Best Science Fiction Movies of 1985

Low-level bureaucrat Sam Lowry escapes the monotony of his day-to-day life through a recurring daydream of himself as a virtuous hero saving a beautiful damsel. Investigating a case that led to the wrongful arrest and eventual death of an innocent man instead of wanted terrorist Harry Tuttle, he meets the woman from his daydream, and in trying to help her gets caught in a web of mistaken identities, mindless bureaucracy and lies.

A dedicated student at a medical college and his girlfriend become involved in bizarre experiments centering around the re-animation of dead tissue when an odd new student arrives on campus.

Trapped in a missile silo, a small team of scientists, civilians, and trigger-happy soldiers battle desperately to ensure the survival of the human race. However, the tension inside the base is reaching a breaking point, and the zombies are gathering outside.

When a group of trespassing seniors swim in a pool containing alien cocoons, they find themselves energized with youthful vigor.

Two unpopular teenagers, Gary and Wyatt, fail at all attempts to be accepted by their peers. Their desperation to be liked leads them to "create" a woman via their computer. Their living and breathing creation is a gorgeous woman, Lisa, whose purpose is to boost their confidence level by putting them into situations which require Gary and Wyatt to act like men.

Mad Max becomes a pawn in a decadent oasis of a technological society, and when exiled, becomes the deliverer of a colony of children.

A soldier from Earth crashlands on an alien world after sustaining battle damage. Eventually he encounters another survivor, but from the enemy species he was fighting; they band together to survive on this hostile world. In the end the human finds himself caring for his enemy in a completely unexpected way.

Chris is the top brain who just wants to party, Mitch is the 15-year-old college wiz kid. Supposedly hard at work on a lab project with a mysterious deadline, they still find time to use their genius to discover new ways to have fun.

After a top-secret experiment misfires, a scientist may be the only man left alive in the world.

The first half of this film, set hundreds of years ago, shows how the man who eventually became Santa Claus was given immortality and chosen to deliver toys to all the children of the world. The second half moves into the modern era, in which Patch, the head elf, strikes out on his own and falls in with an evil toy manufacturer who wants to corner the market and eliminate Santa Claus.

The visionary dreams of three curious and adventuresome young boys become an exciting reality in Explorers, the action-fantasy from director Joe Dante, who combines keen humor, warmth and fantasy with unexpected twists. In their makeshift laboratory, the boys use an amazing discovery and their ingenuity to build their own spaceship and launch themselves on a fantastic interplanetary journey.

Daryl is a normal 10-year-old boy in many ways. However, unbeknown to his foster parents and friends, Daryl is actually a government-created robot with superhuman reflexes and mental abilities. Even his name has a hidden meaning -- it's actually an acronym for Data Analyzing Robot Youth Life-form. When the organization that created him deems the "super soldier" experiment a failure and schedules Daryl to be disassembled, it is up to a few rogue scientists to help him escape.

A space shuttle mission investigating Halley's Comet brings back a malevolent race of space vampires who transform most of London's population into zombies. The only survivor of the expedition and British authorities attempt to capture a mysterious but beautiful alien woman who appears responsible.

Amalgamated Dairies hires David Rutherford, an FBI man turned industrial saboteur, to investigate a popular new product called “the Stuff,” a new dessert product that is blowing ice cream sales out of the water. Nobody knows how it’s made or what’s in it, but people are lining up to buy it. It's got a delicious flavor to die for!

The Towani family civilian shuttlecraft crashes on the forest moon of Endor. The four Towani's are separated. Jermitt and Catarine, the mother and father are captured by the giant Gorax, and Mace and Cindel, the son and daughter, are missing when they are captured. The next day, the Ewok Deej is looking for his two sons when they find Cindel all alone in the shuttle (Mace and Cindel were looking for the transmitter to send a distress call), when Mace appears with his emergency blaster. Eventually, the four-year old Cindel is able to convince the teenage Mace that the Ewoks are nice. Then, the Ewoks and the Towani's go on an adventure to find the elder Towanis.

Michael and Ellie break into a military junkyard to find a science project for Michael's class, and discover a strange glowing orb which absorbs electricity. When the orb begins to blend past, present, and future, its up to Michael and Ellie to stop the orb and save mankind.

The army of the Marauders, led by King Terak and the witch Charal, attack the Ewoks village, killing Cindel's family. Cindel and the Ewok Wicket escape and meet Teek in the forest, a naughty and very fast animal. Teek takes them to a house in which an old man, Noa, lives. Like Cindel, he also crashed with his Starcruiser on Endor. Together they fight Terak and Charal.

