Best Cast – 1985

My Nominations: The Plague Dogs. The Breakfast Club. Into The Night. The Purple Rose Of Cairo. The Goonies. St Elmo’s Fire. Back To The Future. Silverado. After Hours. Marie. Agnes Of God. Spies Like Us. The Color Purple. Revolution.

A mammoth set of nominations this year. If and when they eventually create this category officially, it’ll be interesting to see what criteria they use to strip the field down to five or ten nominees. Doesn’t matter to me and my blog, as I just chuck everything in. Case in point – John Landis made two movies this year, largely by throwing as many of his famous mates into the casts as possible. In Into The Night, Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer zip about the country with stolen Iranian jewels in their possession, and the cast is rounded out by Dan Aykroyd, Richard Farnsworth, Paul Mazursky, Irena Papas, and Vera Miles. However, playing key roles are also Clu Gulager, Roger Vadim, David Bowie, Carl Perkins, and Bruce McGill. That’s before we get to the cameos, including (takes breath) David Cronenberg, Carmen Argenziano, Art Evans, Rick Baker, Jim Henson, Jack Arnold, Jonathan Demme, Amy Hecklering, Don Siegel, Lawrence Kasdan, Carl Gottleib and many many others. It’s like a feature length version of Liberian Girl, but with behind the scenes types. In Spies Like Us, Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd are bumbling spies roped into a secret mission, meeting along the way Bob Hope, Bruce Davison, Donna Dixon, Frank Oz, Terry Gilliam, Ray Harryhausen, Costa Gavras, BB King, Joel Coen, Sam Raimi, Martin Brest, Larry Cohen…. it’s another who’s who of sorts.

Keeping with the ensemble nature of those films, The Plague Dogs is a somehow even darker cousin to Watership Down, its voice cast featuring John Hurt, Christopher Benjamin, Nigel Hawthorne, Judy Geeson, Bill Maynard, Patrick Stewart, James Bolam, Warren Mitchell, and other familiar English voices. The Purple Rose Of Cairo is a more American affair, with Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, Danny Aiello, Dianne Wiest, and Edward Herrmann featuring.

As it was the 80s, another batch of Brat Pack movies appear – St Elmo’s Fire bringing together Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Andie MacDowell, Andrew McCarthy, and Jenny Wright alongside Martin Balsam, Mare Winningham, and Joyce Van Patten, while The Breakfast Club featured Judd, Sheedy, Estevez, Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, and Paul Gleason.

The Goonies saw an even younger cast making names for themselves – Corey Feldman, Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Ke Huy Quan, Kerri Green, Martha Plimpton, Jeff Cohen, along with Robert Davi, Joe Pantoliano, and Anne Ramsey. Back To The Future made stars out of Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd, but also featured Crispin Glover, Lea Thompson, James Tolkan, Thomas F Wilson, Billy Zane, and Marc McClure.

Lawrence Kasdan’s Western Silverado features Kevin Costner, Kevin Cline, John Cleese, Rosanna Arquette, Brian Dennehy, Danny Glover, Jeff Goldblum, Scott Glenn, Linda Hunt, Jeff Fahey, and Amanda Wyss, while Martin Scorsese’s comedy After Hours has Arquette, Griffin Dunne, Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, Dick Miller, Catherine O’Hara, John Heard, Cheech & Chong, and Will Patton.

Marie is a largely forgotten political biography starring Sissy Spacek, along with Morgan Freeman, Jeff Daniels, Keith Szarabajka, and Lisa Banes, while Agnes Of God has Meg Tilly, Jane Fonda, Anne Bancroft, and Anne Pitoniak. The Color Purple is made up of the likes of Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, Rae Dawn Chong, Oprah Winfrey, Lawrence Fishburne, and Adolph Caesar, while Revolution is an underseen Al Pacino vehicle also featuring Donald Sutherland, Nastassja Kinski, Joan Plowright, Dexter Fletcher, Steven Berkoff, Robbie Coltrane, and for some reason Sid Owen, Annie Lennox, and Richard O’Brien.

My Winner: Back To The Future