The years of the 80s became the golden age of horror, giving rise to many legendary franchises that are being exploited and reshot to this day. It was an era of bold experiments, where political correctness was unknown, and generous portions of eroticism and bloody grotesque created the perfect cocktail for an adult audience. The films of that time were not shy about being bold, provocative and truly frightening, offering viewers an unforgettable journey into a world of boundless horror.
1. The Howling (1981)
Released the same year before “An American Werewolf in London” and “Wolfen,” this film became a cult hit, reviving interest in the subject of werewolves. TV journalist Karen White, who has survived the trauma of meeting a maniac, goes with her husband to a secluded colony “Howling” for psychological rehabilitation. She soon realizes that the inhabitants of the colony are not who they seem. Director Joe Dante fills the film with wit and numerous Easter eggs for fans of the genre, but at the same time does not forget about the horror. The transformation scenes created by Rob Bottin are an impressive performance for the early 80s, when bones break and fur grows. “The Howling” offers a more stylized and “Gothic” version of werewolves than its London counterpart, and masterfully plays on the atmosphere of paranoia, when anyone, even the most pleasant neighbor, can be the enemy. The film has become a classic due to its unique tone, balancing between satire and animal fear.
2. The Evil Dead (1981)
Sam Raimi’s debut film, shot with incredible energy and ingenuity on a meager budget, forever changed the face of independent horror. Five friends arrive at an abandoned cabin in the forest, where they find a “Book of the Dead” (Naturom Demonto) with spell records. Their ill-considered decision to cast a spell releases an ancient evil that takes turns inhabiting the heroes. Unlike its more comedic sequels, the first part is, first of all, a tough and ruthless horror. Raimi uses innovative shooting techniques from the perspective of otherworldly evil and shocking special effects to create a sense of incessant panic and claustrophobia. Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) is not a superhero here yet, but just a scared to death guy fighting for survival. This crude and low-budget horror without any computer graphics is still capable of surprising. Then these two will help the Coen brothers with their first film, launching the famous creative tandem.
3. Creepshow (1982)
The tandem of Stephen King’s “king of horror” and George A. Romero’s “master of the zombie apocalypse”, who paid homage to the comics published by EC in the 50s. The film consists of five independent short stories, framed by a story about a boy who reads a forbidden comic book. Each story is designed in a unique style: there is a vengeful farmer who returned from the dead (“Father of the Day”), and a freak infected with an alien meteorite (“Something in the attic”), and a terrible birthday present (“Birthday”), and a creepy creature in a box (“Box”), and a maniacally clean millionaire (“They’re crawling on you”). Romero recreates the aesthetics of cheap comics on the screen with a vibrant color palette, stylized decorations, and animated transitions. “Creepshow” is not about psychological horror, but about the nerve-tickling, slightly childish pleasure of scary campfire stories.
4. The Fly (1986)
David Cronenberg’s masterpiece, a remake of the 1958 original, turned a fantasy plot about a failed experiment into a poignant and repulsive metaphor for the disintegration of personality. Eccentric scientist Seth Brandl sets up a teleportation experiment on himself, but an ordinary fly gets into the camera with him. A slow and irreversible mutation process begins, as a result of which he turns into a hybrid of a human and an insect. The genius of the film is that Cronenberg makes the viewer not just fear the monster, but empathize with it. First we see an unrecognized genius, then a man enthusiastically discovering new powers, then a sick man desperately trying to find a cure, and finally a monster. The Oscar-winning special effects still shock with their realism and hideous beauty. “The Fly” is one of the saddest and most philosophical paintings in the history of horror, where the horror lies not in death, but in the loss of identity. Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis show high class by playing at their best.
5. The Lost Boys (1987)
“The Lost Boys” is a film that mixes vampire horror, teen comedy and youth drama. The sons and their divorced mother move to the California town of Santa Carla, which, as it turns out, is being terrorized by a gang of young people on motorcycles led by the charismatic David. The older brother Michael falls in love with a mysterious girl from this company and gradually begins to turn into a vampire himself, forcing his younger brother Sam and his crony friends, the “vampire hunters”, to save him. The film became the standard of “glamorous” vampires — not old-fashioned aristocrats, but cool, sexy and dangerous rebels living in an abandoned hotel and listening to rock and roll. Joel Schumacher’s film balances between truly creepy scenes (a test for vampirism with garlic and a mirror is a classic), teenage humor and a touching story about brotherhood. “The Lost Boys” is a film about growing up, family, and how to stay yourself, even when everyone around you is pushing you to the dark side. The main roles were played by Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Patrick and Eugene’s girlfriend from “Crossroads” Jamie Hertz.
6. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)
Considered by many fans to be the best sequel to the franchise, this film masterfully combines the psychological horror of the first part with vivid phantasmagoria and the development of mythology. The action takes place in a psychiatric clinic for teenagers, where Nancy Thompson, having grown up, returns to help a new group of patients who are being persecuted by Freddy Krueger. The uniqueness of the painting is that instead of passively waiting for death, teenagers, under Nancy’s guidance, learn to use their dreams as weapons, becoming “warriors of sleep.” The film offers incredibly creative and visually spectacular murder scenes based on the fears and talents of each character, as well as reveals Kruger’s own past. It was a balance between horror, fantasy, and action-adventure that made Freddie a true pop culture icon. All the children of the 80s knew the creepy rhyme “One, two, Freddy came to you./Three-four, close the door tightly…”
7. Near Dark (1987)
Kathryn Bigelow’s cult film is an unusual Western noir reinterpreting the vampire myth without a single mention of the word “vampire.”A young guy named Caleb from the outback falls in love with a mysterious girl named May (Janet Wright) and ends up in a gang of tramps who turn out to be a family of immortal killers traveling around the American South in a van, hiding from the sun. The strength of the film lies in its oppressive atmosphere and style. The gang of vampires, led by the charismatic and convincing Jesse (Lars Henrikson), looks more like inveterate criminals, and their unglamorous, almost dirty lifestyle makes them both attractive and repulsive. The scene in the bar to The Cramps version of “Fever” with the main vampire limitless performed by Bill Paxton is one of the most intense and dark scenes in the history of vampire cinema. The music is from German kraut-rockers Tangerine Dream, who are familiar to us from “The Sorcerer”.
