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 35th 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 August 31, 1984, and we’re off to see C.H.U.D. and Bolero.
C.H.U.D.
C.H.U.D. is one of those 1980s movies I’ve known about since day one, and saw it on countless video store shelves for rent, but never pulled the trigger on watching it.
Why? It’s called C.H.U.D.
With this project of revisiting 1984, I’ve enjoyed making myself finally watching some movies – you’ll see the flip side when you get down to Bolero – and C.H.U.D. goes in that pile.
No, it’s not great cinema, but it’s a fun little horror movie with some decent actors, a fun plot, and some good tension. Lets put it this way, I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing it again.
And it’s an interesting horror spin in the decade that gave us the onslaught of slasher films. This was very much more in the vein of say Alien or JAWS where the predator leaps from unexpected places. It is omnipresent, but also missing at the same time. You just simply never know where the creatures are.
We can definitely recommend C.H.U.D. for the fun aspect of it.
Bolero
Bolero is… it’s something that was shot on film. I don’t want to call this a “movie.” I want to call it an exercise in how a director tries to make his much younger wife famous.
I’m not sure how this movie ever got made. It is stunningly awful. I had always heard it was bad, but figured it couldn’t be as bad as I heard.
Oh no. It’s worse.
The acting. The writing. Even the lighting. There are times this movie feels like it’s assaulting you more than you’re watching it.
And then Olivia d’Abo does a full-frontal nudity scene and you realize she was only 14 at the time this was made. And you become obsessed with how was this even legal? And mind you, this came out only two months after her film debut in Conan the Destroyer.
But no, the 14-year-old nude scene isn’t the part of the film movie got me the most. No, that would be when Angel (Andrea Occhipinti) has been gored by a bull in his genitals. Ayre (Bo Derek) comes to his bedroom and promises him that some day they will get it to work again… while smiling a toothy grin and giving him a thumbs up.
At this point, I just considered throwing in the towel. But no, dear readers, I suffer for you.
Normally we put a link at the end of these reviews for you to buy these movies. We’re skipping that this time. We would much rather see every copy destroyed. No one should ever watch this movie again.
Ever.
1984 Movie Reviews will return on Sept. 19 with Amadeus!
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