While trying to expose corruption and greed, television reporter Edison Carter discovers that his employer, Network 23, has created a new form of subliminal advertising (termed "blip-verts") that can be fatal to certain viewers.

Set on the subterranean Mine-World, a band of human worker are treated like slaves under the power of the evil overlord Zygon until one, Orin, unearths the hilt of a mythical sword that only he can master. Escaping the planet, he runs into the rogue smuggler Dagg and a pair of helpful droids and the princess, who all team up to return to the Mine-World with a plan to defeat Zygon and free Orin's enslaved people.

Rainbow Brite, and her magical horse Starlite, must stop an evil princess and her underlings from taking over the planet Spectra. When they meet Orin, the wise Sprite tries to make the two children get along and work together to stop the evil Princess. Orin tells them that they can only destroy her by combining their own powers against her. Getting in the way of their mission is the sinister Murky Dismal and his bumbling assistant Lurky who, as usual, are lavishing in the new gloom created by the darkening of Spectra, as well as trying to steal Rainbow's magical color belt.

The Care Bears have their work cut out for them, because Nicolas, a lonely magician's assistant, is about to fall under the evil influence of a bad spirit who lives in an ancient magic book -- it seems Nicolas will do just about anything for friends. Aside from Nicolas, Kim and Jason are in trouble because they are starting not to trust people after suffering many disappointments.

An accident occurs in an ultra-secret government biological weapons laboratory spreading a sinister bacteria.

With the help of student assistant Boris and stolen university equipment, Dr. Harry Wolper plans to clone his dead wife. But then he meets Meli, an egg donor for his experiment, and they fall in love. Faced with choosing between his deceased wife and Meli, Dr. Wolper sees his situation in a new light when Boris' own new love, Barbara, falls into a coma. Meanwhile, another professor tries shutting down the cloning project.

Call my name, and I'll be there. Dr. Duran Duran escapes the punishment of the Matmos at the height of British rock group Duran Duran's 1980s popularity. Mistaking the cries of teenage girls at crowded concerts for devotees screaming his name, the Doctor makes his way to Earth so he can lead his faithful masses. Once he discovers the kids don't want an evil Doctor, he goes about trying to destroy the source of the real desires a rock concert taking place at the Oakland (Calif.) Colesium.

Codename: Robotech is an animated pilot that preceded the original 1985 Robotech television series. It is set within the events of the First Robotech War.

Konrad is a factory-made child, perfect in every way. When he is mistakenly delivered to the eccentric Mrs. Bartelotti, the factory demands his return. Konrad must go against everything he has been taught to stand up to his creators.

American soldiers, led by The Sarge, are stuck behind Nazi enemy lines. As they make their way across the Italian countryside, they come across an alien spaceship that has crash-landed in the woods. The alien pilot is dead, but one of the ship's passengers is on the loose. As the GIs hunt down the alien by splitting into smaller groups, they're not only tracked by the Nazis, but also a whole host of other aliens come to save their stranded party.

Régime sans pain, influenced by (Ruiz's) friend Jean Baudrillard (and calling) to mind grade-Z SF, grew out of a commission to direct a music video (featuring French cult rock duo of Angèle/Maimone). Ruiz offered a counterproposal that he direct several music videos rather than one; once this deal was made, he shot enough material to interconnect the various videos until he arrived at a feature.

Sheldon Bart (Fred Ward) is a drifter, and a small-time con man. He meets his old friend, Brother Bud (Harry Dean Stanton), a big-time con man into faith healing and fencing stolen cars, at his revival tent outside a small town. While he's helping Brother Bud, he falls in love with Arlene (Cindy Williams), a local supermarket clerk who believes in UFOs and is deeply religious and deeply lonely. When Arlene has a vision of a coming UFO, everyone deals with it in their own way.

The story begins on a small spaceship docking with a refueling station. On board are a group of four aliens, Bernard, Sandra, Desmond, and Julian. During a particularly tedious period of their stay at the station, the other three begin playing with the ship’s controls while Bernard is outside playing spaceball. They accidentally disconnect his part of the ship, leaving him stranded while they crash into a large blue planet close by...

A young boy, who dreams of meeting the grandfather he never knew gets his chance, when an inventor friend constructs a time machine. After arriving in the past, it soon becomes apparent that his knowledge of the future could change the course of history.

