TOP TEN U.S FILMS OF 1985
(I saw one at the cinema then. I have seen six today).
- Back to the Future (cinema – amazing)
- Rambo First Blood Part II (NS = Never seen)
- Rocky IV (saw on video in the 80s)
- The Color Purple (NS – Probably should have. Read book though)
- Out of Africa (90s TV. Mostly dull)
- Cocoon (NS properly – looks dull)
- The Jewel of the Nile (video or TV 80s – dull)
- Witness (TV/video. 90s – great)
- The Goonies (80s video. Good)
- Spies Like Us (NS)
I love Back to the Future.
I loved it when I was eight and I love it now. Not every childhood favourite survives the journey to adulthood. Fewer still survive the further journey into middle age. What pleases a child of the Eighties is, after all, not necessarily the same as what pleases a forty-something in the early 2020s. But Back To The Future is an exception. at least for me.
I already liked time travel-related things and was particularly excited after watching a documentary about the genre on TV which in fact turned out to be a cleverly disguised bit of publicity for the new film hosted by star Michael J. Fox himself. He was completely unknown to me at this point (his sitcom Family Ties was never very big in the UK) but he was perfect in the role and remains one of my heroes.
I saw it quickly. I remember the dates on the dashboard of the DeLorean being very close to the day I actually watched it.
I am aware now that there were problems behind the scenes. Disney wanted nothing to do with the film as they were concerned about the potential incest element of the storyline i.e. the young Lorraine fancies her own son. Initial lead Eric Stoltz was sacked early on after failing to tap into the comedy element of the story (a few shots featuring him can still be seen in the completed film). Crispin Glover effectively sabotaged his career by being endlessly temperamental on set: a shame really as he’s perfect as Marty’s father, George. None of these things in any way detract from the overall enjoyability of the film, however.
I am aware that it isn’t quite perfect. The make-up used to ‘age’ the younger actors, such as Lea Thompson, in the 1985 scenes isn’t great. She is that age in real-life now, after all (she is nine days older than her onscreen son, Michael J. Fox) and doesn’t look anything like that. Some people (such as Crispin Glover again) complain that the resolution of the film hinges too heavily on the McFlys’ Reagan-era material success. But though I’ve grown up to be quite the politics geek, this element has never really bothered me. It’s true Marty’s siblings have both become yuppies but George’s sense of fulfilment on becoming a successful science fiction author is surely not purely to do with money anyway.
Like most time travel things, it doesn’t make much sense. Why don’t George and Lorraine notice Marty has grown up to look exactly the same as their old teenaged friend? And, of course, if Marty had really altered the course of his parents’ lives so much, neither he nor his brother or sister wold have been born anyway, creating a paradox. But that would be no fun.
I didn’t see any of the other top ten US films at the cinema. The Goonies was a fun 80s video childhood favourite, complete with a pirate called One-Eyed Willie (a deliberate innuendo?) and a scene where a corpse falls out of a wardrobe onto a child.
I watched Rocky IV on video with both my brothers. I know the original Rocky is supposed to be the great one but for some bizarre reason the montage bit in Rocky IV (Rocky training in the snow while the evil Soviet, Dolph Lungren just takes steroids and says things like, “if he dies, he dies” has stayed with me like nothing else in any of the four or five Rocky films I’ve seen.
I also also saw Ghostbusters (released in 1984 and discussed already), 101 Dalmatians, The Last Starfighter (quite fun but a flop) and Return to Oz (awful and terrifying and a flop) at the cinema in 1985 but none of them made 1985’s US box office top ten.
And none of these were a patch on Back to the Future, a film that, ironically given its subject matter, has proven to be timeless.
Chris Hallam's World View 