Ah, the ‘80s – the decade where “greed was good,” Swatch watches were the ultimate fashion statement, and a onetime B-movie actor became a two-term president. It was a strange time – but it was also a fantastic decade for horror-movie fans. The genre was popular at the box office, and the burgeoning home video market gave fans and filmmakers one more outlet to find classic fright flicks.
As such, the “Me Decade” was something of a golden era for the genre. Popular films spawned sequels at a pace faster than their demented murderers killed off horny teenagers, and we witnessed the birth of many a “cinematic universe” decades before that became a Hollywood buzzword.
With that in mind, join us in reminiscing about some of the greatest horror film franchises of the 1980s.
Friday the 13th
It seems unlikely that anyone could have possibly imagined Sean Cunningham’s modest little slasher movie Friday the 13th spawning an entire franchise of films, but that’s exactly what the low-budget 1980 film did. By 1989, there were eight Friday films, and the series had morphed from a gory whodunit in the vein of Mario Bava’s Bay of Blood into the story of Jason Voorhees and his unending desire to kill anyone who came to Camp Crystal Lake.
Friday the 13th didn’t end with the 1980s, but it came to symbolize the decade for most casual horror fans. The franchise’s enduring popularity inspired an entire wave of slasher films, including the title we’ll discuss next.
Number of Films in the Franchise: 12 (one remake, plus Freddy vs. Jason)
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Jason Voorhees and Halloween’s Michael Myers weren’t the only madmen slashing their way through the two terms of the Reagan presidency; they were joined in 1984 by one Fred Krueger – the man of your dreams and the bastard son of a hundred maniacs – in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street.
The original NOES flipped the slasher-film script – whereas Myers and Voorhees were silent killers (allowing audiences to project their own fears onto the madmen), Freddy actually spoke. The sequels (the franchise reached five films in the 1980s, then added several more in the ‘90s) made Krueger into something of a wisecracking antihero, but he’s terrifying in that first feature. That he could get you in your dreams, where you were most vulnerable, only made him that much more frightening.
Number of Films in the Franchise: 9 (one remake, plus Freddy vs. Jason)
Halloween
John Carpenter’s Halloween actually debuted in 1978, but the seminal slasher series officially became one of horror’s biggest franchises in 1980s when a flood of sequels hit.
Rick Rosenthal’s Halloween II was released in 1981, and picks up immediately after Carpenter’s classic ended. It looked like it was all over for Michael Myers (and Donald Pleasence’s Dr. Sam Loomis) at the end of that film, and the next installment, subtitled Season of the Witch, took things in an entirely new direction… and bombed at the box office.
Myers reclaimed his butcher knife in 1988, and then closed out the decade with 1989’s Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers – further cementing his reputation as an ‘80s icon on par with Jason and Freddy.
Number of Films in the Franchise: 10 (including two Rob Zombie remakes)
Poltergeist
The ‘80s weren’t all about slasher movies, something Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg proved with the launch of the Poltergeist franchise in 1982. With three films released between 1982 and 1989 (followed by a remake earlier this year), Poltergeist was a genre mainstay. The ancillary “death curse” rumors and the debate about whether Spielberg actually directed the original film for Hooper are just a bonus.
The overarching story has the Freeling family squaring off against supernatural forces that want their youngest daughter. Unsure how to confront these spirits, they turn to a diminutive psychic named Tangina (Zelda Rubinstein, in a career-defining role), who must rescue little Carol Anne from the forces of darkness.
While the first film is easily the best of the bunch, Poltergeist maintains a surprising level of quality throughout all three original entries.
Number of Films in the Franchise: 4 (including one remake)
The Evil Dead
While it only had two entries released in the ‘80s, Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead still stands as one of the most beloved and instantly recognizable franchises of the decade.
Bruce Campbell’s battle with the Deadites (spawned after he plays an audio recording of a professor reading from the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis) has become a cult favorite over the years – a wonderful mix of gore, B-movie camp and the always entertaining Campbell.
The original film, released in 1981, didn’t find an audience until several years later. A Stephen King blurb catapulted it onto the radar of horror geeks everywhere, and the rest is history. Campbell and Raimi would reteam for a sequel in 1987, and then reunite again for Army of Darkness in 1993. Fans are still clamoring for an Evil Dead 4, but despite constant news stories that have Raimi and Campbell ready to make it happen, it looks like Starz’s new Ash vs. the Evil Dead series is the closest we’ll get to another feature film for the time being.
Number of Films in the Franchise: 4 (including one remake)
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Demons
Italy wasn’t content to let Hollywood have all the horror franchises in the 1980s – it created one of its own with the release of Lamberto Bava’s 1985 film Demons.
With three sequels coming after the original film (although, to be fair, only one of them is truly a sequel—Bava’s Demons 3: The Ogre and Michele Soavi’s The Church, also labeled Demons 3, were sequels in name only), it’s safe to say that Demons was a pretty popular enterprise. The inclusion of Dario Argento as a writer and producer almost assuredly helped with that.
Gory, nonsensical (the first film has maybe the greatest deus ex machina ending of all time… and the sequel brings back fan favorite Bobby Rhodes as an entirely different character), and deliriously fun, the Demons franchise is one of the great starting points for fans new to the grisly charms of Italian horror cinema.
Number of Films in the Franchise: 8 (most of these were sequels in name only and had nothing to do with the two original films)
Hellraiser
Author Clive Barker wasn’t having the best of luck when it came to cinematic adaptations of his highly lauded short fiction and novels, so he took things into his own hands and made Hellraiser in 1987.
Based on his novella The Hellbound Heart, Hellraiser introduced to the world to Pinhead and his merry band of Cenobites. These demons from Hell became instant icons in their S&M garb, and a franchise was born.
While only one sequel – 1989’s Hellbound: Hellraiser II – was actually released in the ‘80s, it’s no stretch to say that the best Hellraiser films (and the ones that made it such an enduring franchise over the years) were made before the calendar flipped over to 1990.
Number of Films in the Franchise: 9
Return of the Living Dead
No list of classic ‘80s horror franchises is complete without mentioning the Return of the Living Dead series – the sillier sibling of George Romero’s somber zombie films.
Dan O’Bannon’s first film was released in 1985, and was an instant cult hit. Mixing humor and gore in equal measures, the original Return of the Living Dead is notable for being the first film where it’s explicitly mentioned that zombies want to eat brains.
The year 1988 saw the arrival of a sequel (directed by Ken Wiederhorn) that was really entertaining in its own right. In that film, a leftover barrel of Trioxin (the chemical responsible for reanimating the dead) leaks into a small town and soon the walking dead are everywhere.
Return spawned three more sequels (the third, released in 1993, is every bit as good as the two films that preceded it, while the two sequels made in this century are borderline unwatchable…), but it will always be synonymous with the ‘80s as far as we're concerned.
Number of Films in the Franchise: 5
