Looking back at the summer movie season of 1985, two things immediately become apparent: 1). Kid movies were all the rage, and 2). Hollywood’s targeting of audiences was quite different back then. This is to say that, unlike today’s mega-blockbusters that seek to encompass every conceivable demographic, eighties-era movies could afford to be more selective in the audiences they played to. The future, of course, was easily foreseeable, as a 1985 New York Times article predicted: “Hollywood’s primary interest is profits, and what more efficient way to run a business than by annually manufacturing one all-new, superimproved, all-purpose item that somehow manages to satisfy everyone?”
Things hadn’t quite gotten to that point in the summer of ‘85. Hence all the kid-skewering movies, a result of the fact that, according to director Joe Dante, “last year, GREMLINS, GHOSTBUSTERS and INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM were the summer’s biggest pictures, and they all appealed to an audience that was substantially under 18. I think everybody wanted to jump on the bandwagon.” The season, I should add, included movies aimed at both kids and teenagers, although my twelve year old self made no distinction between the two so I won’t do so now.
One thing those summer ‘85 kid/teen flicks had in common were fantasy and/or science fiction themed narratives. Hollywood was still under the 
spell of E.T. at the time, and it’s certainly no accident that Steven Spielberg was directly involved in the productions of no less than two of the films in question (and peripherally involved in another).
One of those Spielberg-shepherded films was THE GOONIES, the first of these movies to be released. June 7 was the day it bowed, a smart move on the part of Warner Bros., as that was when kids were getting out of school—and as I recall, rushing out to see THE GOONIES was one of the very first things I did upon finishing the sixth grade.
That, however, does not make for a good movie! As an attempt at updating the 1930s-era OUR GANG films THE GOONIES fails miserably (although not entirely, as the MAD magazine parody of the film made clear in lines like “Welcome to an old fashioned adventure. What makes it old fashioned? It’s full of the blatant, insulting stereotypes they used to have in 1930s movies”). For a glimpse of what Spielberg and director Richard Donner appear to have been attempting check out the novelization by James Kahn, which is written in a bemused HUCKLEBERRY FINN-like brogue (“So this is the story of what happened that one long day last Fall…And I know a lot of it’s gonna sound hard to swallow, but swear to God, every word is true”) completely absent from the movie, whose band of plucky kids—Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Corey Feldman, Martha Plimpton, the tyke from INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM—are far too hip and cynical to be believable as the intended paragons of innocence and purity. In fact, these kids are downright annoying, constantly talking over each other and never staying still, so the film is at least realistic.
D.A.R.Y.L. was released a week later. Unlike THE GOONIES, it wasn’t a success, and never developed much of a following in the years since. That’s no surprise, as it’s one of the lesser entries in the summer ‘85 kid movie craze.
It was a starring vehicle for the famed kid actor Barret Oliver (of FRANKENWEENIE and THE NEVERENDING STORY), who plays a test tube child specially created by the U.S. military. The revelation of Daryl’s true nature is saved until the end of the film, but the posters, trailer and VHS & DVD covers all give it away, so I don’t feel too bad about doing so here. Anyway…Daryl is transported from a secluded military facility by a sympathetic employee, and winds up in the care of Michael McKean and Mary Beth Hurt, a nice couple who, in a succession of agonizingly repetitive sequences, are constantly amazed by his intelligence and superhuman strength. Eventually Daryl is taken back by his “real parents” to be shut down but manages to escape via a fighter jet, in a so-so action sequence that was featured quite heavily in the trailer.
June 21 saw the release of what is arguably the finest of these films: RETURN TO OZ. A massive, and 
undeserved, flop, RTO is an anomaly in this line-up due to the fact that it was headlined by a girl (it was widely believed back then that guys controlled the purse-strings movie-wise, so most movies were male oriented). It also proved you don’t need dopey musical numbers or pill-popping starlets to do an OZ movie. Longtime editor Walter Murch made his directorial debut with RETURN TO OZ, and he reportedly had help from past employers like George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and (you guessed it) Steven Spielberg. Whatever the precise nature of their input was, it worked, as the color and imagination on display remain unparalleled.
Just check out details, from the creepy face-like design of the electroshock machine seen in the beginning to the circular footprints Tick-Tock leaves on Princess Mombi’s rug and the artful manner in which the Gnome King gradually morphs from a Claymation monster into Nicole Williamson. Speaking of Claymation, the Will Vinton creations are among the most striking special effects ever, and fully in keeping with the world created by L. Frank Baum.
Yet in spite of such richness RETURN TO OZ got dumped on by seemingly everyone. I remember the late Gene Siskel telling his partner Roger Ebert on their old TV show that should he die first he wanted Ebert to take the makers of this movie to task for wasting two hours of Siskel’s life. I wonder if that actually occurred…?
