Blast from the past: 15 movie gems of 1985

The Company of Wolves

Director Neil Jordan’s sumptuous Gothic fantasy horror is a haunting twist on “Little Red Riding Hood” adapted from a short story by Angela Carter in her anthology of fairy-tale reinventions, The Bloody Chamber. The central narrative concerns a young girl named Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson) who sports a knitted red cape and encounters a rakish huntsman/werewolf (Micha Bergese) in the woods en route to her grandmother’s (Angela Lansbury) house. There are also several embedded wolf-centric fairy tales, two told by Rosaleen and two told by the grandmother.

Jordan has described this structure as “a story with very different movements,” all variations on the central theme and “building to the fairy tale that everybody knows.” The production design and gorgeously sensual cinematography—all achieved on a limited $2 million budget—further enhance the dreamlike atmosphere.  The Company of Wolves, like the fairy tale that inspired it, is an unapologetically Freudian metaphor for Rosaleen’s romantic and sexual awakening, in which she discovers her own power, which both frightens and fascinates her. It’s rare to find such a richly layered film rife with symbolism and brooding imagery.

Desperately Seeking Susan

In this quintessential 1980s screwball comedy about mistaken identity, Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) is a dissatisfied upper-class New Jersey housewife fascinated by the local tabloid personal ads, especially messages between two free-spirited bohemian lovers, Susan (Madonna) and Jim (Robert Joy). She follows Susan one day and is conked on the head when a mob enforcer mistakes her for Susan, who had stolen a pair of valuable earrings from another paramour, who had stolen them from a mobster in turn. Roberta comes to with amnesia and, believing herself to be Susan, is befriended by Jim’s best friend, Dez (Aidan Quinn).

Desperately Seeking Susan is director Susan Seidelman’s love letter to the (admittedly sanitized) 1980s counterculture of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, peppered with cameo appearances by performance artists, musicians, comedians, actors, painters, and so forth of that time period. The script is rife with witty one-liners and a stellar supporting cast, including John Turturro as the owner of a seedy Magic Club, Laurie Metcalf as Roberta’s sister-in-law Leslie, and a deadpan Steven Wright as Leslie’s dentist love interest. It’s breezy, infectious, frothy fun, and easily Madonna’s best acting role, perhaps because she is largely playing herself.