Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1984 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. Imagine a world where This is Spinal Tap and Repo Man hit theaters on the same day. That is the world of 1984.
We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly three dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1984 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out on the same day the films hit theaters in 1984 so that it is their true 40th anniversaries. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory.
This time around, it’s Oct. 5, 1984, and we’re off to see Eureka, Savage Streets, Stranger Than Paradise, and Teachers.
Eureka
Who knew that hunting for gold could lead to you having what appears to be supernatural powers?
Jack McCann (Gene Hackman) has spent 15 years hunting for gold in the Yukon. When it appears all is lost, a clairvoyant madam gifts him a mysterious stone that ends up leading him to more wealth than he could ever possibly imagine. 20 years later he is living in the Caribbean with his alcoholic wife (Jane Lapotaire), a daughter (Theresa Russell), that is engaged to a gold digger (Rutger Hauer), and a mob boss (Joe Pesci) that needs McCann to sign off on selling them his island. In other words, Jack’s riches have brough him nothing but misery.
Things just get progressively odder in this film as there is also a voodoo ritual/orgy, a henchman with a blowtorch, and a whole lot of symbolism that isn’t always entirely clear. If it wanted to have the supernatural elements, fine, then lean into them harder. As it was, they bordered on appearing to be hallucinations many times. When Jack returns to the clairvoyant, an amount of time that doesn’t seem substantial, the brothel is now dusty, packed up, and filled with cobwebs. The last time we had seen it there were multiple residents and customers. Did Jack imagine that? Was he gone far longer than we realized? It wasn’t clear what was and wasn’t supernatural, if at all.
As movies go, Eureka feels like you fall into one of two camps with it: You think it’s genius, or you go, “What did I just watch?” I’ll never say no to a Hackman movie, but this one felt like it was trying far too hard to be more thought-provoking than it was.
Savage Streets
Ah, the 1980s. Where it really didn’t matter how old you were; everyone would buy you were a high school student.
A bunch of actors in their mid-20s pretend to be high school students who spend their evenings in downtown Los Angeles, making you feel like Angel is going to walk through the scene at any moment. Brenda (Linda Blair) leads a group of girls that hang out there every night, but she also spends a lot of her time being protective of her naive/innocent sister, Heather (Linnea Quigley), who also happens to be deaf. One night Brenda’s crew angers the Satins, a male gang led by Jake (Robert Dryer), by stealing their car for a joy ride. The Satins exact revenge by gang-raping Heather and killing a pregnant/soon to be wed member of Brenda’s crew.
Brenda does what any sensible teen would do: She goes to the military surplus store we saw during the opening montage and buys a crossbow and bear traps and exacts murderous revenge on all of the Satins.
Trapped somewhere between a revenge epic and the growing sub-genre of trashy teen movies, Savage Streets exists in this comical, unbelievable vortex of people far too old to be believed as teens.
Stranger Than Paradise
Kevin Smith has said numerous times that seeing Slacker made him believe he could make Clerks. Having seen Stranger Than Paradise, it feels as though this film resides somewhere in that cinematic family tree as well.
Willie (John Lurie) is a small time gambler in Brooklyn who learns his cousin from Hungary, Eva (Eszter Belint) is going to have to stay with him for 10 days. Incredibly reluctant at first, he grows fond of Eva over their time together, and she seems to come to like hm and his friend Eddie (Richard Edson) as well. A year later the two come into some money thanks to cheating at poker and head to Ohio where Eva is to visit her. When their visit is up, they still want to hang with her, and the three of them head to Florida where their trip goes awry.
I’ve heard this film described as “dry humor,” and I couldn’t agree more. While everything is played extremely low stakes, there are some truly humorous moments, such as the resolution of Eva and the dress Willie gives her.
Stranger Than Paradise feels as though it shares so much DNA with the 1990s independent film movement that you can’t help but think a large number of them were trying to achieve what this film did. The problem is while those were obviously trying, this film just was. There are no tricks, and the acting is sub-par in a lot of spots, but it is so effortlessly cool that you can’t help but to be charmed by it.
It’s been a while since I’ve called a film ‘essential viewing’ in this project, but this one feels as though it deserves the classification solely for what followed it.
That, and it’s a very entertaining watch.
Teachers
I would love to tell you why Teachers exists, but I honestly couldn’t tell you.
Alex Jurel (Nick Nolte) is a teacher that has just stopped caring about his job at this point. he goes through the motions, but there is no fire left in him for something that he once was the best at. He teaches at John F. Kennedy High School in Columbus, Ohio which is currently being sued by a former student for passing him through the system despite lacking the ability to read or write. His family is represented by Lisa Hammond, a former student of Jurel’s, that is befuddled by what has happened to her school.
As the story progresses we quickly learn just how much of a mess the school really is, and, naturally, Jurel regains some of his passion to once again be a great teacher… and then to watch Lisa walk through the halls naked to prove a point.
The team behind Teachers seems to have read stories about 500 different problems in public schools and decided it should try to tackle all of them in an hour and 45 minutes. It touches on out-of-touch faculty, failing students, drug problems in the school, guns in school, and teacher/student sex, and then decides to make the best teacher a mental patient who accidentally got called in as a substitute.
There could have been a really interesting movie in here if it had just learned to control its ambitions. While the main story of the lawsuit is clear and carried through, there is just so much ephemera on the edges that you can’t really settle in to following any of it.
It’s not a bad film, it’s just a film lacking any form of focus.
1984 Movie Reviews will return on Oct. 12 with Garbo Talks and Songwriter.
