The Horror Films of 1986

Top 10 of the Decade:

Aliens  We can squabble over whether this is properly a horror film (as opposed to an action, or even war, movie).  It certainly it fits less squarely into that category then its predecessor, which is basically an Old Dark House gothic writ large. Still, there are enough moments of monster horror here to qualify, I think.  The scene of Ridley and Newt trapped in the infirmary with the facehugger alone is a classic horror sequence.  In any case, this is probably Cameron’s highpoint as a filmmaker, where his increasing penchant for size most perfectly complimented a generally spot-on, intuitive grasp for sci-fi that few of his peers have ever matched—although I still can’t figure out for the life of me why he thinks the Terminator is a cyborg.  In any case, this is a masterwork.

Top 10 of the Decade:  The Fly   This is the gold standard for what has become one of Hollywood’s newest clichés, the ‘reimaging.’  (Indeed, it’s amazing that two films that are arguably the decade’s best monster movies came out the same year and consisted of a sequel and a, of sorts, remake.)  Cronenberg took a cheesy ‘50s monster movie—and anyone who knows this site will realize I mean nothing snide by that—and turned into perhaps the best, and certainly the most mainstream, of his neurotic meditations on the way our bodies can betray us.  Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum remain one of cinema’s oddest power couples, but they were perfect here.  Favorite moment:  Goldblum grotesquely snaps a guy’s wrist during a round of arm wrestling, and as his victim stands screaming in agony, raises his hand in a little “I won” gesture.

Others:

April Fool’s Day  A slasher film, modeled on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, with a ‘twist’ ending that was essentially telegraphed by the film’s title.  Oh…I don’t know what to think about that.  Were people really surprised?  I think they remade this a few years back, but I don’t know if that went in a different direction.

Critters  Ah, the days when stuff like this (and its sequels!) got onto theater screens.  Basically a less ambitious version of Gremlins, with a farm family besieged by the titular furry aliens.  Not bad, not great, it was what it was. And with all that, it’s better than about 90% of the few monster movies that make it to theaters today.

The Hitcher:  (Remade? Yes.)  Stephen King once opined that horror movies were “as conservative as a three piece suit,” and this is an example of that.  Of course, they would be, because the people in them generally face horrible, horrible fates and often for little reason.  In this case, a guy picks up a hitchhiker (Rutgar Hauer in a seminal role) and really, really learns to regret it.  The film is generally remembered for one shock, and would make a good double bill with Road Games.

House:  William Katt is an author suffering from writer’s block, caused by horrible dreams about the his time as a soldier.  (As Chicago horror host Svengoolie summed it up to the tune of the song ‘Our House’:  He’s divorced from his son’s mom / ‘cause he still has flashbacks from his days in Viet Nam.)  He movies into an old house, and hey, it’s haunted.  When his young son disappears, he has to confront his fears to reclaim him.  You know, horror movies were just more fun back then.  The sequel was inevitiably titled, House: The Second Story.

Invaders from Mars:  Truly pointless remake of the ‘50s sci-fi fable.  Another of Tobe Hooper’s failed attempts to regain the relevance of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Manhunter:  Directed by Michael “Miami Vice” Mann, this is a very ‘80s tale of an overly emphatic profiler (CSI’s William Petersen) after scary, well-etched serial killer Tom Noonan.  Adapted from a novel by Thomas Harris, this film is generally remembered as the first to feature supporting character Hannibal Lektor

as originally played by Brian Cox.  With so few Harris novels available, this was remade as Red Dragon to give Anthony Hopkins another change to play his trademark role.

Jabootu’s Favorite:  Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf  The fact that you can make a valid argument that this is Reb Brown’s worst movie—and he starred in Space Mutiny—indicates how luscious this flick is.  Bonus cringe points for co-starring Christopher Lee, who once turned down the Dr. Loomis part in John Carpenter’s Halloween.  Sybil Danning signed to do only one nude scene, so the producers grabbed the seconds where she ripped her shirt open and played it like fifty times over the end credits.  Ms. Danning was reportedly not amused.  Best part: The five dollar recreation of the (then) high-tech, top-dollar climax of the first film.

Other Stuff:

Night of the Creeps Fun, campy zombie flick that really kind of is emblematic of ‘80s horror.

