The 10 Best Summer Movie Seasons In Hollywood History

Since the late 1970s, the summer has been synonymous with blockbusters, popcorn films designed to pack multiplexes and break box office records. Some years we're saddled with mediocre seasons like the one currently concluding. These lame attempts to cash in on the formula lack the winning execution that built the instituion in the first place.

The best summer movie seasons are relentless, with a slate of releases so stacked die-hard moviegoers rarely have time to hit the beach. The season proper starts in June, but true cinephiles know as far as Hollywood is concerned, summer starts the first weekend of May and runs to Labor Day. There are several years when the blockbuster machine has not only delivered on the level of constant spectacle that we've come to expect—they've exceeded it. Reflect back on those the summers when your wallet was swimming in ticket stubs. These are The 10 Best Summer Seasons In Hollywood History.

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Best films: Cliffhanger, Jurassic Park, Last Action Hero, The Firm, In the Line of Fire, Hocus Pocus*

Steven Spielberg, already a proven visual maestro, does the impossible and sends Hollywood back to the dinosaur age with groundbreaking effects which, of course, becomes the highest grossing film of all time, at the time. Meanwhile The Fugitive and The Firm survived the T-rexes and raptors to become two of the '90s' most ubiquitous thrillers. Your Saturday afternoon spent channel surfing TNT wouldn’t be the same without them.

*Don't trust any '90s baby that doesn't appreciate this movie.

Best films: Bonnie & Clyde, You Only Live Twice, To Sir With Love, The Dirty Dozen, In the Heat of the Night, The Born Losers

The practice of stacking summer with blockbusters wasn’t even instituted at this point, but coincidentally, few years can match the pedigree of the films released in June and August of ‘67. Action fans were treated to both James Bond’s (still featuring the best to ever do it) fifth mission with You Only Live Twice and the tough guy dream team, The Dirty Dozen. Meanwhile, August’s slate more closely resembles contemporary winter Oscar-baiting season: two of the month's three releases were Sidney Poitier’s In the Heat of the Night and cinema’s most culturally enduring ride-or-die couple, Bonnie & Clyde.

Best films: The Avengers, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Magic Mike, Ted, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Dark Knight Rises, Killer Joe, ParaNorman

The summer slate that only previously existed in a Comic-Con nerd’s dreams: tentpole films from both comic giants—a worthy conclusion to an insanely satisfying Batman saga and a film that actually united all of Marvel’s heroes, and did so without producing a clumsy, cluttered mess. And with visionaries like Christopher Nolan and Joss Whedon guiding the respective helms, they were both successes. But more importantly, they resonated beyond geek circles.

Thanks to the efforts of both teams, both franchises achieved a crossover appeal and pop culture significance so great that it doesn’t even matter what else came out in summer ‘12 because it couldn’t possibly eclipse or even escape the collective shadow cast by Gotham’s Dark Knight and the Earth’s Avengers.

Best films: Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Jaws, The Apple Dumpling Game, Dog Day Afternoon

The summer that saw the debut of all-time classics like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Dog Day Afternoon, and successful endeavors like Disney’s The Apple Dumpling Game. But of course, we’re burying the lede. That June, Universal dropped $1.8 million in promo on a $9 million shark movie suffering production problems. The result: $86 million in box office returns in under three months. After Jaws, the summer blockbuster as we know it today was officially defined, and nothing was the same.

Best films: Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, The Fifth Element,Con Air, Face/Off, Men in Black, Air Force One

The popcorn flick—brainless but artistically executed—was in full force, highlighted by Nicolas Cage completely owning June with the one-two punch of Con Air and Face/Off. Reigning action stalwart Bruce Willis joined with future standby Milla Jovovich for the eye-popping, Chris Tucker-in-drag featuring, gloriously over-the-top Fifth Element. Will Smith continued his march toward dominance with Men In Black, while elder statesmen Harrison Ford proved he was still in the game with an instantly classic four word growl: "Get off my plane."

