The Mean Season (1985)

Based on a book by John Katzenbach called In The Heat of The Summer, the dull The Mean Season should have capitalised on Florida's oppressive Summer, but everyone in it — Kurt Russell's journalist, a camera-toting colleague, his boss, and a detective played by a very young Andy Garcia — remains fresh despite running around after a serial killer - and Mariel Hemingway's love interest at one point even leaves Kurt a message written in a fogged up car window - and in the same way, the serial killer himself, a taunter of the public via the phone on Malcolm's news desk and a presence that really should sweep through with menace and ravage the community, never actually takes a compelling shape.

★★☆☆☆

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Black Widow (1987)

In this very straightforward easy-to-watch soapy 80s thriller, a Government agent (Debra Winger) tries to prove that a series of deaths are connected not just by bad lurching editing but by a mysterious 'black widow' with crimped blonde hair who marries rich men then kills them for their money.

★★★☆☆

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Weekend At Bernie's (1989)

This 80s comedy with a cult following will make you smirk a couple of times, especially when Bernie — the dead body Andrew McCarthy's shouty and annoying Larry and Jonathan Silverman's straight-man Richard drag around pretending it to be alive — is dragged behind a boat and banged against buoys or dragged across uneven ground, but these black slapstick moments, a single joke played over and over, hardly sustain the just-short-of two-hour runtime.

★★☆☆☆

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Criminal Law (1988)

A defence lawyer (Gary Oldman), the impressive sort who places a glass before a jury and says the decision they have to make is "as clear as water", starts muddying things when he turns against a client he has just got off a murder charge, suddenly believing him to be a crazed killer that needs taking down from within their lawyer-client relationship, and how could he not come to this conclusion given the client (Kevin Bacon) is doing crazy eyes so hard he is cross-eyed (see poster) and has a perfectly plain-to-see serial killer's relationship with his mother, all crude, eyeroll-inducing plot details out of all balance with the movie's attempts at loftiness as the lawyer engages in heady Socratic dialogue about justice with an annoying law muse and at the same time engages in fiery revenge talk with an unlikely love interest.

★☆☆☆☆

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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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The Terminator (1984)

For an 80s sci-fi action that is essentially a string of cgi-free car and foot chases set to broken synthesizer chords and interrupted with occasional scenes of exposition (our mulleted heroes trying to soberly discuss a ridiculous time-travelling robot assassin plot), the original 1984 Terminator is a masterpiece and even more enjoyable to rewatch now to see the genesis of the Terminator motifs that recur throughout the sequels, like the first appearance of Dr Silberman (here dismissing as mental illness the robot killer threat but himself destined for the insane asylum) and Arnie's first utterance of the line, "I'll be back," and a few clever smaller details like the scene where a fellow waitress being glib about the future tells Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor not to worry about the customer's child who spoons ice cream into her apron pocket because no-one is going to care in 100 years.

★★★★☆

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Spies Like Us (1985)

They cheat during their CIA entrance exams - in laboured, unfunny fashion - but even so two boobs are sent out into the field in Afghanistan and Russia because, unbeknownst to them, it is hoped they will distract the enemy from the actual nuclear missile mission happening elsewhere, in this comedy with punchlines that come first, longwinded setups that come second, and that has Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase at the height of their comedy movie careers in 1985 (Aykroyd fresh from 1984's Ghostbusters; Chase squeezed this in between Fletch and National Lampoon's European Vacation in 1985 and The Three Amigos in 1986), both presumably too busy to scrutinise or veto subpar projects (Aykroyd, the co-writer, should've gone over the script again) or perhaps they wanted to do any and every old thing that came along before the world tired of Chase's unchanging schtick or twigged that Aykroyd is more irritating than funny.

★☆☆☆☆     

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Splash (1984)

No sooner had Australian Senator Cory Bernardi proclaimed that gay marriage would be the first step towards people having sex with their pets than the Gay Marriage law passed and The Shape of Water, that cinematic manifestation of all of Bernardi's worst human-beast coupling nightmares, was released in theatres, but in 1984, the world was already well along this road to destruction when the original The Shape of Water, Splash (Ron Howard's comedy about a romance between a human and a sea creature) proved so popular, it launched the career of little-known star Tom Hanks, introduced the world to the future Elle Driver, and was so light, frothy and warm that this very early death knell for world decency probably didn't even make Cory Bernardi blink.

★★★☆☆

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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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Ghostbusters (1984)

It is hard to imagine, despite decades of advances in cinema technology and the various sequels and reboots that started with the Melissa McCarthy one in 2016, that anyone is ever going to improve upon this classic 80s comedy - even rewatching it today, so many years after its initial release in 1984, it impresses with its special effects and comedy, and Bill Murray is in top form as the drily hilarious Dr Peter Venkman who, with his fellow Ghostbusters, takes on New York's growing number of paranormal problems including the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

★★★★★

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Evil Dead II (1987)

Bruce Campbell, pretty much a big-jawed rubbery-faced cartoon himself, battles stop-motion-animated horror like this Evil Dead sequel is a Tom and Jerry cartoon: it doesn't matter that the back-and-forth between Ash and the H P Lovecraft-inspired horrors of the cabin-in-the-woods is senseless because the ordeal is inventive ghastly fun and is never anything less than visually arresting.

★★★★☆

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Ghostbusters II (1989)

Apparently not even Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, the writers, thought Ghostbusters II was a good idea - it was never going to improve upon the original - but as far as studio-driven money-grabbing sequels go, it is pretty fun: like a Lethal Weapon sequel, the cast has grown and so things are busier - Dana has a baby, for one, and there are several new characters standing between the Ghostbusters and the city mayor, and Louis Tully has been adopted into the Ghostbusters' circle, so his role of goofball demigod conduit is handed over to newcomer Peter MacNichol who plays a very Rick Moranis-ish 'Igor' assistant to the evil Vigo - when their evil plot requires a loan of Sigouney Weaver's baby, the Ghostbusters get their proton packs back on.

★★★☆☆

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Working Girl (1988)

In her career best performance, Melanie Griffiths plays Tess McGill, a big-haired receptionist from Staten Island who decides she deserves better than her demeaning job and cheating boyfriend and so sets about making it big in the corporate world, in this comedy drama that anyone who has ever had a job or a boss they didn't like will find impossible not to love: a kind of 80s corporate office version of The Devil Wears Prada with Sigourney Weaver in the role of boss from hell.

★★★★★

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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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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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The Witches of Eastwick (1987)

A trio of women, Jane, Sukie and Alexandra (Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Cher, redheaded, blonde and brunette) conjure up a dark, mysterious stranger using their collective feminine powers of creation, bringing havoc to their conservative New England town, in this riotous, star-studded film version of John Updike's distinctly feminist novel looking at gender politics, standards of social propriety (old-fashioned versus new) and good old good and evil, creation and destruction.

★★★★☆

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Heathers (1988)

Long before Scream Queens, 90s cult classic Heathers was making light of murderous teenage angst; today, the movie is still a riot and the satire as black as pitch in light of so many real trenchcoated Jason Deans wreaking havoc on the jocks, geeks, emos, loners and 'Heathers' of their US high schools.

★★★★☆

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