1985 was the WORST Year for Movies - Part Four

Why do you suppose there are certain years that seem to attract the best and worst of history?

1939 was famous for Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.

1941 gave us The Maltese Falcon and High Sierra.

1965 gave us The Sound of Music and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

But 1985?

What did it ever give us besides misery and agony and pain and suffering and lice and boils and syphilitic lip sores? And movies so bad that even VCRs wouldn't accept them.

It was just a plain bad, stinky year with a lingering stench that followed us well into 1986.

Don't stare at me like that; I just report the facts.

And speaking of facts, you're not getting out of here without the latest batch of the worst of the worst of the worst year for movies. Again, in no particular order:

THE NEW KIDS

I'm at a loss here. There's two kids on the poster, one of them has a stick and they're surrounded by doll faces. Plus is the fact this is directed by the guy who did Friday the 13th. These may have been selling points in the studio meeting to get this made but, come on, what in the hell is this movie even about? Anyone? Can you explain this to me? Is it even out on DVD? VHS? Laserdisc? Betamax? Anyone...???







HEAVENLY BODIES

Did we really need a ripoff of FlashDance? Starring Cynthia Dale and a bunch of Canadians? You've never seen so many leg warmers, torn sweatshirts, leotards, spandex, mirrored studio walls and sweaty bodies since Perfect. Come to think of it, this could only have been made in 1985. Any later in the Eighties and the humiliation of the actors would have made this a tragedy. Check that: MORE of a tragedy.






BAD MEDICINE

Police Academy set in a hospital. Great. They even cast Steve Guttenberg in it. And Julie Hagerty - you know, from Airplane!; the movie Police Academy wished it was. That's bad enough, but then they drag Alan Arkin into it doing his best Mexican improv and Gilbert Gottfried doing his worst Mexican improv and Taylor Negron as "Pepe the Cab Driver". This will have you looking for new adjectives for "crap".







CREATOR

In 1982, Peter O'Toole starred in My Favorite Year about an alcoholic actor whom everyone conveniences to get him on a TV show. In 1985, a movie was made with O'Toole using the same principle, apparently. Dealing with superficial ideas of science and romance, this is inconsequential fluff of the first order but, though certainly flimsy, certainly not Mariel Hemingway's worst performance of 1985 (that'll be revealed at a later time....).






STICK

Burt Reynolds and Elmore Leonard both had good years and good movies, but this was neither. Burt's idea of getting some pals together to make a movie almost never pulls together (except maybe for Sharkey's Machine) but when a stuntman (Dar Robinson) gives the best performance in your crime drama, it's time for a mulligan. And Charles Durning in a red Bozo wig? WHY????







JAGGED EDGE

Glenn Close is a good actress. Jeff Bridges is a good actor. Richard Marquand is a good director. But Joe Eszterhaus, slopping out a script that gives lurid melodrama a bad name, is the biggest culprit in this courtroom schlockfest. When you can't even count on Robert Loggia to liven things up, something's wrong. And when a camera angle is so bad that it takes you awhile to figure out who done it, that's worse. This will make you yearn for the stylish wholesomeness of Fatal Attraction.






THE HOLCROFT COVENANT

Robert Ludlum is the king (KING, I tell you) of convoluted and confusing literature. His movie adaptations are no better, as this flick proves. Nazis, treasure, assassinations, incest and Michael Caine in all his well-cured smoky hamminess all fight for top spot in this globe-hopping junket of junk, but the headliner for Holcroft is a plot that is at once too detailed and too simplistic for its own good. Caine's embarrassing acting outbursts are actually the highlight of this thing.










MAXIE

Glenn Close strikes again! This time as an average housewife who gets possessed by the spirit of a Twenties floozy who wants to sing and dance and booze it up and seduce everything in pants, even Close's hubby Mandy Patinkin! This tries to be every bit the breakaway hit that 1982's Kiss Me Goodbye was (which, incidentally, Kiss wasn't), and was in itself a remake of the FAR SUPERIOR Dona Flor and her Two Husbands. Ruth Gordon actually would have fared better by waiting for a call from Clint Eastwood and Clyde the Orangutan.





THE CARE BEARS MOVIE

Starring: Product Placement! For Kids! Seriously, this is one long ad for new toys, not a movie. Hasbro or Kenner or whoever it was that handled this meal ticket probably got rich from the tie-ins for this. But the film itself; that's an investment that probably won't pay off for awhile.







RAINBOW BRITE AND THE STAR STEALER

See: The Care Bears Movie.












There.

Satisfied?

No?

Fine; see you next time, when I will discuss two sequels that should never have been, the sad decline of Stephen King and what Patsy Cline has to do with any of this.

Dope out.

- TGWD