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 Sept. 27, 1985, and we’re off to see Invasion U.S.A. and Hard Rock Zombies.
Hard Rock Zombies
… I have no idea what I just watched.
Holy Moses, a hair metal band, is heading to a small conservative California town to put on a performance in hopes of impressing a record executive. What they don’t know is that Hitler now lives there and is trying to bring about the Fourth Reich.
I honestly couldn’t even begin to tell you how this film got made or how it then got released. I’m all for an oddball movie, but this film is just pure insanity.
Avoid at all costs.
Invasion U.S.A.
Chuck Norris just phoned this one in.
The Soviets have come up with a way to invade the U.S. without a massive military force. Instead they will send in smaller groups that just seed confusion and terror everywhere they go and make us turn on one another. Thankfully, CIA Agent Matt Hunter (Chuck Norris) knows how the mastermind, Mikhail Rostov (Richard Lynch), operates and agrees to take on the fight without any assistance.
Frankly, the concept of this film isn’t the worst. It actually makes a bit more sense than Red Dawn, but other than the concept, the film is just a hot mess. Nothing is logical. Not a single thing.
Take for instance the scene where a school bus full of kids is being evacuated from a city and it gets held up by road construction. Because as we all know, road construction goes on no matter how much violence is happening across the country and we’re being invaded.
This is just one small example of the absolute nonsense in this movie.
1985 Movie Reviews will return on Oct. 4, 2025, with Commando, Dreamchild, Jagged Edge, and Sweet Dreams.
