Hello my friends. This week we shall conclude our October long look at horror films through the ages and the leaps forwards in technology that brought those to us.
Let’s explore and welcome back ☺️
We now head into my favourite period, the 1980’s and this decade would change the horror genre again and also the technology that allowed us to watch these movies in our own homes.
As l talked about last week, the home video system revolution from the late 1970’s to the early 1980’s was a turbulent and confusing one for home consumers.
The machines were incredibly expensive, VHS vs Betamax was still being played out to see which would be the dominant format, and home video films had no age restrictions to speak of.
During these early years l would get to see my first horror film, a video nasty, a unrated film and what would that be? “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” from 1974 and l was 8-9 years old.
Before you recoil in terror that l was watching something like this at such a young age and that my parents couldn’t have been that nice to let me watch it, did they know? of course not.
This is the early 1980’s and children from that decade I think, were trusted more as a generation. You could jump on your bike with friends and be out all day and as long as you were home for dinner, all was well.
Was the world any less of a threat to children at that time? not really but it wasn’t in the public zeitgeist and it was absolutely a more relaxed atmosphere and subsequently l definitely had a more liberal up bringing.
So, my parents were at a neighbours birthday party a few houses down from us and it was an adult thing. So they were happy enough to leave me at home with snacks, the TV and our video player so l took my opportunity 😳
I didn’t even know what “The Texas chainsaw Massacre” was and just popped it into our wonderful Ferguson VideoStar, grabbed some snacks and pressed down the chunky play button.
Little did l know l was about to watch, (at the time), one of the most infamous horror movie of the early 1970’s. To be honest, l didn’t really understand it and that’s not surprising as the subtext to this film was lost to me.
For what it was, it was a lot of people talking in heavy American accents, it was noisy with funny characters and it was all a bit comical. Of course you have the villain of the piece Leather-face who was a silly guy “dancing” with a chainsaw as far as l could make out.
As for scary, not really but you have to look past the film and to the way it was made and marketed to audiences in the 1970’s and that is something l can now do as a fully understanding adult.
When the movie first starts it was says this is all based on true events to instantly inject a sense of realism and fear to the audience.
The way the film was shot using that guerrilla style of camera work which was very reminiscent of 1968’s “Night of the living dead” gave it more of a documentary feel and something still not common place in modern cinema at that time.
It started to blur the lines of reality with movie goers and it got to a point where you didn’t know if you were watching a fictitious film or something that was actually happening.
The film was made on a tiny budget of $140,000 in the blazing heat of a Texas summer with a small cast of believable actors all of which were unknowns with an ambitious and creative first time director in the form of Toby Hopper.
Once again, this was all very much in the same formula of “The night of the living dead” from 7 years earlier, with the small budget, cast of unknowns, first time director and all made and financed outside the mainstream film making system.
Toby or “Tobe” Hooper would go on to direct another notable classic horror film, this time within the mainstream studio system with 1982’s “Poltergeist”.
As a side note, the executive producer was Steven Spielberg on that project and there is still some rumours to this day whether Spielberg actually directed the majority of the 1982 “Poltergeist” rather than Hooper.
Both men throughout the years absolutely maintain that Hooper directed with Spielberg not getting involved in any way. Unfortunately, it would be a rumour that wouldn’t go away and Hooper would never really hit the big-time as a director after that.
So, that was my first ever horror film and to be honest it was a bit of a flop to me as a child. Most people think it would be blood soaked and violent from the title but actually, it’s more to do with unsettling characteristics of the people in the film and it’s not particularly graphic in nature.
The next “horror” film l got to see would give me nightmares and it would be something l saw at my grandparents house when staying over one night. It was on a different video player from our Ferguson Video Star we had at home.
This is the amazingly designed Akai VS-5EG from 1982 and you can see by the picture that only in a few short years, video cassette recorders had really started to look very high end.
This all metal design with a glass front panel for the LED display was still a top loader but it was slanted at the front and all the indication lights were this wonderful green colour.
The buttons were not the clunky ones as seen only a few years before but sleekly integrated into the front of the machine and each one had their own indication light when pressed.
