Eddie and the Cruisers is a 1983 American film directed by Martin Davidson based on the novel by P. F. Kluge. It was marketed with the tagline "Rebel. Rocker. Lover. Idol. Vanished." Davidson was getting close to rehearsals when Vance called him and said that he had found the band - John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band from Providence, Rhode Island. Davidson met the band and realized that they closely resembled the band as described in the script, right down to a Cape Verdean saxophone player, whom he cast in the film. Initially, 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 film. Only two cast members, Michael "Tunes" Antunes, the tenor saxophone player for John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band, and backup singer Helen Schneider were professional musicians in the fictional band. After successful screenings on HBO in 1984, the album suddenly climbed the charts, going quadruple platinum. The studio re-released the soundtrack in the fall of 1984. 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.

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