Summer Movies of 1968

Much as it was last year the summer movie season opened with a bang the very first Friday of the month of May. Last year Spiderman 3 came roaring out of the gates to bad reviews but good box office. This year Iron Man opened the door to the summer movie season with strong reviews and strong box office.

As I have illustrated in several articles in the past, the summer movie season seems to be opening sooner and sooner. Summer movies were never as crucial to film studios as the fall and Christmas films until Jaws took the world by storm in the summer of 1975 and everything changed. Since then bigger budgeted films directed at younger audiences have had their premieres in the prime summer months.

I always like to take a trip back in time and look at the films that opened in a particular season in a particular year to compare the types of films that played then as opposed to those that play now. Often you find less movies opening in the summer months but often they were critical hits that would go on to Academy Award nominations and, in some cases, bringing home the gold.

For this article I thought it would be fun to look back at the summer movie season of forty years ago, 1968 to see what a totally different generation of people enjoyed that summer. You will note that there were 15 movies released that summer but only one that was specifically directed towards children, something unheard of now. One was a sequel but only because of its use of a popular character's name. Four of these films were remembered at Academy Awards time the following winter and two of them were among the biggest hits of the year.

Here are the summer movies of 1968 listed in alphabetical order. I hope you enjoy the trip back in time and if you happen to have attended some of these movies in first run I hope this brings back pleasant memories.