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Christian Sauvé

Congrès Boréal 2024

Goal, Warnings, Notes, etc.

• Horror movies in the 1980s
  • Why the decade was such a turning point
  • Links to the cultural and social context of the time
  • Not definitive or exhaustive – just a few essentials
  • “Barroom not Classroom”
• A focus on Hollywood horror films, and a few overseas titles
• The definition of Horror will be left to the presenter
• Movie Titles in Bold, except for a corpus of 100 Top Horror movies (See Appendix A) in Dark Orange Bold Small Caps
• A few personal favourites highlighted with a 📼
• Companion text (don’t take notes):
  • www.christian-sauve.com/1980s-horror-cinema

Who is Christian Sauvé?

•   Oh no, that guy again

•    Film critic for Solaris and Alibis from 2001-2017

•     Camera Oscura 1-60 and Sci-Néma 153-210

•    5,200 capsule film reviews at christian-sauve.com, with an enormous 2020-2024 backlog on the way

•    Has moderated SF panels on three continents

•    Attended three World Horror Conventions (‘07, ‘09, ‘10)

•    Has attended every Boréal since 1995; was Boréal’s programming director from 2004-2008; presented lectures in 2004, 2008, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2024…

•     Plus, somehow: Discussion par la bande-annonce

•    Amateur novelist, often in a horror-adjacent style

A special warning for you, colleagues: Horror is weird

•    Deals with violence, sex, death and everything else life is about

•     It grabs viewers by the seven deadly sins and their basest impulses

•     It makes people very, very uncomfortable

•     It can literalize the metaphors of anxiety

•    It looks very different from the outside and the inside

•     From the outside, it makes fans look like psychopaths

•     From the inside, it’s fun stuff, more interesting than the rest

•     Fannish jadedness/detachment is needed to make sense of it

•     “The Game” of one-upmanship between filmmakers and genre fans

•    1980s horror is extra-weird

•     Shifting from the brash 1970s to the conservative 1980s

•     Horror as l’enfant terrible of Hollywood, provocative and rebellious

•     Taking the foundations and perfecting them for entertainment

•     Movies usually made by a specific young-white-male demographic

•     Doesn’t mean it was solely embraced by that demographic

A few final words of introduction…

•    Overall structure of the presentation

•     Introduction and pre-1980s foundations

•     A romp through the 1980s with thematic overviews

•     Post-1990 legacy and conclusions

•    Opiniated lecture

•     I strongly dislike slashers

•     Strong tilt toward supernatural horror

•     Will tackle the influence of 1980s US social/political context

•     The delicate balance of horror: “Eeek” rather than “Eeew”

•     The best horror is a thrill ride, not a succession of grossness

•     Will mention, but not obsess over directors

Why do we like 1980s
horror so much?

Fun 💀 Practical special effects 💀 Relatable themes and settings 💀 Go-for-broke audacity 💀 Iconic monsters 💀 Variety of styles and approaches 💀 There’s a lot of it 💀 Splashy gore 💀 Talented filmmakers getting their first breaks 💀 Deliciously chaotic plotting 💀 Sex and nudity 💀 More entertaining than disgusting 💀 Aimed at young-at-heart audiences 💀 Low budgets = more creative freedom 💀 Giddy invention of then-fresh tropes 💀 Social themes metaphorized 💀 Synth music 💀 True horror is punk, not corpo 💀 Short and to the point 💀 Self-aware trash 💀 VHS watch parties at home, not theaters 💀 Grittiness 💀 Accessible filmmaking 💀 Little censorship 💀 Nostalgia 💀 Working out the anxieties of Reaganism 💀  Wide variety of subgenres  💀  Big hair 💀 FUN!

