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Poster for Best Defense
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Released
1984 · FILM

Best Defense

“Unfortunately, they're both on our side.”

Directed by
Willard Huyck
Written by
Robert Grossbach, Gloria Katz
Runtime
94 min
ComedyWar

Synopsis

An engineer is unable to resolve technical issues with a tank before an Army officer is forced to deploy it in Kuwait.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 18

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Sidney WolinskyShot by Donald PetermanScored by Patrick WilliamsDesigned by Peter Jamison

Box Office

1984 · Box office

⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 1.1× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$19.3M

Budget$18.0M
Worldwide gross$19.3M
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $7.9M — 41% of its US run. Front-loaded — most of its money arrived opening weekend.

Opening week (7-day): $11.0M — 57% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 1,425 theaters

Also known as

  • Angriff ist die beste Verteidigungde
  • La mejor defensa... ¡El ataque!es
  • Une défense canonfr
  • La miglior difesa è... la fugait

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