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 March 8, 1985, and we’re off to see The Hit, Mask, and Variety.
The Hit
Who knew a road trip with a bunch of killers could be so much fun?
Willie Parker (Terence Stamp) turns on his compatriots in crime and goes into witness protection in Spain. years later, he’s found by Braddock (John Hurt) and newbie killer Myron (Tim Roth) who capture him and are heading to Paris with him to turn him in and kill him. Along the way they leave a trail of bodies across Spain, and pick up an innocent woman (Laura del Sol) that they end up taking along for the ride.
Part gangland thriller, part road trip movie, The Hit is a lot of things, and all of them are entertaining. Not only are all of these people on a journey together, but they are all on journeys of their own as characters. Each of them gets in the car thinking they know who they are, but by the time the exit it for the final time they have learned something new about themselves.
It’s an inventive movie that surprises more than a few times. There is nothing especially 1980s about it and it easily slots into anyone’s viewing of films based on any number of criteria. Well worth your time.
Mask
I can so clearly remember this movie coming out and the majority of people saying, “Wait… Cher acts now?”
Rocky Dennis (Eric Stoltz) was born with craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, a generic disorder that causes calcium to continue building up in their body to the point that it finally kills them. Rocky’s mother, Rusty (Cher), tries to make Rocky’s life as normal as possible knowing that he will more than likely not live to his twenties. The problem is, Rusty has a drug problem and she leans heavily on Rocky to take care of the both of them. Eventually she gets clean, but just in time for Rocky to pass away.
I went into this film no real thoughts about it in either direction and I walked away confused more than anything. First and foremost, at times it felt much more as if the focus of the film was on Rusty than it was on Rocky. Both characters were interesting, but it was clear that Rocky was meant to be the main subject. Perhaps it was Cher’s acting – which was superb – that made her stand out more than intended.
Secondly, the makeup, even for the time, is so bad that it is shocking it won an Academy Award. There are many times where little to no effort is made to match Stoltz’s skin tone to the prothestics and it becomes distracting to the eye that you can so clearly see where all of the applications are.
The film is fine, but I just didn’t find it as engaging as many did at the time. It’s a biopic, and a mildly confused one at that.
Variety
Very few movies leave me confused, but I have a new one for the list.
Christine (Sandy McLeod) takes a job at a Times Square porn theater as the booth girl selling tickets. She becomes intrigued by a wealthy customer, Louie (Richard M. Davidson), as her introduction to pornography quickly becomes an addiction. She turns into a stalker of Louie as she wants to know more and more about him until, ultimately, she attempts to take control of their interactions, a situation which is left unanswered at the end.
It is clear that Variety wanted to say something about society and culture, and it very nearly gets there, but it falls short in the end. By far, the biggest reason is the awful dialog throughout the film. It isn’t just the delivery, the words themselves are just not something you care to here. You think back to the conclusion of Paris, Texas with one of the most uncomfortable bits of dialog ever written as two people bare their most intimate thoughts to one another and you could watch it again and again. Here, the words are poorly chosen and often poorly delivered as well.
The most entertaining thing about this film is I think it’s the earliest performance I’ve seen from Luis Guzmán.
1985 Movie Reviews will return on March 15, 2025, with Def-Con 4.
