Worst to Best: The Summer Blockbusters of 1984

Revisiting and re-evaluating a summer filled with nerds, gremlins, karate kids, and last starfighters.

Every Friday (well, nine Fridays out of ten), our paid subscribers get a post that our free subscribers do not: a call to answer an open question about some sort of movie topic. This week’s question stirred a lively discussion: 1982 is obviously the best year for summer blockbusters, what is the second best? I chose 1984, and while I admit that nostalgia certainly plays a role in my thinking — I was eleven and went to movie after movie all summer long — the films themselves make a pretty good case.

But, my list-prone mind asks, how should they be ranked? Well, let’s try to figure that out. A few caveats: I’m going to attempt to rank these based on how I feel about them now. (Or how I would expect to feel about the ones I’ve not revisited recently.) I’m also going to use a big-tent definition. Is The Natural a summer blockbuster as we now define them (or as they had essentially been defined by ‘84)? Nah. But it was a big-deal movie with a big-deal movie star released in an era when that was the equivalent of, say, making a film in which Thor makes some lame jokes and saves some kids from a space kidnapper.

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Finally, here is my list of shame: notable summer of ’84 movies I have never seen: The Bounty, Hardbodies (no, honestly), Beat Street, Under the Volcano (I know, I know), The Pope of Greenwich Village, Rhinestone, Conan the Destroyer, The Muppets Take Manhattan (I’m sure I’ve seen most of it in pieces over the years), Best Defense, Meatballs II, Cheech & Chong’s The Corsican Brothers, Grandview U.S.A., Joy of Sex, The Philadelphia Experiment (I don’t think), The Woman in Red, Dreamscape (bought the DVD to cover it for Laser Age; maybe I still will…), Sheena (no, honestly again), Tightrope (which I’ve seen in part and now I’m kind of putting it aside so there’s at least one new-to-me ape-free Eastwood-starring movie I can treat myself to someday), Oxford Blues, and Bolero. 

That still leaves a lot, however. And here they are, ranked to the best of my ability and using my best judgment.

23. Revenge of the Nerds

Shifting cultural mores have made this one-time cable fixture about as beloved as Ebola and rightly so. If playing a horrifying act of invasion of privacy for laughs wasn’t bad enough, it essentially climaxes with a sexual assault that’s treated as heroic. (The choice has continued to resurface and haunt us in unexpected places.) But even with those moments aside, should we ever have embraced this grotesque caricature of outcast culture? I’m with Harvey Pekar in American Splendor: it’s a Hollywood bullshit version of what it means to be a nerd. Besides, as in the movie, the nerds ultimately won in the real world. We’re living in what they created, and a lot of it sucks.

22. The Gods Must be Crazy

Released abroad in 1980, this South African/Botswanan co-production about a San tribesman from the Kalahari attempting to dispose of a Coca-Cola bottle he believes to be a cursed gift of the gods became an arthouse staple in the U.S.. I don’t think I caught it until I was a teenager, and I don’t want to pat myself on the back for being more enlightened than the rest of the world, but even then it seemed pretty condescending. I’d have to revisit it to have that feeling confirmed (or maybe disproven), but I’m not sure I’ll get around to that anytime soon.

21. Cannonball Run II

For years I would tell people this was the worst movie I’d ever seen. I had the occasion to revisit it a couple of years ago, and it’s definitely not good — even if it doesn’t quite earn Gene Siskel’s claim that it “gives movies a bad name” — but it’s hard to be too down on any film that features both Jackie Chan and Frank Sinatra (and Tim Conway, Don Knotts, Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, etc., etc.).

20. Bachelor Party

I retain little memory of this raunchy Tom Hanks-starring comedy beyond its forbidden glimpses of nudity. I’m going to assume it belongs at least above Cannonball Run II.

19. Electric Dreams

I’ve got a soft spot for movies about computers made before anyone really had a grasp of what computers could do. This is sort of a comedic take on Demon Seed featuring a home computer that, after being doused with champagne, comes to life and falls in love with Virginia Madsen. (Who among us..?) It’s a true time capsule thanks to its antiquated technology, high-‘80s soundtrack (including the pretty great “Together in Electric Dreams,” a team-up between Giorgio Moroder and Human League’s Philip Oakley), and Steve Barron’s direction. An A-list music video director — he’d already handled “Billie Jean” and everything from “Take On Me” to “Money For Nothing” lay ahead of him — Barron brings in basically every early-MTV stylistic trick you can imagine. All that plus Bud Cort voices the computer. (Maybe this should be even higher?)

18. Sixteen Candles

On the one hand, it’s incredibly short-sighted (and tiresome) to judge art based on the moral standards of the current moment. On the other, maybe that art always sucked, and shifting moral standards just exposed its shortcomings. (See Revenge of the Nerds above.) Sixteen Candles doesn’t suck, but it’s undeniably on the lower end of the Golden Age of John Hughes Teen Movies spectrum. (Weird Science, now that one sucks.) Yes, it made Molly Ringwald a star and helped give ’80s teen angst a cool soundtrack, but it’s considerably more facile than the better films that followed (which had plenty of their own shallow spots). All that plus Long Duk Dong and some deeply suss sexual attitudes.

17. C.H.U.D.

It’s no C.H.U.D., that’s what I’m saying.

16. Breakin’

True story: toward the end of fifth grade my class was allowed a movie day, one voted on from three choices: Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Breakin’. If I remember correctly, Star Wars and Raiders each received three votes (I voted Raiders) leading to a  landslide Breakin’ victory. Did democracy fail? Maybe, but I get it. Breakin’ is a quickie Golan-Globus-produced attempt to cash-in on the then-hot breakdancing craze with a beyond-thin plot. On the other hand, like much of the world, this was our first real window into this world and it looked awesome. Breakin’ captures some great dancers at the height of their powers and features Ice T as the “Rap Talker.” This gives it the edge over C.H.U.D.