Best films: Spider-Man, Unfaithful, Attack of the Clones, Insomnia, The Sum of All Fears, The Bourne Identity, Lilo & Stitch, Minority Report, The Road to Perdition, Signs, xXx

It was a banner summer for top-tier action in which Matt Damon proved himself as an action hero in The Bourne Identity while his mate Ben Affleck scored one of his last pre-Gigli hits with Sum of All Fears. Steven Spielberg delivered his most celebrated late-career blockbuster in Minority Report, while a young director named Christopher Nolan continued to make a name for himself with the underrated Robin Williams versus Pacino psychological thriller Insomnia.

George Lucas gifted with Attack of the Clones—the most solid out of all three Star Wars prequels—but also cursed with wooden thespian extraordinaire, Hayden Christensen. Plus, we're probably days away from Vin Diesel's agent remembering xXx's box office returns and arranging a jump-start to yet another of his defunct action franchises.

Finally, Tobey Maguire and Sam Raimi finished where X-Men left off in 2000, reinvigorating Hollywood’s obsession with superheroes when Spider-Man became the first film to gross over $100 million during its opening weekend.

Best films: Super Size Me, The Day After Tomorrow, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, The Notebook, Spider-Man 2, Before Sunset, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The Bourne Supremacy, Garden State, Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, Collateral

It started with a super Hollywood-sanitized take on the Trojan war that shouldn’t have worked, but instead solidified Brad Pitt as a bonafide star and ended with the big screen’s reigning action hero switching sides for a memorable villainous turn. Tom Cruise’s silver fox killing spree, Collateral, was the perfect conclusion to a run that included the last viable Roland Emmerich disaster-fest, Day After Tomorrow, and a tag-team from current kings of comedy Vince Vaughn and Will Ferrell, Dodgeball and Anchorman.

Moreover, Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon came together to create action movie napalm, alleviating headaches like Catwoman. And the pièce de résistance: Sam Raimi delivered a top-five superhero movie of all time with July’s show-stopping Spider-Man 2.

Best films: Alien, Escape from Alcatraz, The Muppet Movie, Moonraker, The Wanderers, The Amityville Horror, Apocalypse Now

1979 stands out because every major genre gets its shine in this Academy-ready summer. Alien leads the pack, taking giant steps forward for science fiction while Amityville Horror reinvigorates the haunted house formula. Bond battles Jaws in space, and Martin Sheen closes out the season with a trip into the heart of darkness (a.k.a. Vietnam). Add in some singing Muppets, and you have everything people want in movies.

Best films: Friday the 13th, Fame, The Empire Strikes Back, The Shining, The Blue Lagoon, The Blues Brothers, Airplane, Caddyshack

Most of summer 1980’s memorable films are comedies (Caddyshack) and musicals (Fame, Blues Brothers), the lighthearted antidote to a summer that began with two of the most iconic dark moments—and most imitated—of all time: Luke Skywalker’s Maury moment in Empire and Jack Torrance’s maniacal perversion of Ed McMahon’s trademark catchphrase in Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining. And speaking of pale imitations, 67 sequels/remakes/crossovers later and Jason Voorhees still hasn’t managed to match the scares his mother delivered in the original Friday the 13th. That's entertainment.

Best films: Road House, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Dead Poets Society, Batman, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Do the Right Thing, Weekend at Bernie's, Lethal Weapon 2, When Harry Met Sally..., Turner & Hooch, sex, lies, and videotape, The Abyss

A particular theme or through-line can be unearthed in some of Hollywood’s best summers, but 1989's selling point is quality. The season's stacked with one classic after another, starting with the prototypical blockbuster Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and finishing with Steven Soderbergh's brilliant trend-setting indie sex, lies and videotape.

In between, Michael Keaton silences the comic book haters alongside an iconic performance from Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton’s Batman; Tom Hanks fights crime with a dog; Meg Ryan shows off her mad faux-orgasm skills; and Spike Lee delivers his best film, Do the Right Thing. Turns out the easiest way to have the best summer movie season is to just make good movies.