Access Code (1984)
Computer Surveillance Conspiracy Thriller
Obscure VHS era paranoia thriller about the uncovering of a conspiracy to use satellites to control the population. Not a very interesting film.
Films of 1984
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eighth Dimension (1984)
Funky Inventor Hero vs Alien Invaders
An object lesson in how to create an instant cult film – exceedingly eccentric, a commercial failure at the box-office, it instantly receiving a fan clique – all without it ever being a particularly great film
All Of Me (1984)
Bodyswap Comedy
One of Steve Martin’s finest works, a variant of the bodyswap comedy in which he finds himself sharing his body with Lily Tomlin. Martin’s on-screen contortions are side-splitting
Angel (1984)
Teenage Hooker vs a Psycho
Trashy film about a regular high school student who leads a double life as a hooker on Hollywood Boulevard who becomes targeted by a serial killer. Several sequels followed.
Black Devil Doll from Hell (1984)
Evil Doll/Bad Movie Classic
Watchers of bad films rejoice – this comes as close to total amatuerism as possible. None of this prepares you for the sheer dementia of the saga of an evil doll that inspires a good church-going woman to become a sex addict
Blind Date (1984)
Blind Man Tracks a Serial Killer
Thriller where a blind man is given a device that allows him to see sounds and then obtains evidence of a serial killer. Featuring a number of before-they-were-famous names
Bloodbath at the House of Death (1984)
Horror Spoof
Parody of the horror genre designed to highlight British comedian Kenny Everett. Some quite funny spoofs, some that aren’t. Vincent Price appears as the leader of a coven.
Body Double (1984)
Psycho-Sexual Thriller
Brian De Palma psycho-thriller that blatantly copies Hitchcock’s Vertigo and a few dashes of Rear Window. But De Palma’s stylish moves collapse under the weight of an absurdly contrived plot
The Brother from Another Planet (1984)
Black Alien Visitor Comedy
John Sayles responded to E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial and its suburban middle-class fantasy with this wry comedy in which a mute Black alien visitor (Joe Morton) arrives in Manhattan
Children of the Corn (1984)
Pagan Child Cult/Stephen King Adaptation
A fifteen page Stephen King story about a patricidal child cult has spawned this film, nine sequels and a remake. Not a very good film, this is stuck with padding a very slight original out to a full-length film
Chocky (1984)
Boy and Invisible Alien Companion
Mini-series adaptation of a novel by John Wyndham, best known for The Day of the Triffids, concerning a young boy who develops an invisible alien companion. Imagine a version of Harvey retold by way of E.T.
A Christmas Carol (1984)
Miser’s Redemption
Well-made and extremely faithful adaptation of Charles Dickens’s perennial Christmas story starring George C. Scott as Scrooge. This brings out story elements other versions skip over
Cloak and Dagger (1984)
Children's Spy Caper/Invisible Companion
Henry Thomas, then riding on the success of E.T., is cast as a kid with a love of spy games who, accompanied by his imaginary companion, is plunged into the midst of a real spy caper.
