Release Date: December 20, 1985
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Louis Gossett, Jr., Brion James, Richard Marcus, Carolyn McCormick
Favorite quote: “Earthman, your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!”– Jeriba ‘Jerry’ Shigan
Prior to the 1980s, a movie’s only gauge of success was its box office results. Executives who greenlighted movies back then hoped that the movies’ box office take alone would offset the amount of money spent making them. Movies that didn’t were considered a flop.
A cursory view of movies that flopped include some treasured classics, such as The Wizard of Oz, It’s a Wonderful Life, and even Citizen Kane. The latter movie, despite winning NINE Academy Awards and being considered one of the best movies of all time, only grossed $1.5 million at the box office on a budget of $839,000. Its reception was lukewarm, belying its stature today.
In the mid-to-late-80s, a technological opened my teenage eyes to a bevy of content: cable television. For the first time, a wide selection of TV shows, movies, and sports telecasts were literally beamed into my bedroom TV. It was through this medium that I discovered some of my favorite cult classics of the decade. Among them was Enemy Mine, a sci-fi action drama that flopped in theatres but found new life on the small screen.
The premise was standard cut-and-paste fare for the decade. It’s the late 21st Century, and humans are embroiled in an interstellar war with the Dracs, a amphibian-like bipedal humanoid race. Battles occurred frequently in space, and both sides suffered equally.
On the humans’ side, no one hates Dracs more than Willis E. Davidge (Dennis Quaid), a hot shot pilot for the humans’ alliance, the Bilateral Terran Alliance (BTA). During a combat mission against the Dracs, he ends up in a dogfight with a Drac fighter, piloted by Jeriba Shigan (Louis Gossett, Jr.). Their furball brings them into the atmosphere of Fyrine IV, a planet that is hostile but can support life. They both crash land on the planet’s surface and survive, but are obviously hostile to one another. The majority of the remainder of the movie details their attempts to survive together, despite their hatred for one another.
As a sci-fi movie, the movie is average. The effects are believable but below the level of the Star Wars movies of the 80s. It’s the interpersonal relationship between Davidge and Shigan – nicknamed ‘Jerry’ – where the movie really shines. Enemies at first, they grow to trust and depend on each other. That dependence persists through death and new life, and is the main thrust of the movie.
Enemy Mine is not spectacular by any means, but it is a good sci-fi based movie with a great narrative. Unfortunately, the narrative didn’t save the film financially. Originally budgeted at $17, the movie’s expenses ballooned to over $40 million before being released. It subsequently bombed at the box office, earning only $12 million. That would be where the story would usually end: bloated movie bombs, everyone moves on.
Cable TV, however, had a different idea. I remember the movie being on heavy rotation on Cinemax and HBO; I must have seen it at least 3 times per month. The familiarity, coupled with the strength of the story, won me over.
I consider Enemy Mine to be an underappreciated sci-fi movie. There are many better films in the genre, but very few of them have a story that resonates as much with me. Whether it is due to the repetition or the quality, I still fire it up every so often for a watch. It’s a movie that is worth a viewing.
