A bit over a decade after Venkman and co. busted some ghosts, and nearly exactly two decades before Gilbert, Yates, and co. started their Ghostbusters, Michael J. Fox was having his own encounters with ghosts.
20 years ago today, The Frighteners opened in theaters.
It was one year after Casper, another movie that had its male lead character seeing ghosts after the death of his wife.
Frighteners was Peter Jackson”s theatrical film follow-up to Heavenly Creatures, and it was one of the earliest films that wowed audiences with visual effects by Jackson”s Weta Digital.
It”s Fox”s last starring role in a live-action feature film. After Frighteners, he started his run on the TV series Spin City and then took on fewer major acting gigs after revealing his diagnosis with Parkinson”s.
Hasn”t stopped Fox from taking the stage and rocking out with Coldplay as recently as this weekend.
Other notable July 19 happenings in pop culture history:
• 1950: Treasure Island, Disney”s first entirely live-action feature, opened in U.S. theaters.
• 1961: An in-flight movie was shown on a plane for the first time, when TWA screened By Love Possessed on a flight from New York to Los Angeles.
• 1965: The Beatles” “Help!” single was released in the U.S., followed by a U.K. release a few days later.
• 1986: Genesis”s “Invisible Touch” hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100. One week later, Peter Gabriel”s “Sledgehammer” knocked it off the top spot.
• 1988: Bruce Springsteen ventured behind the Iron Curtain, playing a historic concert in East Berlin for a crowd of 300,000.
• 1991: Bill & Ted”s Bogus Journey hit theaters.
• 1995: Clueless opened in theaters.
• 1996: HBO aired the final episode of Tales from the Crypt.
• 2007: Mad Men premiered on AMC.