Right now 90% of you born in the 80's had flashbacks to a video store. You're welcome.

As I have mentioned before on this very blog, I am something of a horror movie aficionado; well I guess limiting it to movies is slightly misleading, I am a horror aficionado in general. Movies, books, comics, television shows, radio dramas, shadow plays, particularly scary postage stamps; it doesn't matter, I am on it.
With that said, you can imagine how the last, oh let's say, twenty years of horror movies has made me feel.

Well...

Sort of...

I had to quote the Fifth Element for this, do you know how that makes me feel?

Aaaaannnd scene.

I have been...let down by modern horror, let down, and abandoned. As horror has become bedfellows with the Pro Torture Council™ and the Brown Lovers Clubs of America™ the genre of horror has been made less and less fun and original with every passing film. Indeed, even the remake of "The Evil Dead is...no wait, I don't need to finish that thought, the are remaking the EVIL DEAD, if that doesn't sum up horror films in 2013, nothing does (and before you ask, I have no problem with remaking The Evil Dead, aside from the fact that remaking such a fiercely original movie just seems like a slap in the face to the fans and creators of said movie, but whatever).

If I had to pick a golden age for horror, it would be the 80's. Sure there were amazing horror movies in the 50's, 60's and 70's, in fact some of the best horror films came from those decades; but it was in the 80's that horror movies became fun. Sure they were violent gore fests, but you knew that at some point in the average 80's horror film you were going to have a few things happen:

1. Someone was going to die in a terrible but ultimately giggle inducing way. Like being stabbed with a pitchfork, but then picked up and thrown into a pile of hay.

2. There was going to be a cool physical effect or two that would make the girl you were with squirm up next to you.

3. There would be a boob in there somewhere. And if you were really, really lucky, maybe some lady parts. Hairy, hairy 80's lady parts. Covered in hair.

80s horror wasn't less violent than today's horror films, far from it (although I would argue they were less brutal), nor were they necessarily more original, but they did have something that today's films lack.

Fun

Yep fun. Two big, luscious, heaving, tempting, wonderful mountains of fun.

In the 80's it didn't matter what the story was to your horror movie, or who was in it, or even if anyone involved in the production knew what a movie was or how to make one; if you had some cool effects, buckets of blood and a strong desire to poke fun at yourself, your movie would be watchable, if not fantastic.

Was "Dead Alive" any good as a film? Hell no. Was it a blast to watch. Fuck yeah. Because Peter Jackson knew enough to make his film fun. My god a man uses an upturned lawnmower to plow thru a room full of zombies. How can that not be fun?

I guess that brings us to "The Video Dead". Which , in a nutshell is about a TV that births an army of zombies in a town where no one can act, or even look scared convincingly, and mayhem erupts. Is it any good? See above.

"The Video Dead" was, honestly pretty terrible. The acting was terrible, the cinematography was terrible, the script was terrible, I'm sure the lead actors smelled terrible, but that doesn't matter. Every frame of this movie oozes with the passion of a filmmaker wanting to tell a story he had in his head. It wasn't made for money, or for fame, movies like "The Video Dead" were made because someone wanted to tell a story about zombies, and they happened to have a camera and a hell of a lot of fake blood. That is the passion that today's horror movies are lacking. Do you think the latest version of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" was made because some one just really loves the characters? Or was it made to make some easy money that the studio can put into other projects?

More importantly, does it have boobs in it?

I rest my case.



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