Years before the Walt Disney Company became the umbrella to several diverse brands as Lucasfilm, Marvel, and 20th Century Fox, the Mouse House had different labels that targeted older audiences outside of their family-friendly Magic Kingdom community. For this piece, I'd like to talk about two of these banners.
During the 2020 worldwide pandemic, I re-watched Sister Act for the first time in years. When I was a kid, one of the first celebrities that introduced me to comedy (besides Jim Carrey and Robin Williams) was Whoopi Goldberg. This was also the first movie of hers I remember seeing. Released in 1992, this comedy about a sassy lounge singer on the run from mobsters--by hiding in a convent and shaping the chapel's choir--had its fair share of edgy content. But it was also toe-tapping and had soul-singing swag. (I can't help thinking of my family's Catholic upbringing as well.) This was also one of the most famous movies released under Disney's Touchstone Pictures label.
First created in the early-1980s under then-studio CEO Ron Miller (just before being replaced by Michael Eisner and Frank Wells in 1984), the goal of this new subsidiary was to produce films for an older demographic. Some of Touchstone's other famous hits included 1984's mermaid romance Splash, 1987's Ernest Goes to Camp and several other installments featuring the late Jim Varney's ever-popular handyman, 1988's live-action/animated Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and the 1989 drama Dead Poets Society, the latter of which received a Best Picture Oscar nomination.
In 1990, Disney formed another (though similar) label. It was titled Hollywood Pictures. Even though it turned out to be a short-lived venture for more than a decade, it still produced many acclaimed and crowd-pleasing (if not as financially-successful) hits as its contemporaries. Some of them even qualify as early examples of modern independent filmmaking.
It began with 1990's Arachnophobia, a co-production with Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, and the directorial debut of producer and Spielberg-regular Frank Marshall. The story is about a killer Venezuelan spider who ends up in a small American town and begins breeding while terrorizing the local residents, including the newly-appointed town doctor (played by Jeff Daniels) and his family at their new farmhouse.
The thing I remember most about this chilling suspense-comedy was John Goodman's scene-stealing exterminator Delbert McClintock coming out of nowhere, gear at the ready, and saying, "Rock 'n roll." The same for Daniels using a flamethrower in the film's spine-tingling climax. A fitting context in light of the recent pandemic, though the overall movie is far-fetched.
Subsequent films under the Hollywood label included the 1994 biopic Quiz Show (directed by Robert Redford), the 1996 period musical Evita (starring Madonna), the 1996 music drama Mr. Holland's Opus (starring Richard Dreyfuss), and 1999's record-breaking thriller The Sixth Sense (starring Bruce Willis). Other titles included low-brow comedies starring Pauly Shore (like 1993's Son-In-Law), and action extravaganzas produced by Jerry Bruckheimer (1996's The Rock, starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage). An attempted revitalization occurred in the mid-2000s with a few low-budget horror films (i.e., 2007's The Invisible) before the Hollywood brand ended indefinitely.
It is curious, nonetheless, that this label was created even though Disney could've easily released said films under their Touchstone banner, which itself has been debunked since 2016's The Light Between Oceans (the last release under a six-year partnership with DreamWorks). At least the films themselves are all that's left of these bygone labels.
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