120 Years of (Horror) Film History: A Map

Pre-1970s horror: defanged

•    Prior to the 1960s, horror is accessible to all audiences

•     US Production Code (1934-1960s) censors disturbing material

•     Unsophisticated audiences, sophisticated filmmakers: Universal’s Monsters movies, Val Lewton, Vincent Price

•     Science-Fiction monster thrills of the 1950s

•    This is no longer true as of the 1960s

•     Colourful British Hammer horror intensifies (mid-1950s-1970s)

•     Italian Giallo, starting with Blood and Black Lace (1964)

•     “Godfather of Gore”: Herschell Gordon Lewis

•     Increasingly extreme horror: Les Yeux sans visage (1960), Peeping Tom (1960), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Night of the Living Dead (1969)

1970s:
The beginning of modern horror

•    Italian giallo is stylish, gory horror, from Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) onward

•    New Hollywood changes everything during the 1970s

•     Movies target much younger, more cynical audiences

•     Freedom of expression with the new ratings system

•     Many independent producers unburdened by respectability

•    Early examples of major genres:

•     The Exorcist (1973) popularizes religious (well, Catholic) horror

•     Slasher get started in 1974 with The Texas Horror Chainsaw Massacre and Black Christmas (inspired by Montréal, shot in Toronto) – but Halloween (1978) truly launches the sub-genre.

•     Alien (1979) launches “monster in enclosed space” sub-genre

•    1970s horror, even today, is disturbing and effective

More 1970s legacies

•    1980s horror builds on foundations laid down during the 1970s:

•     Premium cable TV (via HBO) begins in 1972; not censored (as much)

•     VHS introduced in 1976, along with video cameras

•     Fangoria magazine is first published in 1979

•     Stephen King begins publishing in 1974 with Carrie; the hit movie, in 1976, makes him recognizable. Horror becomes a publishing genre.

•     Major 1980s horror directors with 1970s debuts: John Carpenter (Dark Star, 1974), Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 1974), Dario Argento (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, 1970), David Cronenberg (Shivers, 1975), Wes Craven (Last House on the Left, 1972)

•    Political/economic context: Americans pull out of Vietnam in 1973, oil shortages in 1973, Watergate scandal causes Nixon to resign in 1974, Saigon falls in 1975, Jimmy Carter’s administration (1977-1980) beset by crises

The impact of Star Wars
…wait… Star Wars?!?

•    Star Wars leads to 1980s horror in three ways

•     It marks the end of New Hollywood

•     What Jaws proposes in 1975, Star Wars disposes in 1977

•     Making money is akin to sainthood in Hollywood

•     Audiences just wanna have fun

•     It massively increases the audience for non-realistic films

•     Sci-Fi conventions in the late 1970s decuple in attendance

•     Everyone is looking for “the new Star Wars”, in SF, in Fantasy… or horror

•     1980s shift in box-office success: non-realistic films take over

•     Familiarity with non-realistic plot devices redefines entry-level

•     It launches an effort to improve special effects… and makeup

•     The Mos Esley Cantina as inspiration, R&D Lab and benchmark

•     Knowledge of new techniques diffuses through Hollywood

Social Relevance:
Literalizing the metaphor

•    One of Horror’s assets is to make literal monsters out of anxiety-inducing concepts: Vampires (Sex/Death), Werewolves (intrusive thoughts), Zombies (consumerism and conformity), Kaiju (nuclear weapons), Frankenstein (science out of control)

•     Metaphors change over time: now Vampires (greed, exploitation)

•    The 1980s in the United States are, socially, a reaction against the hedonistic excesses of the 1960s/70s – Under Reagan and AIDS, society becomes more conservative, puritan and seeks simple answers. (And yet optimistic: “Morning in America”)

•     The 1980s are a time of rising crime and violence in the USA – peaking in 1993, possibly due to lead in gas.  Everyone is terrified of everyone else, and this show up in slasher films.

•     High cold war tensions in early 1980s, nuclear war avoided in 1983

•    Is 1980s horror cinema a safe outlet for pent-up anxiety?

