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 February 8, 1985, and we’re off to see Heaven Help Us, Lust in the Dust, Mischief, and Witness.
Heaven Help Us
This movie is about the worst endorsement ever for Catholic schools.
Michael Dunn (Andrew McCarthy) moves to Brooklyn to live with his grandparents and enrolls in St. Basil’s Catholic school. He is quickly shocked by the way the monks treat the students, in particular, Brother Constance. He makes a new group of friends and falls for Danni (Mary Stuart Masterson), a teenage girl that has taken over running the local cafe popular with the Catholic students for what she allows them to get away with. Over the course of the story we watch as Dunn and his friends navigate not only an extremely strict school, but also the trials and tribulations of growing up.
Having never attended a Catholic school, and most certainly not one in 1965, the things the monks get away with just seem so radically out of control is stunning. In one particular scene they show up at the cafe and start throwing students around physically while also busting up the cafe and its furniture, and everyone just seems okay with this turn of events.
The film is fine, but there is nothing exceptional here. The story, for the most part, feels like a series of vignettes that aren’t always wholly connected. And the story of the Catholic school is just unpleasant. I don’t care what school it is, no one should allow their children to be treated in this way.
A definite skip for me.
Lust in the Dust
What if a John Waters movie had no involvement from John Waters? You get Lust in the Dust.
Rosie Velez (Divine) makes her way to a small town in the old west under the guise of wanting to be a singer. In reality, she is there to find the gold, as is everyone else. Having met Abel Wood (Tab Hunter) along the way, they continue to encounter each other, and most specifically when they run into each other at Marguerita Ventura’s bar (Lainie Kazan). Eventually, Rosie and Marguerita figure out their sisters, each of them tattooed with half of the map to the location of the gold.
This film feels like such a second rate attempt at John Waters’ film, and it turns out that it is. Hunter was behind the film and was trying recapture some of the success he had with Waters and Divine on Polyester. Waters did discuss directing the film, but eventually dropped out of the project, and you can feel it.
It’s not a bad movie, and is genuinely funny in a few moments, but it does feel like a thired generation photocopy of an original.
Mischief
Something that amuses me about the 1950s is how everyone romanticizes them as some innocent time, when every piece of media made about that time period pretty clearly tells us otherwise.
Eugene “Gene” Harbrough (Chris Nash) moves from Chicago to Nelsonville, Ohio and becomes friends with the local “nice boy,” Jonathan Bellah (Doug McKeon). Jonathan shares he has a huge crush on Marilyn (Kelly Preston), and Gene says he’ll help him win her over. In the meantime, he falls for Bunny (Catherine Mary Stewart). Gene’s plan works, and John wins his way in with Marilyn, while Gene starts to rub people in the wrong way. Eventually he is driven out of town, but not before making sure Bunny will go with him.
The film feels like an attempt to make a more sincere version of Porky’s in some ways. While it is another “coming of age in the 1950s” story, it tries to toss in some sincerity instead of nothing but raunchy jokes like the other film attempted to do. In turn it just feels very basic and nothing really stands out about it. You don’t walk away like you’ve seen anything fresh and new, but just a pale imitation of several other films with a similar setting.
The ending is the only thing even remotely new, and at that it is so improbable as to be annoying rather than satisfying.
Witness
Who knew that Harrison Ford’s best performance might be playing a cop pretending to be Amish?
A recently widowed Amish woman heads from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to Baltimore, Maryland with her son to visit her sister. While changing trains in Philadelphia, Samuel (Lukas Haas) witnesses a murder. When he identifies a cop as the culprit, Det. Capt. John Book (Harrison Ford) secrets Rachel (Kelly McGillis) and Samuel out of the city and back to Lancaster whre they hole up in the Amish community while he recovers from a wound.
Up to this point, Ford was mainly known for the roles of Han Solo and Indiana Jones, so playing something as run-of-the-mill as a cop seemed a bit of a surprise to many. What it allowed was for him to really spread his wings acting-wise. Book is a far more nuanced character than we’re used to seeing from Ford at this point and his career, and he shows a lot of little slices of what appears to be a more complex character.
When he eventually leaves Rachel to her life, you can tell it’s not what he wants, but what he feels is best for her and Samuel.
It’s a good movie, well made, very well acted, and just a lot of fun to see Ford expand his collection of characters. Is it completely accurate in its portrayal of the Amish? From what I know of them having lived around their communities for years? Not completely, but it’s also not horrific in its portrayal either.
Well worth a watch.
1985 Movie Reviews will launch on February 15, 2025, with The Bay Boy, The Breakfast Club, Fast Forward, Lost in America, The Mean Season, Turk 182, Vision Quest!
