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 January 11, 1985, and we’re off to see The Mutilator, Rockin’ Road Trip, Walking the Edge, and Water.
The Mutilator
Ah, the early months of any year in the 1980s. Great time to dump low-budget horror films.
Ed Jr. (Trace Cooper here, later Matt Miller), decides his father with a gun collection cleaning for his birthday. While cleaning the first gun it goes off, and shoots his mother through a wall and kills here. Needless to say, his relationship with his dad goes downhill from there.
Once in college, his fahter asks him to close up the beach house for the year, and instead dad spends the night killing Ed Jr.’s friends one-by-one in gruesome ways.
The film really makes no sense. Why Ed Sr. (Jack Chatham) waits so many years makes no sense. And why he kills off the innocent friends makes even less sense.
It’s a nonsense film, and just isn’t that interesting, and just doesn’t need to be visited by anyone.
Rockin’ Road Trip
It may come as a shock to some, but Troma was more than just the Toxic Avenger. They also made a road trip movie about a garage band?
Martin (Garth McLean) falls for Samantha (Katherine Harrison) and quickly ends up entangled in her sister’s band Cherry Suicide and running from her crazy ex-boyfriend, Ivan (Graham Smith). They end up on a road trip that involves running into a wide assortment of odd balls and includes them playing a gig at a Christian gathering, which is very much not their normal audience.
The movie is fine, thought a tad boring. There is a rather unfortunate segment involving a lot of adults having sex with underage girls, but… the 80s. Just seems like this was an accepted concept throughout the entire decade.
Very much a movie you can skip.
Walking the Edge
If ever there was a movie that felt like a hold over from the 1970s, this is it.
The movie kicks off with a father and son being killed by a gang, but the mom, Christine (Nancy Kwan), manages to escape and then is institutionalized for several years to recover from the trauma. Once she’s out, she hires Jason (Robert Forster), a part-time cab driver to drive her around. What he doesn’t know is he’s driving her to the various gang members to kill them. Once he’s fully embroiled in her thirst for revenge, the two eventually fall for each other and take out all of the people who wronged her.
If this movie didn’t feature Forster, I would be way harder on it, but I just enjoy his work too much to not enjoy it at least a little bit.
The film is fine, albeit highly predictable. It’s a revenge film, what do you really think is going to happen?
Water
It seems the 1980s were required to have a minimum of one Michael Caine film per yer. 1985 knocked that out quick
A fictional Caribbean island, long forgotten by the British, suddenly finds itself thrust onto the world stage due to its mineral water. Between the sudden interest of the world, rebels fighting for independence, and general ineptitude by everyone involved, the island residents find themselves just going from one predicament to another.
Caine plays the governor of the island and is just going full Caine here, which is never a bad thing. While 90% of the film is a low-brow comedy, there are some interesting moments dealing with Britain’s growing precarious position in the world thanks to its colonizing, and there are a few comments about not wanting to repeat the Falkland Islands or Granada situations.
Pleasent enough, but mystifying why it is in the Criterion Collection.
1985 Movie Reviews will launch on January 18, 2025, with Avenging Angel, Blood Simple, Escape From the Bronx, Ghoulies, Here Come the Littles, and The New Kids!