1980s horror in three letters: VHS

•     The fundamental change in the 1980s is taking movies out of theaters and into the home (via VHS / cable), which benefits marginal genres like horror

•     Respectable people can now watch disreputable material at home after stopping at the video store

•      The end of the inner-city grindhouse theater era

•     Age checks aren’t as stringent once the movie is home – teenagers (alone or in groups) can watch horror films well before they’re 18

•     A new distribution model: “straight to video”

•      Video rental stores (and cable TV) offer a new distribution channel that’s not as strict as theaters, especially prestige or mall theaters

•      Given the low visual quality of VHS and 1980s TVs, you can shoot movies on less-expensive video or 16mm film and make a profit

•      No major 1980s horror films were shot on video, but Bad Taste, The Evil Dead, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and Tetsuo: The Iron Man were all shot on 16mm film

•      All you need is a camera, friends, an isolated house and buckets of red syrup

•     All of this makes horror films far more viable as a business

Meanwhile… in bookstores

•    The best-selling success of three horror novels (Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby (1967); William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist (1971); Thomas Tryon’s The Other (1971)) lead major 1970s publishers to create dedicated horror publishing imprints– usually in mass-market paperback, sometimes in hardcover.

•     Recognizable through many black-white-and-red covers.

•    Stephen King’s success helps sustain the horror genre throughout the early 1980s, alongside authors such as Anne Rice, Brian Lumley, James Herbert, Dean Koontz, Clive Barker,  Ramsey Campbell and Peter Straub.

•    The horror genre busts in the late-1980s due to overexposure and substandard quality product. This does seem to be reflected (with a lag) in the decreased number of horror films and their lower profile in 1990s cinema.

Horror director of the decade:
John Carpenter

•    No other 1980s horror director has a better track record:

•     The Fog (1980) – Atmospheric coastal ghost story

•     📼 The Thing (1982) – Paranoid shapeshifting alien thriller

•     📼 Christine (1983) – S.King adaptation: a teen and his killer car

•     Prince of Darkness (1987) – Scientists contact Satan, can’t prevent the apocalypse

•     They Live (1988) – Discovering an alien conspiracy in plain sight

•    …plus non-horror classics Escape from New York (1981), Starman (1984) and Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

•    Other directors with impact: Wes Craven, Stuart Gordon, Clive Barker, Joe Dante, Tobe Hooper, David Cronenberg, Sean Cunnigham, Ram Raimi, George Romero, Dario Argento

Horror Writer of the Decade:
Stephen King

•    Throughout the 1980s, Stephen King becomes the most famous horror writer of all time due to a prolific number of high-quality stories and several high-profile adaptations, some of which have him acting or directing:

•     📼 The Shining (1980) – Landmark horror film from Stanley Kubrick (King didn’t like it)

•     Cujo (1983) – Stripped down suspense: a dog against mother and child

•     Silver Bullet (1985) – One of the defining werewolf movies of the decade

•     Pet Sematary (1989) – King’s most disturbing: resurrecting a dead child

•     The Dead Zone (1983) – Clairvoyant alarmed at presidential candidate

•     Children of the Corn (1984) – Rural anti-adults demonic cult; 10 sequels

•     Plus: Knightriders (1981), Firestarter (1984), Maximum Overdrive (1986), Stand by Me (1986 – non-horror), The Running Man (1987)

•     Also: Christine (1983) and Creepshow (1982), mentioned elsewhere

Franchises and Sequels

•    The cheap, easy, formulaic nature of most low-budget horror films (especially slashers) naturally leads to more of the same from producers.

•     For a time, audiences can’t get enough – box office success!

•     Linked to the typical “evil not vanquished” horror ending cliché

•     No need for stars when you’ve got kills

•    Sequels to 1960s-1970s horror films:

•     Halloween II (1981), Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988),
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)

•     Phantasm II (1988)

•     The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)

•     Psycho II (1983), Psycho III (1986)

•     Amityville II: The Possession (1982)

More Franchises and Sequels!

•    New 1980s franchises, most of them iconic

•     Friday the 13th (1980), Friday the 13th part II (1981), Friday the 13th: Part 3 (1982), Friday the 13th Part 4: The Final Chapter (1984), Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985), Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986), Friday the 13th: The New Blood (1988), Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

•     A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985),  A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Master (1988), A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (1989)

•     Hellraiser (1987), Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

•     Child’s Play (1988)

•     Critters (1986), Critters 2: The Main Course (1986)

•    All are about the monsters, not the heroes, except for The Evil Dead (1981) and 📼 Evil Dead II (1987)

…sigh… slashers…

•    First, let me re-iterate my utter loathing for slashers: Crude, dumb, nihilistic, misogynistic and pointless.  Why won’t the slasher die?

