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 June 28, 1985, and we’re off to see Pale Rider, Red Sonja, and St. Elmo’s Fire.
Pale Rider
Clint Eastwood plus cowboys always seems to lead to success
A big gold mining family has just about run their claim dry, and they need another. They’re trying to drive a small gold panning community out, and following a raid on their camper, a girl Sydney Penny) prays for help. Suddenly a preacher (Clint Eastwood) arrives on a pale horse, and the implications are clear he has been sent by God himself to answer her prayers.
Other than the religious themes – which they nearly beat you over the head with – this is a pretty standard ‘evil rich person in the West’ story. Eastwood directed, and his talent is definitely on full display here.
Other than being a bit heavy-handed with the religious theme, and the super basic story, it’s entertaining, and definitely interesting for the historical perspective as it was the first Hollywood Western since Heaven’s Gate.
Red Sonja
Raise your hand if you want a knock-off Conan movie… made by the people who made Conan the Destroyer!
Sonja (Brigitte Nielsen) is gang-raped and left for dead after watching the majority of her family be killed by Queen Gedren’s (Sandahl Bergman) army. Now, swearing revenge, she becomes a sword master in next to no time, and thank goodness as Gedren has now stolen an orb that could destroy the entire world. Along her journey to revenge, she picks up a group of helpers, including Kalidor (Arnold Schwarzenegger), who is totally not Conan. Really.
This film is just insanely basic, and plays almost as a parody of the Conan films, which is made even funnier by Schwarzenegger and Bergman being in it.
Let me put it this way: Conan the Destroyer was bad, but Red Sonja is even worse.
St. Elmo’s Fire
I hated literally every character in this movie. If an asteroid had struck them all dead, I would have been rooting for the asteroid.
The film follows seven recent graduates from Georgetown University as they attempt to adjust to adulthood, at which none of them is excelling. Each of them has an issue of some form that they need to overcome before the conclusion of the film, and some of them are handling it better than the others.
This film was a big milestone in the 1980s ‘brat park’ climb and you have to wonder how any of them worked after it. This is mainly because every single character in this film is irritating, or downright creepy/criminal.
Lets take Kirby (Emilio Estevez) as an example. He is obsessed with Dale Biberman (Andie MacDowell), a woman who was three years ahead of him in school and he once saw a movie with. He spends the entire movie trying to get with her, and this mainly boils down to him stalking her and her being totally fine with it, down to when he shows up at her ski cabin toward the end of the film where she is staying with her boyfriend. Not only are they not cropped out by it, they invite him to stay for the night after his car gets stuck in the snow.
No, what you should have done is called the police and locked all of the doors.
An awful film filled with wholly unlikable people. I can not understand how this movie helped anyone’s career.
1985 Movie Reviews will return on July 5, 2025, with Back to the Future and The Emerald Forest.