The Shout Select edition from Shout! Factory contains both the theatrical version and the home video cut. The final third, when the boys meet up with some Borscht Belt aliens, is a chore to endure. The kids are great - Hawke and Phoenix, both 15, were making their film debuts, and Presson deserved a bigger career based on this and the previous year’s The Stone Boy - but their exploits aren’t particularly riveting, and Dante regular Dick Miller is wasted in a role that registers as an afterthought (doubtless a victim of the studio rush). Wolfgang (River Phoenix) is the pint-sized scientist, Ben (Ethan Hawke) is his inquisitive friend, and Darren (Jason Presson) is the loner who joins them in their quest. Yet given the overall direction of the picture, how much better could it have been, even with more time to shoot and assemble? The first stretch concerns itself with the efforts of three teenagers to build a spaceship that will take them up, up and away. One does feel sorry for gifted director Joe Dante ( The Howling, Gremlins), who was ordered by the studio to wrap it up and get it into theaters ASAP, leaving ample footage on the cutting room floor. Against the likes of Back to the Future, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, and Cocoon, Explorers felt positively puny when it was released during the summer of 1985, and it remains an also-ran decades after the fact. Ratings are on a four-star scale.) River Phoenix in Explorers (Photo: Shout! Factory)ĮXPLORERS (1985). (View From The Couch is a weekly column that reviews what’s new on Blu-ray and DVD. John Wayne in Hondo and True Grit (Photos: Paramount)

Frenzy by Rex Miller