•    Slashers are horror films with a non-supernatural antagonist progressively killing off the cast until there’s a single survivor left.

•    There were over 300 slashers made in the 1980s alone, many of them outright loathsome. The “Golden Age” of slasher lasted from 1978 to 1984.  Some of the least-awful ones:

•     Maniac (1980) – Maniac kills, kills, kills and kills again

•     My Bloody Valentine (1981) – Focused on February 14, otherwise generic

•     The Burning (1981) – Scarred psychopath kills summer camp teenagers

•     The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) – Sort-of parody, by female director

•     Sleepaway Camp (1983) – Final twist has not aged well

•     April Fool’s Day (1986) – Focused on April 1st, otherwise generic

•     The Stepfather (1987) – Killer romances single moms, kills family, repeats

•     Maniac Cop (1988) – Psycho policeman kills a lot (same director as Maniac)

If slashers are the worst,
then what’s the best?

•    At its best, 1980s horror was a fast, intense, gleeful blend of dark humor, social themes, strong visuals, great makeup and innovative practical effects.  Some of the better examples:

•     📼 Society (1989) – Teenager discovers upper-class polymorphic orgies

•     Re-Animator (1985) – Scientist resurrects the dead: what can possibly go wrong?

•     From Beyond (1986) – Parallel universes and monsters from other dimensions

•     Dueling 1985 zombie movies: The ultra-dark Day of the Dead (1985) versus the dark humor of 📼 The Return of the Living Dead (1985) and its introduction of “braiiins”

•     An American Werewolf in London (1981) – If you travel, don’t get bitten by werewolves

•     📼 The Hidden (1987) – Body-hopping alien causes chaos, targets presidential candidate

High-Gloss Horror

•    While the vast majority of 1980s horror films were cheap, gory, artistically unambitious exploitation products, some had bigger means and ambitions, from directors who don’t usually work in the genre.  Noteworthy examples:

•     Altered States (1980) – Ken Russell’s usual insanity and pretention – meditation as doorway to murderous shapeshifting

•     Possession (1981) –  Andrzej Zulawski and high-quality visuals

•     Cat People (1982) – Paul Schrader’s update of 1942 classic

•     📼 Poltergeist (1982) – Hooper/Spielberg and the ultimate suburban haunted house story

•     Near Dark (1987) – Kathryn Bigelow’s blend of vampires, bikers and westerns

•     The Keep (1988) – Michael Mann does WW2 Nazi horror, badly

Anthology Films

•    Since a scary idea can grow stale over 80+ minutes, Horror is one of the few genres where anthologies of shorter films (often themed) can be successful:

•     Stephen King writes, even stars in Creepshow (1982) and Creepshow 2 (1987)  (Don’t watch the third) – bonus points for carrying the EC Comics legacy and sense of humor to the big screen (later continued by Tales from the Crypt in 1989)

•     Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) is more notable for the real-life horror of its production than its big-budget star-directors segments.

•     Director John Landis charged, acquitted of having caused 3 deaths on set

•     More minor entries include Cat’s Eye (1985), Night Train to Terror (1985), The Monster Club (1981), Deadtime Stories (1986) and nearly 30 others.

Monsters

•    Part of why the 1980s are such a great decade for horror is that it was generally more original than simply re-using the classic monsters of the genre.  Still, there were exceptions:

•    Werewolves

•     The Howling (1981) – Joe Dante slickly takes on werewolves

•     The Company of Wolves (1984) – Self-explanatory

•    Vampires (anticipating a much bigger subgenre in the 1990s+)

•     The Lost Boys (1987) – Vampire mythos for teens in small-town California

•     The Hunger (1983) – High-gloss directing by Tony Scott

•     Vampire’s Kiss (1988) – Maybe not horror, but definitely vampire

•    Zombies (anticipating a much bigger subgenre in the 2000s)

•     Dead & Buried (1981) – Sort-of-zombies, sort-of coastal cultists

•     The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988) – Haiti trip involves voodoo zombies

•    Blobs?!?

