By Peter Covino

Entertainment Editor

Were you alive in 1985?

If you were a teenager in 1985, The Breakfast Club was probably your movie. Few high school movies impacted a generation the way John Hughes classic film did in the 1980s. Amazingly, the movie celebrates its 25th anniversary this year with a new edition, and in Blu-ray as well.

Hughes died last year, but his legacy lives on in films such as Weird Science, Ferris Bulleur’s Day Off and Sixteen Candles, but none of those had the impact of The Breakfast Club, a film that delved into the psyche of 80s teens, and still seems fresh (except for maybe those dance scenes) 25 years later.

It also made stars of Anthony Michael Hall, Ally Sheedy, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez and and Judd Nelson, who shortly after the film was released would collectively be called The Brat Pack.

The storyline was deceptively simple: five teens are each spending their Saturday in the high school library  as punishment for committed infractions earlier in the week. The five on the surface are as stereotypical as you can get: the jock (Estevez); the troublemaker (Nelson); the brainy nerd (Hall); the princess (Ringwald) and the outcast (Sheedy).

In the course of one morning and an afternoon, you know the five young lives have been changed as they sort out the very worst of teen-age angst finding out who they are and the always paramount group pressure in a high school setting.

This special anniversary edition and Blu-ray debut offers a lot for fans of the film, including a closer look at the five high school kids, and interviews with Nelson, Hall and Sheedy. Hall and Ringwald were both in high school when they made the film and were required to go to school during scene breaks. All of them are in their 40s now.

Nelson and Hall are on the optional commentary as well as in other features talking about the making of the film.

It makes for a nice package for anyone interested in the background of The Breakfast C

lub (Hughes’ second film), shot almost entirely in sequence, the way it is shown and on location at a Chicago high school.

The Breakfast Club even today would be considered a relatively low-budget film so this isn’t the best Blu-ray film to buy for Blu-ray enthusiasts. But the Blu-ray edition is also probably as good as it ever is going to get for a home edition of the film.

Also featured in interviews on the DVD is John Kapelos, who played school janitor Carl. Nice sidelight: Early in the film, there is a photo of a young and aspiring Carl hanging in a showcase in the school office. He too was a student and probably was a member of his own breakfast club some ten years earlier. Paul Gleason, who played Principal Richard Vernon, is also remembered fondly by the cast. He died in 2006.

The Breakfast Club is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Universal Studios Home Entertainment.

oooo

Nazis. Everywhere you look there are Nazis.

But that is a very good thing with the newest Errol Flynn collection TCM Spotlight: Errol Flynn Adventures (Warner Home Video).

The five-disc set (with five films and lots of bonuses on each disc) show off one of Hollywood’s biggest adventure stars Flynn during the years just before and during World War II.

It’s great stuff for World War II buffs, particularly since the war was raging when the films originally game out and everyone from Ronald Reagan and Walter Houston, to Flynn himself, wore their hearts on their sleeves trying to beat the Germans (and those nasty Japs too) on the big screen.

The two gems in the collection are Desperate Journey and Objective, Burma! similar films set in different war theaters.

Desperate Journey  (1942) has Flynn heading up an operation flying over German territory, but the plane is shot down.  The airmen (including Reagan and frequent Flynn co-star Alan Hale) fight their way through enemy territory trying to get home. It’s directed by first-rate director Raoul Walsh.

In Objective, Burma! (1945) Flynn is again in charge. This time it is  a secret mission to destroy a key radar post in Japanese-held Burma. The mission is a success,  but they find there is no way out but to walk through the jungle and fight all those Japanese troops. Again, Walsh directs this first-rate war adventure.

Edge of Darkness (1942) has Flynn living in a small Norwegian fishing village when, yes, the Nazis show up. Tired of the Nazi brutality, he organizes an underground resistance. Ruth Gordon and Ann Sheridan also star.

In Northern Pursuit (1943), the Nazis are up to their old tricks, this time a small band of them have managed to get into Canada, via a submarine. But Flynn, playing a Canadian Mounted Policeman infiltrates the group as he tries to thwart their secret plan.  This one is also directed by Walsh.

And Uncertain Glory (1944) has a bit of the Casablanca appeal, as Flynn plays  a French thief who has spend most of his life on the run from the police inspector (Paul Lukas). He is finally captured in occupied Paris and condemned to die but becomes a patriot volunteering to pose as a resistance leader the Nazis desperately want. They have even ordered a decree — 100 Frenchmen will die if the resistance leader doesn’t turn himself in. Once again, Walsh directs.

In addition to a film, each disc contains Warner Night at the Movies. It’s at least a close facsimile one what movie night was like during the golden age of cinema. There are newsreels, featurettes (all in keeping with theme and time of the film) as well as a Warners cartoon.