Nomads  Pierce Brosnan  Interesting if not entirely successful attempt to create a folklore-ish tale revolving around a group of demonic nomads living in modern cities.  This was Brosnan’s first starring movie role in the wake of Remington Steele.  The first film by director John McTiernan, who followed it up with Predator and Die Hard.

Maximum Overdrive  Spectacularly dumb, but not one of my favorites.  Remembered mostly for a killer soda dispenser and for being the first Steven King adaptation actually directed by King himself.

Haven’t seen it, but it’s supposed to really suck:

Neon Maniacs.

Troll

Never saw:

Cassandra (hell, never heard of it), Crawlspace (I remember this one though, Klaus Kinski was a murderous nut hiding in, well, crawlspaces, or something like that), Deadly Friends (Wes Craven
fick most famous for its death by basketball), Demons 2, Dream Lover, The Fantasist (wow, lots of obscurities this year), Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, From Beyond (Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator follow-up), Gothic (flick based on the vacation with Lord Byron during which Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein), The Kindred (mad scientist flick starring the lovely Amanda Pays, then of TV’s Max Headroom TV show), Link, Poltergeis t II: The Other Side , Psycho 3, Silent Night Deadly Night 2, Slaughter High, The Supernaturals, Terror at Tenkiller, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, Trick or Treat, Vamp, Witchboard.

  • The really sad thing about Howling 2 is that the only reason Lee did the film was because he’d never been in a werewolf movie before. I like the reasoning, hated the results.

    And the music video at the end of the movie still haunts me. Dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. With the possible exception of the ending to Deadly Friend (which you were lucky to miss.)

  • Food

    Trick or Treat is not horror at all. It’s a high school heavy metal flick about a kick who is morbid over the death of his favorite rock star, until said dead rock star is resurrected to cause chaos. Cameos by Gene Simmons as a DJ and Ozzy Osbourne as a televangelist.

  • Ericb

    There was also the awful E.T./Alien hybrid “Star Crystal”.

  • Trick or Treat is generally regarded as a horror film (see IMDB or Wikipedia), and as it concerns a guy who returns from the dead to kill people, it’s kind of hard to argue the point. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trick_or_Treat_%281986_film%29_Poster.png

  • Great list but, wow, your not seen list includes many of my personal favourites!

    I really like Poltergeist 2 and as a kid I thought it was better than the original (not so sure now – the climax is too cheesy). Highlights include a gloriously creepy preacher antagonist and a monstrous tequila worm designed by H.R. Giger.

    From Beyond, Texas Chainsaw 2, Psycho 3 and Demons 2 are very uneven but fun movies although anyone put off by gore and masses of latex probably won’t be impressed. Troll is nowhere near as hilarious as the infamous sequel but worth watching for the non-amusingly named Harry Potter and his family fend off a troll who turns Sonny Bono into a tree imp.

    My favourite of all of the movies listed other than The Fly, House and Aliens is probably Friday the 13th 6 – astoundingly cheesy fun and the point in the series where the producers decided to stop with such pretensions as plot and character and just see how many ways they could kill people in 90 minutes.

  • I’d actually be a lot better with the horror movies of the ’30s through the ’60s. That was my personal sweet spot. I haven’t seen them all, of course, but I’ve seen most, I’m sure.

  • BeckoningChasm

    I think the “cyborg” aspect of the Terminator was the fact that it was covered in living skin–“sweat, bad breath” included. I would assume that the robot component had to take in some kind of nutrients to keep the skin alive.

  • Yeah, but the flesh was just an envelope, as revealed after it was all stripped away by the fire. If the organic material isn’t essential to the unit–as with Robocop, which had a human brain–then that ain’t a cyborg.

  • Rock Baker

    Invaders From Mars wasn’t bad for what it was. It’ll never match the 50s version, for sure, but I thought it was pretty fine for an 80s monster movie. Anytime the Marines are sent in to mop up evil space invaders, and the soldiers are THE GOOD GUYS to boot, you’ve got a pretty fun picture on your hands!
    Night of the Creeps was a nifty valentine to the pulps and EC horror comics of the 50s, and I thought played a lot better than it should have. I think you’re right, “Fun, campy” sums it up pretty good.
    I must think Critters was a better flick than you, though. I saw it again recently and was very impressed by how well written it was. Back in the 80s, they had a much better feel for writing stories set in Small Town USA than they do now. And I felt they did a supurb job of creating a realistic family unit that had their differences but obviously loved each other. I liked the script a lot after seeing it again. The first sequel was fun, but I’d call it as Bigger-but-Emptier. It was flashy, and had some cool moments, but it just didn’t have the same heart the first film did. I’d have to place Critters firmly in the ‘really good’ (for what it is) list. But then, it is YOUR site, Ken, so I guess you ultimatley have the final say!