The Company of Wolves (1984)
Little Red Riding Hood with Werewolves
In his first film, Neil Jordan adapts an Angela Carter story that retells Little Red Riding Hood as a werewolf film that becomes a fascinating swim of fairytale and sexual allegory
Conan the Destroyer (1984)
Sword and Sorcery
This sequel to Conan the Barbarian makes the mistake of watering the primal brutalism down to a PG rating and what results ends up being a pedestrian comic-book adventure
Crimes of Passion (1984)
Psycho-Sexual Thriller
Team-up between Ken Russell and Anthony Perkins with both in full-on lunacy mode. Kathleen Turner gives her best performance ever as a fashion designer moonlighting as a hooker who is stalked by Perkins as a psycho priest
Death Warmed Up (1984)
Mad Scientist/Zombie Splatter
The first horror film from New Zealand, a gore drenched effort about a mad scientist creating zombies. Directed by much energy even if it suffers a complete lack of plot
Don’t Open Till Christmas (1984)
Christmas Slasher
The 1980s slasher fad brought a number of ventures into the Christmas slasher film, which has grown into its own genre niche since then. This is one British entry in the genre about a killer targeting people dressed as Santa
Dorian Gray as Reflected in the Popular Press (1984)
Surrealism
Long and baffling German surrealist film that makes much reference to German silent cinema. Lots of avant garde set ups without any real point
Dream One (1984)
Adventures in Dreamland/Characters from Fiction
Head-scratchingly odd fantasy film produced by John Boorman and family where a young boy is transported to a world where he mingles with characters from fiction
Dreamscape (1984)
Psychic Dream Therapists-Assassins
The original version of Inception almost, featuring psychics entering into people’s dreams and then attempts to dream assassinate the US President. Despite much promise, the idea is prosaic in its handling
Dune (1984)
Desert World/Intergalactic Politics/Precognitive Messiah
David Lynch disowned his film version of the classic Frank Herbert SF novel. However, Lynch may be incapable of making a bad film and this, while acting freely with the book, has a visual grandeur that makes it highly watchable
The Dungeonmaster (1984)
Warrior's Virtual Quest/Anthology
An anthology film produced by Charles Band where assorted directors turn in seven episodes all centred around a videogame warrior put through a series of tests by The Devil
Electric Dreams (1984)
Computer Falls in Love
Lightweight, rather silly effort where Lenny Von Dohlen’s home computer becomes sentient and the two compete for the love of neighbour Virginia Madsen
The Element of Crime (1984)
Decayed Future Thriller
The first feature film from Lars von Trier, a crime thriller set in a futuristic Europe. There are glimmers of the visual style von Trier would develop but the film also badly drags
The Ewok Adventure (1984)
Children's Planetary Adventure/Star Wars Spinoff
Crass attempt by George Lucas to further milk the Star Wars phenomenon with a tv movie (released to theatres outside the US) given over the Ewoks from Return of the Jedi
Fear City (1984)
Serial Killer Targets Strippers
Abel Ferrara is known for bleak works of social realism. This features a killer targeting strippers but has a superficial blandness that feels like it is made by someone who has never visited a strip joint in their life
Firestarter (1984)
Pyrokinesis/Stephen King Adaptation
The adaptation of the Stephen King novel with Drew Barrymore giving a fantastic performance as a young girl with pyrokinetic powers on the run as she is hunted by a sinister government agency
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
Slasher Film
The fourth Friday the 13th film, called the final chapter in an effort to kill the series off, only to be such a success this was rescinded in the next film. Joseph Zito directs with more style than usual
Future-Kill (1984)
Killer Cyborg
Low-budget attempt to make a Cyberpunk film. Essentially The Warriors with New Wave fashions as a group of frat boys are pursued by a relentless, psychopathic cyborg
Ghostbusters (1984)
Team of Spook Chasers Comedy
An overrated classic that is nevertheless an undeniable fixture of 1980s pop culture. Overlong, it is largely carried through Bill Murray’s lazy sarcasm and the sterling work from the visual effects team
Godzilla 1985 (1984)
Giant Atomic Monster
Reboot of the Godzilla series that forgets about all the sequels and acts as a direct follow-up to the original film. This uses top drawer effects technology of the era to create Godzilla as the fearsome creation he originally was
Gremlins (1984)
Malicious Creatures
The film about malicious creatures that was the runaway box-office hit of 1984. Director Joe Dante runs amok like a schoolboy with a chemistry kit and gleefully trashes the wholesome innocence of producer Steven Spielberg’s E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984)
