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 Oct. 19, 1984, and we’re off to see Best Revenge, Crimes of Passion, The Little Drummer Girl, The Razor’s Edge, and Thief of Hearts.
Best Revenge
Sometimes Hollywood tries to cash in on another film’s success, but it’s clear when it’s released that they didn’t understand what made the original work.
Best Revenge follows Charlie (John Heard) who tries putting together a drug deal and ends up in the middle-east and gets in over his head and going up against people that all want their cut.
In short, Best Revenge is a bit of Midnight Express with some Raiders of the Lost Ark flair thrown in on top for no real good reason. It is a completely unremarkable film that apparently sat around on the shelf for a few years due to the passing of the director. While, of course, it’s unfortunate he passed, we still have to look at the film on its merits, and there is just nothing of note here.
Crimes of Passion
Apparently, we’ve hit the ‘sexy thriller’ part of 1984, as this is the first of two today, and more are coming over the next few weeks.
Bobby Grady (John Laughlin) owns a small electronics store who is in a fairly loveless marriage with Amy (Annie Potts). He’s approached by the owner of a fashion design company to do some moonlighting to prove one of his employees, Joanne (Kathleen Turner) is selling company secrets off. What Buddy learns is Joanne has her own moonlighting gig as China Blue, a popular street walker China has her own issues with Reverend Peter Shayne (Anthony Perkins) who is obsessed with her.
Eventually, Bobby sleeps with Joanne/China and becomes obsessed with her in his own way. By the end of the film, Joanne has come to terms with what has driven her to live this double life, and Buddy has learned what he wants out of life.
Crimes of Passion really felt it wanted to go for something a bit surreal, and while it does have elements of hyper-realization, it never quite commits to the concept hard enough. It just becomes a rather pedestrian thriller in the final act of the film and doesn’t make you feel any certain way about that part of the plot.
What you do know is that by the end of the film, Bobby has left Amy for Joanne and you have yet another film in this time period where instead of a couple having a healthy discussion about their marital issues, it’s just more convenient to cheat. While Joanne is clearly dealing with some issues in her life, Bobby just seems to be bored with his marriage and instead of doing something healthy to correct that, he instead just cheats and rolls with it.
This is definitely a growing trend in the films we’re watching in this project.
The Little Drummer Girl
There is a point where you push the suspension of disbelief to its breaking point, and this is one of those films.
Charlie (Diane Keaton) is an actress that believes in the plight of the Palestinians against Israel. When she shows a keen interest in their cause, the Israelis recruit her to be a double agent to help them take out a serial bomber they have been after for some time. After some intense training they send her off to infiltrate the Palestinians and in turn receive intense training from them as well.
The plot of this story is so wildly unbelievable that you can’t believe no one stepped up and said anything. You’ve shown quickly that Charlie’s beliefs can be blown in the direction of the last person she spoke to, and now we’re supposed to believe she goes off, goes through the Palestinian training and doesn’t end up turning on the Israelis? She flips twice in just the first act, but for some reason, now she can be trusted.
While I normally enjoy Keaton’s work, the premise of this entire film is just so off-the-wall that you can’t ever take it seriously. Sure I might believe an actor getting involved, but they just keep pushing it one step too far and it ends up as an unsatisfying soup.
The Razor’s Edge
I remember when this film was released and no one could believe Bill Murray tried to take on a dramatic role. Little did they know what else his career would hold for him in the years to come.
The film begins in 1917 as Larry (Murray) is setting off with Gray (James Keach) to be ambulance drives in Europe during World War I. Once there, they are quickly exposed to the horrors of war, and when Piedmont (Brian Doyle-Murray), their commanding officer, dies saving Larry, it breaks him and he wonders what his entire life is worth. He spends the next several years trying to find himself, costing him his already set up future, his fiance, and more. He eventually learns what he feels is the meaning of life, and attempts to save a woman he was in love with earlier in his life who has gone through a lot as well. At the end he seems to finally know his value and plans to return to the United States at long last.
Murray caught a lot of flack for this film, but the blame is definitely with the script. It lets him down on numerous occasions by simply being to cowardly to embrace the subject matter. This most notably happens when Larry has his big epiphany moment at the top of a mountain. It just happens. There’s no real explanation, no sense of what the final moment of realization was for him. There are some guesses you can make, but nothing is clear as being the definitive answer.
And if this was the only time in the film this was an issue, it would be one thing, but it’s not. The film just wants you to make assumption after assumption.
The acting is fine, the movie isn’t as horrible as a lot of people made it out to be in 1984, but it definitely could have been a lot more.
Thief of Hearts
Remember how I said we had entered the age of ‘sexy thrillers?’ Well, here’s the next one.
Scott (Steven Bauer) is a burger who one night ends up stealing the journals of a married interior designer, Mickey Davis (Barbara Williams). He ends up reading them and discovers a woman who years for more, especially when it comes to the man she loves. Steven ends up modeling himself after her dream man in a plot to win her heart and have her fall in love with him and he succeeds.
Yes, this movie is 100% as creepy as it sounds. Steven is a full-on stalker who violates Mickey in some of the most intimate ways possible. And Mickey, as so many women in this period of film, ends up cheating on her husband without so much as a second thought. No one in this film is likable no matter how sweet they try to portray the criminal trying to win over the damsel. You walk away from this film, going, “Why didn’t more of you die?” There’s really only one death, and that was about three less than I would have encouraged them to go for.
It’s a horrible and creepy film, and not in an entertaining way.
1984 Movie Reviews will return on Oct. 26 with American Dreamer, Body Double, Firstborn, Give My Regards to Broad Street, Paris, Texas, and Terror in the Aisles.
