Stranger Things, the movies of 1984.

The new season of Stranger things has hit Netflix.  It’s 1984 and the kids are dressing up as Ghostbusters for Halloween.  Then, there is a gratuitous shot of a cinema showing The Terminator, it seemed like a good time to look back at my favourite movies of 1984:

A Nightmare On Elm Street: Wes Craven’s horror thriller about serial killer who kills his victims in their dreams.

Beverly Hills Cop: Eddie Murphy’s best movie role. Culture clash action comedy about a Chicago cop to travels to Beverly Hills catch a killer. 

Blood Simple: The Coen Brothers criminally under-seen debut about a rich man who hires a private investigator to kill his cheating wife and her lover (obviously things don’t go to plan). 

Dune: David Lynch’s criminally underrated adaptation of Frank Herbert’s influential sci-fi novel. 

Ghostbusters: If I need to explain Ghostbusters, give up now!

Repo Man: Alex Cox’s bizarre sci-fi fantasy about a punk who becomes a Repo Man.

Night of the Comet: Two valley girls, a trucker and a group of mad scientists are amongst a small group of survivors after a comet wipes out most of the population and turns the rest into zombies.

Streets of Fire: “A Rock & Roll Fable” Walter Hill wrote and directed the story of a mercenary who is hired to rescue his now famous ex-girlfriend who has been kidnapped by a motorcycle gang.

The Company of Wolves: Neil Jordan’s Gothic horror fairy tale based on a story by Angela Carter.  A clever reworking of Little Red Riding Hood that is possibly a allegory on the end of innocence. 

The Terminator: James Cameron’s seminal Tec-Noir, Cyberpunk thriller about a killer cyborg who travels back in time to change the future.

Other 1984 movies to check out: 1984, Tightrope, Paris Texas, Top Secret, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Romancing the Stone, The Bounty, The Killing Fields, Against all Odds, The Natural, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Purple Rain, This Is Spinal Tap.

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Mixtape Movies – Trouble in Mind

Three weeks to go until the Mixtape Movies blogathon as promised I plan to post one Mixtape of my own each week until the 22nd, here is number two.

A group of films that are vividly beautiful in their own way but share an unreal otherworldliness, sometimes because of their setting others because of their dreamlike quality. Some of the movies you will all know, hopefully like all great mixtapes there will be a few surprises:

Streets of Fire (1984) directed by Walter Hill: Singer, Ellen Aim (Diane Lane) is kidnapped by a biker gang (led by Willem Dafoe) while performing a benefit concert in her rundown hometown. The police won’t do anything so its left to her ex Tom Cody (Michael Paré) and her nerdy manager (Rick Moranis) to rescue her.

The Dead Can’t Lie aka Gotham (1988) directed by Lloyd Fonvielle: New York detective Eddie Mallard (Tommy Lee Jones) is hired by a wealthy businessman to stop his ex-wife (Virginia Madsen) from harassing him, things get weird why he discovers she has been dead for ten years. It was actually made for TV but don’t let that stop you, it’s a great atmospheric noir thriller.

The Isle original Korean title “Seom” (2000) directed by Ki-duk Kim: A man on the run hides out on a floating fishing hut in the Korean wilderness. He forms a difficult relationship with the mute woman who rented the hut and looks after the fishermen.

Mud (2012) directed by Jeff Nichols: A newer pick than the others, so new you may still catch it in UK cinemas. Two young teenage boys find fugitive living in a boat stranded in a tree on a river island. They agree to help him despite the obvious dangers.

Trouble in Mind (1985) directed by Alan Rudolph: Rather than a plot synopsis I will just tell you a little about the cast: Hawk (Kris Kristofferson) a former cop fresh out of prison for murder, Wanda (Geneviève Bujold) a diner owner and Hawk’s ex-lover, Coop (Keith Carradine) and Georgia (Lori Singer) a penniless young couple with a baby, Hilly Blue (a rare none drag performance from Divine) a mob boss.

Wildcard pick – Lost In Translation (2003) directed by Sofia Coppola: All the movies have an underlying story involving crime except the wildcard: What is left to say about Lost In Translation? Well firstly, as hard as is to believe, it will be ten years old later this year. If you love it as much as I do, its time to watch it again. If you don’t like it, its time to give it a second chance.

