Some movie summers are remembered because one giant blockbuster took over everything. Batman owned 1989. Jurassic Park ruled 1993. Top Gun dominated 1986. One movie kicks the door open, vacuums up the box-office cash, and suddenly owns the whole season. But the summer of 1987 was different. This wasn’t one movie swallowing the conversation. This was the entire video store wall getting restocked at once.
This was the kind of summer where you could walk into a theater and find Eddie Murphy back as Axel Foley. Arnold Schwarzenegger being hunted in the jungle. RoboCop cleaning up Detroit with the subtle touch of a bulldozer. Teenage vampires prowling the Santa Cruz boardwalk. James Bond getting a new face. Mel Brooks dropping a Star Wars parody. Patrick Swayze becoming a summer movie icon. And Stanley Kubrick dropping a Vietnam war film right in the middle of popcorn season. And that’s before you even get to future classics such as The Untouchables, La Bamba, Born in East LA, The Monster Squad, Summer School, Adventures in Babysitting, Stakeout, Hamburger Hill, and yes, somehow, Masters of the Universe. Just to name a handful.
So instead of treating 1987 like a simple top-ten list, it’s better to look at the bigger story: how one summer managed to restock every section of the imaginary video store at the same time. The action shelf was loaded. The comedy shelf was busy. The horror corner had bite. The teen movies had charm. The prestige dramas had real weight. And the oddball cult-movie shelf was quietly preparing for decades of VHS afterlife.
That’s what makes this summer so interesting in retrospect. It wasn’t perfect. Not even close. There were classics, some solid hits, some cult favorites, a few strange swings, and franchise stumbles, and a few movies that felt like they were greenlit during a drunken lunch meeting. But together, they make the summer of ‘87 feel alive: messy, commercial, creative, strange, confident, and extremely 1987.
Now by this point, Hollywood already knew the summer could be huge. Jaws had changed the game in the ‘70s. Star Wars turned moviegoing into an event. And the early ‘80s gave us the blockbuster machine, movie stars, sequels, toys, soundtracks, and high-concept ideas that could be sold in one sentence.
But 1987 hit a little differently because it didn’t feel like one clean trend. It felt like Hollywood threw every genre into the pool and, somehow, most of them floated. Some summers are built for opening weekends. This one was built for shelf life. That’s why it still feels so video-store friendly.
A few of these movies were massive right away. Some took a little longer to find their audience. Some weren’t fully appreciated until they hit VHS and cable, for sleepovers, and those lazy weekends where you rented something because the box looked cool and the guy behind the counter said, “Yeah, this one’s weird, but definitely worth a shot.”
The Summer of 1987: When the Whole Video Store Came Alive
May: The Season Opens for Business
You had Creepshow 2 bringing horror anthology flavor for fans of practical effects and comic-book nastiness. The Gate added another solid horror entry to the mix, giving kids a backyard portal to demonic chaos and reminding everyone that in the ‘80s, even suburban holes in the ground could ruin your weekend. American Ninja 2 kept the martial arts B-movie shelf attractive. Ernest Goes to Camp served pure family VHS comfort food. And River’s Edge brought something much darker and stranger to the teen movie conversation.
It’s not exactly summer escapism. It’s bleak, unsettling, and full of dead-end youth energy, with Keanu Reeves before he became full-on Keanu and Crispin Glover transmitting from his own private satellite. But it’s a quality gem from the past without question although not appreciated at the time.
The season really announced itself with Beverly Hills Cop II, which came out late in the month and basically strutted into theaters wearing sunglasses indoors. Eddie Murphy was already one of the biggest stars in the world, and bringing Axel Foley back was a major event. The first movie had that perfect blend of action, comedy, and fish-out-of-water charm. The sequel turned everything up: Tony Scott style, fast cars, glossy lighting, synth energy, expensive rooms, gunfire, and Murphy moving through the whole thing like he knows the movie gets better every time he walks into frame. It’s a slick, loud, stylish sequel, and very much the summer saying, “Alright, we’re open for business.”
So right away, the summer of ‘87 was delivering hits, oddities, horror, comedy, action, family fare, and darkness. And the release schedule was just getting rolling.
June: When the Shelves Started Filling Up
June would roll in and quickly start stacking the shelves even higher with multiple hits each week for audiences to choose from.
On the same day, moviegoers would get Harry and the Hendersons and The Untouchables, which is a perfect snapshot of this season’s range. On one screen, John Lithgow was bringing home a giant, lovable Bigfoot like the world’s hairiest exchange student. On another screen, Brian De Palma was giving us Prohibition-era crime, Al Capone, federal agents, Ennio Morricone music, and Sean Connery delivering the kind of performance where they probably started etching his name in the Oscar halfway through the damn movie.