15. Firestarter

With all the bad adaptations of Stephen King that have piled up over the decades, it’s easy to forget that he was served pretty well by movies and television in the early days. Carrie, The Shining, Cujo, The Dead Zone, Christine, Salem’s Lot… that’s a pretty good run. 1984 brought the first chinks in the armor, via Children of the Corn and this Drew Barrymore-starring adaptation, but even these are perfectly watchable.

14. Red Dawn

More important than good, Red Dawn captures just how hot the Cold War felt as Reagan ran for a second term. And if someone’s going to create a fever dream fantasy of communists invading the United States driven by a view history as series of brutal conflicts in which only the strong survive, it may as well be John Milius, a true believer given free rein to express those views with some of the ’80s biggest teen stars. At least it’s an ethos, Dude.

13. Cloak & Dagger

Somehow the world did not go nuts for an espionage thriller starring the kid from E.T. and the boss from 9 to 5 in which the former imagines the latter to be a dashing spy. I liked it, though, and suspect I would still now.

12. The Last Starfighter

In one of those quirky release strategies decisions that fell out of favor long ago, Cloak & Dagger originally opened as part of a double feature with The Last Starfighter,  a different sort of story about an ordinary kid swept away to a more exciting and dangerous world. I rewatched this a few years ago. Fun stuff!

11. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

On the other hand, the last time I tried to watch Temple of Doom I bailed halfway through. It was probably just the mood I was in, but this and 1985’s The Goonies are from a stretch when Spielberg started to confuse cacophony with entertainment (and, in this case, some pretty uncomfortably retro racist depictions of India and China). When it hits the action scenes, however, it’s a lot easier to take.

10. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

It’s both baffling that this film — which plays like the second sequel to films that don’t exist — ever got made and that it’s cult isn’t even bigger than it is.

9. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

I always thought this challenged the every-other-Trek-movie-is-good truism. It’s no Wrath of Khan or The Voyage Home, but it’s a perfectly solid outing, and casting Christopher Lloyd as a Klingon is inspired.

8. Streets of Fire

I somehow didn’t catch up with Walter Hill’s music-fueled ‘50s-meets-‘80s act of madness until a couple of years ago. It’s a truly sui generis movie that, even when it doesn’t work, is kind of thrilling in its willingness to take its vision as far as it will go. It also suggests that Rick Moranis should have gotten more chances to play mean.

7. Top Secret!

Between Airplane! and The Naked Gun, the Zucker-Abrams-Zucker team bombed at the box office with their best film. I’m still kind of in awe at how it starts as a Cold War spoof then segues seamlessly into a World War II movie send-up by depicting East Germany as a place overrun with Nazis (complete with a French resistance movement for some reason). Star Val Kilmer slags it in the recent doc Val. With all due respect, he’s wrong.

6. The Karate Kid

I have not seen this movie approximately 5000 times, unlike my newsletter partner. But I remember it fondly.

5. The Natural

The Natural is a conundrum. What do you make of a film that beautifully and faithfully adapts Bernard Malamud’s novel up to a final scene that completely sells it out? It’s a story of how corruption and venality are entwined with the noblest of American myths. Until it’s just not. On the other hand, who would trade that finale for a downer in which Redford didn’t smash the lights? Maybe we need the myths, even the ones we know don’t tell the whole story.

4. Purple Rain

This is Prince’s own exercise in mythmaking, a semi-autobiographical musical in which he mostly comes off as a jerk. It’s not always clear how much self-awareness he brings to the material, but it also doesn’t matter that much. The movie has its flaws, but the music overwhelms them. Sometimes mythmaking actually offers a glimpse into the world of gods.

3. Ghostbusters

You almost need a thought exercise to appreciate Ghostbusters these days: think back to a time before the subsequent films and the toxic fandom and try to imagine just how weird it was to see a bunch of wisecracking stars in a special effects-heavy horror comedy. Why does it work? It’s kind of a weird ramble of a movie that tonally ought to be all over the place. Maybe it’s Bill Murray’s ability to drain the bombast out of every scene, even those that put him face-to-face with demonic forces from the ancient world. Whatever the case, everyone involved pulled off a neat trick. Once.

2. Gremlins

Joe Dante uses destructive little monsters to run roughshod over a picturesque small American town. This was, and remains, my kind of movie. (I think I discovered Bloom County and Mad magazine around the same time I watched this for the first time. Maybe irreverence can be acquired.)

1. Once Upon a Time in America

Again, I’m going big-tent with my definition of a summer blockbuster. Sergio Leone’s final film doesn’t really fit any definition of the term, but it was done so dirty when it was first released in the U.S. — cut from 229 minutes to 139 and drastically altered in the process — that it deserves us cutting it a break. It’s overwhelming in its original form, and not flawless, either. (It’s sometimes quite ugly in its sexual politics.) But it’s a true epic, Leone’s attempt to reinterpret the American gangster movie the way he reinterpreted the western. It’s filled with spectacular set pieces, a haunting sense of melancholy, and one of the most spectacularly pessimistic endings I’ve ever seen. And while Leone’s movies aren’t famous for their dialogue, it also features an exchange that’s stunning in its efficiency. After an absence of decades, Noodles (Robert De Niro) drops into the life of an old friend who wonders what he’s been up to between his violent youth and his middle age. His response: “I’ve been going to bed early.” Because what else is there to say?