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The 1980s Movie [Lex]

When conceiving this post, I began broadly. I came up with a slew of titles that I believed represented “a 1980s movie.” My list included Hoosiers (1986), Mr. Mom (1983), Nine to Five (1980), Cloak and Dagger (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), Risky Business (1983), and The Karate Kid (1984).

Why these movies? I deliberately left out blockbusters from the 1980s, such as E.T., Star Wars, and any of the Indiana Jones pictures. Spectacles and blockbusters have been a given since at least the 1920s, so I didn’t feel a high budget movie qualified as representative of any particular decade. Different appetites (sword and sandal, war, sci-fi), yes, but no distinctive aspect that would tie any big-budget series of films to a decade.

I also put Academy Award-style films to the side—for the same reason. Movies seeking Oscar glory are always going to exist and don’t necessarily possess anything unique to a decade. Finally, I did not count the burgeoning independent film scene of the 1980s or foreign films.

What then, in my estimation, made the films on my list “80s” movies, other than the years in which they were produced? These mainstream domestic pictures, in my opinion, were particular to the 1980s because they were mid-budget fare, well-structured, quite clear in their dramatic purpose, and reflective of the more ordered zeitgeist of the Reagan era.

Many films will mirror the times in which they are produced, but I think there was something more distinctive to a middle grade 1980s movie than in other decades. Of course I have to check my bias. I came of age in the 1980s and am more familiar with the movies of that era, but I think I can dismiss these prejudices with a quick review of film history.

After the silent era, Hollywood entered its golden age, and the studio system, though legally dashed in the mid-1940s, managed to hang around through the 1950s and even into the 1960s. By the end of the 1960s, there were new rules, and the 1970s, many say, was the most free-handed decade for mainstream filmmakers as Hollywood reorganized itself.

By the 1980s, order took hold again and corporations edged out the latter-day studio mogul. Thus, you had a decade finally free of old studio rules but somewhat brought to heel by the new, conglomerate powers that be, as well as a Reaganesque social ethos. The result for cinema was the kind of middle tier films on my list.

Did this category of film exist in other eras? Of course, but they were more akin to b-roll or schlocky genre movies than solid, medium budget pictures with clean and compelling metaphors. To me, these are the hallmarks of a 1980s movie.
This type of movie hung around into the 1990s until the internet came along and probably destroyed quality filmmaking at the mainstream level forever.

You’ll never see a movie like Mr. Mom on 3,000 screens again. Blame it on Covid or CGI (now AI) or streaming or the unslakable thirst for prequels, sequels and origin stories, but the simple, effective, and meaningful medium-budget picture of the 1980s is likely not to be produced again—at least for broad consumption in domestic movie theaters.

Circling back, I thought I could discuss most, if not all, of the films on my list. But the more I wrote, I realized it would be too long an essay. So, I decided to dissect one movie I believe is emblematic of what I consider a 1980s movie. That film is Cloak and Dagger.

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Cloak and Dagger is about a boy and his father (Dabney Coleman) who recently lost their mother/wife and are in the throes of grieving. The father works on an air force base and is frequently absent. The boy, Davey (Henry Thomas), is left to his own devices much of the time and often spins tales about espionage and conspiracies. He’s aided in these fantasies by the fictional character Jack Flack (also played by Coleman), who is a master spy of some kind. He eggs Davey on, much of the time to no good, until of course they stumble upon a real spy ring.

But the plot is incidental to the real power of the movie. Davey and his father are still reeling from their loss. Davey needs his father to help him get over his trauma, but the father is too busy—and too wounded himself—to give Davey the support he needs. Thus, Davey descends into the world of imaginary spies and secret missions to salve his wounds.

Jack Flack can only be seen by Davey, and the dramatic purpose of the movie is similarly shaded by the plot. Cloak and Dagger is not about a tween boy who [SPOILER ALERT] uncovers a conspiracy to encode secret military plans in a video game cassette. It’s a movie about grief and healing.

Cloak and Dagger might seem a little silly to modern eyes, but even its title is an indicator of its deftness. ‘Cloak and dagger’ of course defines the nature of the story, an adventure tale fraught with disguise and menace. At the same time, the title underscores the metaphor of the movie: Davey and his father are themselves caught in a personal caper.

Davey needs his widowered, hard-working father to be there for him. He needs his father to be his hero, and that’s why at the very end of the film [SPOLIER ALERT again] the two figures merge with the real father taking the place of the imaginary Jack Flack, and both father and son realizing they will have to behave differently to get past their grief. This movie is not about spies and secret tapes but a boy who needs his father to be his hero, not a mythical, cartoon version of one.

***
My debut essay on AoS was about the difference between clever and good screenwriting, and Cloak and Dagger epitomizes the style of good writing found in the 1980s, medium-budget range, which is almost a lost art now.

In that essay, I explained that a movie need not be a straight drama with a serious tone (from the 1980s think Ordinary People or Chariots of Fire) to be considered “good.” Offbeat films, even silly ones can fall into the good camp of screenwriting as opposed to the “clever,” which means the movie is more about its plot hook and therefore superficial.

Perhaps it’s no accident, then, that several of the movies on my list are goofy, veering towards hokey—with Cloak and Dagger the goofiest and hokiest of my choices.

Putting aside its playfulness, Cloak and Dagger is a tight, three-act movie with well-rounded characters, effective dialogue, smart pacing, and, above all, a strong dramatic purpose with which viewers can connect. The conclusion, [last SPOILER ALERT], where Jack Flack and the father merge with the father assuming the dominant role is one of the more touching final moments in a movie that I can recall.

Cloak and Dagger was a modest financial success and played on almost 1,200 screens. Had it not been up against the Summer Olympics I believe it would have gone wider and done even better business.

Much of Cloak and Dagger’s success in the 1980s and its impact since then, I believe, is due to its light touch, and, to me, a great deal of what makes an 80s movie just that is an insouciance mixed into the potage.

Saturday Night Fever is a movie that is almost inseparable from the 1970s, but it has many characteristics of an 80s movie—at least according to my definition. Yet there is one key difference which would keep it off my list.

Saturday Night Fever’s final moments leave things open-ended. As the credits roll, we don’t quite know what Tony Manero has achieved or if he has changed, but we know when Bender raises his fist at the conclusion of The Breakfast Club that something significant has shifted within him. The same can be said in the concluding frames of Cloak and Dagger, and that’s what defines an 80s movie—the cleanness and assuredness of its arc as a story.

This is the effect of Reagan’s America, a little bit square but surely a better and more self-confident era for the United States and filmmakers. There are no loose ends or dumb plot holes in my idea of a 1980s movie, and the stories are entirely believable within the context of the world they establish.

It was “morning in America again” or so Reagan said in a political ad in the 1980s. Our movies were also finding themselves again in this decade, and I’m not sure other decades can say the same.

Of course, I expect to be challenged on this theory. It is all a little speculative. Were there smaller, compact, issues-pictures in the 1950s, for example? Undoubtedly; but I’m not sure any of them could be called a “50s” movie. Were Magnificent Obsession or All That Heaven Allows or Imitation of Life (three wonderful Douglas Sirk pictures) unique to the 1950s or just produced then? I can see a case either way, and I expect my conceit to be tested.

In that spirit, what’s a “1980s movie” I’m leaving out? Or what other decade has a type of film particular to that time period? Prove me wrong, in essence, or point out that the type of movie I’m describing falls in other eras and is not unique to the 1980s.

Maybe the 80s will only be remembered for its music or big hair and shoulder pads, but I’m making a case that a certain type of film should also be indelibly written into that decade.