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Embarrassing early appearances by 'The Breakfast Club' cast

Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall in 'The Breakfast Club'
Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall in 'The Breakfast Club'

The ensemble cast of “The Breakfast Club” will always hold a special place in the detention of our hearts. Starting this weekend, moviegoers can prove that they haven’t forgotten about those lovable ‘80s misfits by checking out the 30th anniversary theatrical re-release, which both celebrates the legacy of the classic film and also cements the fact that we’re all getting old.

While "TBC"’s cast of fresh young faces seemingly appeared out of nowhere back in the ‘80s, some of them had already made some early, somewhat embarrassing, appearances you might not remember.

Molly Ringwald in “Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone”

 

Before she was the wealthy, spoiled Claire, Molly Ringwald played the exact opposite character: a filthy scavenger living in a barren futuristic wasteland -- this was even before “Sixteen Candles” in which she merely traversed the metaphorical wasteland of puberty.

In 1983, Ringwald starred as Niki, sidekick to Wolff (he was so tough he spelled “wolf” with two f’s) in the Canadian “Star Wars”/”Mad Max” knock-off  “Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone.”

Despite the fact that “Spacehunter” was executive produced by a young Ivan Reitman, co-starred future Ghostbuster Ernie Hudson, and was presented in glorious 3-D, “Spacehunter” flopped, currently residing in the forbidden zone of crappy movie obscurity.

 Anthony Michael Hall in a ridiculous cereal commercial

It seems that every child star appears in at least one cereal commercial during the early part of their careers. Anthony Michael Hall is no exception-- he popped up in this commercial for Honeycombs back in 1979.

The spot finds Hall eating Honeycombs with his sister, when suddenly a stranger with an electric guitar bursts in and starts singing a jingle at them. Apparently in the late ‘70s, doors were just left unlocked with the assumption that strangers were freely welcome to barge in and throw cereal at children.

Incidentally, the musical stranger is played by Tod Foster, a disco artist notable for appearing in perhaps the most awkward musical television performance of all time.

Twelve-year-old Ally Sheedy on a game show

 
 

Ally Sheedy is smarter than you. Seriously. In 1975, twelve year old Ally Sheedy wrote a children’s novel about Queen Elizabeth I that became a best-seller.

To promote her book, young Sheedy appeared on the game show “To Tell the Truth," in which a panel of celebrities badger a trio of contestants, trying to discern which of them is telling the truth-- in this case, which one is the real Alexandra Sheedy.

Of course, little Ally Sheedy is adorable and charming, so it’s not really that embarrassing--  but it sure is surprising that someone we mostly remember as a brooding eccentric, who loves to scarf down Cap’n Crunch and Pixy Stix, was basically a character from a Wes Anderson movie as a child.

The assistant principal was in a ‘70s beer commercial

The late great character actor Paul Gleason perfectly portrayed that no good assistant principal Vernon, who forced our beloved characters to come into school for detention on a Saturday. In retrospect, was that even legal?

It’s hard to picture this stern, imposing authority figure casually downing some beers with his buddies-- but that’s exactly what he’s doing in this Lowenbrau commercial from 1978.

Back before beer commercials were about tricking you into believing that members of the opposite sex will magically find you attractive when you’re hammered, it seems that back in the ‘70s they could just about boating buddies hanging out and enjoying some suds, as well as each others’ mustaches and windbreakers.

Judd Nelson in “Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel”

Judd Nelson’s first film credit “Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel”  was a poorly-conceived attempt to cash in on the burgeoning MTV generation. The production was so disastrous, the movie itself was thought to have been lost for almost thirty years.

Judd plays the guitarist of a fictional band, The Third Dimension, as they enter a battle of the bands-- keep in mind this was made in an era when people somehow thought the phrase “battle of the bands” constituted a fully formed narrative arc.


Segments of the movie were shot in a new and inexpensive 3-D filmmaking technique, which is why, according to the original screenwriter, storytelling was always second to “objects poking the audience in the face.” Needless to say, no one was triumphantly punching their fist in the air at the end of this turd.