•     The Blob (1988) – Acceptable remake of the 1950s Steve MacQueen film

For kids and laughs

•    Horror can be off-putting, but a few movies are good entry points to the genre – lighter, funnier, and often aimed at older kids and reluctant adults

•     Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983) – Carnivals: creepy places

•     Ghostbusters (1984) – About as innocuous as it gets

•     📼 Gremlins (1984) – “Don’t feed them after midnight”

•     📼 Fright Night (1985) – Next-door neighbour is a vampire

•     Little Shop of Horrors (1986) – A musical comedy about… a human-eating plant named Aubrey

•     The Gate (1987) – Kids discover a demonic portal in their backyard

•     The Witches of Eastwick (1987) – The devil meets three witches

•     The Monster Squad (1987) – Homage to the classic Universal Monsters. Mostly innocuous.

•     Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988) – Wisecracks and cleavage

Comedies for Horror fans

•    There’s a strong distinction to be made between “horror comedies” and “comedies aimed at horror fans” – the second may not be all that funny if you’re not already comfortable with the genre’s attitude toward violence, gore and death.

•     📼Eating Raoul (1982) – A couple discovers a taste for flesh, then open a restaurant.  Pitch-dark cannibal comedy… and it works.

•     The Toxic Avenger (1984) – Mutated by chemicals, a man fights crime

•     Night of the Comet (1984) – Two endearing teenage Valley girls deal with zombies everywhere and at the mall

•     The Stuff (1985) – It’s a dessert and a mind-control alien substance

•     House (1985) – Veteran writer tormented by his haunted house

•     Chopping Mall (1986) – Stuck overnight in a mall with killer security robots – more campy than funny

•     Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) – Self-explanatory title

All horror, no laughs

•    Despite 1980s genre horror being steeped into entertainment and comedy (most of it dark, some of it very dark), a few outliers are unusually serious – often to the point of being unbearable to watch.

•     The Entity (1982) – Generally non-exploitative examination of trauma and survival after poltergeist sexual assault and harassment

•     Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) – grim, dark, unsettling portrait of a serial killer – one of the few movies to ever receive an X rating

•     The Hitcher (1986) – Thriller that falls into horror due to extreme, unrelenting violence

Quasi-mainstream Horror Thrills

•    On longer “best of 1980s horror” lists, some big-budget films more associated with non-horror genres appear.  They’re certainly thrilling, they’re certainly inspired by horror, but are they really horror?

•     Jaws 3-D (1983), Jaws: The Revenge (1987) – Big sharks

•     The Terminator (1984), Saturn 3 (1980) – Deadly robots preys on ordinary people

•     📼 Aliens (1986) – MORE aliens, MORE thrills, MORE fun

•     Predator (1987) – High-testosterone mercenaries face an expert hunter alien in the jungle

•     Dreamscape (1984) – Proto-Inception, with nuclear war

•    What is the difference between suspense and horror?

A grab bag of typical 1980s horror

•    We’ve reached the point in the presentation where I’ve run out of categories for the last films in the Top-100 list.

•    Motel Hell (1980) – Checking in for a room, or for cannibalism?

•    Alligator (1980) – Flushed-down mutant alligator eats people around Chicago

•    The Funhouse (1981) – Carnivals are creepy places filled with monsters

•    Basket Case (1982) – Young man keeps deformed brother in a wicker basket

•    Night of the Creeps (1986) – Partying Teens transformed into zombies

•    Pumpkinhead (1988) – Father sends monster after those who hurt his son

•    Brain Damage (1988) – Young man seduced by mind-controlling monster

•    Night of the Demons (1988) – Teenagers party in an abandoned mortuary. Guess what?

Overseas: Canadian Horror?!?

•    Amazingly enough, Canada is an influence in 1975-1982 horror filmmaking due to the “Canadian Tax Shelter” sub-genre, created by 100% tax rebates for Canadian film investors.

