I came of age mostly in the eighties and, as such, cut my horror-watching teeth on movies produced and released in that decade. The eighties actually saw the genesis of numerous horror franchises, including Friday the 13th (1980), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Hellraiser (1987), and, though the first film was actually released in 1978, the Halloween series of movies achieved the status of franchise in the eighties.
Most of these films have led to a string of sequels, some nearing a dozen follow-ups, and the majority have been remade. There are other films and franchises, however, which were birthed in the eighties but, for varying reasons, forgotten in more recent years.
I remember watching many of these movies as a child (this was usually done illicitly, my parents certainly wouldn’t have allowed me to watch such terrifying films at the age of ten or eleven) and, in some cases, I did not understand them, found them unpleasant, or was simply too frightened by what I saw to ever want to watch them again.
Until now.
I’ve made a concerted effort, recently, to watch some of these movies I would not have been able to appreciate when I’d first seen them. These films, films I remembered as terrible, as things made only to scare children, I watched with new, more discerning eyes... and was surprised.
The eighties did not only produce movies now relegated to remake and parody fodder, but genuinely frightening, smartly constructed films.
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