The Untouchables would end up being one of the big prestige-popcorn movies of the summer. It’s classy, violent, beautifully made, and ridiculously rewatchable.
Kevin Costner gives it that clean heroic center, Robert De Niro goes big as Capone, and Connery brings old-school toughness to every scene. It’s not just a crime movie. It’s a real movie-movie, full of style, music, costumes, set pieces, and that big-screen confidence you rarely get anymore.
One week later, Predator arrived, and that’s where the summer went from strong to legendary. Predator is one of those perfect ’80s movie concepts that sounds almost too good to be real: Arnold Schwarzenegger leads an elite military rescue team into the jungle, only to discover they’re being hunted by an invisible alien warrior who collects skulls. That is not just a movie pitch. That is an ’80s sleepover for teenagers in cinematic form.
What makes Predator so great is that it starts as one kind of movie and slowly turns into another. At first, it’s all giant guns, giant arms, giant handshakes, and guys who look like they were built in a gym during a lightning storm. But then the jungle gets quieter. The team starts getting picked off. Arnold’s usual action-movie certainty begins to crack. And by the end, it becomes almost primal. One man, one alien, mud, traps, fire, and survival. It’s action, sci-fi, horror, and macho mythology all at once. And somehow, it still feels lean. It doesn’t over-explain itself. It just drops you in the jungle and lets the trees start whispering trouble.
June would also deliver The Witches of Eastwick, which brought a whole different kind of adult weirdness. Jack Nicholson, Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Susan Sarandon in a sexy supernatural dark comedy about desire, power, and one devilish man who treats subtlety like a traffic suggestion. It’s glossy, strange, funny, and a little grotesque in that very 80s way where a major studio movie could still feel slightly dangerous. Then there was Roxanne, with Steve Martin at his most charming, giving us a sweet, clever romantic comedy that didn’t need to shout to be funny.
Near the end of June, moviegoers would get a wild triple feature: Spaceballs, Dragnet, and Full Metal Jacket. Another indication of what kind of summer this was. A Mel Brooks sci-fi parody, a buddy-cop comedy with Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks, and Stanley Kubrick’s brutal Vietnam war film all arriving in the same moviegoing window. It was a genre buffet.
Spaceballs gave audiences Mel Brooks taking aim at Star Wars, merchandising, sequels, sci-fi fandom, and the whole pop culture machine. It may not be Brooks at his absolute sharpest from start to finish, but Dark Helmet alone earns the movie its permanent parking spot in nerd history.
Meanwhile, Full Metal Jacket was about as far from light summer viewing as you could get, yet it became one of the year’s defining films because Kubrick could always turn discomfort into something you couldn’t look away from. The first half, with R. Lee Ermey’s drill instructor, became instantly iconic. Then the second half turns colder, stranger, and more morally exhausted. It’s far from escapism, but that’s part of what makes 1987 feel so rich.
So, in true 80s fashion the summer of ‘87 gave audiences jokes about ludicrous speed, and psychological war trauma practically side by side.
July: The Future Cult-Classics Arrive
Then July showed up and did its best to turn the season into a future video store hall of fame in four weeks.
Adventures in Babysitting is pure 80s teen-night chaos, with Elisabeth Shue trying to babysit and somehow ending up in a big-city adventure involving car thieves, blues clubs, gangsters, and kids learning that the outside world is basically a theme park designed by anxiety. It has that great 80s quality where teenagers are allowed to be in actual danger, but the movie still feels fun.
Then there was Innerspace, Joe Dante doing sci-fi comedy with Dennis Quaid, Martin Short, and Meg Ryan, and it has the kind of plot that sounds like someone spilled three genres into a blender. Miniaturization, espionage, body invasion, romance, physical comedy, and Martin Short panic-sweating at Olympic levels. It’s inventive, playful, and very much from that era where weird mainstream movies were still allowed to be weird.
But the big July cannon blast was RoboCop. And honestly, this might be the best example of why 1987 was far more interesting than it ever had to be. On paper, RoboCop could have been simple: cop gets killed, cop becomes robot cop, robot cop shoots bad guys. Done. Sell the poster. Try not to explain the rating to parents.
But Paul Verhoeven made something sharper. He made a violent, satirical, corporate nightmare comedy disguised as an action movie. RoboCop is brutal, funny, tragic, and weirdly emotional. Peter Weller gives Murphy a soul even under all that metal. The movie is packed with fake commercials, news breaks, corporate greed, privatized policing, and Clarence Boddicker, one of the great scumbag villains of the decade.