•     Notable non-horror tax-shelter films: The Silent Partner (1978), Meatballs (1979); Murder by Decree (1979); Atlantic City (1980); Quest for Fire (1982); Porky’s (1981)

•    David Cronenberg, body-horror master:

•     Scanners (1981) – Psychic powers battle in Montréal

•     Videodrome (1983) – Toronto-based Cable TV channel is evil

•     The Fly (1986) – Man fuses with fly during teleportation experiments

•     Dead Ringers (1988) – Two twin gynecologists… but I’ve said enough

•    Other notable tax-shelter horror: The Changeling (1980); Prom Night (1980); Terror Train (1981); My Bloody Valentine (1981)

Overseas: Italian Horror

•    Italian horror is undead and well during the 1980s, often more extreme than the US

•    Giallo master Dario Argento continues to direct visually stylish films, but he’s clearly on a downward path:

•     Inferno (1980), Tenebrae (1982), Phenomena (1985), Opera (1987)

•    Argento collaborators, sometime working from Argento scripts

•     Lamberto Brava: Demons (1985), Demons 2 (1986)

•     Michele Soavi: The Church (1989)

•    Argento rivals:

•     Lucio Fulci: City of the Living Dead (1980), The Beyond (1981)

•    Yuck: Cannibal horror (DON’T WATCH)

•     Cannibal Holocaust (1980), Antropophagus (1980), Zombi Holocaust (1980), Cannibal Ferox (1981) and many others worth even less of a mention

Overseas: a globe of horrors

•    Other noteworthy films and trends from around the world:

•     United Kingdom (in an otherwise rough decade)

•     The “Video Nasties” list of banned films

•     Lifeforce (1985) – Apocalyptic science fiction / horror

•     The Lair of the White Worm (1988) – Ken Russell’s weird sense of humor

•     New Zealand

•     Bad Taste (1987) – Peter Jackson’s wild, entertaining debut

•     Japan (anticipating much more extreme filmmaking to come)

•     Anime: Vampire Hunter D (1985)

•     Might as well be anime: Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)

…and the rest of the video store’s horror shelves

•    Focusing on 100-odd films is one percent of the nearly 10,000 horror-themed films released during the 1980s.

•     There is a long, long list of horror films that you never heard of and never will

•    For many horror fans, the pre-Blockbuster video rental store was the place to get horror films.

•     Not all of them were good!

•     Blockbuster also carried horror, but stuck to major releases

•    Is VHS dead?  Not for collectors…

•     Tales from the QuadeaD Zone (1987) – Once the most expensive VHS tape ever sold. ($2000, ebay, pre-Covid)

The end of the 1980s

•    The 1980s arguably end with the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989; politically, with Clinton’s election in November 1992, after the first Gulf War in 1991.

•    While horror has a few notable titles in the early 1990s, it is not as important, interesting or focused as in the 1980s.

•     1980s classics, honorable mentions (all released in 1990): 📼Tremors, Jacob’s Ladder, The Witches, Misery, Flatliners, Child’s Play 2, Arachnophobia, Gremlins 2, Frankenhooker, etc.

•     1990s horror aims to a broader public, and becomes more diffuse – blended with thrillers, science-fiction, drama, comedy, etc.

•     Slashers get an ironic next-generation-of-teenagers revival in 1996 with Scream

•     Later: Horror taken over by zombies and vampires fads

•    So, what is the legacy of 1980s horror?

The Legacy of 1980s Horror: Sequels!

•    Sequels: most of them aimed at the video market, without the original filmmakers, stuck in a death spiral of smaller box office, smaller budgets, repeat

•     Prime examples: Hellraiser, Children of the Corn, many others

•    Remakes/Reboots (hit a peak in 2000s-2010s)

•     “Platinum Dunes” specializes in horror reboots, among them The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), The Hitcher (2007), Friday the 13^th (2009), A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010), then more original fare.

•     More remakes: Child’s Play (2019), Fright Night (2011), Evil Dead (2013), The Fog (2005), My Bloody Valentine (2009), The Thing (2011), Poltergeist (2015) and so many forgettable others

•    Revivals and homages

•     Neo-slasher from the mid-1990s onward: the Scream series, I Know What You Did Last Summer (1998) and sequels, Urban Legend (1998) et al.

