FINAL GIRL explores the slasher flicks of the '70s and '80s...and all the other horror movies I feel like talking about, too. This is life on the EDGE, so beware yon spoilers!

Jul 11, 2008

awesome movie poster friday- the 1983 edition!

Apparently grasping hands, either in terror or of terror, were a big theme in 1983.













Wow, Ian McKellan is in The Keep.

You know, a lot of these movies kinda stink and yet there's something lovable about them. Just like Oscar the Grouch!

Other notable 1983 movies include The Dead Zone, Videodrome (see ampf: David Cronenberg), and The Entity (see ampf: Stan Winston).

30 comments:

Kmork said...

It's impossible to love anything about Nightmares. Okay, that's a lie: the scene in which Lance Henriksen heaves a jug of holy water at the Devil's S-10 touches me in all the right places.

Stacie Ponder said...

I love the videogame segment. I mean, it's terrible, but I love the early, heady days of videogames when the graphics were atrocious and we were supposed to be afraid of them because virtual reality was going to take over our LIVES!

Kmork said...

Good point. One can never get enough vector graphics, be it in cinema or otherwise.

Another thing I can never get enough of is Tangerine Dream soundtracks, and The Keep definitely had that (and a whole lot of Scott Glenn, too).

Anonymous said...

That is the best part of Nightmares! Emilio set an unreachable standard for arcade geeks.

The thing aboot the reaching arms is that they are to inspire you into thinking that the scary arms are reaching for YOU. It's to inspire terror & a general sense of oogghhy-ness.

CobiWann said...

I like that poster for "One Dark Night." The half-shadowed decayed dude makes it art.

Anonymous said...

Ah, flashback to youth, when I was too young to beallowed to see half those movies. : )

rob! said...

that's A LOT of copy on that Keep poster...sheesh, if i wanted to read, i'd buy a book!

Fox said...

You know that Curtains poster is very vaginal... I mean, it is called Curtains after all.

FatalPierce said...

The people behing the "Nightmare" poster knew only one thing for sure, "Jazz hands are always scary."

Theron said...

Dude, too bad "The Hand" wasn't made in 1983! Oliver Stone's timing has always been kinda crappy.

Anonymous said...

I saw One Dark night in the theaters and it totally freaked me out. Dude.

Shannon the Movie Moxie said...

Wow, Something Wicked This Way Comes - I've not heard that title in ages. Creepy movie!

Unknown said...

I love The Keep. I maintain hope for a nice DVD release someday. I believe there was an actual theatrical screening not too long ago in England somewhere.

Anonymous said...

Oh, my God. Mortuary is such a wonderfully horrible, horrible movie. Not quite as wonderfully horrible as Slaughter High, but it's up there. I own it on VHS (confused it with Funeral Home.) Is this the movie where its trailer was something completely unrelated, with Michael Berryman as a gravedigger getting pulled into the ground?

Evol Kween said...

I love The Hunger.

Arbogast said...

because virtual reality was going to take over our LIVES!

Laugh it up... as you sit hunched over your computer.

Angel Weiss said...

Doesn't that guy on the Something Wicked poster look like Clint Eastwood? The outfit makes me think of one of his western movies.

I also found it hard to be scared of Cujo, because Saint Brenards are like giant teddy bears. Although rabid teddy bears would've been pretty damn scary, too.

Adam Ross said...

I like how the "Jaws 3" poster wants to make it very clear that the movie is "all new," like there would be confusion that it was simply "Jaws" re-shot in 3-d. Actually, they probably should have encouraged that kind of confusion.

Anonymous said...

One of the funniest things about Jaws 3-D was seeing it without the 3-D effects. The shark looked like the worst Photoshop EVER.

Nightmares wasn't that great, but the Lance Henriksen sequence was well done, with a familiar arc enlivened by one of Henriksen's better performances.

Unknown said...

I love NIGHTMARES if only for how dated it seems now. Plus, the first story with the lady who goes out for cigarettes while a killer is on the loose was pretty cool.

Anonymous said...

i think that stephen king's old book covers are some of the best horror stuff around, and it's neat cuz they basically just took the book covers and made them into the movie posters back in the early 80s which is why it rulz.

Anonymous said...

I'm just gonna go ahead and say it: I like Psycho II more than I like Psycho.

Lied to myself for a long time about that one.

PIPER said...

There was a creepy movie trailer in the 80s of a guy on the road and he comes upon a doll in the middle of the road. He walks up to it and it grabs him. Was that from Curtains? Or Nightmares?

Anyone? Anyone?

Anonymous said...

Um, Sleepaway Camp? AAAHH! Stacy. :(

Anonymous said...

Piper: I was just about to post my memory of a creepy '70s commercial with a doll in the road. It's Curtains. 'Cept it was a lady driving down the road. I used to have nightmares about that trailer! It's an actual dream sequence in the movie too. The mask from Curtains is pretty creepy too, but the slo-mo ice skating across the lake was funny rather than scary to me. Gotta see it!

Anonymous said...

My bad, it was an '80s trailer after all (Curtains)...still killer...!

lhohl said...

Amazing the style of posters back then, then again I suppose it wasn't truly all that long ago. About one of the movie posters, there is one titled Mortuary, or so forth. There is one that came out in the late 90's or recently.

Is it my imagination, or does it seem like no one can come up with their own idea for a movie. Almost everyone is re-making movies from back in the day.

One of the few movies I've seen that came from the 1980's, was a movie made in 1985. The Evil Dead I and II movies. The second one was hilarious. Me, my mom, my fiance were tired and hyper and saw it on tv and were laughing about the trees and how the hand talks or so forth.

PIPER said...

narvolicious,

Thanks for head's up.

Unknown said...

something wicked was kind of a let down...

Unknown said...

Jaws 3 on the other hand...is a 3-D wonderland of wondrousness