1985 Was a Rad Year for Cinema

I’ve already written in depth on Talkhouse about my favorite movie of all time celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, The Breakfast Club, but 1985 was such an incredible year for cinema that I needed to delve deeper and give heartfelt shout-outs to some more tubular films released smack dab in the middle of the ’80s.

I’ve also written for Talkhouse about my color-coordinated wall of VHS – my pride and joy! I’ve been actively collecting tapes here and there since college, getting hardcore about it when I started rescuing tapes from closing video stores around Los Angeles, and even now I still browse at thrift stores and flea markets.

In all of that time, I have never organically come across a VHS copy of The Legend of Billie Jean. It’s now an underground cult classic, starring Helen Slater as Billie Jean, a Texas teen who unwittingly becomes a hero when she won’t let the sleazebags terrorizing and exploiting her and her brother, Binx (Christian Slater), get away with it.

While the film is fun and quirky, it certainly carries more weight than the majority of ’80s teen movies, dealing with dark, intense themes, set to a rousing Pat Benatar theme song. Billie Jean’s “makeover” in the film isn’t to become conventionally pretty to fit in, but instead a punk rock fuck you of a hair cut, inspired by none other than Joan of Arc. Billie Jean’s cry of “Fair is Fair!” still resonates – isn’t that what everyone longs for? To be treated fairly?

Finding the film on VHS started to become a fixation, because it first seemed unlikely, and then impossible, that I would never come across a copy in all my years of searching. I knew, of course, that I could hop on eBay and buy one immediately, but it began to be a fun quest to try to find one in the wild.

In 2019, I was helping the Maltin Family with Maltinfest, a three-day film festival at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. There were many celebrity guests, and one of them was Helen Slater. I mentioned my love for The Legend of Billie Jean to her, and how it was the holy grail of VHS tapes I was searching for. She smiled and said that she might have a video cassette of it at home that I could have. How nice is that? She took down my address and said she would send it to me if she found it.

A few weeks later, I got a nice note from her – she searched, but couldn’t find a VHS copy, but she was including a signed DVD copy instead. So incredibly sweet of her! Then, a few months later, one of my kind friends bought me a VHS copy, so I now own the film on two formats, and that particular gap in my collection is filled. (But I still have never found a copy in the wild!)

I also interviewed Keith Gordon, who plays the love interest, Lloyd, for my podcast, Horror Movie Survival Guide, and we talked about The Legend of Billie Jean and its legacy – and, of course, that bitchin’ slide from his character’s room to the pool in the film. If you haven’t seen this one, get into it!

Sure, serious teen movies about dark themes rock – but what about ridiculously silly, partially animated, definitely weird teen movies about dark themes? How about a wacky comedy where the main character is constantly trying to kill himself and there’s a Van Halen musical number with claymation rock star hamburgers?

Better Off Dead is, in my opinion, the highlight of Savage Steve Holland’s teen trilogy (although One Crazy Summer and How I Got Into College are certainly fun and worth watching). There’s so much going on in the film and the world the characters live in is so insane, there’s something for everyone.

John Cusack plays suicidal hero Lane Meyer and isn’t afraid to go big, strange and goggle-eyed in this one. (Cusack also goggled brilliantly in another 1985 comedy, Rob Reiner’s terrific The Sure Thing.)

Lane is too blind in his love for his ex Beth (Amanda Wyss) to notice the French cutie Monique (Diane Franklin, who I also talked to on my podcast) living across the street (with an actor who Shall Not Be Named and certainly not condoned). Curtis Armstrong is at his sleaziest as Lane’s bestie Charles DeMar, we get an E.G. Daily musical number, and beyond that there are a thousand gags a minute and a surplus of hilarious minor characters.

There are hundreds of films made in the ’80s that long to achieve this nonstop onslaught of bizarre characters and hilarity, but few do. Every brick falls into place easily with this one – endlessly quotable with super fun performances and a killer soundtrack, Better Off Dead made such an impression on me that I named my production company after a line from the film. Not many ’80s films are willing to chance mixing comedy with teen suicide (Heathers, of course, wouldn’t be released until 1989), but Savage Steve Holland pulled it off, and then some, with Better Off Dead.