Revisionist Tarzan Film
Maybe the definitive Tarzan film, one that drops the pulp adventure and recasts the story as British arthouse theatre. Superbly mounted and cast. Christopher Lambert has never better in the title role
Gwendoline (1984)
Lost City Quest/Softcore Fetishism/Comic Strip Adaptation
From the director of Emmanuelle, this is an adaptation of an adult comic-book that replays the lost city adventure with the addition of a mind-boggling softcore fetishism
Hail Mary (1984)
Modern Day Immaculate Conception
A controversy-laden Jean-Luc Godard film that offers an irreverent modern-day retelling of the Immaculate Conception. An amusing idea that vanishes under Godard’s pretensions
The Happy Ghost (1984)
Hong Kong Ghost Comedy
A popular Hong Kong hit in its day where a schoolgirl gains a ghostly scholar as an invisible companion, resulting in a series of slapstick sequences. Several sequels followed
The Ice Pirates (1984)
Space Opera
A space opera that was made in the aftermath of Star Wars. It is a magpie collage of influences that are not always the most coherently presented and given a comic emphasis
Iceman (1984)
Revived Caveman
Excellent and underrated film about a caveman unthawed in the Arctic where attempts are made to help him adjust. This conducts the a creaky old story with modern scientific and anthropological realism
Impulse (1984)
Mass Insanity Inducing Biospill
Reminiscent of George Romero’s The Crazies, this is a subtle, low key film about a small town as it is affected by a toxic waste leak that causes mass insanity
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
High Adventure in India
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’s first sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark is like a single 118 minute rollercoaster ride without let-up in terms of action, although is far less polished in the scripting department
The Initiation (1984)
Slasher Film
An entry in the slasher film fad that features a young, fresh-faced and stunning Daphne Zuniga being stalked around a mall during a sorority hazing prank
The Invisible Man (1984)
Invisible Man/H.G. Wells Adaptation
A version of the H.G. Wells novel conducted as a mini-series of six half-hour episodes from the BBC. This is the most faithful adaptation of the book so far
Invisible Strangler (1984)
Astral Killer
A painfully bad film about a jailed killer who uses astral projection powers to become invisible and leave his cell to take revenge on those who convicted him
The Jar (1984)
Cursed Jar
This may count as the worst horror film to be released in the entire 80s VHS era. The plot concerns a man who is left a strange jar that causes a series of terrifying hallucinations
Kaos (1984)
Luigi Pirandello Anthology/Werewolf/Ghosts
An anthology adapted from the stories of Sicilian writer Luigi Pirandello directed by the Taviani Brothers. The stories include a werewolf episode and a ghost story
The Last Starfighter (1984)
Videogame Junkie Joins Intergalactic War
One of the sillier films made in the aftermath of Star Wars. It is recycling third hand cliches and reduces these to simplistic fantasies of military heroism for the videogame generation
Lensman (1984)
Anime/Space Opera
E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s Lensman books are space opera classics. Here they are given the anime treatment, which abandons much adherence to the source material and ends up more as a copy of Star Wars
Meatballs Part II (1984)
Summer Camp Comedy/Alien Visitor
No-one is pretending that the Bill Murray summer camp comedy Meatballs was a masterpiece but it looks a work of art in comparison to this unfunny sequel, which also throw in a stiff E.T. lookalike
The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)
Muppet Movie
The third Muppets film, the last Jim Henson would be involved with, this shows them putting on a Broadway show
Mutant (1984)
Toxic Waste Zombies
One of the handful of films from the underrated 70s/80s director John ‘Bud’ Cardos. Cardos does extremely creating an usual smalltown atmosphere simmering with Southern bigotry, before the film erupts into a more standard toxic waste zombies outbreak film
Nausicaa in the Valley of the Wind (1984)
Anime/Post-Holocaust Environmentalism
Hayao Miyazaki’s second film, a visually stunning work set in the aftermath of a holocaust. Miyazai’s frequent themes of pacifism and respect for the environment and run through building to a emotionally wrenching climax
The Neverending Story (1984)
Fantasy Adventure Inside an Interactive Book
A popular fantasy film of the 80s that sits just between the imaginative, particularly when it comes to some its creature effects and design work, and the mawkish. It also comes with an intriguing level of meta-fiction that delivers some odd messages
