What was happening in Peru when Top Gun was released in 1986?

Cruise, who plays the pilot Peter Mitchellnicknamed ‘Maverick,’ and McGillis, turned astrophysicist Charlotte Blackwood, dubbed ‘Charlie’, formed an explosively sensual couple, whose flirtation was forged between practice flights, furtive glances and dizzying motorcycle rides.

In Lima, the 110-minute film was screened at the Metro, Lido, El Pacífico, Roma, Alhambra, Diamante, Ídolo, Premier and Monarca theaters. The film, which also included in its cast Val Kilmer (‘Iceman’) and Anthony Edwards (‘Goose’), competed at that time with productions such as ‘The Color Purple’ by Steven Spielberg and ‘The Cotton Club’ by Francis Ford Coppola, two weighty rivals.

But… What was happening in our country when ‘top gun‘ burst in with its fast-paced aerial combat scenes? Well, while on the screens of cinemas in Lima the irreverent Mitchell was fighting against himself and against the shadow of his father, a deceased former pilot, in Peru he ruled us Alan Garcia Perezthe official currency was the Inti, public telephones worked with ‘rin’ tokens and the first ‘walkman’ were the novelty among young people and adolescents.

On the economic plane, ‘The Other Path’ by Hernando de Soto it was the most commented book in academic spaces, while the most popular commercial houses were called ‘Hogar’ and ‘Sears’. In the now-defunct Monterey supermarket, ‘Capri’ oil was sold at 15.90 intis, ‘Regio’ toilet paper at 2.20 intis and a can of ‘Timonel’ sardines at 8.50 intis. For the Christmas campaign in ‘Todos’, another supermarket of those years, the kilo of turkey was 60 intis and the house panettone at 34.50 intis.

Likewise, days before ‘Maverick‘ made its foray onto the big screen of our cinemas, the subversion claimed five new victims in its wave of terror, killing three engineers from the Minsur mining company in Puno and two APRA doctors in Huancayo.

Only eight TV channels

The television offer compared to today was austere. You had to choose between the few free-to-air channels: 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 27 and 33. Cable didn’t exist, but Beta and VHS recording did. At 4:30 on Channel 2 we could enjoy ‘The magnificent‘, while on Channel 4 at 1 in the afternoon the housewives were glued to the screen to watch the Argentine telenovela “El Infiel”, starring Arnaldo André.

At 10 p.m. on Panamericana Televisión, Channel 5, the ’24 hours’ newscast was on as always, and on Channel 7 the little ones could be entertained with Mirtha Patiño and ‘Chiquiticosas’ at 4 in the afternoon. Channel 9, for its part, achieved a good rating with the Peruvian telenovela ‘Bad weed‘. Likewise, at the end of December, Channel 11 was inaugurated, which put the series ‘Camino al cielo’, starring Michael Landon, in prime time.

In the musical field, rock in Spanish ruled in the Lima stations. Groups like GIT, soda Stereo, The grandparents of nothing and El Tri imposed their best songs, along with Peruvian bands like ‘Rio’, which, according to an article in El Comercio, had been contracted to Bolivia to make several presentations. However, rock and Anglo-Saxon pop did not stop producing hits. Madonna’s ‘Gambler’ was chosen as Radio Panamericana’s Most More, an event organized on December 12, 13 and 14 in Plaza de Acho.

A few days before the premiere in Lima of Scott’s film, the magazine Somos appeared. The play ‘Se casa Barrantes’ by Nicholas Yerovi and at the Royal Theater you could see ‘Who’s Who?’, a comedy directed by Horacio Paredes and starring Hernán Romero and Yvonne Frayssinet.

The success in Peru of the adventures of the pilot Pete Mitchell extended the projection of ‘Top Gun’ until January 1987, when the Pelé Cup, which was broadcast on television, had begun to be played in Brazil. In those days here the National Institute of Statistics warned about the first increases in the inflation rate. Little snowball that would end up being an avalanche months later. For his part, President Alan García ruled out any possibility of re-election due to the distrust of the opposition.

Similarly, Peru and the United States signed an agreement in mid-December by which commercial flights between the two countries and the drinking water service by Sedapal (Lima Potable Water and Sewage Service) were reestablished, much to the discomfort of Limeños, increased their rate.

music and action

‘top gun‘ had a phenomenal soundtrack, which hit it both romantically (‘Take my breath away’, Oscar for best original song) and warlike (‘Danger zone’), thus closing the virtuous circle for a film production that has not lost validity.

The F-14 Tomcat fighter plane, the ‘other protagonist’ of the 1986 film, is today a museum object. It is true that this interceptor fighter appears in the new version of Top Gun, but it is thanks to the magic of CGI that we can see it in the film by Joseph Kosinski.

‘Top Gun: Maverick‘ has been released in 2022 with the commotion that was supposed, and in Peru the call has been numerous and nostalgic, once again capturing its followers with the intoxicating vertigo of war planes, risky missions and sentimental ups and downs. We have a Cruise who ‘dusts off’ the motorcycle and has not stopped challenging his superiors, with that philosophy of a rebellious boy, who this time seems to settle down before a Jennifer Connelly named Penny, who threatens to lull him to sleep with her warm beauty, so different to the already distant and fair-haired McGillis. The end, as always, will leave open the question of a continuation.

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