{babes} 'Back to the Future' is gift that keeps on giving to Thompson

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Lea Thompson has at least two reasons to still be thankful for Back to the Future. For one, it put the actress on the map in Hollywood for years to come. And it also gave her the Halloween costume that keeps on giving.

"I still have the pink prom dress," says Thompson, the past, present and future Lorraine Baines McFly of the Back to the Future trilogy, which celebrates its 25th anniversary by making its Blu-ray debut (1985, 1989-90, Universal, $35; Blu-Ray, $50).

"We have a ritual: Every Halloween, my girls try to put (the dress) on and decide whether they want to wear it for Halloween. It's really too uncomfortable. And then I'm like, 'No, you can't take this out! I'm gonna have to sell it on eBay one day and pay for your college!' "

While Thompson's two daughters Madelyn, 19, and Zoey, 15, were initially confused the first time they watched Back to the Future and saw their mom kiss guys who weren't their dad — namely, Michael J. Fox and Crispin Glover— but she says now they see it as a beautifully crafted film.

And with this anniversary release, a whole new generation will be introduced to the time-traveling DeLorean, Christopher Lloyd's eccentric scientist Doc Brown and his 1.21 gigawatts, and Fox's classic performance as Marty McFly, the guy who has to keep going back and forth across decades over the course of three movies to make sure his parents fall in love in the 1950s as well as keep the space-time continuum intact.

"When a kid sees it, they get excited about all the time-travel nuts and bolts, the lightning, the skateboard stuff and all that. And as you get a little bit older, you see other things in it and it works for an adult," says screenwriter and producer Bob Gale, who hatched the idea for the trilogy with director Robert Zemeckis.

The special features of the new release are a time capsule in itself, as Zemeckis, Gale and executive producer Steven Spielberg explain the movie's origins, its scrapped finales (that clock tower climax of the first film was originally supposed to be at a nuclear test site) and important tweaks.

"In an early draft, we had Marty McFly as a video pirate. That didn't go over so well with any of the movie executives," Gale says, laughing.

A noteworthy extra is the first archival footage of Eric Stoltz, who was originally cast as Marty. He shot for five weeks before he was replaced by Fox.

"We know the movie would have been very different had we not recast it," says Gale, adding that he and Zemeckis had always held off on releasing the footage. "We never want to make Eric look bad. He's a good actor, a good guy, and now that he safely has a well-established career, we thought that just those little clips would be fine."

Thompson is grateful to have played six aspects of Lorraine over the course of the trilogy, plus the 1880s character of Maggie McFly in the Western-tinged Back to the Future III.

"It's probably still my middle name. For a while, my middle name turned into Caroline in the City," Thompson says, referring to her 1990s sitcom, "but now it's back to Back to the Future.

"It was just a great part. It was sad and it was funny and it was sexy — what more could an actress ask for?"

Part of the reason Back to the Future endures in pop culture is its deep themes, she says. "The idea that you can change your future, you can live a better life and be happier as you get older, that's an amazing thing to think about. And the idea that a child could help his parents go back and change their life and make it better is a sweet notion."