Back in 1987, RoboCop worked perfectly as a hard-R sci-fi action movie. On VHS, it became a rite of passage. And today, it feels like one of the smartest genre films of the entire decade. Not bad for a movie where the hero looks like he was constructed from old appliance parts.
Then because every great summer needs a few cautionary tales, July also delivered Jaws: The Revenge and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. Now, neither of these is remembered as a high point for its franchise, but in retrospect they do help tell the story of the season. Jaws: The Revenge is what happens when a franchise keeps swimming long after the beach should have closed. The shark appears to have a personal vendetta, travel plans, and maybe access to family records so this was never gonna fly.
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace had noble intentions, especially with its nuclear disarmament message, and Christopher Reeve still gave it dignity, but the budget issues are all over the screen. Yet, you can feel the good idea buried under all the production chaos. These movies, however, do show the other side of 1987: the moment when some older franchises were starting to creak while newer genre films like RoboCop and Predator were just getting started.
Much to the delight of audiences, July was not done. The release schedule would see La Bamba and Summer School, two completely different, but very rewatchable movies.
La Bamba brings real warmth and emotion to the story of Ritchie Valens, with Lou Diamond Phillips giving the movie its heart. It’s fueled by music, constantly sincere, and bittersweet without ever feeling phony. Summer School, meanwhile, served pure cable comfort. Mark Harmon as a laid-back gym teacher stuck teaching remedial English, surrounded by a classroom full of lovable underachievers. It’s not trying to reinvent comedy.
It’s a movie that just wants to hang out, get a few laughs. But growing up it would become a seasonal staple. And then July would close with another awesome pair of contrasting releases, The Living Daylights and The Lost Boys.
Now Timothy Dalton’s first Bond movie gave the franchise a tougher edge after the Roger Moore years, pointing toward a more serious version of 007. But The Lost Boys would be the real vibe machine here. Fictional Santa Carla, the boardwalk, the music, the motorcycles, the leather jackets, the vampire gang, the freakin’ Coreys, and that saxophone guy doing more for shirtless beachside confidence than science could ever hypothesize.
The Lost Boys is horror, comedy, teen movie, vampire movie, and music-video cool all at once. Kiefer Sutherland’s David doesn’t feel like some ancient gothic vampire. He feels like the cool older kid your parents warned you about, except your parents were dramatically underselling the problem.
And maybe, of all the summer of 87 movies, this one, The Lost Boys, might be the one that feels most like it was destined to live on a VHS shelf forever.
August: The VHS Afterlife Begins
Now by August, the season had already delivered more than enough movies for one legendary summer, but there would be more. Along with movies like Back to the Beach, Disorderlies, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, House II, Hamburger Hill, and Who’s That Girl, August did its best to close the season with some gusto.
Masters of the Universe kicked the month off with a splash, and while it may not have been the He-Man epic kids dreamed of, it remains one of the great VHS-era oddities. Dolph Lundgren looks the part, Frank Langella gives Skeletor way more commitment than the movie probably had any right to expect, and the whole thing has that Cannon Films energy where ambition and budget are arm wrestling in public. It’s not perfect. It’s not even close. But it is fascinating, and for a lot of kids, that box art alone was enough to secure the rental.
Also opening the month was Stakeout, one of the sleeper hits of the summer, with Richard Dreyfuss and Emilio Estevez mixing buddy-cop comedy, romance, and suspense with comical precision. Then there was Can’t Buy Me Love, another classic 80s teen comedy about popularity, insecurity, and the dangerous idea that high school social status could be fixed with a financial transaction. Yet Dempsey and Peterson give it charm, and it captures that specific teen movie world where the cafeteria felt like a stock exchange.
That same August stretch would also give us No Way Out, a slick political thriller with Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, and Sean Young. It’s tense, adult, twisty, and another reminder that Costner was having a very strong summer between this and The Untouchables.
Then there was North Shore, which may not have been a giant mainstream hit, but has exactly the kind of sun-baked, surf-movie sincerity that grows into cult affection. And for a beach-town video store vibe, this little Karate Kid knock-off feels legally required to be on the shelf.
And then there was the Goonies knock-off The Monster Squad, one of the great “didn’t own theaters, but owned kids’ memory banks” movies of the era. Kids versus Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, and the Gill-man. It’s basically classic monster horror filtered through 80s kid adventure.
It wasn’t a huge theatrical hit, but VHS gave it the life it deserved. And again, that was the key to the summer of ‘87. Some movies won right away. Others waited until kids found them at the rental store and never let them go. Others were discovered on cable late at night, or on a weekend morning with a bowl of cereal after the cartoons were over.
