Eddie and the Cruisers is a 1983 American film directed by Martin Davidson based on the novel by P.F. Kluge. The story concerns the mysterious death of a fictional '60s rock star. The film received mixed reviews, did not do well at the box office and was pulled from theaters after three weeks. After successful screenings on HBO in 1984, the album suddenly climbed the charts, going quadruple platinum. Nine months after the film was released in theaters, the main song in the film, "On the Dark Side," was the number one song in the country on Billboard's Mainstream, Rock, and Heatseeker charts; and #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Another single from the film, "Tender Years," peaked at #31 on the Billboard Hot 100. Cafferty was hired to write a few songs for the film, but he did such a good job of capturing the feeling of the 1960s and 1980s that Davidson asked him to score the entire film. Only Michael "Tunes" Antunes, the tenor saxophone player for the Beaver Brown Band, and Helen Schneider were professional musicians in the cast. "There was a year's delay before this film, which concerns the mysterious death of a fictional '60s rock star, took off via video and cable TV, but when it did, the soundtrack album, featuring such songs as 'On the Dark Side' and 'Tender Years' by John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band, took off with it..." - William Ruhlmann, allmusic.com