Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1984 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. Imagine a world where This is Spinal Tap and Repo Man hit theaters on the same day. That is the world of 1984.

We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly three dozen.

Yes, we’re insane, but 1984 was that great of a year for film.

The articles will come out on the same day the films hit theaters in 1984 so that it is their true 40th anniversaries. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory.

This time around, it’s Sept. 14, 1984, and we’re off to see Exterminator 2, Ninja III: The Domination, and A Soldier’s Story.

Exterminator 2

When I watched Exterminator back in 1980/2020, I did not think four years later I would be reviewing a sequel.

John Eastland (Robert Ginty) has still been making his way around New York City from time to time with his flamethrower, dishing out his own form of justice. As the sequel kicks off, Eastland finds four men robbing a store and kills two of them, unaware they worked for X (Mario Van Peebles), and one of them was his brother. X vows revenge while also putting together a deal for a huge shipment of cocaine that he feels will let him take control of the city. Along the way, X kills an old friend of Eastland’s as well as his girlfriend, setting up the Exterminator to have plenty of reasons for taking down his budding criminal empire.

I was unaware they could make a worse film in the Exterminator series, but they succeeded.

There are massive leaps in logic throughout the film of people just seemingly figuring things out. But, by far, the funniest part comes when John and Caroline (Deborah Geffner) go through Central Park on a date, and stop to watch some break dancers… and continue to watch them. One has to remember this film was released by Cannon Film Distributors, which also released Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo in this year. Cannon really went all-in on break dancing in 1984.

The film isn’t entertaining in the “it’s so bad, it’s good” way. It’s just bad. The script is laughable and you spend most of the movie wondering how X thinks $500,000 worth of cocaine – which fits in just one duffle bag – is going to be enough for him to take over the city. A plan he states multiple times.

This is a definite pass.

Ninja III: The Domination

I lived in Phoenix, Arizona, from 1971 to 1978. Both my parents were raised there.

We had no idea the Valley of the Sun had many issues with ninjas.

Christie Ryder (Lucinda Diskey) is a telephone linewoman, and while working she spots a ninja dying in the desert who had just engaged in a lengthy fight on a golf course. (It actually makes sense in the film despite making no sense here) She runs over to check on him, and his spirit possesses her, making her into his vessel of vengeance against those who killed him. She ends up falling for a policeman who was involved in the death of the ninja and later has to try to fight the ninja spirit from killing him as well.

This movie tries hard to cash in on the ninja crazy of the early 1980s, but it is just so off-the-wall that it is distracting. You have the fact the ninjas are all running around Phoenix – which, even if you never lived there, it’s distracting as the desert setting makes no sense – horrible special effects, and a very odd sex scene involving V8. Yes, as in the juice. And it is more of a cringe-inducing moment than anything sexy.

Once again, this is a film from Cannon Film Distributors, and while there is no breakdancing, Diskey is the woman in both Breakin’ films. In other words, she starred in three Cannon films in one year. You have to respect her grind.

This film is, once again, bad, but it’s good for some laughs such as the incredibly bad floating sword scene. It’s worth checking out as part of several 80s trends, but don’t expect to walk away loving it.

And just think of the poor residents of Phoenix who have had to put up so many ninjas.

A Soldier’s Story

After watching two films by Cannon Film Distributors, it was nice to see something completely different.

Based on a play, CPT. Richard Davenport (Howard E. Rollins Jr.) is sent to Fort Neal in Louisiana to investigate the murder of Master Sergeant Vernon Waters (Adolph Caesar). Davenport uncovers many secrets of the segregated base operating in the Jim Crow South during the time of World War II.

The film is engaging from start to finish, although there are times when you wish for a bit less of the murder mystery and more of just the soldiers’ lives. They are fully fleshed-out characters; you want to learn more about them, but there is insufficient time.

It’s not a cheerful watch as you hear about what everyone is going through, or what the ultimate reason is for the murder, but it’s a worthwhile use of your time for some amazing perfomances.

1984 Movie Reviews will return on Sept. 19 with Amadeus!

Director:Gurutej Shetty

Cast:Kiran Raj, Radhya R, Sameeksha, Ravi Shankar, Yash Shetty, Apurva

Published 14 September 2024, 04:31 IST

It would be completely understandable that Ron Howard, having directed more than two dozen genre-tripping films spanning six decades, would want to shake things up a bit by jumping into something outside his proven comfort zone.

And it would be equally logical that the vehicle to take him there would be a certifiably bizarre but true account of a 1920s German philosopher who sets up an experimental society with his lover/disciple on a remote island in the Galápagos, only to have it all implode when opportunists come and crash the party.

But despite all the intriguing possibilities of the concept and a game, international cast including Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Daniel Brühl and Sydney Sweeney, Eden, handed its world premiere at Toronto, never finds its happy place. The prevailing overwrought tone lands more cartoonish than satirical, while a protracted running time accentuates the film’s deficiencies.

The movie certainly starts promisingly enough, efficiently setting up the life and times of Dr. Friedrich Ritter (Law). In 1929, he flees German society and its bourgeois values to create a new home on the remote island of Floreana, living off of limited natural resources with his survivalist partner, Dore Strauch (Kirby).

But the couple’s solitary existence is interrupted by the arrival of Heinz Wittmer (Brühl), a World War I vet with a younger new wife, Margaret (Sweeney), and a son, Harry (Jonathan Tittel). They have been following Ritter’s dispatches and hope the land’s virgin air might cure Harry’s tuberculosis, just as it appears to have kept Strauch’s multiple sclerosis under control.

Feeling less than hospitable, Ritter and Strauch glare at the newbies with their safari shorts and butterfly nets, figuring they won’t make it until the first rains.

But while the family prove surprisingly resilient, building a home for themselves and their soon-to-be newborn, their co-existence is freshly threatened by the entrance of the Baroness Eloise Bosquet de Wagner Wehrhorn (de Armas), accompanied by a pocket harem of young men, who intends to build the world’s most exclusive resort on the rocky terrain.

It soon becomes clear that the Baroness, with her long strand of pearls and a hard-to-place accent that sounds much like Anna Delvey’s, is a scheming instigator. She proceeds to pit the inhabitants against each other, leading to an inevitable descent into madness.

Despite an inspired setup that might suggest Werner Herzog’s Gilligan’s Island, Howard and screenwriter Noah Pink (Tetris) shipwreck the Queensland-shot vehicle in a mishmash of styles. Neither quite satire nor thriller nor murder mystery, the film cries out for a sharper attack.

It’s the kind of tale that would have been a natural fit for the likes of Mike White, whose acutely devious White Lotus sensibility would have been right at home here. But although Howard delivers some effective set pieces, notably a harrowing sequence in which Margaret must deliver her own baby, little about Eden feels consistent.

As a result, the performances are likewise hit and miss. De Armas does the best she can with her femme fatale role, even though she ultimately lacks the satirical chops of a more seasoned character actress to really hit it home.

Meanwhile, Law (so commanding in another TIFF offering, The Order) grows so tiresome as the smug, pontificating Dr. Ritter that by the time he eventually loses his mind, you can’t blame it for wanting to get away.

Only Sweeney manages to retain the viewer’s sympathy and her character’s sanity as the decent pillar of stability that is Margaret — who, as the end credits and archival footage reveal, would remain on the island until her death in 2000, and where her descendants host tourists at Wittmer Lodge to this day.

Now that premise sounds more like something in Howard’s wheelhouse.