Alright, now it is on. 1984 is a huge year for movies in general and for me in particular. Picking five favorite films from this year was a grueling test of resolve and personal fortitude. I can’t tell you how difficult this was for me and it is damn near physically painful to omit some of these from the top five but such is the nature of ranked lists.

As mentioned last time, this year was incredibly foundational for me and the top five are just the tip of this particular iceberg. I normally try to limit my runners up so it isn’t ridiculous but I am going to do less of that this time around because holy shit. They are, in vaguely release order:

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, This is Spinal Tap, Police Academy, Romancing the Stone, Star Trek III: the Search for Spock, Streets of Fire, Top Secret!, the Last Starfighter, Neverending Story, Purple Rain, Cloak and Dagger, Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8^th Dimension, Dreamscape, Amadeus, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Night of the Comet, Breakin’ 2 Electric Boogaloo, and Johnny Dangerously. Holy Shit.

If you have not read the introduction to this exercise, I recommend you do so for context regarding what this all is. In short, be nice, these are my favorites based on how I encountered them in my life and what they mean for mean to me. This is not a list of objective best movies in their respective years and if a movie that you love or is considered great does not appear, it does not mean that I think it is shit or that I don’t love it. These are just my favorites for particular personal reasons. Feel free to let everyone know your favorite five for 1984 and why as well. It is also worth mentioning that there will be spoilers here for what are now 42-year-old movies. Let’s dig in!

1.Ghostbusters-Ivan Riteman

Directed by Ivan Riteman from a script from Dan Akryod and Harold Ramis, Ghostbusters might very well be my favorite comedy of the 80s. Telling the story of three parapsychologists ousted from their positions at the university who go into business for themselves after discovering that they can capture and hold ghosts, Ghostbusters is at once hilarious and visually impressive. With elements of horror weaved into a story that brings science fiction to blue collar sensibility, Ghostbusters has something for everyone.

The cast here is insane with Bill Murry, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, Dan Akroyd, Rick Moranis, Sigourney Weaver, William Atherton, Annie Potts, and the ghost of John Belushi (Slimer). That is incredibly stacked and everyone fires on all cylinders here making this a stone cold classic that holds up today just as well as it did in 1984. Repeated attempts at sequels and reboots have been made including three cartoons and while I like all of those things to varying degrees, none of them match the original.

The development history of Ghostbusters is fairly long and complex and well worth checking out. Indeed, entire books have been written about the development so I will not get into a ton of it here but suffice it to say, it is something of a miracle that this movie exists at all. Originally conceived by Dan Ackroyd as a more serious, future set sci-fi epic starring John Belushi, and depending who you believe, Eddie Murphy, the movie went through multiple iterations. Hell, arriving at the name Ghostbusters was fraught with rights issues and cease and desists.  The rights were tied up with the 1970’s show ‘the Ghost Busters’ which involved two men and a gorilla chasing ghosts and Ghostsmashers and Ghostchasers were considered before some executive hopping around studios allowed the rights to the name to be purchased for $50,000. The amusing post-script to that is that, following Ghostbusters’s success in theaters, Filmation, who had the rights to the 70s property, put out a cartoon based on it and forced the eventual Ghostbusters cartoon to be called ‘the Real Ghostbusters.’ Good lord.

The cast that we got for the movie also evolved quite a bit in pre-production. After John Belushi died, Bill Murry came on to the project, mostly it seems, so that he could make Razor’s Edge later, and it is now hard for me to imagine the movie with Belushi. Constantly eating ghost Slimer, who was not named until the cartoon, was based on Belushi in order to give him a ‘presence’ in the movie. Similarly, John Candy was offered the role of Luis Tully but he turned it down after admitting that he didn’t understand it and wanted to play him with a German accent. Sandra Bernheart was originally considered for Jeannine before Annie Pots took it over. Paul Ruebens was originally considered for Gozer, who was conceived as an architect before he passed and they decided to go the androgynous route that was based on David Bowie and Grace Jones. As for Eddie Murphy, legend has it that Winston was originally part of the core Ghostbusters before they pivoted to making Winston a late addition. As much as I love Murphy, I think Ernie Hudson is perfect. Also, I wouldn’t have wanted to lose out on Axel Foley if Murphy participated.

As mentioned above, there is a ton of information out there about the making and behind the scenes of this movie. It is like a lot of iconic movies in that it really is a miracle that it ever got made at all. The impact of this movie on pop culture is huge with a legacy of the aforementioned sequels, reboots, and cartoons as well as video games, comic books, toys, board games, clothing, cereal, a popular drink, and quotable lines that have infiltrated the lexicon and are in common use today.

