Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988)

This slasher series doesn't just follow a formula - each episode is a cookie-cut repeat of the last 'FtTp n - 1' episodes - so the sense of same you get watching it extends beyond the Camp Crystal Lake impalings, which happen one after the other in cookie-cutter fashion, and makes the whole series of seven parts (that I've reviewed to this point) feel like one interminable movie showing what may as well be the same death - the death of Barry, stabbed in the stomach by Pamela Voorhees in the opening scene of the original - over and over and over and over, and this episode's attempt at injecting something new - a telekinetic heroine - is, like the copycat of Part III, the resurrection in Part VI, the kidnapping in the reboot, just a different coloured flag in the hand of a stationmaster: the same sluggish train lurches forward and heads along the same tired tracks to its same destination and - surprise! - you're back at the departing station, ready for part FtTp n + 1.

★☆☆☆☆

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Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986)

Part VI is the one where Jason Voorhees, the serial killer with a hockey mask for a personality, is finally turned into an undead, something that happens in the opening scenes by way of grave robbery and a lightning rod, but don't get your hopes up that the series too will lurch to life with the electric jolt because although it benefits from some tonal shifts - and even some laughs not yet seen in the series - Part VI is the same plodding slasher - it's just that now and forevermore the writers can think even less when they are considering bringing Jason back to our screens..

★★☆☆☆

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Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

The sequel to Steven Spielberg's Poltergeist of 1982 is the 1986 release, Brian Gibson's Poltergeist II, a movie variously and bewilderingly about car-whispering, teenage smile correction, cult worship, family togetherness, curses, burial chambers, possessed toys, parasitic infection, domestic abuse, alcohol abuse, ghosts, trauma, paranormal investigation, shamanism, Native American steam bath rituals, and evil, and it doesn't make even one word of sense but has some neat effects a la the original.

★★☆☆☆

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Manhunter (1986)

Those of you waiting for Season 3 of Mindhunter to come out in 2078 may like to fill some of the time with this adaptation of Thomas Harris' Red Dragon, the first of the author's serial killer thrillers featuring Hannibal Lecktor/Lecter, the incarcerated psychotic psychiatrist who helps the FBI with serial killer investigations, because it is superior to the Red Dragon of 2002 and like Mindhunter features a retro time-specific look and feel and soundtrack, and the investigator, Will Graham played by William Petersen is essentially a prototype of Mindhunter's Agent Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff).

★★★☆☆

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April Fool's Day (1986)

Like And Then There Were None, the Agatha Christie book that inspired it, this wafer-thin cult classic 80s teen slasher opens on a group of people boarding a ferry to spend a weekend on an island, and even before these college kids arrive at their destination, someone starts picking them off one by bloody one and the surprise at the end is that there is a reason for this other than the fact each of the characters is extremely annoying - particularly the penis-obsessed, gnashing, gyrating, sniggering hyena frat boys.

★★★☆☆

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Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986)

The Canon Group intended to release an Allan Quatermain trilogy, but even before this 1986 sequel to King Soloman's Mines is over, there are signs the money has dried up and number three isn't going to happen, for example, while Quatermain (Richard Chamberlain) and his fiancée, Jesse Huston (Sharon Stone, reprising her Razzie Worst Actress-nominated role) trek across Africa searching for his brother (Chamberlain's partner at the time, Martin Rabbett), the dangers they face are not massive Indiana Jones boulder setpieces but just incredibly low-budget things like the ditch they stumble across which they simply jump, or the bats they find which simply fly away, or the snakes, two Cecils-the-Lion, and cannibalistic tribespeople they encounter which Quatermain simply shoots, and if anyone remains hopeful for a third in the series after all these underwhelming things, the climactic wire fu endscenes with their conspicuous wires, undisguised safety harnesses, and golden porridge remove all doubt.

★☆☆☆☆

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Invaders From Mars (1986)

In filling his movie with wooden acting, stilted dialogue, several benign sideplots that add nothing except length to the runtime, and garish monster puppetry of a distinctly 80s horror variety, director Tobe Hooper pretty much nails the look and feel of a B-movie sci-fi classic of the 40s and 50s, and in fact this IS a remake of the 1953 movie of the same name, about a schoolkid who first witnesses a flash in the sky, then notices his parents acting strangely, then becomes alarmed as more and more people from town wander up and over the hill near his house and come back as monotone weirdos with welts on their necks.

★★★☆☆

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Lady In White (1986)

I recall my mum suggesting I turn this off if it was too scary and I remember thinking how ridiculous she was being given it was just a silly ghost story with some cool special effects, but of course I was a child and rewatching this today I discover the fun supernatural romp of my 80s past actually tells a deeply disturbing story of a child serial rapist and killer and features among other distinctly adult things child murder, suicide, upskirting, masturbation, hideous unchecked racism from the mouths of children, an assassination, and while it features a not very satisfactory plot, you have to be impressed at the way director Frank LaLoggia manages to hide a supernatural psycho thriller for adults inside a Goonies-style adventure for kids and vice versa.

★★☆☆☆ (the psycho thriller for adults)

★★★☆☆ (the ghost story for kids)

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F/X: Murder By Illusion (1986)

Two things - Crocodile Dundee (another 1986 movie release with an Australian lead) and a nonsensical, inexplicably punctuated title - probably detracted from F/X: Murder By Illusion's success in the box office, and revisiting it today reveals a good concept stretched by middling action sequences into a way-overlong movie-with-a-tv-budget, but as a kid I loved this Mission: Impossible-lite, Now You See Me crime-magic story, about Hollywood special effects man Rollie Tyler (Australia's own Bryan Brown) hired by the Justice Department to fake the murder of a mobster in the Witness Protection program.

