1980-1989

1980: In an attempt to cash in on the success of Halloween, Paramount releases Friday the 13th. Sean S. Cunnigham (Last House on the Left) produces. Jason Vorhees becomes the latest screen slasher. The film will spawn ten formulaic sequels, a tv series, novels and comics. Master filmmaker Stanley Kubrick releases his answer to the slasher movies, the terrifying The Shining starring Jack Nicholson. Italian film Cannibal Holocaust is banned in many countries around the world due to it’s scenes of sexual violence and real animal torture. In order to escape an outright ban in the UK it is released straight to video as home video is not yet covered by the BBFC and films can be released uncut.

1981: David Cronenberg releases Scanners with it’s iconic exploding head sequence. Sam Raimi releases his low budget horror The Evil Dead. This low budget shocker causes an international outcry for it’s graphic violence and gore.

1982: GO Video in a publicity stunt send a complaint to Mary Whitehouse about their own film Cannibal Holocaust. The stunt however backfires and Whitehouse begins her campaign against ‘video nasties’. John Carpenter releases his remake of The Thing (original version 1951). He transforms it into an allegory about infection and paranoia for the AIDS era. However it seems that with the introduction of home video, box office returns for cinema horror are dwindling.

1983: In response to the trend for slasher movies, horror pioneers Universal bring back Norman Bates from Hitchcock’s Psycho and release Psycho 2. The film is a moderate success and spawns two further sequels. Cronenberg’s masterful take on the video age Videodrome is released. Deborah Harry stars in a film that explores the effects of exposure to violence, torture and pornography via the video medium on human society.

1984: in the UK after pressure from Mary Whitehouse and The Daily Mail amongst others the government pass the Video Recordings Act (1984). The British Board of Film Censorship becomes the British Board of Film Classification. Under new guidelines films can be prosecuted for obscenity, forced cuts can be made and many will be banned from video altogether. Films affected will include Cannibal Holocaust, The Evil Dead, Driller Killer, I Spit on Your Grave and Zombie Flesh Eaters among others. Wes Craven releases A Nightmare on Elm Street the latest twist on the slasher theme. This time the ghost of murderer Freddy Krueger hunts adolescents and butchers them in their dreams. The film costs just $1.8 million dollars but grosses $25.5 million at the US box office alone. Like Jason Vorhees and Michael Myers the series becomes a franchise mirroring the model pioneered by Universal in the thirties and forties.

1985: George Romero releases Day of the Dead. The film receives a limited release and is condemned by critics as being too slow and depressing. It will be his last zombie film for twenty years.

1986: Cronenberg releases his most commercially successful film yet, a remake of the nineteen fifties movie The Fly.

1987: As horror films become increasingly comedic Sam Raimi releases a slapstick remake of his own earlier film under the title Evil Dead 2. It seems that the horror boom of the seventies and eighties is largely over and that audiences are once again looking elsewhere for their entertainment. Arnold Schwarzenegger appears in the action sci-fi/horror movie The Predator.