Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1984 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. Imagine a world where This is Spinal Tap and Repo Man hit theaters on the same day. That is the world of 1984.
We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly three dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1984 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out on the same day the films hit theaters in 1984 so that it is their true 40th anniversaries. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory.
This time around, it’s August 31, 1984, and we’re off to see Bolero, C.H.U.D., Choose Me, and Flashpoint.
Bolero
(This review was originally published in 2019 when I first got this idea for the project. I watched the film again in 2024, and portions of the review have been updated.)
Bolero is… it’s something that was shot on film. I don’t want to call this a “movie.” I want to call it an exercise in how a director tries to make his much younger wife famous.
I’m not sure how this movie ever got made. It is stunningly awful. I had always heard it was bad, but figured it couldn’t be as bad as I heard.
Oh no. It’s worse.
The acting. The writing. Even the lighting. There are times this movie feels like it’s assaulting you more than you’re watching it.
And then Olivia d’Abo does a full-frontal nudity scene, and you realize she was only 14 at the time this was made. And you become obsessed with how this was even legal. And mind you, this came out only two months after her film debut in Conan the Destroyer.
But no, the 14-year-old nude scene isn’t the part of the film that got me the most. No, that would be when Angel (Andrea Occhipinti) has been gored by a bull in his genitals. Ayre (Bo Derek) comes to his bedroom and promises that someday they will get it to work again… while smiling a toothy grin and giving him a thumbs up.
At this point, I just considered throwing in the towel. But no, dear readers, I suffer for you.
Having watched it a second time for this project, I can safely say that no one should watch this movie.
Ever.
C.H.U.D.
(This review was originally published in 2019 when I first got this idea for the project. I watched the film again in 2024, and portions of the review have been updated.)
C.H.U.D. is one of those 1980s movies I’ve known about since day one, and saw it on countless video store shelves for rent, but never pulled the trigger on watching it.
Why? It’s called C.H.U.D.
With this project of revisiting 1984, I’ve enjoyed finally making myself watch some movies – you’ll see the flip side when you just saw what I had to say about Bolero – and C.H.U.D. goes in that pile.
No, it’s not great cinema, but it’s a fun little horror movie with some decent actors, a fun plot, and some good tension. Lets put it this way, I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing it again.
And it’s an interesting horror spin in the decade that gave us the onslaught of slasher films. This was very much more in the vein of say Alien or JAWS where the predator leaps from unexpected places. It is omnipresent but also missing at the same time. You just simply never know where the creatures are.
We can definitely recommend C.H.U.D. for the fun aspect of it. And on my second viewing, I liked it even more.
Choose Me
Choose Me is almost impossible to define. Is it a movie about multiple people unlucky in love? Yes.
Is is a movie about a man with delusions of grandeur? Quite possibly.
But it is most definitely a movie about people with a wide assortment of emotional and mental issues that find one another.
Mickey (Keith Carradine) leaves a mental hospital and makes a beeline for a bar names Eve’s. While he finds a woman there named Eve (Lesley Ann Warren) that own’s the bar now, it’s not the one he was looking for. He’s immediately taken with her, but she has numerous issues with men, something calls into a radio show hosted by Nancy (Geneviève Bujold) many times throughout the movie. Little does Eve realize who Nancy is when she rents a spare bedroom from Eve, making everything a little bit more intimate for all of the main players of the story.
This film is part drama, part sex farce – namely the scenes between Mickey and Zack (Patrick Bauchau) – and all odd. As the film moves along, we learn Mickey just wants to marry everyone. If he kisses you, he wants to marry you. He proposes to multiple women throughout the film, and eventually ends up with Eve who thought she never wanted to be married.
While the performances are good, flowing into the world of charming at times, everyone in this film has serious issues. Mickey and Eve marrying one another feels like a recipe for a disaster. While the movie ends on a hopeful note, you can’t help but think if we visited these characters 48 hours later it would be a very different story.
The film is worth a watch, but you will more than likely find yourself questioning everyone’s decisions.
Flashpoint
This movie went in directions I never would have expected in a million years.
Bobby Logan (Kris Kristofferson) and Ernie Wyatt (Treat Williams) are Border Enforcement Agents who are both getting tired with how things run. When Logan comes across a jeep buried in the desert with $800,000 dollars in it along with a rifle, their lives begin to take some unexpected turns.
While I would love to reveal the massive twist, I feel like it’s better off leaving it out on the off chance you want to watch it some day. There is one hint about halfway through the film to the final resolution, but it still is wild when you hear it spelled out.
Flashpoint is not a great film, and it keeps you guessing throughout its runtime as to what you will finally see at the end. The final resolution is so insanely bonkers that you almost want to go back to the beginning to see what you missed. The thing was, I thought I had figured it out halfway through, and I was still baffled when it turned out I was right.
This film is not easy to find to watch, and I have to think the insane ending is a lot of the reason for that.
1984 Movie Reviews will return on Sept. 7 with The Brother from Another Planet and The Warrior and the Sorceress!