  • I hope not, that’s what the comments section is for. I will say that you bring up a good point; I saw Critters back in the day (in a theater!), and thus compared it to horror movies of that era. Frankly, the writing has in general gone down enough that were I to see it again, I also might find it better than I remembered.

  • Dr. Whiggs

    Am I the only one who likes the Hitcher? I mean, no, I haven’t seen anything else on this list, but c’mon! Rutger Hauer was so great in it! And I love that they didn’t feel like they had to punctuate the shock with the sound of an entire orchestra punching their instruments.

  • Actually, The Hitcher has a pretty good rep, doesn’t it? As I noted, it’s probably the role Hauer is most associated with.

  • sandra

    I loved The Hitcher. After I saw it, I wrote to a friend “I just saw a great movie, but I can’t tell you about it without ruining it for you. I will say that the first line is “My mother told me never to do this” i.e. pick up a hitch=hiker, and it turns out Mother was right!” I was astonished when Siskel and Ebert panned it. It was like they saw a completely different movie. The one I saw was a black comedy ie. some scenes made you want to laugh and throw up simultaneously.

  • GalaxyJane

    Ok, I’ll admit it, I was completely surprised by the ending of “April Fool’s Day”. I have absolutely no idea what that says about my level of gullibility. Don’t remember much about the movie now except that I enjoyed it a lot more than most slashers. Probably BECAUSE of the ending rather than DESPITE it. I’m a complete sicko who likes my scary movies to have survivors.

    The poster for “Night of the Creeps” gave me nightmares for years. Even after I caught the flick on USA.

    I remember “Vamp” being sort of a big deal when it came out, but thought it was a bust when I got around to renting it. Grace Jones looked insane, as usual.

    Troll sucks, but not quite enough to be a real pleasure. I did enjoy Barbara Billingsly and Sonny Bono though. Or was it June Lockhardt? Crap, now I either have to sit through it again (unlikely) or head to the IMDB.

    “Trick or Treat” is actually a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. I think it’s mostly the insane concept of seeing Skippy from “Family Ties” trying to pull off gothy misunderstood headbanger. That and the insane death scenes. And the resurrected rock star killing kids at the school dance by shooting lightning from his guitar. And Gene Simmons. And all the shout outs to all the semi-obscure metal bands I was into at the time (not now of course, anyone who claims they saw me watching Lizzy Borden in San Antonio last year is obviously hallucinating).

    I guess what I am trying to say is that, along with “Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park” and “Never too Young to Die,” it constitutes part of the Gene Simmons ultra-crap movie trifecta. No, “Runaway” doesn’t count, it’s a half-way decent low-budget SF film and, compared to the former three, high art.

    That said, YMMV. I ADORE “Maximum Overdrive” and never saw widely acknowledged classic “The Fly” because I hated (and still find unpleasant) icky gore stuff.

  • GalaxyJane

    It was June Lockhart, sigh. I always mix up my iconic 50’s TV moms.

  • Plissken79

    Nice lisr Ken, I liked your take on Aliens, when James Cameron made great films inbstead of insufferable exercises in environmental extremism. April Fools’ Day is a bit of a guilt pleasure for me. One of the other films you have not seen, Slaughter High, was also called April Fools Day until Paramount threatened a lawsuit.

    You really should see Slaughter High (I saw it on Monstervision in the 1990s), it is an utterly bizarre film (but also quite mean and unpleasant, even for the genre), British actors in their 30s playing American teenagers, one of the most incomprehensible endings of all time, and its “star” Simon Scuddamore killed himself shortly after its release

  • The Rev. D.D.

    Trick or Treat was an OK little flick. I didn’t regret seeing it although I’ve yet to re-watch it.
    I have heard of Cassandra; it had a blurb in one of L.A. Morse’s books. I think it was about a woman having flashbacks/memories/visions of a murder or two, and no one believed her, of course. The Fantasist is a new one to me, though.