The Android Sisters sing about the alarming increase in U.S. defense spending during the cold war and its effect on various aspects of the domestic economy.

Two men and a woman circle the globe in a satellite armed with a nuclear device. The third world war breaks out, and a few months later the satellite crashes. They survive the crash but one man gets killed by survivors and the other man gets caught. The woman stays by the remains of the the satellite but is soon caught by evil punks who have taken power.

A kid is hypnotized by a scientist to kill his parents and ends in a mental institution. As a grown up he returns to seek revenge over the scientist.

The Vixens are coming! They've landed on earth to wreak havoc on the male student bodies of Mayfield High. You see, there are no men on their native planet, and every so often, they'll visit earth to fulfill their ravenous desires. Unfortunately, the adolescent boys are no match for these lustful aliens, and in their frustration, the Vixens zap them with their ray guns and turn them into garden variety vegetables--tomatoes, zucchinis, carrots, pickles, even squash!

A crew of scientists arrives on a far, cold planet to examine archaic artifacts of unknown origin. They discover that their German enemies already have a ship there. When they seek their help after a failed landing, they only find the Germans’ bodies, obviously slaughtered by one of the archaic creatures, awoken to new life. Now the alien is after them.

George Kuchar received his only funding grant for this film ($20,000 from the NEA), and so, freed from the usual financial restraints, he was determined to have a good time and make a “spectacle” with “tons of color” and dazzling superimpositions. A big, colorful tapestry about rumors that are in all of the previous UFO movies. A loose story line that weaves in and out of the UFO phenomenon.

Three young friends who are on vacation in Spain and a NASA scientist must join forces to save themselves and the rest of the world from an alien menace.

A man who has been dead and cryogenically preserved for ten years is miraculously revived, but with chillingly unexpected results.

The year 2037. Rugged soldier Max and weary sculptress Nicky try to sustain a relationship in a bleak totalitarian future plagued by war, nuclear fall-out, and overpopulation. Flashbacks show Max and Nicky's doomed romance throughout the years as things get worse and the world deteriorates all around them.

An alien woman is running from a deadly enemy and tries to hide on Earth where she meets a young mechanic, who helps her to get back home and to fight for the freedom of her people.

"The Afterman" is about a guy who lived alone in an atomic fallout shelter after the A-Bomb was dropped, so he can't read, write or speak. 20 years later the shelter opens and he wanders into a barbaric world full of sex and depravity. The film is done completely without dialogue and it offers some wall-to-wall sleaze including graphic nudity, homosexual rape and forced blow-job.

Set in the "not-so-distant future", the crew of an international space station are set to return triumphantly to Earth, until someone starts killing the other crew members.

After a nuclear war with civilization's death as a result leads an adventurer, a group of hikers on their search for the Mountain of Life. On their way they meet pygmy tribes, brutal gangs and amazon women.

Two obscure film critics host four SF/Horror films: The Thing in the Basement, Illegal Alien, Nightfright, and Dr. Dobermind.

When high class hooker Nicole is kidnapped from her brothel, Rich businessman Hugo Motherskille hires her ex love Roy Bain to find her. Investigating the disappearance, he eventually finds traces that lead to Dr. Savary, who has produced a strange white powder that's coveted by a race of deformed human beings who live in the underworld in the sewers below the city.

Sex-hungry teens are kidnapped by auto mechanics, who take them to a rural hospital run by aliens who need their blood as the key to their own longevity.

A Miami TV reporter is sent to a local university to do a story on a professor who is cloning a cell from DNA found inside a meteorite. Soon after the reporter leaves, a gunman kills everyone in the professor's lab and steals the cell for a wealthy businessman. When the reporter learns that he is targeted for assassination as well, he enlists the help of two scientists to discover who is behind the crimes, why they stole the cell, and whether or not the cell should be allowed to continue living.

Sex Wars, an erotic space odyssey, is the first adult film with major studio sci-fi plus lots of hot, hungry flesh! Princess Layme is just landing on Pluto, in search of a crew to man her spacecraft... for a most dangerous journey, past the solar system, to the far reaches of the galaxy... to the planet Tryos. She finds Brinker Duo and Mark Starkiller and bribes them with money, sex, booze and sex. Baltazar, the evil ruler of Tryos, has populated his planet with sex-slaves, including Princess Orgasma--Princess Layme's sister. The attempted rescue ends in the capture of Brinker, Mark and Princess Layme.