Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1985 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.
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We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1985 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1984 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.
This time around, it’s April 26, 1985, and we’re off to see Code of Silence, Gotcha, Gymkata, and Private Resort.
Code of Silence
I was actually enjoying a Chuck Norris movie until those last 20 or so minutes. He just can’t help himself, can he?
Sergeant Eddie Cusack (Chuck Norris) leads a team on a major drug bust that just happens to be the same day Luis Comacho (Henry Silva) plans to rip off his arch rival, Tony Luna (Mike Genovesse). Cusack’s men get caught in the crossfire, and in a sad twist of fate, an older officer shoots a bystander and then tries to frame it he had a gun. Now Cusack is caught between a drug war and turning on his fellow cops to get justice for the kid that was shot incorrectly.
Don’t get me wrong, Code of Silence was never going to be a ‘good’ movie, but it was entertaining me. And then, toward the end, as Cusack is about to take out Comacho and his men to rescue Luna’s daughter, he goes full Norris. Earlier in the film there had been an odd little scene about a armed police robot. Before Cusack goes on his raid he grabs the robot and steals weapons from the police armory, which, for some reason, includes a rocket launcher?
While certainly better than his other action films of the time, the last fight is so over the top that it’s difficult to look past it.
Gotcha
I’m not sure what the 80s obsession was with plots revolving around college kids playing TAG-style games, but here it is again.
Jonathan Moore (Anthony Edwards) is the top “Gotcha” player at UCLA and has come up with many ways to track his victims and allude his own assassin. When he heads to Europe on vacation, he meets Sasha Banicek (Linda Fiorentino) and gets wrapped up in a real world game of spies and assassins.
The plot was highly predictable, but it also took absolutely forever to get moving. While the film clearly wanted to establish a deep love between Jonathan and Sasha (Surprise! She’s an undercover CIA agent!), it spent far too long on getting the actual plot of the film moving along. By the time you get to the main plot of the film, you’re closing in on the hour mark.
While I don’t mind longer movies, thsi was an insane length to go to for such a simple plot.
Gymkata
This film had to be an attempt to launder money, right?
Jonathan Cabot (Kurt Thomas) is an Olympic gymnast who has been chosen to be trained to an entirely new level to enter “The Game” in the country of Parmistan. Whomever wins the Game gets to make one request that can not be denied, and in Cabot’s case, it’s too let the U.S. install a Star Wars defense system monitoring station. And should you lose the Game? Death.
I’ve heard about Gymkata for years, but avoided it. Then this silly project of mine forced it upon me, and I can honestly say I will never be the same. The concept is silly to its core, but when Cabot reaches the Village of the Crazies – which is a silly concept already – and just happens to find something resembling a pommel horse so he can go full Gymkata on them, it’s… it’s a lot.
This movie is horrible top to bottom. Character motivations are non-existent. It looks like it was shot in a room with a 60 watt light bulb, and Thomas, bless him, can’t act to save his life.
So, yeah, give it a watch.
Private Resort
It’s another week, time for another pointless teen sex comedy.
Ben (Rob Morrow) and Jack (Johnny Depp) head to a resort for vacation and, of course, to pick up some ladies. Little do they know they will get tangled up with a jewel thief known as The Maestro (Hector Elizondo), a nosy head of hotel security (Tony Azito), and that we would get to see a young Johnny Depp’s butt.
Surprisingly, this is actually the third in a quasi-trilogy of teen sex comedies with the first two having been Private Lessons and Private School. The only thing they had in common was the word “private,” but, hey, it worked. Of these three, this one worked the best as it was a bit more in the style of a 60s slapstick film than what was passing for comedy at this time.
All that said, the only reason to watch this is to see young Morrow and Depp.
1985 Movie Reviews will return on May 10, 2025, with Rappin and Rustlers’ Rhapsody.
