Ethan Alter
'Star Wars' Turns 40: 17 Other Movies That Premiered in the Summer of 1977
- 1/15
‘Smokey and the Bandit’ (May 27)
- 2/15
‘The Other Side of Midnight’ (June 8)
- 3/15
‘The Deep’ (June 17)
- 4/15
‘Exorcist II: The Heretic’ (June 17)
- 5/15
‘New York, New York’ (June 21)
- 6/15
‘For the Love of Benji’ (June 10) and ‘Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo’ (June 24)
- 7/15
‘Sorcerer’ (June 24)
- 8/15
‘MacArthur’ (July 15)
- 9/15
‘Orca’ (July 22)
- 10/15
‘Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown’ (Aug. 24) and ‘The Rescuers’ (June 22)
- 11/15
‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ (Aug. 3)
- 12/15
‘March or Die’ (August 5)
- 13/15
‘The Kentucky Fried Movie’ (Aug. 10)
- 14/15
‘Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger’ (Aug. 12)
- 15/15
‘Thunder and Lightning’ (Aug. 24)
Ethan Alter
·Senior Writer, Yahoo Entertainment
During the summer of 1977, Star Wars was the only movie anyone wanted to talk about. Blasting into theaters on May 25, just in time for Memorial Day weekend, George Lucas’s space opera shot down box-office records left and right during its lengthy run, remaining a fixture on marquees as summer gave way to fall and then winter. But it’s worth remembering that Star Wars wasn’t the only film that Hollywood released that summer. Here are the other movies that are celebrating their 40th anniversaries during the next three months, from the good, to the bad, to the downright obscure.