  • fish eye no miko

    I’m one of those who tends to think of Aliens more as an action film than a horror one. Great movie, regardless.

    I’ve seen April Fool’s Day, and I rather liked it. I don’t think it’s been re-made, and I’m not sure I’d want it to be.

    Ah, Deadly Friend. Yeah, the death-by-basketball is a… uh… classic. (-:

    Friday the 13th Part VI: I actually like this one. It’s the one where they just went ahead and made Jason unstoppable/immortal/whatever to make sequels easier to justify (not that they ever really tried to hard). And, hey, how many movies feature a former Sweat Hog getting his heart ripped out?

    Like Plissken79, I saw Slaughter High in the hey day of TNT’s Monster Vision, the movie block hosted by Joe Bob Briggs. Wow. It’s… lame. And the ending… Argh…

  • The Rev. D.D.

    2008 saw another horror movie called April Fool’s Day come out. I don’t know if it’s connected to the original or not, not having seen it.
    The original was all right for what it was, though it’s certainly not near the top of the slasher heap. I agree with Ms. Kingsley that having one particular kill be real might’ve made for a better movie.

  • Marsden

    I liked Troll. (yes, that was me) I liked the whole pocket universe thing and each apartment had a different kind of fairy, Elaine turned into a fairy and most of the actors were good, the little girl and the parents were good, but the main boy (Harry Potter, Jr)could have been better. I really liked the middle part where they all got singing their little mock opera, and they seemed to like old movies when they made it with the boy refrencing pod people from the planet Mars. The end effects when the enchantment started to get to the outside of the building weren’t too good and they never exactly answered what happened to the other people in the apartments (like Sonny) who got turned into things. The part with the English professor named Malcolm turning into a little elf version of himself was nice, but what happened to him, the poor guy was terminal and the troll basically gave him a new life. I could go on but I’m sure you don’t want to hear it.

  • Rock Baker

    I’ll have to cut against the grain here. I hated April Fool’s Day, but not because of the ending. I just hated the characters and the lousy script. I saw the film back to back with My Bloddy Valentine (the original, on a bargin DVD double feature) Valentine was an above-average slasher, one of the very, very few I would call a good movie. It had good characters, solid direction, and a dandy script. Then I watched April Fool’s Day with it’s unappealing characters, hack direction, and obvious script. That evening I started with the best of breed in slasher flicks, and can’t say that that helped when I got to the far more typical example of the genre. The big reveal was fairly clever but ruined by the title. It felt more like an R rated TV movie. But hey, if you liked it you liked it, I’m just throwing my two cents in.

  • Rock Baker

    Sorry, that should be My BLOODY Valentine! Didn’t catch that before I hit the button.

  • Wow, this was the year of my guilty pleasures (and a few not-so-guilty). Night of the Creeps, the Hitcher, House, Manhunter, Howling II and Critters… It is like a lineup of every USA Up All Night Rhonda Shear ever hosted. (Well, if you add in Sorrority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama and Piranha Women in the Avacado Jungle of Death.) And the same year also saw Aliens and the Fly.

    Oddly, I think, despite being a dissolute teen at the time (or maybe because of it, and all the free time it left me), I actually saw most of these in the theater.

    What is more interesting though, is how many of these went almost immediately to VHS/Beta to become the abckbone of mom-and-pop video shops in the late 80’s and very early 90’s, riught before the chains killed them off. House, Critters, April Fool’s Day, those posters were in every little hole in the wall store I can recall.

  • I know no one cares besides me, but that list of guilty pleasures was supposed top prominently include From Beyond, as well — also another video store favorite — but I somehow overlooked that favorite.

    Not to mention Texas Chainsaw II, whose chainsaw duel was second in popularity among my teenage friend only to the sledgehammer duel in Streets of Fire.

    And Gothic, which I somehow missed in the mid-80’s, but was forced to watch repeatedly by my college roommate.

    And, finally, though it is horribly embarrassing to admit, I actually liked Vamp, even had (more embarrassing — I STILL HAVE–) a copy taped off HBO back in the late 80’s. I know it is bad, but for some reason I just couldn’t stop watching it.