8. Angel Heart (1987)
Atmospheric neo-noir, mystical thriller and philosophical parable, expertly mixed by Alan Parker. The year is 1955. Private investigator Harry Angel receives an order from the mysterious Louis Cypher to find the missing singer Johnny Favorite. The investigation takes him from gloomy New York to stuffy and superstitious New Orleans, where ancient voodoo magic reigns, and where the boundaries between reality and nightmare are blurred. With each new clue, Angel plunges into an increasingly surreal and frightening world, and his own personality begins to crack at the seams. The film is famous for its oppressive and tense atmosphere, the brilliant performance of Mickey Rourke as the lost detective and Robert De Niro as the devilishly calm Cypher, as well as the provocative ending that shocked the audience. This is an intellectual horror game where the main monster is not outside, but inside.
9. Pumpkinhead (1988)
A dark and poetic horror tale, the directorial debut of special effects artist Stan Winston. The plot is simple: farmer Ed Harley (Lance Henrikson again), in anger and despair after the accidental death of his young son from would-be endurists, resorts to the help of a local witch to summon a revenge demon named Pumpkinhead, a distant relative of the Xenomorph. However, the payback for using ancient witchcraft turns out to be scarier than he could have imagined: every act of retribution physically and spiritually cripples Ed himself. The strength of the film is not in the unexpected twists, but in the Gothic, almost biblical atmosphere and remarkable visual. The monster itself, created by Winston, is both creepy and pitiful. “Pumpkinhead” is a tragedy clothed in the form of horror, there are no winners here, but there is only the price of retribution and the irreversibility of the curse.
10. Vampire’s Kiss (1988)
It is difficult to call this film a horror in the classical sense; it is rather a surreal black comedy and psychological drama about the disintegration of personality, which is remembered primarily due to the brilliant hysterical performance of Nicolas Cage. He plays New York literary agent Peter Lo, who, after being bitten by a bat, begins to convince himself that he is turning into a vampire. The film slowly and methodically plunges the viewer into the depths of his madness: Peter begins to wear plastic fangs, hunt people in the night city and commits absolutely absurd acts (like eating a cockroach). The iconic scene where he runs through crowded Manhattan with a distorted face, shouting “I’m a vampire!” has become Cage’s calling card. It is a restless journey to a place where the line between reality and delusion is blurred, and vampirism becomes a metaphor for narcissism and existential crisis.
11. Beetlejuice (1988)
Tim Burton’s masterful Gothic farce that transforms death and the afterlife into a colorful, absurd and incredibly funny carnival. Adam and Barbara Maitland, a recently deceased couple, discover that they are stuck in their house like ghosts, and a new owner and her unbearably eccentric daughter Lydia move into their home. Having failed to scare the new tenants, the couple turns for help to the “bio-exorcist” Beetlejuice, a bawdy, vile and completely unpredictable demon, which is extremely dangerous to unleash. The film is a triumph of visual imagination: from a surreal afterlife with offices for the dead to grotesque transformations. But his heart is, of course, the charismatic and repulsive Beetlejuice performed by Michael Keaton, whose energy literally tears the screen. Beetlejuice is the perfect Halloween movie: it’s simultaneously creepy, funny and touching, charming with its macabre aesthetic. Everyone will decide for themselves whether to watch the new “Beetle House squared”, but the original looked like a masterpiece for its time!
12. Pet Sematary (1989)
One of the darkest and most hopeless films by Stephen King, which explores the theme of uncontrollable grief and its terrible consequences. Dr. Louis Creed moves with his family to an idyllic country house, next to which an ancient Indian cemetery with the power to bring the dead back to life is discovered. At first, the tragic death of the cat forces Louis to go against the warnings and take advantage of an ominous place. However, the real horror begins when his little son Gage is killed on the road. The father’s desperate desire to return the child turns into a nightmare, because “sometimes the dead are better.” The film doesn’t just scare with sudden screams, but methodically immerses into an atmosphere of doom, and the climax with a little zombie boy and his phrase “Now I want to play with you” remains forever in the viewer’s memory.
13. Tales from the Crypt (1989)
The hilariously funny series Tales from the Crypt, which started in 1989, is the quintessence of Halloween entertainment. This anthology film, released on videotapes, is the perfect mix of horror stories, ironic and moralizing stories that have become the hallmark of the franchise. The leading, charming and sarcastic Keeper of the Crypt with a high and charming laugh is a separate success. The stories are filled with black humor, unexpected denouements, and the style of EC comics. There is a Christmas revenge with ghosts, and the fatal consequences of adultery, and the horrors hidden in the walls of the house. The film does not seek to scare the goose bumps, but masterfully creates the atmosphere of a gloomy carnival, where evil always gets what it deserves in the most sophisticated and poetic way. The franchise has featured such stars as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robert Patrick, William Sadler, Demi Moore, Joe Pesci, Tim Curry, Brad Pitt, Steve Buscemi and Billy Zane. “Tales from the Crypt” is the perfect choice for viewers who want to plunge into a series of short, witty and stylish horror stories that give real pleasure. viewing on Halloween eve.
And which of these films have you watched, oh, sophisticated reader? And what films of the 80s would you suggest to complement this creepy list?