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Contemporary Dystopia

Catching up on an old episode of The Matineecast got me thinking about movies set in dystopian futures. Ryan referred to dystopias that are not that far in the future, and via the movie Pleasantville (1998) he and his guest Sasha James Talked about how a nostalgic view of America in the 1950’s could be a dystopia for people from the present day. My first thought was that we could now be living in what would be the dystopian future that people in the 50’s feared. With dwindling natural recourses, and rising costs, losses of civil liberties and an over reliance on technology coupled with the threat of war and terrorism, we are probably closer to dystopia than utopia. With this in mind I have avoided movies set in an unrecognisable world to concentrate on dystopias that are not that different to the real world.

Movies like Gattaca (1997), V for Vendetta (2005) and In Time (2011) exist in a society that has adopted practices that oppress the masses and it is through rebellion that people are able to find a better life. There are other films like1984 (1984), Brazil (1985) and Code 46 (2003) that revel in their desperation and futility by pulling rug from under the hero, and the audience with it. Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and Children of Men (2006) find a happy balance where the despair is tempered by a glimmer of hope. The brilliance of Fahrenheit 451 the way we see a character comes to distrust what he has been taught to believe in and chooses to fight the system from within. We see a similar idea explored in the interesting if a little overrated Equilibrium (2002), set in a society where emotions are outlawed it also explores what it is to be human. Both these ideas are explored in the underrated and misunderstood RoboCop (1987). In there own way the characters in Rollerball (1975) and Death Race 2000 (1975). This is very different from District 13 (2004) and A Clockwork Orange (1971) whose protagonists are and remain outsiders. An interesting case is The Handmaid’s Tale (1990) whose main protagonists desire is only to escape the system but her desires bring her into the sphere of those who are trying to change things.

When you mention Mad Max many people think of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, in some ways the best film in the trilogy, but the original low budget Mad Max is actually equally as good in its own way. Set in a near future world were society is crumbling and law & order has begun to break down people will do what it takes to keep moving to stay on the road. It was relevant in its day but it has found new relevance in recent years. If we think about the glue that holds society together, it is not fear of prosecution, but a moral belief of right and wrong, if you take that bond away the world as we know it will crumble. We see the early days of this in Mad Max, and the subtlety with which this idea is displayed within a violent revenge thriller is why it is possibly the best dystopian movie. This breakdown of society is in the background of neo-noir Trouble in Mind (1985) and retro-future comic book inspired Streets of Fire (1984) but lacks the despair of Mad Max. The other movie that perfectly depicts society at a tipping point is Strange Days (1995). Made in the mid 90’s with LA’s troubles fresh in the memory and set just five years in the future, now more than a decade in the past, some would argue the world is a worse place now than what was depicted. Given the reality TV obsession of the last dozen years and current distrust of media and governments, The Running Man (1987) now seems strangely prophetic. Battle Royale covers some of the same ground but is all the more shocking in the way it casts children against society.

It is human nature to try and change and shape society, but some movies have taken this to an extreme. By travelling back in time from a dystopian future to change the present and reshape the future, their present. This is handled in different ways in different movies, the hero of Twelve Monkeys (1995) is haunted by memories of his own death and with it his failure to save the future. Millennium (1989) takes a different point of view as the characters from the future battle to hide the existence in the present through fear that it will change and potentially destroy the future with the effects of the paradox of time travel. While Millennium is afraid of the effects of paradox, The Terminator (1984) exists within a paradox. It is only within an effort to kill the hero who can save the world that he is conceived. The one thing all these movies have in common is the way they only give us glimpses of the dystopian future, a future created in the present.

One thing that is clear, there are as many differences as there are similarities within the genre, but the movies that are the best and that age the best are the ones that have a deeper relevance. This can be an overt plot, a subtle subtext or just a theme that anchors the story in reality.

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My Movie Year – Contenders from the 1980’s

As we move into the last two decades I will mention lots of films I saw at the cinema when they first came out. The films I have already mentioned fro the 70’s and before I have caught up with over time, but this is the 80’s the decade of VHS. That’s how I saw all these movies on home video.

1980: The Shining, Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, Airplane! Raging Bull, The Blues Brothers

1981: Mad Max 2, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Evil Dead, An American Werewolf in London, Scanners

1984: The Terminator, Once Upon a Time in America, Ghostbusters, Repo Man, Streets of Fire

1985: Fandango, Back to the Future, The Goonies, The Breakfast Club, Brazil

1986: Aliens, Blue Velvet, Platoon, Salvador, The Colour of Money

1987: Aliens, The Lost Boys, Evil Dead II, Hellraiser, Near Dark

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