Then came Dirty Dancing, one of the great sleeper success stories of the year. Compared to the louder movies around it, it didn’t necessarily look like the one that would become a cultural phenomenon. But audiences found it, and then they kept finding it. Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey had that lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry, the music exploded, and the movie tapped into romance, nostalgia, class tension, coming-of-age drama, and the fantasy that your summer vacation might change your entire life.
Which, frankly, is false advertising. Most summer vacations just gave you a sunburn, a few family barbecues, and, if yours were anything like mine, awkward lake rejections on a seasonal basis.
But Dirty Dancing worked because it’s sincere. It’s not embarrassed by its own romance. Baby’s transformation, Johnny’s pride, the resort setting, the final dance, the music, the emotion, all of it lands because the movie believes in itself. People remember the lift, of course. But they remember the feeling before the lift too, and that’s what would make it timeless.
So as you can see by Labor Day, the summer of 1987 had become comically stacked. The action shelf had Predator, RoboCop, Beverly Hills Cop II, American Ninja II, The Living Daylights, and Masters of the Universe.
The comedy shelf had Spaceballs, Dragnet, Summer School, Adventures in Babysitting, Roxanne, The Squeeze, Stakeout, and Born in East LA.
The horror and cult shelf had The Lost Boys, The Monster Squad, Creepshow 2, The Gate, and House II.
The drama and thriller shelf had The Untouchables, Full Metal Jacket, No Way Out, White Water Summer, River’s Edge, and The Big Easy.
The music and romance shelf had Dirty Dancing, Who’s That Girl, La Bamba, Disorderlies, and Back to the Beach.
The “how did this get greenlit into production” aisle had both Innerspace and The Garbage Pail Kids Movie.
The family section had Ernest Goes to Camp and Harry and the Hendersons, among others.
There was the failed sequel section with Jaws: The Revenge, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, and Revenge of the Nerds II. Although I do have a soft spot for Nerds II, I can’t lie.
And lastly, and probably most iconic, would be a little film most never watched but nearly all will remember for giving video stores one of the most memorable posters of all time: The Allnighter.
So really, that’s what makes this specific summer so special. It never felt like one trend. It felt like a whole ecosystem. A loud, sweaty, neon-lit ecosystem with saxophones, squibs, vampires, robot cops, summer romances, alien hunters, and at least one shark with a vendetta.
The reason the summer of 87 still plays so well now is because it captures a moment when big studio movies still had personality. These weren’t just products. Predator had fingerprints. RoboCop had teeth. The Lost Boys had style. Dirty Dancing had heart. The Untouchables had old-school craftsmanship. Even the messy movies had their own funky flavor. And then the home video era came along and gave all of them a second, and in some cases third, fourth, and fifth life.
And that’s the part that matters. Sure, theatrical box office tells one story, but VHS tells another. Some movies were huge right away. Some became cult favorites later. Some were disappointments that still became essential rental-store artifacts. Once these movies hit video stores, they all had another chance to find their people. You could rent Predator because your friend hadn’t seen it. You could grab The Lost Boys because some girls were coming to the birthday party. You could discover The Monster Squad during a sleepover. You could rent RoboCop when your parents probably should’ve checked the rating. You could bring home Masters of the Universe because you loved the toys and were willing to negotiate with quality because of that.
So was the summer of 1987 one of the best for movies? Absolutely. But beyond that, it has a real shot at being the greatest movie summer of all time. Maybe it doesn’t have the clean mythology of one unstoppable title. But that’s the point. This wasn’t the summer of one movie. The summer of 1987 was a whole rental aisle come to life in only four months.
It was Axel Foley and Al Capone. Dutch and the Predator. Murphy and Clarence Boddicker. Baby and Johnny. David and the vampires. Dalton’s Bond. Mel Brooks playing with space toys. Stanley Kubrick taking us to war. Ritchie Valens chasing a dream. Teenagers babysitting, surfing, monster hunting, buying popularity, and learning that summer school might not be the worst thing that can happen to you.
That’s why the summer of 1987 still feels special. Not because every movie was great, but because the shelves were full. And sometimes, that’s the real magic.
So the real question is: what would your summer of ’87 rental stack look like? Are you grabbing Predator, RoboCop, and The Lost Boys right away? Are you making room for Dirty Dancing, La Bamba, or The Untouchables? Are you defending Masters of the Universe with your whole chest? Or are you the brave soul walking to the counter with Jaws: The Revenge and saying, “Trust me, I know what I’m doing”?
That’s the magic of the summer of 1987. Not every movie was great, but the shelves were full. And sometimes, that’s what makes a movie summer unforgettable.
Anthony J. Digioia II © 2026 SilverScreen Analysis & Sunset Video Rentals