I asked Savage Steve where he got his nickname from at a Q&A at the Aero many moons ago, and he said he was so small as a kid that it was a nasty joke name he was called at school, but he flipped it around on them but owning the nickname in his own punk rock way. So rad!

But what if you’re hankering for a dark comedy involving teenagers and vampires in 1985? You’d be spoiled for choice! (And would be for the next several years!) 1985 saw two of my favorite vamp comedies, Tom Holland’s Fright Night and Howard Storm’s Once Bitten.

Fright Night, written and directed by Holland, is a humdinger of a feature film debut, with campy, powerhouse performances, a rad seduction dance number at a nightclub, lots of in-movie vampire lore, a rocking soundtrack and some really great special effects.

Horror-obsessed teen Charley (William Ragsdale) is convinced his new next door neighbor (Chris Sarandon) is a vampire. But when you’ve seen too many spooky movies, it’s hard to convince anyone you’re telling the vampy truth. Charley’s mom (played with underrated hilarity by Dorothy Fielding) doesn’t listen, his preppy girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse) is insulted he’s ignoring her, his weirdo bestie, Evil Ed (Stephen Geoffreys, chewing scenery to the delight of all), thinks Charley’s a joke, and not even ex-Fright Night horror host Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall – note perfect!) can be persuaded to help without some bread crossing his palm.

The practical effects in this one get their own second shout-out, because they’re some of my faves from this era – Evil Ed and Amy’s transformations are both so lovingly created, and thankfully Holland allows them the screen time to really shine. As someone who is asked for horror movie recommendations a lot, I would suggest this one to anyone at any level of interest – it’s silly enough to keep newbies from getting too scared, but also just scary enough to lure them deeper into the horror genre. A fantastically well made film.

A little less well made, but just as enjoyable, is Once Bitten. A young, surprisingly normal Jim Carrey is horny teen Mark. Frustrated with his seemingly permanent virgin status, he joins his goofy buddies (Thomas Ballatore and Skip Lackey, both slaying it) in a Hollywood nightclub and meets the Countess (played with obvious joy by Lauren Hutton) – who has a different plan in mind for him. (This L.A. club with the telephones at every table is incredible and I wish it really existed.)

Once Bitten is a film I saw upon its release in 1985, and it was always a favorite of mine and my mother (who is also a vampire fan) – she will still spontaneously sing me the “Hands Off!” song from the dance number. As I mentioned in my Renfield piece for Talkhouse, I believe every movie is better with a dance number and Once Bitten has a doozy of a number at the Halloween Dance. For Halloween one year, I convinced my ex-boyfriend to dress up as Mark (“I’m not wearing a costume!”) and his girlfriend Karen (Jill without her Jack) in this scene – a costume too obscure for most people, but the ones who did get it were well impressed.

(Speaking of the soundtrack to this movie, I still have a vinyl copy from my youth, and while I will say it’s a solid soundtrack through and through, I cannot recommend “The Picture” by Hubert Kah enough – it’s a fantastic song buried in the middle of an obscure ’80s movie soundtrack.)

The fun of this movie is watching the actors have a good time – Cleavon Little, in particular, is a riot as the Countess’s snooty Renfield. Jim Carrey’s restraint is obvious to play such a normie, but he’s still just as mesmerizing to watch on screen as ever. Both films were exceedingly influential in my youth.

And I can personally attest that Fright Night and Once Bitten are incredibly fun viewed back to back.

James Spader was having a helluva year in 1985, too – playing a lovestruck high schooler who falls for the wrong girl in the gloriously cheesy Tuff Turf (featuring Spader singing – well, lip-syncing anyway – a heartfelt love ballad)! Then, in typical Spader fashion, he 180’d to play one of my favorite of his characters – the psychotic, bleached blonde Florida high schooler named Dutra, intent on making the lives of the new kids in town a living hell in The New Kids. Let me just say that this film was directed by Sean S. Cunningham, who produced Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left, and directed Friday the 13th, and it feels like it. Harsh, dark and mean, this film is cuckoo bananas and a complete delight all at once. Definitely a Spader villain for the books.

