lot of the actors are still with us and have been able to give interviews, attend conventions, perform in commercials and skits and still bring us joy all these years after the first movie was released.
Before we sign off I’ll give one last Tom Wilson story he told at the 2018 convention. He claimed that he was watching the movie with his mother and his mother jumped up and cheered when Biff got punched by George McFly. You know you’ve done a great job when even your own mother wants you to get your comeuppance. Here’s to 40 years of BACK TO THE FUTURE and all the great times that came with it. GREAT SCOTT!