The Next One (1984)
Mysterious Visitor
A very strange film where widow Adrienne Barbeau finds an amnesiac Keir Dullea on a Greek island who shows mysterious abilities and may have come from the future
Night of the Comet (1984)
Post-Holocaust Bimbos
This has the amusing idea of casting a Last People on Earth film with two Valley Girls. This starts well but the film seems to run out of steam halfway through
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Dream-Invading Boogey Man
One of the most influential horror films of the 1980s, creating a series of dream horror copycats. Before the campy, makeup effects driven sequels kicked in, Wes Craven’s original creates a genuinely unearthly series of nightmare jumps
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
Dystopia
Superb adaptation of the George Orwell novel that was actually shot in the months and year that the book takes place. Orwell’s future is imagined as a bleak post-War dystopia given life by a superlative cast
The Noah’s Ark Principle (1984)
Action Aboard a Weather Satellite
Roland Emmerich’s first film, made while he was still a student, involving intrigue aboard a weather control station
The Phantom Treehouse (1984)
Animation/Boy's Adventure on a Magic Island
Australian animation about a boy’s adventure on an island amid pirates, inventors and magic creatures that in its better moments suggests a collision between Peter Pan and Pufnstuf. Unfortunately, the film is made with a budget that must have been well within four figures
The Philadelphia Experiment (1984)
Time Travel Experiment Amok
Based on a non-fiction, fringe science book that makes claims that the US Navy conducted experiments that turned a ship invisible during WWII, this spins the idea out into a modest time travel story
Razorback (1984)
Killer Boar
Russell Mulcahy, a director fresh from success on the early days of MTV, returned to his native Australia to make this extraordinary variant on the Animals Attack film. Mulcahy piles on amazing photography, turning the landscape into something otherwordly
Red Dawn (1984)
Communist Invasion of the USA
Ridiculous red-blooded, flag-waving film in which the Soviets invade the USA and a group of high-school teenagers maintain a lone guerilla campaign
Repo Man (1984)
Gonzo Punk Film
Alex Coz’s surreal cult film with Emilio Estevez as an L.A. punk working as a repo driver who gets wound into the hunt for a car with radioactive aliens in the trunk
Rocktober Blood (1984)
Psycho Rock Star Returns from the Dead
The first in a cluster of mostly terrible 80s films that tried to incorporate horror and rock music, this concerns a rock star sent to the electric chair after a killing spree who now appears to return from the dead
Runaway (1984)
Police Amok-Robot Squad
Michael Crichton’s books and films are always run through with a fear of technology run amok. Here Crichton makes an enjoyably straightforward directorial outing about a police squad set up to stop runaway robots,
Scream for Help (1984)
Psycho-Thriller/Slasher Film
Often wrongly pegged as a slasher film, this is more of a 1940s psycho-thriller with slasher sensibilities. The notorious Michael Winner directs with typically crude and unsophisticated effect
Second Time Lucky (1984)
Adam and Eve Comedy
One of the most excruciatingly painful films ever made – a softcore comedy in which God and The Devil make a bet to replay the Garden of Eden by reincarnating Adam and Eve throughout history. Filled with ghastly over-the-top performances and much eye-rolling innuendo
Sex Mission (1984)
Women-Ruled Future Comedy
A popular Polish comedy in its day about two men who awake from cryogenic suspension in a women-ruled future where men are obsolete. Some of the comedy reads as very dated watching the film today
Sheena (1984)
Jungle Girl
Big screen adaptation of the Will Eisner comic-book and 1950s tv series about a female Tarzan. A blank Tanya Roberts in the title role and a campy script pushes it well into bad movie status
Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
Christmas Slasher Film/Psycho Santa
Not the first but the most famous of the psycho Santa films. At the time, it was just another slasher film exploiting a holiday title. However, this does the slasher movie formula rather well while digging into Christmas sentiment with a bite that takes you aback
The Silent One (1984)
Deaf Polynesian Boy Befriends a Sea Turtle
New Zealand made film about a deafmute boy in a Cook Islands tribe and his mystic communion with a sea turtle
Splash! (1984)
Mermaid Comedy
One of the earliest films from Ron Howard as director, a bubbly infectiously light comedy with Tom Hanks in a romance with mermaid Daryl Hannah. This was a hit and offered major career breakthroughs for Howard, Hanks, Hannah and John Candy.
Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984)
Intergalactic Adventures
Leonard Nimoy steps into the director’s chair of the third Star Trek film and his doing marks the shift of the films from intergalactic adventuring into the regulars engaged in a safe, easy set of adventures playing to fan audiences
Starman (1984)
Alien Visitor
John Carpenter abandons horror to make one of the better E.T.-inspired cute and cuddly alien visitor films. The film’s grasp of science is sometimes shaky but the film gains an enormous amount from Jeff Bridges’ performance as the alien trying to adjust to being in a human body
Starship (1984)
Planetary Adventure
A planetary adventure from the director of Battlefield Earth. I waited 35 years to find a copy of this – it looked incredibly promising when I saw production artwork back in the 1980s
Supergirl (1984)
Comic-Book Superheroine
The Christopher Reeve Superman films started superbly but became wrecked by the producers’ insistence on the insertion of comedy element. Here they turn their attentions to Superman’s cousin Kara whose screen debut is derailed by a horrendously overacting Faye Dunaway
Surf II (1984)
Gonzo Comedy
Eccentric 80s frat rat/surfer comedy – part of the weird joke is that there never was a Surf I. Eddie Deezen is a mad scientist turning surfers into zombies with a soda made of industrial waste.
Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1984)
Sword and Sorcery
Cannon Films make an adaptation of the Mediaeval legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Routine 1980s fantasy cinema with Sean Connery looking embarrassed as the Green Knight
The Terminator (1984)
Time-Travelling Killer Android
One of the 2-3 most influential SF films since 1980. James Cameron creates a barrelling powerhouse of a film, all lorded over by Arnold Schwarzenegger as the relentless killer machine in the role that defined his career
Threads (1984)
Nuclear War
UK tv movie that sets out to offer an unflinching depiction of a nuclear strike. About as bleak as it is possible to get
Tightrope (1984)
S&M/Serial Killer Thriller
One of the darkest films Clint Eastwood ever made where he is a detective who becomes tempted by the world of BDSM during his pursuit of a serial killer
The Toxic Avenger (1984)
Mutant Superhero/Bad Taste Splatter/Troma Film
The film that launched the name of Troma Films. The world’s first superhero splatter film, this readily dives into bad taste just to see what kind of offence it can get away with
Trial Run (1984)
Feminist Slasher
Woman directed New Zealand horror film where Annie Whittle is attacked by a mysterious assailant
The Tripods [Season 1] (1984)
Earth After an Alien Invasion
Classic tv mini-series about rebellion in a future where Earth is controlled by giant alien tripod machines, this still holds up as something great today
2010 (1984)
2001: A Space Odyssey Sequel
2001: A Space Odyssey did not need a sequel but this fits the bill surprisingly well. A warmer and much more human film than Stanley Kubrick made, this has some of the very best effects of its era.
V: The Final Battle (1984)
Alien Invasion
Follow-up to the popular V mini-series, this is an absurd melodrama that is made up of incredibly bad science-fiction writing and directed with zero plausibility
Voyage of the Rock Aliens (1984)
Alien Visitors Musical Comedy
Forgotten 1980s obscurity about aliens come to Earth in search of rock music that feels like someone attempted to conduct a version of Grease for the Star Wars crowd. Filled with utterly excruciating slapstick humour and bland songs from bands that nobody has heard from again
The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984)
Sword and Sorcery
One of the spate of sword and sorcery films that came out during this period, marginally better than most. The plot is a blatant copy of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo where a swordsman (David Carradine) sets two rival gang factions in a town against one another
Wizards of the Lost Kingdom (1984)
Sword and Sorcery
A painfully cheap entry in the 1980s fad for sword and sorcery films.