1986 was a year of uncertainty at the Oscars. With no front-runner to speak of, the pre-cursors pretty much disagreed about everything.

Back in their traditional position of being the first to announce, the National Board of Review went with the Merchant-Ivory production of E.M. Forster’s A Room With a View, but gave their Best Director award to Woody Allen for Hannah and Her Sisters.

A few hours later the L.A. Film Critics decided to give Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters their Best Picture award, but gave their Best Director prize to David Lynch for Blue Velvet. Four days after that the New York Film Critics decided to give both their Best Picture and Best Director awards to Hannah and Her Sisters and Allen.

The National Society of Film Critics, almost always contrarians, gave both Best Picture and Best Director honors to Blue Velvet and David Lynch.

The Golden Globes honored Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters as the year’s Best Picture – Musical or Comedy, but gave their Best Director award to Oliver Stone for Platoon, which won Best Picture – Drama.

The Directors Guild chose to honor Allen and Stone with nominations, but not Lynch. Joining them were A Room With a View’s James Ivory; Children of a Lesser God’s Randa Haines and Stand By Me’s Rob Reiner.

The directors’ branch of the Academy agreed with Allen, Stone and Ivory but chose to honor The Mission’s Roland Joffe and Blue Velvet’s Lynch over Haines and Reiner. Best Picture nominees lined up with Stone’s Platoon and Ivory’s A Room With a View (eight nominations each) and Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters and Joffe’s The Mission (seven each). Haines’ Children of a Lesser God, with a total of five nods, overtook Blue Velvet, Lynch’s nod being the film’s lone nomination.

What then, would be the other five nominees had Oscar gone with ten Best Picture nominations this year? Despite the fact they only earned one nomination each, Blue Velvet and Stand By Me would probably be there. So, too, would Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money (four nominations, one win – Best Actor Paul Newman on his eighth try) and James Cameron’s Aliens (seven nominations, two wins).

The most likely contender for the tenth slot would probably be Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa which ended up with just one nomination.

With no film dominating either the pre-cursors or the Oscar nominations themselves, no picture dominated the awards. Platoon won Best Picture and Director, but just two other awards. Hannah and Her Sisters and A Room With a View each took home three.