Ten years in the dark. Yes, film fans, it’s been a decade since The Dauph first pitched headlong through the doorway of a screening room as CREEM’s ambassador to the cinematic wasteland. Since that fateful day, there have been many screening rooms and yours truly has wandered from one to another like a water rat scurrying from cesspool to drainpipe. So many bright, sunny days spent in darkened enclosures. So many awful movies. So much inadequately buttered popcorn. And always, at the close of each year, the dreaded wrap up, in which the scum of the past 12 months must be stirred up yet again, just when you hoped you had put those wretched films out of your mind forever. Join me then, reader, as I dip a tarnished spoon into a fresh batch of sewage, separating its foul, filmy covering for the feature everyone in Birmingham likes to call The 10 Worst Movies Of The Year.

Future historians may look back on 1985 as the year when Halley’s Comet put in its long-awaited appearance. Or the year when Ed Meese bought his very first pair of Beatle boots. But film scholars will, no doubt, recall 1985 as the unfortunate year when audiences were subjected to not one, but two, Sylvester Stallone movies. Not since 1983, when David Bowie starred in no fewer than three pictures, has there been a comparable glut of cinematic inadequacy.

Here, then, is this year’s septic brew. In keeping with tradition, the films are in no particular order since their stupefying shabbiness even rendered me incapable of alphabetizing. And, as always, we have prizes for the producers of the rancid 10: their choice of a) framed artwork of CREEM’s most memorable cover, depicting David Lee Roth and Michael Jackson; b) from The Dauph’s own collection, an “I love Connie” t-shirt (never worn!); or c) authenticated spent cartridges from Madonna and Sean’s wedding reception. Pretty lavish gifts, eh? And certainly more than they deserve for:

BACK TO THE FUTURE— Sure, this film was seen by everyone in America, with the possible exception of Mrs. Ed Meese. But did anyone really like it? And who cares about seeing their parents fall in love? In the case of The Dauph’s mother and father, they hooked up during a jail break at a maximum security prison in French Morocco— believe me, there was nothing romantic about it. Basically, Future was just more Spielberg nostalgia pap, this time featuring a real-life E.T. in the person of someone called Michael J. Fox. I know he’s a big TV star, but The Dauph doesn’t watch anything on the tube except the All Wanted Poster channel.

DAVID—Seen any good biblical movies lately? Probably not since The Three Stooges Go To Nineveh, right? David had Richard Gere as the Old Testament king, looking like he’d lost a four million dollar bet to a producer in Las Vegas one night, got kidnapped and found himself before the cameras in this production the following morning. In many theaters around the U.S., the film actually closed during the first showing. Later it was rumored that some of the financial losses were recouped by selling Richard’s robes to Boy George and Marilyn.

AGNES OF GOD— Something about a nun who has a baby. But there’s no father. So then it’s a miracle. Or maybe there is a father, only they don’t know who he is. The baby gets killed. Did the nun do it? Or the mother superior? Jane Fonda is the shrink who has to figure it all out. During this endless exercise in guilt and repression, Jane smoked a lot of cigarettes. So did The Dauph. Difference is, I left before the end. Jane was still on the screen puffing her robust lungs out.

RAMBO—A prize fighter goes to Vietnam to rescue MIA’s from a Communist stronghold run by Grace Jones’s boyfriend, Wait a minute, I’m confusing this with another picture...

PERFECT—John Revolta as a Rolling Stone reporter. It sounded like accurate casting to me Jamie Lee Curtis got to look sexy in some form-hugging workout numbers. Jann Wenner was in there somewhere, but The Dauph has no idea what he looks like so could not evaluate his performance. Revolta looked severely constipated. Maybe the script should have been re-written to feature a CREEM reporter. Then the part could have been played by Pee Wee Herman.

SANTA CLAUS: THE MOVIE—Admit it. You took your younger brothers and sisters to see this feeble fiasco over the holidays. Dudley Moore played one of Santa’s elves and, if there’s a God in heaven, Dudley will spend time in purgatory for this little career move. Throughout the land, small children crawled out of theaters en masse before the end of the picture. From the producers of Superman, and that should have given us fair warning. A Christmas turkey with all the trimmings.

Steve Guttenberg, an actor

COCOON—The combined age of the stars of this Ron Howard movie amounted to more than a thousand years, but it asn’t the oldsters like Don Ameche, Jessica Tandy, et al. that had The Dauph reaching for the Kaopectate. No, it was the hapless performance of relative newcomer

whose modest goal seems to be to follow in the footsteps of Tom Hanks. How’s that for an easily attainable objective? Too bad he’ll never make it. Steve ruined every scene he was in, and Cocoon tried too hard to rise above what it really was—a geriatric Splash.

Vietnam vet goes on a com-

AFTER HOURS—Having once given us the harrowing Taxi Driver, the brutal Raging Bull and the wonderfully sardonic King Of Comedy, director Martin Scorsese chose, in 1985, to present us with a tale of an ineffectual yuppie trapped for a night in the artistic jungle of New York’s Soho district. A low budget shaggy dog story with about the weight of your average Chihuahua. Scorsese even stooped to casting Cheech and Chong, an offense punishable by death in several states.

ROCKY IV—An embittered mando mission to the Soviet Union where he fights for the heavyweight crown against Grace Jones’s boyfriend. Hold on, I’m still a little mixed up... PRIZZI’S HONOR—This is the picture all the critics loved and, yes, Jack Nicholson is being touted as a shoo-in for Best Actor in the part of a Brooklyn gangster with marbles in his mouth. But Yogi Berra has been talking funny for 50 years and no one ever gave him no Oscar. What he got was fired from the Yanks and a lifetime supply of chocolate soda. As Nicholson’s lover and rival, Kathleen Turner continued the decline that began after Body Heat. At this rate, she’ll soon be co-hosting Your Number’s Up with Nipsey Russell.

See you in the dark.

That’s it for 1985’s roster of debris. Now it’s off to the next screening for The Dauph.