Movies I Saw In Theaters 1975-1996

I have had my “Red Movie Notebook” since 1985.  Some times, years go by, without me looking at it…..sometimes I look at it on a regularly basis.  There are two parts to my notebook.  Part 1 (see the photo below) shows all the rental numbers that Variety listed in their 1986 All-Time Top Grossing Movies chart.

I still pat myself on having the patience to write all of these movies down….and for me….doing it in a decent handwriting.

The second part of my “Red Movie Notebook” was a movie viewing log (photo below).  It listed all the movies I had seen….with a rating for each movie.  4 stars was the highest score while a 1/2 star was the lowest score.   If I had seen the movie in theaters it got a star.  In the photo below…I saw 13 “H” movies in theaters.

The other day I was looking at my “Red Movie Notebook” and thought….”Wow, I could probably list about 95% of all the movies I have ever seen in theaters.  So the first part of that idea was to move the movies from the notebook to our website.  The following table shows most of the movies I saw in theaters during the 1970s (I was a pre-teen), 1980s (high school/college) and mid 1990s (I became a father at 21…actually on my 21st birthday).  I will have to depend on the old memory to come up with the movies for mid 1990s to 2018.

These Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort movies by movie titles and trailers
  • Sort  movies by stars of the movies
  • Sort movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort  movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort movies how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations each movie received and how many Oscar® wins each movie won.
  • Sort  movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score.  UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.

  1.  My first ever date was to see E.T. (1982).  She was a red-head……I would eventually marry a red-head…..just not her…and not WoC.
  2.  My mom and dad took me to see Clint Eastwood’s The Gauntlet (1977).  After Sondre Locke’s chest was exposed during a scene…..my  dad told my mother he would never take me to another R rated movie.
  3.  Endless Love (1981) was the first R-Rated movie that I was able to see without adult supervision.
  4. I never saw Jaws (1975) in theaters…but I have vivid memories of friends telling me the  breakdown of how the movie happened.
  5.   I spent most of Friday the 13th 3D (1982) staring at the bottom of my popcorn box versus the movie screen.
  6. The Breakfast Club (1985) came out my senior year in high school.  Because we knew someone that worked at our local theater….me and my friends most have seen that movie 40 to 50 times.
  7. I loved Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) but I was very disappointed in the “Special Edition” that Spielberg later released.
  8. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) is the movie that made me the movie nut I am today.
  9. Biggest laughter in theaters?  1976’s Gus, 1980’s Stir Crazy and 1981’s Porky’s.
  10. Saw A Clockeork Orange (1971) at a midnight showing when the movie was almost 15 years old.
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33 thoughts on “Movies I Saw In Theaters 1975-1996”

  1. Yeah I see a lot of Bruce Willis films on the chart, which makes me think it’s probably a list of films Bruce has watched in theaters, many of these are favorites of his so Cogerson might be the connection. He was too young for Clockwork Orange so it may have been a later rerelease.

    Reply

    1. Hey Steve….Bruce is actually topped by Tom Hanks……13 to 10……which of course made me wonder if Tom still has the lead 25 years later…..so the current total is currently seen 23 Tom Hanks movies at the theater and 34 Bruce Willis movies in theaters….so Tom was not able to hold off Bruce. As for A Clockwork Orange….I saw that one when I was in college and it was playing at a midnight showing…I knew nothing about it….my older brother was the one that was really interested in seeing it. Congrats on figuring out the answer to my question.

      Reply

  2. I like Steve’s guess of movies Cogerson saw in theaters. Too many movies for it to be a person behind the camera. Most of the movies were box office successes, so it makes sense. I do not even have a second guess at all.

    Reply

    1. Hey SteinHoF16……Steve was correct…and you were correct to second his thought. So no second guess was required at all. Good stuff.

      Reply

  3. Hello Bruce,

    Too many différents genre, too many stars, too many directors, too many producers, too many companies even Paramount, and just from 1971 to 96 so may be it is your own list of favorite films during 25 years but it is really ???????? For me….
    There are three ZERO rank at the beginning of the list , another ???????
    So long
    Pierre

    Reply

    1. Hey Pierre….thanks for stopping by. My movie viewing was largely dictated by how and who I was going to the movies with. My mom, dad and grandma influenced most of my 1970s movies, not to mention my early 1980s movies. Then my friends started to take over….as well as my older brother….at least when he started driving. Then the later movies…many of the movies…I was the dad…..sitting through some bad movies….getting through Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls was very very difficult. That ZERO ranking was when I was adding in some new movies….and the update had not taken place yet. Good to hear from you….hope all is going well.

      Reply

      1. Hello Bruce,
        I am fine and hope for you too, and you know, i know this picture of your red movie notebook because i saw it on another page of your site and the name of the page is box office obsession where you explain how it happen to you to be very interrested by all the BO and the productions etc
        And you know, i made two comments on this page, the first was very long because i explain like you how i was so interrested BUT I LOST IT, i dont know how but it hapened, anyway i started a new comment not so long of course because with IPAD it is not easy and when i wanted to send it my IPAD was without NRJ and stopped everything and the next day everything was gone ….again….
        And i think to myself, this is not my page forgot about it may be another day…
        Anyway funny interrogation
        Pierre

        Reply

  4. I can’t figure it out. Bruce mentions “a person” as a clue. But I can’t connect all of these films with any particular person. Maybe these are films Bruce saw at the cinema? Or reviewed on his website? I don’t think there’s a Joel Hirschhorn connection.

    Reply

    1. Hey Steve…..Bingo….you got it right…”Maybe these are films Bruce saw at the cinema?”…was 100% correct. I figured The Swarm and Meteor would help get you to the answer….as we have mentioned many times….that both of us have seen those bombs in theaters. Not many of us can make that claim. I like the thinking of the Joel connection…..it gets me thinking….lol. Congrats on figuring out our little question.

      Reply

  5. Hmmmm. Like puzzles and riddles. So I have been looking at these movies.

    My thoughts. There are only three decades listed. From 1971’s A Clockwork Orange being the oldest to 1996’s Fargo being the youngest. So what happened in that 25 year gap?

    Lots of stars have numerous movies Hanks, Williams, Ford and Willis seem to be the most popular.

    The table has a wide variety of genres from musicals to dramas to science fiction to comedies to action to lots of sports movies.

    I looked at directors, but only Spielberg has a noticeable amount of movies.

    I do not see anything that joins these movies together. So I will have to go with these movies are your Favorite Movies? Are movies you think are Overrated? Though not thinking anybody thinks Can’t Stop The Music is overrated.

    Well that is my two guesses. I am correct?

    P.S. I had to look up Dead Heat. Vincent Price and Treat Williams, not to mention Joe Piscopo in a movie. I had no idea. Look forward to the answer.

    Reply

    1. Hey In The Shadows…….good to hear from you. Your input is always welcome and appreciated. Glad you had fun trying to figure out the subject of this page. A Clockwork Orange was seen in the mid to late 1980s….it was playing at a midnight showing….and my older brother got me to go. Talk about a movie confusing me…..I have since come to really appreciate that one.

      Hanks, Williams, Ford and Willis got me to a lot of movies. My best friend was a huge Arnold fan…..I think every Arnold movie listed here was seen with my friend. As for your guesses….well there are some favorite movies on this list…….so it was a good guess. I like your line about Can’t Stop The Music being overrated…..that was the first winner of the Golden Raspberry award for worst picture of the year.

      Dead Heat was a very strange movie….I had forgotten Vincent Price was in the movie…..not to mention most of the movie as well. Hope the answer to the riddle was not too disappointing. Good feedback.

      Reply

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