I saw Ghostbusters opening weekend with my parents. We went to see it at the Buena Vista, the theater I talked about in the Star Trek II entry. It was two screens and we were lined up around the building. I remember this vividly. It was raining and we all stood in it for our chance to see the movie. My Aunt, Uncle, and cousins were supposed to see it with us but they got there late and they got sold out and diverted to Top Secret! which isn’t so bad all things considered, but they did not make the Ghostbusters cut. We were finding our seats as the camera scrolled up to the door of Venkman’s office. I didn’t really get why anyone would want Venkman to burn in hell at the time but I was eight so what do you want me to do?

I fucking loved Ghostbusters. I talked about it to all my friends. I re-enacted scenes from memory with friends at a party. I wanted to see it more. When the time came for it to be out on VHS, I made a copy after renting it and watched it over and over. I counted how many times I watched it in the first month and the total was 50 before I stopped counting. I was obsessed. I still am, if I am honest.

Venkman was easily my favorite character at the time and continues to be one of my favorite characters of all time. When I was in high school people used to tell me that I looked like I could be related to Bill Murry and while I have never seen it myself, I imagine that it has something to do with the level to which I emulated his dry delivery and facial expressions. The amount of Venkman that is in me even today would be disturbing if I didn’t still think it was awesome.

I didn’t realize at the time, when I first saw it, that I was living in a haunted house. I knew a lot of weird shit happened and I thought that I saw people that weren’t there and worried I was crazy. When my mom told me that it was haunted when I was in eighth grade, I was relieved. This eventually led me to taking a parapsychology class in college, meeting my writing/investigating partner Katie at the video store I hung out at due to our mutual love of ghosts, and 30+ years as a paranormal investigator which includes four books published on the subject. This is a huge part of my life and it would not likely be there without Ghostbusters.

People talk about movies changing their lives a lot in a variety of ways and that is all valid. In this particular case, it is in a very tangible and literal way. It is hilarious, it is comfort food, it is a near-perfect film, and it led me on a lifelong journey that has transcended a fun movie that Dan Ackroyd wrote because of his own personal connection to the paranormal. When I say Ghostbusters is an important movie to me, please understand how much of a massive understatement that is. I literally would not be who I am today without this movie.

2.Beverly Hills Cop-Martin Brest

A fish out of water tale of a hard-bitten Detroit detective trying to solve a friend’s murder in Beverly Hills, Beverly Hills Cop is a hilarious starring vehicle for Eddie Murphy that capitalized on successes from SNL and Trading Places and solidified him as a massive star. With support from Judge Reinhold, Paul Reiser, John Ashton, Ronnie Cox, and even Bronson Pinchot, Beverly Hills Cop is a heavy hitter from start to finish.

If Ghostbusters had a long and fraught development cycle, Beverly Hills Cop saw it and raised it. Originally conceived in 1977 by Don Simpson, the concept was originally meant to be a serious action movie before morphing over the intervening years to be a comedy.  Mickey Rourke was originally attached to star before it moved over to Sylvester Stallone. Directors considered included David Cronenberg and Martin Scorcesse. Stallone’s ideas changed the tone and storyline considerably, with several of those eventually ending up in Cobra (it is unclear if one of those ideas was him cutting pizza with a pari of scissors). Other actors considered before Murphy taking over include: James Caan, Richard Prior, and Al Pacino. It is hard to imagine any of those configurations next to the finished project but it that final project was heavily influenced by Eddie Murphy, which further solidifies that he was absolutely the right one for the job.

I saw Beverly Hills Cop on video mostly on the strength of my cousin’s advocacy. This was less a product of my parents bending the rules of R-rated movies for me and more a case of top notch lawyering from my cousin. I really dug it a lot at the time and I bought the soundtrack on audiocassette.   Part of my mom’s strange religion based rules about content I could consume involved an almost complete music black out. I could listen to Weird Al, the Monkees, Huey Lewis and the News, and Genesis. Also soundtracks. I could generally get away with movie soundtracks. They were my little peak into the lives of normal people who could listen to whatever they want. This is largely why I have an outsized appreciation for Kenny Loggins and that brand of soundtrack rock. So, Beverly Hills Cop exists for me as one of my favorite movies but also one of my favorite soundtracks. In case you are ever wondering, I’m just burning, doing the neutron dance, especially when the heat is on.

3.Karate Kid-John G Avildsen

Here is another doozy for me. I saw Karate Kid for the first time at my grandma’s house. My cousin had rented it and something else the night before. I wanted to watch it, and he wanted to watch whatever else it was that he rented because he had already watched Karate Kid. I have no memory of any kind what the other movie was. My grandma made him show me Karate Kid, which is sort of ironic in its way given that it is about a kid learning karate to escape from the torment of bullies, when my cousin bullied me pretty regularly back then. I am not sure my grandma did me any favors in that department by making him show it to me but obviously I loved it. He did too so I am not really sure what he was bitching about.