Gotcha! from 1985 also deserves a quick mention, not only because it’s the only UCLA paintball/Berlin Wall espionage movie I can think of, with super performances from Anthony Edwards, Nick Corri and Linda Fiorentino, but also because I got to live inside the movie once – kind of.

When I was performing as Alison in the stage version of The Breakfast Club here in L.A., I planned a birthday day out for the girl playing Claire, and it included doing fun things that characters from ’80s movies do. For the first of those things, we drove to UCLA, where the boy playing Brian in the show lived.

In fact, he lived in the exact apartment that Anthony Edwards’ character, Jonathan, lives in at Gayley Terrace in Westwood. So after running around UCLA playing tag (with squirt guns instead of paint guns), we watched Gotcha! and got to experience watching it exactly were it was filmed – how rare!) Gotcha! isn’t talked about much these days, but I say it’s worth a watch.

I love William Friedkin’s dynamic To Live & Die in L.A. so much that I covered the Wang Chung theme song with band Lovers & Poets and shot a music video near the locations from the film. I only discovered this film a few years ago, but I love everything about it. I love how it shows “ugly” parts of Los Angeles not usually seen onscreen, all the killer diller performances from William Petersen to John Turturro, Dean Stockwell, Willem Dafoe and more. This film has one of the most nail-biting car chase sequences ever put to film, everyone and everything is absolutely corrupted – absolute perfection.

And though it deserves its own piece worshipping its genius, I’ll briefly mention Brazil here. Terry Gilliam always had troubles behind the scenes making his films, and some of his films feel like, “Almost, but not quite …” Brazil, on the other hand is a 10/10, no notes, completely perfect. (Only watch the full directors cut! – no “love conquers all” cuts!)

Jonathan Pryce gives an astounding performance as Sam Lowry, a daydreamy romantic stuck in a dystopian retrofuture with no room for such things as hope or love. This film is so wonderfully layered, with a brutally searing vision of the future (which seems to be the one we are living in!). Gorgeous, deep and so superbly well done. Most disturbingly, it’s perhaps set on perpetual Christmas. My number one film ending of all time. Incredible.

There are so many other wonderful films released in 1985 that are near and dear to my heart:
Scorsese’s incredible After Hours
Romero’s brilliant Day of the Dead
The Stephen King anthology Cat’s Eye
My favorite fantasy film of all time, Legend
Stuart Gordon’s revolutionary Lovecraft adaptation, Re-Animator
Every ’80s kid’s favorite, Richard Donner/Steven Spielberg’ s The Goonies
The underseen kid robot movie D.A.R.Y.L. 
The nightmarish Return to Oz, which dared to almost give Dorothy Gale electroshock therapy
The Brat Pack’s swan song soap opera, St. Elmo’s Fire
The delightful swerve into science in cinema that year, with Joe Dante’s acidic Explorers, John Hughes’ wacktastic Weird Science, Jonathan R. Betuel’s My Science Project and Martha Coolidge’s Real Genius
Tim Burton came screaming out the gate with Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.
I got to see my first ever boy crush, Michael J. Fox, in the cinema twice that year with Back to the Future and Teen Wolf

When I look back on these films, I see a lot of movies that I don’t think would be made today – they would be considered too weird, too risky, too indie, too gory. But I look at these movies with respect for their diversity in theme, plot and aesthetic.

Even though I was only six years old in 1985, it’s clear how deeply film was already affecting me and I have clear memories of watching many of the films I mentioned in the cinema. Some I still watch through the rose-dipped nostalgic memories of my youth, and others I only saw for the first time through the experienced viewpoint of an adult.

I think each film I name-dropped in this piece is worth watching and discussing 40 years later – don’t you?