Lost in '84

Coming of Age during Cinema's Greatest Year

Sam McPheeters and me - after Repo Man and Black Flag corrupted us

I realize that many of my readers were either not alive or too young to get into R rated movies in what was arguably the best year in cinema: 1984. Technically I was too young as well, but as a six feet tall kid sporting the punk style that disguised my age, I was able to get into any movie and most bars starting in 8th grade. 1984 was one blockbuster after another: Beverly Hills Cop, Nightmare on Elm Street, The Terminator, Ghostbusters, The Karate Kid, Red Dawn, Gremlins, Police Academy, the David Lynch Dune, Amadeus, Night of the Comet, and even a problematic Indiana Jones before they had to de-age him with special effects. The list goes on and on, and include films constantly playing on cable that you’ve no doubt seen at least once.

In Albany, NY, where I grew up, we had an arthouse cinema, The Spectrum, which is still in business today. There was another indie theater across the river that played John Waters films and similar transgressive and alternative fare. My friends and I could get to either theater on the CDTA bus and starting around 1981 or so, we saw almost every film they played.

Here’s my brief, personal recollections of just a few of the films from 1984 that don’t get discussed as much as the box office giants from that wild year.

Streetwise

Students of twentieth century earth among you might know of a large format magazine, loaded with photography called Life, not to be confused with our favorite cereal and a popular board game. In 1983, Life published a piece by Cheryl McCall and photographer Mary Ellen Mark called Streets of the Lost featuring street kids in Seattle. Mark’s spouse, documentarian Martin Bell, followed some of these Seattle kids, among them urban forager “Rat” and “Tiny,” a teen prostitute. In a horrifying example of Boomer neglect of Gen X kids, Tiny’s mom gave not a single damn about her life hustling johns.

While it's available, watch Street Wise here.

Looking up what became of the cast of this super-dark forerunner to reality shows, I found that Rat and Tiny eventually settled down and had kids and grandkids, and some of the kids became homeless advocates or otherwise found gainful employment. Many of them died, from drugs, AIDS, and murder. Notably, Roberta was one of the last of 49 victims of serial killer Gary Ridgway, dubbed the Green River Killer.

Repo Man

One of the classmates I saw Repo Man with would eventually write the liner notes to the film’s Critereon Collection release. This film was nothing short of validation for my friends and I, who were all about punk rock. It came out about a year after Penelope Spheeris’ Suburbia, a punk rock thriller everyone had heard of, but most of my friends had not actually been able to see. The soundtrack had some of our favorite bands like Black Flag and Circle Jerks, and introduced us to others like the Latino punk group, The Plugz. We’d get to see Black Flag play Albany, twice in 1985 – at the VFW hall and at SUNY, and I’d soon promote a show by the newly formed Rollins Band – but was too young to go inside the bar to actually see it.

I’ve been tracking down other films by Alex Cox - many are streaming for free - and there’s much to recommend, even when he does it for as cheap as possible. Searchers 2.0 (2007) just might be my second fave by him and one of the weirdest movie about child actors ever made.

Stranger Than Paradise

In the 80s and early 90s, I often saw John Lurie eating at the same Avenue A pizza joint that gave me free pizza as they thought I was famous too for some reason. I never told him that as a kid, I copied his thrift store style depicted in the second of many terrifically funny Jim Jarmusch films.

Me in my East Village hipster phase which luckily I outgrew prior to moving there...

Five years before Seinfeld would debut a “show about nothing,” with a character who got his style cues from Lurie and Edson, Jarmusch filled 89 minutes with single long takes in black and white.

A lot of the laughs in the theater resulted from the awkwardness of scenes held long after the dialog ended. There was a time before incels on Reddit when these hats really were cool and went with the old cars that were still on the road as it’s all we could afford.

I’m going to end my article here.

You can stick around if you want.

Jason O’Toole is Poet Laureate Emeritus of North Andover, MA and was co-founder of the Anne Bradstreet Poetry Contest. He serves on the advisory board of the New England Poetry Club, and as treasurer of the Independent Living Resource Center San Francisco. He is the recipient of the 2025 Amy Lowell Prize and the 2026 judge for this contest. He also serves as a judge for the Tom Nattell Peace Poetry Prize and the Capital District Slam Poetry Festival in NY. His third full collection of poetry is The Strange Misgivings of the Sadly Gifted (Dead Man’s Press Ink). Recent poems and prose have appeared in the anthology Love is for All of Us (Storey Publishing), as well as Wednesday Magazine, Ghost City Press, The Somerville Times, and Phil Lit.

The Strange Misgivings of the Sadly Gifted 2^nd edition – ships from the US.