'Cocoon' at 40: Ron Howard's sci-fi smash is proof they don't make them like they used to

The US box office chart for 1985 makes for interesting reading. It's no surprise to see all-time classic "Back to the Future" at the top of the pile, propped up by bombastic Sylvester Stallone sequels "Rambo: First Blood Part II" and "Rocky IV". Things then take a turn for the unexpected, however, with the awards-friendly "The Color Purple" and "Out of Africa" rounding out the top five, and — perhaps most improbable of all — a treacly confection about aliens and septuagenarians at number six.

"Cocoon" made more money than Harrison Ford cop drama "Witness", beloved kids' adventure "The Goonies", and Roger Moore's rather less beloved final outing as James Bond, "A View to a Kill". Forty years on from its original release, this sci-fi precursor to "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" feels like one of the most unlikely box office smashes of all time, its blockbuster success defying all conventional logic.

The film's lead characters were almost exclusively in their 70s, while its other headline star, Steve Guttenberg, was best known as that guy out of "Police Academy". Although his mermaid comedy "Splash" had done good business the year before, 30-year-old director Ron Howard was, for many, still Richie from "Happy Days". Yet here he was directing a film about friendly extra-terrestrials that had no action set-pieces to speak of, and very little (human) peril.

But describing "Cocoon" as a film from another time doesn't provide the whole picture, seeing as it doesn't really belong in any era at all. In fact, with its unlikely mix of aliens, life after death, interplanetary romance, and dolphins, it arguably belongs in a sub-genre all of its own.

The connection between "Back to the Future" and "Cocoon" runs way deeper than their appearance among 1985's highest-grossing movies. "Back to the Future" director Robert Zemeckis had been attached to direct the film (based on a then-unpublished novel by David Saperstein), until execs at 20th Century Fox got it into their heads that his "Romancing the Stone" shoot was "out of control", and fired him from "Cocoon". As it turned out, Zemeckis's adventure yarn was a big hit, and — as the director explained in Variety — "After they saw the movie, they wanted to hire me back on 'Cocoon'. I just sort of kind of politely declined after that."

As well as being essential for preserving pop culture history as we know it (imagine a world without Marty McFly, Doc Brown, and time-travelling DeLoreans), this would turn out to be a major turning point for the up-and-coming Howard's career.

On set, he described "Cocoon" as "Close Encounters on Golden Pond", referencing both the Spielberg sci-fi classic, and Oscar-winning 1981 weepie "On Golden Pond", which starred Hollywood legends Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn. A more accurate summary, however, might have been "ET for seniors", particularly as Spielberg's other tale of alien visitation (released three years earlier) was still sitting pretty at the top of the all-time box office chart.

Just as the eponymous extra-terrestrial changes the lives of Elliott and co in "ET", the friendly aliens in "Cocoon" — who, coincidentally, possess similar resurrectionary gifts — have a profound effect on the residents of the Sunny Shores Villas Retirement Community in St Petersburg, Florida. These Antarean visitors have returned to Earth to recover their compatriots, buried in cocoons at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico since they evacuated Atlantis millennia ago. Having enlisted the help of ocean tour guide Jack Bonner (Guttenberg), the aliens prepare the cocoons' occupants for the long voyage home by submerging them in a swimming pool charged with restorative life force. Unfortunately, the Antareans don't count on a trio of mischievous elderly chaps sneaking in for illicit dips that leave them feeling like much younger men.

''I had some reservations because of the story's similarities to 'Splash', 'Close Encounters' and 'ET'," Howard admitted to the New York Times back in 1985. "In fact, that bothered me quite a bit, but it's so rare that you have an opportunity to work with these kinds of characters that I decided it was worth doing.

"In the first script [the retirement home residents] were a fairly indistinguishable group,'' he added. ''They were always together, and they almost always got along. We started building up a bit more conflict within the group and sharpening the individual stories.''

While Fox wanted to play up the sci-fi elements of the story, Howard stuck to his guns by keeping his focus on the eight pensioners. It's not unusual to see older actors in big movies, but these days they're usually reprising legacy roles (like Harrison Ford in various "Star Wars", "Blade Runner" and "Indiana Jones" sequels), or an elder Hollywood statesperson helping out the young 'uns with some hard-earned gravitas (see Robert in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier").

"Cocoon" was different. These veteran stars were establishing new roles in an unfamiliar franchise, and — rather than being ageing action heroes — actually playing old. (Until the cosmic swimming pool worked its magic, at least.)

That young whippersnapper of a director managed to entice an eclectic selection of actors, who had — as producer Richard D Zanuck put it — "maybe 400 years of experience, combined." There were past and future Oscar winners (Don Ameche, Maureen Stapleton, and Jessica Tandy), a bona fide Broadway legend (Gwen Verdon), and a renowned character actor who'd been aged up from 50 to play one of the gang. (Wilford Brimley would later become the subject of a meme comparing his appearance in "Cocoon" with other actors at the age of 50.)

There's no question "Cocoon" is a weird, sometimes jarring, mish-mash of themes. One minute it's dealing with cancer, dementia, and mortality, the next it's newly sprightly protagonists are performing cannonballs, seducing younger women, and — in the film's most '80s moment — breakdancing in a nightclub. (Ameche, who won an Academy Award for his performance as the debonair Art Selwyn, later said that, "Almost all the shots in that scene are me.")

There are scuba-diving sequences with trained dolphins, aliens wearing human skin disguises, and a weird extra-terrestrial sex scene in which a glowing Kitty (Tahnee Welch) "shows" herself to Guttenberg's confused (but enthusiastic) Jack. And at the end of the film, when the golden oldies accept lead Antarean Walter (Brian Dennehy)'s offer of eternal life on his homeworld, their efforts to rendezvous with his spaceship result in a very slow, barely thrilling race from authorities who believe they've joined some sinister cult.

And yet for all "Cocoon"'s changes of gear and over-generous servings of schmaltz, it's easy to see why so many cinemagoers fell in love with it. The performances, particularly from the older members of the cast, are uniformly excellent, and it asks some big questions about life, death, and the bits in between. Would you leave your family behind in exchange for immortality?

Ironically, the film's biggest misstep is the sci-fi element Fox had been so keen to accentuate. While it's no problem believing that the luminescent Antareans (realised by an Oscar-winning team from Industrial Light & Magic) can fly and live forever, their altruistic personalities never quite ring true. So, when an army of residents from the retirement home breaks into the pool and drains its miraculous energy, Walter displays no obvious anger or resentment, despite his wasted trip and the cost to his submerged friends. Maybe the Antareans are just better than us…

Or perhaps they'd simply fallen in love with Earth, seeing as they would return three years later — along with most of the original cast — in 1988's "Cocoon: The Return". Unfortunately, the sequel was much less successful, failing to capture the unique magic that had turned the original film into a one-of-a-kind smash hit. They don't make 'em like they used to.