★★★☆☆

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Howard The Duck (1986)

As with the more recent Ted and Ted 2, the basic tenet of Executive Producer George Lucas' infamous box office bomb seems to be that a furry or fluffy creature doing human adult things like smoking cigars, drinking beer, and bar brawling is funny, but this Marvel comic-inspired movie about a 3 foot 2 inch and - except for his pink skin eyelids - frozen-faced duck alien who somehow ends up trapped in Cleveland, is so mundane that a more suitable title would have been Howard The Turkey or HowAwful The Duck.

☆☆☆☆☆

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Frog Dreaming (aka The Go-Kids/The Quest/Fighting Spirits/The Mystery of the Dark Lake) (1986)

Struth, this 1986 family adventure with a zillion different titles must be 'Stralya's answer to 1985s The Goonies cos it has a gang of loopy ankle-biters (one is Henry Thomas, the kid from E.T., fair dinkum) going bush, braving scary stuff like skeletons and crabby adults to cop a gander at what they reckon is Donkegin, a frog monster from Aboriginal mythology that lurks in a billabong up the back paddock, and the bloody flick is such an oddity and pretty good mystery, it is definitely worth a Butcher's Hook.

★★★☆☆

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Back to School (1986)

The reasons to watch this 80s comedy about a businessman who enters his son's university to deter the son from dropping out are Rodney Dangerfield's handful of amusing one-liners, his face as he performs the ridiculous Triple Lindy at the movie's end, and Robert Downey Jnr's not very sophisticated early career turn as try-hard university geek Derek Lutz.

★★★☆☆

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Blue Velvet (1986)

David Lynch's neo-noir cult classic from 1986 pre-dates Twin Peaks and his increasingly mind-bending films of the 90s and is remarkable for its hideous gas-sucking, dry-humping villain, its uniquely Lynchian imagery, its dreamlike scenes - like the one with the dancer on the car rooftop, and the standing lobotomee ' and for helping salvage Kyle MacLachlan's career after the director's much-maligned Dune.

★★★★☆

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The Karate Kid Part II (1986)

The stakes are ridiculously high now, escalating from a karate tournament title in the original Karate Kid movie to teenage death and honour in this melodramatic sequel, with a lanky teenaged Daniel-san (who really doesn't give the impression of being able to walk straight let alone coordinate a brutal drum rhythm-inspired karate takedown) and his senpai Mr Miyagi coming to the attention of Okinawan bullies.

★★☆☆☆

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Aliens (1986)

For poor Rip-(van Wink)-ley, 57 years of sleep in an escape pod must have seemed like a mere heartbeat when in fact it was plenty of time for the eggs on the LV-426 colony (sighted in the original Alien) to hatch into an alien plague; Ripley skips breakfast and gets straight into alien-busting consultant mode for some macho commandos, but before long, Director James Cameron wipes everyone else out so that the mother-progeny theme that is to become the series' signature can come to the fore as Ripley defends herself and Newt, the colony's lone survivor and first daughter figure of the series, from the aliens and their queen.

★★★★★

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River's Edge (1986)

Grubby American high school friends react to the fact one of their group has committed murder but not in the way you'd imagine, in this difficult to watch drama inspired by a true story (!) featuring such a great deal of adolescent ugliness that in the end, like the apathetic teenagers in it, you'll find the story so depressing, so grim, you'll just want to dismiss it all out of hand.

★★☆☆☆

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Big Trouble In Little China (1986)

1986 was a big year for Chinese mysticism in LA with this fantasy adventure released in quick succession with The Golden Child - both feature rather disconcerting sfx sequences but where The Golden Child crosses its fantasy elements with a Beverly Hills Cop-style police procedural, Big Trouble In Little China, directed by John Carpenter, is full of John Carpenter horror-lite and features Mortal Kombat-style streetfighters, sewer monsters weird and wonderful and thrilling to a kid in the 80s, and the fabulous Kim Cattrall long before Sex And The City was a thing - watching it back today, though, it really isn't very good at all.

★★☆☆☆

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The Golden Child (1986)

Following his success in 1985's Beverly Hills Cop, Eddie Murphy loaned his signature laugh to this hugely-popular-at-the-time 1986 fantasy cop drama, pretty much "LA Chinatown Cop" with Axel Foley (here called Chandler Jarrell), a man tasked with protecting a Tibetan "golden child" from a supernatural villain; apart from an unexpected claymation scene and some magic effects, it is fairly humdrum to watch today.

★★☆☆☆

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Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

A high schooler skips school and despite the dogged efforts of a suspicious Principal and irritated sister who try to catch him out, he enjoys his day-off with gay abandon, roping friends into elaborate schemes, street parades, restaurant outings, in a John Hughes comedy as entertaining today as it was on its release in 1986, an enduring favourite for perfectly capturing the joys of unfettered youth.

★★★★☆

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Peggy Sue Got Married (1986)

A year after Michael J Fox was sent Back to the Future to his parents' teenage lives in 1955, a 40ish Peggy Sue, like a temporal Dorothy Gale, was zapped back to her high school days in this adorable 1986 comedy drama and, resembling Sandra Olsson but with modern day sensibilities, she takes the opportunity to make different choices and ends up better appreciating her future in a troubled marriage.

★★★★☆

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