July 3 marked the release of the kid-skewering sci fi movie that dwarfed all the others: BACK TO THE FUTURE. You know the film’s story I’m sure—Michael J. Fox utilizes a time travelling DeLorean to meet his parents in high school—and I’m certain you’re also aware that it made an ungodly amount of money. I’ll always remember it for the fact that it seemed so uninteresting; in common with the above film, it looked quite dumb, with the the “Steven Spielberg Presents” credit being the only promising thing about it. I also recall being bored shitless by the first twenty minutes, which methodically set up the time travel shenanigans to come; once they do, though, the film comes to life in major way. Certainly BACK TO THE FUTURE played much better back in ‘85 than it does now, but it remains terrific popcorn movie fun.
It was followed, unfortunately, by Joe Dante’s EXPLORERS on July 12. I eagerly awaited this film, having followed its development in the pages of Starlog and elsewhere, and even shelled out for the novelization and EXPLORERS movie magazine. The flick, unfortunately, was a royal clunker, with a cloyingly wistful and nostalgic air that doesn’t suit Dante, whose films tend to be marked by irreverence and manic invention. It certainly didn’t help matters that the script was so undernourished, squandering a promising set-up about three boys (River Phoenix, Jason Presson and a debuting Ethan Hawke) constructing a spaceship out of a tilt-a-whirl car. Once they finally blast off, alas, very little happens, with the kids’ encounter with a pair of goofy space aliens (one of them voiced by Dante regular Robert Picard) going nowhere.
Further negatives include the fact that EXPLORERS’S fourteen year old protagonists are all impossibly sincere and well behaved. Of the youthful cast, Phoenix and co-star Amanda Peterson are now deceased, while, nearly as tragically, Ethan Hawke is still Ethan Hawke. Truly, this was a cursed project!
The John Hughes programmer WEIRD SCIENCE followed on August 2. Speaking of it and its immediate predecessor THE BREAKFAST CLUB, Hughes had this to say: “It was terrible, going between something I really loved and this dopey-assed comedy.” Identifying which films he’s referring to is no great task, as “dopey-assed 
comedy” is a pretty accurate assessment of WEIRD SCIENCE.
I suspect the film’s producer Joel Silver had as much (indeed perhaps more) influence on the production as Hughes, given the outsized special effects and overall level of action movie mayhem on display. Worst of all is the fact that Hughes and/or Silver insist upon framing the material, which seems ideally suited to an especially depraved porn flick (or the adult-oriented stories Hughes used to publish in National Lampoon), as a message movie, with the uber-nerd protagonists (Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith) creating a hot chick (Kelly Le Brock) via Smith’s computer, only to learn that they need to just “be themselves” and find a pair of nice girls with whom they can be in a serious relationship.
Yet the film is pretty funny, particularly in the performance of the late Bill Paxton as Smith’s asshole older brother, and it has an amiably freewheeling, anything-can-happen vibe. Plus, the terrifically rambunctious theme song by Oingo Boingo is one of the decade’s finest written-for-movies pop tunes.
August 7 brought REAL GENIUS. It’s the most unassuming movie of the lot, a light comedy in the mode of director Martha Coolidge’s previous films VALLEY GIRL and JOY OF SEX, albeit with more than a hint of the “institutional” raunch-fests of screenwriters Neal Israel and Pat Proft (POLICE ACADEMY, MOVING VIOLATIONS, etc.) that were popular at the time. What sets REAL GENIUS apart, and makes it especially appropriate to 1985, is the scientific wraparound given its leisurely account of highjinks amid a group of genius college students led by Val Kilmer. It ends in highly implausible but enjoyable fashion, with a massive tub of popcorn kernels popped by a satellite-born laser beam. An unexceptional but quite likeable film.
Last but definitely least is the inexcusable MY SCIENCE PROJECT. How this poorly scripted and amateurish production ever managed to attract a major studio—Disney—and an event-film budget is beyond me. This was, incidentally, another film I eagerly anticipated, based on the fact that its writer-director Jonathan Betuel was the scripter of 1984’s much loved LAST STARFIGHTER, and also the trailer, a tantalizing compendium of aliens, guns and dinosaurs. All those things are indeed present in the film, about a dorky teen (the perpetually smirking John Stockwell) who finds a piece of an alien spacecraft in an Arizona junkyard and uses it as a science project, which for some reason brings about a massive time warp. Of course this is all just an excuse to display some cool special effects, but those FX, once they come, really aren’t that cool. Even worse, the eternally obnoxious Fisher Stevens is on hand to annoy us further, as is Dennis Hopper in one of the innumerable self-mocking ex-hippie roles he played throughout the eighties and nineties.
Other movies from the summer of ‘85 include the geezer-skewering COCOON, the R rated RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II, the non sci fi-themed teen flick THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN, the disastrous John Candy vehicle SUMMER RENTAL, the equally disastrous RED SONJA, Tobe Hooper’s LIFEFORCE, the horror-comedy FRIGHT NIGHT, the inert BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN remake THE BRIDE, the animated BLACK CAULDRON, Dan O’Bannon’s RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD and NATIONAL LAMPOON’S EUROPEAN VACATION. And we mustn’t forget the most unique “kid’s movie” of them all, PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, which ranks as one of the year’s all-around greatest films, and serves to underline what the eight movies profiled in this article so adequately prove: that the summer of ‘85 belonged to the kids.