Time Bandits opened in America 45 years ago today and went straight to number one.

Terry Gilliam wrote it with Michael Palin. George Harrison's company paid for it.

It cost about $5 million and held the top spot for four weeks.
The story runs on a stolen map of the holes in time and space that six small thieves were hired to repair.

They use it to rob Napoleon, Robin Hood and Agamemnon, and they take a kid from the suburbs along.

Gilliam shot it low, from the kid's eye level, fitting as this was the first of his three films about escaping into imagination.

Brazil followed, depicting the world through the lens of a grown man, and finally The Adventures of Baron Munchausen through the eyes of an old one.

Richard Garriott watched it about 20 times to copy that map for Ultima II.

The parents blow up at the end. Gilliam fought to keep it.