I got into karate in 5^th grade off the strength of Karate Kid but unfortunately that school was more like Cobra Kai than Miyagi Do so I was only in it for about a year. When seventh grade rolled around and I was savagely bullied on the daily, I wanted to give karate another shot but my parents had decided by then that I was a quitter because they felt like I didn’t stick with anything. Ironically that was because in soccer, little league, and karate I quit because I was being bullied there. It wasn’t until I was 18 and could sign myself up that I got into karate again, this time in Shuri-ryu karate, an Okinawan style not dissimilar to what Mr. Miyagi teaches in the movie.

Karate changed my life and I have trained in martial arts ever since. I currently co-own a Muay Thai and Mixed Martial Arts gym with the hopes that others can learn the self confidence I did from being involved with martial arts. All that started for me with Karate Kid.

I unabashedly love the entire franchise and have followed it to Cobra Kai and the most recent Karate Kid Legacy. I think the first was the best in its simplicity. It has been emulated over and over again such that it has become its own sub-genre of martial arts movies. Some are good and some are bad but none of them offer the same heart that beats inside Karate Kid. This is another movie that absolutely changed my life and continues to inform who I am as a person. As far as I am concerned, it is a masterpiece.

4.Gremlins-Joe Dante

Here we have another historical heavy hitter with Gremlins. Not just because it was a franchise started and inspired dozens of imitators, but because the horror-comedy was ‘so violent’ for a PG rating and led to the creation of the PG-13 rating system. Sole credit does not belong to Gremlins, Temple of Doom weighed in here too, but it was originally released with a PG and then later changed to PG-13. This was probably a good move but at the time when it happened, I felt like it was just one more roadblock to me actually getting to see shit I wanted to see. And boy oh boy did I want to see Gremlins.

I wanted to see it in the theater but I was unable to and I waited with bated breath for it to come out on video. I had the movie poster on my door, with Billy holding a box that was slightly ajar and Gizmo’s hand reaching out, and I imagined how rad it must be.

When it came out on video, it was really hard to come by and I was super stressed by not being able to see it right away. I was an only child, after all, and movies were my main source of personal fulfillment in those days. I remember this wait led to the one time I ever mouthed off to my Grandpa in my life as he was trying to call me down because I was having a panic about my parents not showing up on time. They had snagged Gremlins and I was an impatient little shit. I continue to regret this to this day.

When I watched it, it was everything I wanted it to be. Kate’s story about Christmas notwithstanding, Gremlins feels very much like comfort food for me and it is the sort of movie I can put on to feel better. I have seen it a few times in the theater now, once with a foam gremlin ears hat on, and I will do so at every opportunity because it just makes me feel good. It is worth mentioning that as much as I love Gremlins, I love Gremlins 2s meta-comedy that much more. They are apparently doing a third movie and I am super down assuming they don’t fuck it up. And, yes, it is a fucking Christmas movie you animals.

5.Terminator-James Cameron

It is absolutely insane that Terminator is number five on this list. This is a testament to how many amazing movies came out this year. It is honestly a toss up ranking wise between this and Gremlins but Gremlins edges it out due to how late I came to this movie in the first place.

Terminator, the story of a cyborg sent back in time by rogue AI to kill the mother of a future military leader before he is born, came out at a time when I was knee deep in being absolutely terrified of horror movies. As such, my mom had a bit of trouble determining the difference in things that I would find pants wetting terrifying and fucking bad ass. It is pretty hard to blame her given that choosing wrong would land a tall for his age eight year old in bed with them for an indeterminate amount of time.

So it came to pass that my mom said no when I wanted to watch the Terminator. She described a terrifying scene with a robot skeleton chasing someone through an industrial area that she thought would scare me. I countered that that sounded like the coolest thing I had ever heard but she wasn’t having it. So I didn’t see Terminator until after I saw Terminator 2, which may be the best action movie ever made.

Going back to Terminator after T2 was both rad and disappointing. I think had I seen Terminator first it would have meant more and I would have appreciated the original more. As it was, I loved both but T2 is one of my absolute favorite movies ever made so it isn’t really close.

With all this in mind, it is important to take a moment to say that I attempted to break the cycle of motherly tyranny for my younger cousin Zack, whose mom was several measures stricter than man but strict in the same way, by showing him Terminator at an age I thought was probably okay. It scared the living shit out of him and I got in a bunch of trouble. So, I don’t know, maybe my mom was right all along, and Terminator would have scared me. I don’t think so though because it remains one of the coolest concepts ever. I just wish that it wasn’t starting to feel so much like a documentary nowadays. With that in mind, I guess I think it is way scarier now than I would have back in. Oh well. It is still badass.