The Breakfast Club to Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the writer-director's mix of Brat-pack stars, Prom nights and teenage rebellion features in series of screenings at Cinema City.
With their mix of Brat-pack stars, Prom night angst, teenage rebellion and, for us in the UK, small-town American glamour, anyone who hit adolescence in the 1980s is likely to have a soft spot for the films of John Hughes.
The writer-producer-director, who died of a heart attack in 2009 aged 59, made a string of movies that rewrote the rules of teenage films and, despite their flimsy seeming subject matter of surging hormones and frustrated adolescence, had suprising perception and resonance with audiences — plus they are often extremely funny.
Beginning with his debut Sixteen Candles (1984), he is best known for his mid-1980s run of so-called Brat Pack movies, named after the young actors he cast, including The Breakfast Club, Weird Science (both 1985), Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off (both 1986) and Some Kind of Wonderful (1987).
Now Norwich's Cinema City is sett o celebrate his work with a season of Sunday afternoon screenings of some of his best loved films.
The season will include five of his so-called 'Brat Pack' movies – all of which showcase his uncanny ability to tap into teen emotion — starting with perhaps the best loved of the lot, his seminal teen comedy The Breakfast Club on October 1.
Five very different high-school students are forced to spend a Saturday together in detention. A jock (Emilio Estevez), a criminal (Judd Nelson), a princess (Molly Ringwald), a basket case (Ally Sheedy) and a brain (Anthony Michael Hall) talk about everything, from parental tensions to sex to peer pressure and hurtful stereotypes, while serving time.
Hughes's 1982 directorial debut, Sixteen Candles, a coming of age comedy film starring Molly Ringwald, screens on October 8.
Ringwald, a Hughes favourite, returns with her weird punk makeup and clothes, forced to choose between the affections of her doting childhood sweetheart and a rich but sensitive playboy, in his most romantic and joyously sentimental film Pretty In Pink on October 22.
Meanwhile geeks rule the roost in the outrageous sci-fi fantasy romp, Weird Science, October 29. Rejected by their peers and desperate to be liked, Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith play two misfit teens design their ideal woman on a computer – and then accidentally bring her to life.
Matthew Broderick plays everyone's favourite charismatic rascal, who's off on an impulsive adventure in Ferris Bueller's Day Off on November 5.
With older stars Steve Martin and John Candy and a non-teen storyline, Planes, Trains and Automobiles stands out in the season, but it is perhaps the funniest of all Hughes' films.
• We ? John Hughes season starts at Norwich Cinema City on October 1, with The Breakfast Club. Full details of the season and booking HERE
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