If ever a movie could lay claim to being misunderstood on its initial release, then its Ridley Scotts dystopian neo-noir, whose box office failure caused him to rethink his ambition of becoming the John Ford of science fiction. Released into American theaters on June 25 1982, Blade Runner proved unable to compete against Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan and ET: The Extra-Terrestrial because of a studio-imposed handicap. Saddled with an extraneous voiceover and a truly bizarre ending cobbled together from footage shot for Stanley Kubricks The Shining, the movie polarized critics, while audiences remained indifferent, resulting in a $33 million gross on a budget of $28 million. There was a good film in there somewhere, but it took 25 years for the Final Cut to reach DVD. In that time, Blade Runner set a new trend for visual design, influencing the Battlestar Galactica reboot as well as the Ghost In The Shell film series.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