It boasted multiple day programmes for weekly recordings, automatic tracking for clear pictures, audio recording dubbing, picture re-wind and fast-forward so you could see on your TV where you needed to stop on a tape and an infrared remote control.
This was so bloody cool when l was a kid, (10-11 years old at this point), and it was like looking at a control panel from a spaceship and l loved being able to use it and watch VHS films on it.
This next part is a bit fuzzy and l don’t know whether my grandfather had recorded this particular film off of late night terrestrial television in the UK, or whether he had bought a VHS copy of it but it was the classic “Jaws” from 1975.
This absolutely scared me to bits as a kid for a number of reasons. The first being that l couldn’t swim at the time and the sea and its vastness always felt uncomfortable to me.
The second was the films visual nature, no subtle adult context needed like “The Texas chainsaw massacre”. Big killer shark eats people, attacks whenever it wants, blood and death ensues.
The third and the most telling was the brilliant film score by legendary composer John Williams.
That slow and penetrating “Jaws” theme just seeped into me as a child and l knew something bad was about to happen when that came on.
For weeks after watching “Jaws” l had nightmares of giant killers sharks burst through my bedroom window while l was sleeping in attempts to eat me because of scenes like this from the end of the film.
Is “Jaws” a horror film?, technically no as it’s listed as a “Adventure/thriller” movie which at the time would have received a PG/PG13 age rating. But to me it was a horror film and as much as it scared me l re-watched that VHS whenever l was over at my grandparents.
Let’s bring today’s blog entry to a close and look at one last 1980’s horror film that really freaked me out. It’s a classic and a rare combination of the horror/comedy genre. 1981’s “An America werewolf in London”.
This film was definitely one that my Father got from one of those shady guys from a pub in London during the “video nasties” era l mentioned last week and l was around the same age as of having seen “Jaws” when l watched this movie.
Maybe l was going through a “monster” film phase as both these films featured blood thirsty beasts but this horror classic took the terror to a dark and frightening place.
The story is a very simple one. Two young American tourists Jack and David, (David seen in the red coat in the poster above), are attacked on the moors in the U.K. by a werewolf.
David survives but his friend Jack doesn’t and our main protagonist David is unknowingly now cursed to transform into a werewolf himself once the next full moon appears.
David is taken to London to recover in hospital and befriends a nurse that is looking after him. After he is seemingly recovered and released from hospital, the nurse takes pity on David and he moves into her flat in London. Then the killings begin.
While David can’t remember what happened exactly he keeps having horrific dream like visions and his dead friend Jack keeps visiting him in this semi dream state.
Jack warns David that he is now a werewolf and that all his potential victims will be doomed like Jack is to walk the earth in an undead form until David is either killed or kills himself.
The horrific dream sequences that David has before his first transformation and Jack’s undead visits as he slowly decays with each time he see him are just terrifying and they really stood out when l first watched this film.
These dream sections of the movie from David’s point of view were just so unsettling and they would be brilliantly put in throughout the film and you never knew if what you were seeing was real or not.
Then you have David’s transformation from man to werewolf and it was just absolutely shocking and some of the best practical effects ever seen in a horror film to date.
I won’t spoil the ending of the film but there is a final brutal confrontation in the centre of London and the body count is high along with the gore with some fabulous creature special effects.
What really frightened me as a child with this movie were the combinations of everything already mentioned and the film was shot in places in London my parents worked and l had visited and it made it feel all the more real.
As much as l was bloody terrified and the inevitable nightmares it gave me as a kid, l loved it and it was one of the first films l brought when l was old enough to have my own proper copy on VHS.
As the 1980’s continued and l got older, l got to see all the classics of the decade. From franchises like “Halloween”, “Friday 13th”, “Nightmare on Elm street”, “Hellraiser” and “Phantasm”, just to name a few.
This decade in horror and also in audiovisual advancements in film making , television and the home video revolution makes the 1980’s one of the most influential times in our technological age and l was thankful to see it first hand.
Next week we lose our horror theme from the month of October and look at what technology was fighting to replace home video and my experiences with it.
As always, thank you so much for reading today’s entry, your likes, comments, shares and general interest in the blog.
Let’s explore together again next week ☺️
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