3 Thrillers and Horrors That Defined Their Release Dates

Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk

Horror and thriller cinema has claimed the October release calendar repeatedly, with three films proving that suspense and scares remain perennial crowd-pleasers. On October 21st, 2011, Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s Paranormal Activity 3 arrived as the third installment in the found footage horror series, written by Christopher Landon and starring Lauren Bittner, Christopher Nicholas Smith, Chloe Csengery, Jessica Tyler Brown, and Katie Featherston, continuing the franchise’s exploration of supernatural terror captured through cameras and surveillance.

Almost exactly a decade later, Chris Nahon’s Kiss of the Dragon premiered on October 25th, 2001, blending action and crime drama in an English-language French production written and produced by Luc Besson. The film stars Jet Li as a Chinese police officer sent to Paris to assist in arresting a mob boss, only to be framed for murder and forced to team up with Bridget Fonda’s character, a woman trapped in prostitution, as the two navigate a web of corruption and betrayal.

That same October 25th date ten years earlier marked the release of John Hughes’s Curly Sue, a comedy-drama that marked Hughes’s final directing role for a feature film. James Belushi stars as a homeless con artist alongside Kelly Lynch and child actor Alisan Porter in her debut, with Steve Carell appearing in his film debut in a supporting role. Directed by Warner Bros. Pictures, the film told the story of the con artist and his young orphan companion gaining shelter with a wealthy divorce lawyer, though critics responded negatively to the film despite its box-office performance of $33.7 million against a $25 million budget.

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Editor Sally — Trivia Desk Editor

Sally runs Studio CarryOnHarry’s Hollywood Trivia Desk, with a true movie obsessive’s knack for spotting exactly what happened on this day in film history. She lives for a great ‘did you know,’ can’t resist a good critics-vs-audience divide, and never met a film anniversary she did not want to celebrate.

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