•     Second-generation homages: The Final Girls (2015), Fear Street (2021), The Slumber Party Massacre (2021), Totally Killer (2023) and others

The Legacy of 1980s horror: Creators

•    Many, many 1980s horror directors have gone on to other (sometimes better, usually more sedate) things:

•     Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema – The Lord of the Rings

•     Cronenberg, from body-horror to mainstream thrillers

•     Sam Raimi’s mainstreaming: Darkman, then Spider-Man, then others

•     John Carpenter: Hmm. — Despite 📼In the Mouth of Madness (1995)

•    Less obviously, horror print writers were inspired by the movies

•     The common origin story of horror genre writers in the 2000s: Watching horror VHS tapes at home, often with friends.

•     That generation is now being involved in filmmaking: Joe Hill’s Horns (2013), Paul G. Tremblay’s The Cabin at the End of the World à Knock at the Cabin (2023), etc.

The Legacy of 1980s horror: Techniques and technicians

•    The legacy of practical effects and makeup innovations on bigger, more mainstream productions

•     Again: The Lord of the Rings trilogy as pinnacle of scrappy horror filmmakers applying what they’ve learned to a big-budget production

•     Famous makeup and SFX artists with early 1980s horror credentials: Stan Winston, Tom Savini, Rick Baker, Kevin Yagher, Screaming Mad George, Rob Bottin, Ed French, Alec Gillis, etc.

•    Less obvious than named creators are the below-the-line makeup artists, special effect supervisors and designers, production assistants, and members of trades who got their start on cheap, low-budget productions and then worked their way to bigger, more prestigious films.

The Legacy of 1980s Horror:
Burying New Hollywood

•    Bizarrely, 1980s horror repudiates the New Hollywood on which it was built.

•     Its focus on entertainment and pleasing audiences is a direct contradiction of the often-alienating impression left by 1970s horror and directors free to embrace their own artistic goals.

•     Because it pleases audiences, 1980s horror succeeds by making money (often out of very low budgets), outclassing the pretentions of the more serious-minded mainstream filmmakers

•     The notion of the writer/director-as-author is immediately embraced by the horror audience, often more so than in other studio-controlled genres

•     Carpenter, Craven, Barker, Savini, King become genre references

•     It certainly helps steer Hollywood cinema toward a more populist, entertaining stance by the 1990s.

The Legacy of 1980s horror:
A Renewed Appreciation

•    The 30-year nostalgia cycle means that we’ve had a renewed exposure to the 1980s in the 2010s… and much of the re-appraisal was positive despite some dodgy material

•     Remakes have only highlighted how special were the originals

•    “They don’t make them like they used to”

•     Has the new “Elevated Horror” left fun behind?

•     Why can’t digital effects do better than the clunky SFX of the 1980s?

•     Splashed red syrup: cast authenticity and viewer distance?

•     Neo-puritanism, progressive orthodoxy and what’s acceptable or not

•     Modern screenwriting is far more predictable, even when it’s trying to be subversive – the result of internalized screenwriting conformity

•     The rough giddiness has become competent and performative

•     More cautious, business-driven filmmaking

Where to see 1980s horror?

•    The good news are that 1980s horror isn’t going away, and it’s never been easier to be a classic horror movie fan:

•     Physical media is doing well, with specialized re-masters

•     Criterion, Vinegar Syndrome, Shout!, Arrow, Kino Lorber and the studios

•     General streaming services will often carry the highlights, but may be sparser on the less-known backlist

•     Amazon Prime is the best of the big ones for older films

•     Specialized streaming services often propose more choice

•     Paid: Shudder, Screambox, Criterion Channel

•     Free: TubiTV (free, surprisingly good), Popcornflix

•     Some areas have specialized cable channels

•     FrissonTV in Quebec, AmericanHorrors in the US

•     Otherwise – you’d be surprised at what a Google search can find

•     (I’m not supposed to talk about private torrent trackers or free streaming sites)

Bonus: Top-100 1980s Horror films

A compilation of fifteen Top-1980s-horror-films lists

Horror Movies released in the 1980s