The 80s in Hollywood were a magical era of weird movies. The cinemas of American audiences, the VCD of Chinese audiences, and the American horror films of the 80s have left an indelible scary memory. In many Hollywood contemporary films with "nostalgic" gimmicks, you can always see posters of movies such as "Strange Shape", "Ghost Playman", "Ghost Street" and other movies hanging on the wall by cynical protagonists.
Strange and strange, a good summary of the characteristics of the brain-opening and imaginative films of the 80s. From the very beginning of the "slash and kill" movie, a group of inexplicable characters chase young boys and girls to kill, either wearing masks or looking terrible. From spiritual problems to demonic possession, or extraterrestrial creatures, anyway, after finding a novelty from the head, quickly start sprinkling plasma, and more b levels are b levels.
In terms of genre alone, most horror films have been fixed in the 80s, and the stories and characters have been revised and revised, repeatedly polished, and used to this day. There are examples of "killers" slash movies. It contains genre elements such as thriller crime and psychological horror. Monster horror creature movie. Based on the great progress of model special effects, horror filmmakers in the 80s had more room to play their own image power. There are also well-known zombie movies.
Due to its large number and abundance of exploitation, it can be completely self-contained. There are also supernatural films depicting demons, witches, etc.; as well as physical horror films that focus on human physical exploitation, showing the disconnect between human technological innovation and self-cognitive imbalance. Of course, the glory of the 80s did not happen overnight. After more than 20 years of exploration by the former people, technological innovation, and social upheavals, the 80s became an era of strange movie outbreaks. "The Exorcist" paid 12 million dollars to return the $190 million box office, shocking the entire film industry in the 80s.
Horror films that cost tens of millions of dollars were already big productions at the time. "Texas Chainsaw Killer", cost more than 80,000 yuan, box office more than 30 million US dollars to invest 1.8 million "Witch Carrie", received 33 million box office.
"Moonlight Panic" for $300,000 grossed $60 million.
The extremely low cost investment and the ultra-high box office return show the audience's recognition of strange movies, and also push them into the golden age of horror films. The themes of the 80s strange movies, from the peeping of capital to the examination of sex, the challenge of decentralization of the government, and the expectations and concerns about alien creatures in the universe, make the strange movies have many themes to cover and borrow. Today, Fat Brother integrates some of the strange movies of the 80s that I personally prefer, so that everyone can roughly understand the genre style of these films, and present the brilliant era of moths, shock and surprise synchronization, fear and hilarity coexisting.
A young man who has not undergone professional training at all actually made a generation of classics that influenced American culture and sat on the cult clut wind, "Ghost Play man" or "Corpse Change". It tells the story of a small group of people who go on vacation to a cabin in the forest, accidentally discover the mysterious Book of Death, and are possessed by a demon. This film, which is a little older than me, has pioneered countless horror movies. Ultra-low cost, a bunch of small celebrities, no special effects, relying on first-class and fanciful makeup, this low-key movie has been put on the altar.
Sam Remy became the leader of a cult. Even the Japanese master of "The Grudge" Takashi Shimizu admired him. The previous generation of the "Spider-Man" series, which sold well at the box office, made him one of the top commercial directors. The first "Ghostbusters" was released in 1981 and became a sensation in the United States, with the protagonist Bruce Campbell becoming an action superstar.
Calling the hot iron, the two continued to cooperate, filming a total of three "Ghost Play people". The low cost did not stop the horror that seeped out of the shots, and the uncontrollable violent and bloody shots were extremely shocking at the time. Sudden conflicts, irregular switching of rhythms, blood clots in the film, ghostly follow-up shots, and the black humor interspersed with them make the audience fall into an inextricable experience of fear in a twist and turning plot. Sam Remy pays more attention to the movement of subjective shots and the free switching of perspectives, exaggerated large close-ups, close-up showing of the distorted expressions of the characters, coupled with terrifying music and the strange cries of the devil, fear is like an electric current flowing directly through the body.
Even the world-famous master of horror, Steve King, is highly regarded. The Ghostbusters series inspired the arrival of the American zombie genre, and the later "Living Dead" series was deeply influenced by it. It is no exaggeration to say that "Ghost Playman" opened up a new world of film genre films.
This may be a favorite of the fat brother's 80s weird movies. In the eyes of the fat brother, if the B-grade film uses cg special effects, it will be a lot worse. A B-grade film with a strong taste must rely on fine makeup and wild imagination to create scenes that are enough to make people's hearts skip and their brains briefly crash. And cg always has a bit of copper smell and anti-movie tradition of elite weirdness. In the 1982 movie "Strange Shape", all the special effects of this movie came from makeup and models, some scene models, and the design and assembly took up to 7 months!
With an oppressive atmosphere, unprecedented special effects models, and a bombing script story, "Strange Shape" is called by science fiction fans, the greatest third type of contact type in the history of cinema, horror films. This sci-fi movie is written by the B-grade horror master, John Carpenter! In the 70s, the strange coffee who made the American horror classic "Moonlight Panic" and "Blood Splash Thirteen Police Station" set a mountain for American movies to wait for future generations to climb.
The horror of film history is considered by many to be the century of horror brought about by the young alien creatures in "Alien 1" after being pierced from the stomach of a person. However, in the eyes of the fat brother, in the slightly later "Strange Shape", the alien creature changed from a complete human form to a split from the abdomen, turning into a huge man-eating flower-like alien, and then swallowed a person whole! After watching this scene, I believe that you will never forget it!
There are also melting humanoids, like the little girl in "The Exorcist" walking backwards on all fours, putting a person who is lying on the ground, forcibly fusing, a classic monster is born, two heads, a few feet, open teeth and grin running towards you who have already scared silly! If you're interested in the structure of the human body that breaks the thread, I'm sure this movie will definitely be the Bible in your heart.
The so-called Carpenter-style sci-fi movies will always have a steady stream of thrillers! Movie fans regard him as a master of sci-fi horror thrillers! The source of horror is not only special effects, but also the atmosphere that goes deep into the bone marrow. The story takes place on the closed, isolated continent of Antarctica. The Norwegian expedition took in an Antarctic dog that accidentally broke into the camp, which was actually a deformed creature of an alien organism.
This shaped organism, which mimics any organic matter, transforms into animals and humans, and is highly intelligent. You can imitate people, and do whatever it takes to protect yourself.
There is not a single female character in the whole film, and more than a dozen big bosses are disrupted by alien creatures and are isolated. The biggest source of horror in the film is that you can't guess who among the dozen or so people is already a variant of an alien creature. In the process of constant suspicion, the audience is tired, slack, afraid, without a sense of security, and finally loses its strength, deep into the strange world of Carpenter, unable to retreat.
It is the childhood fear nightmare of countless people, and it is also a spring dream that we in adolescence have dreamed of a hundred times. The so-called thousand corpses are not as good as Gordon's live jumping corpses.
As soon as "Jumping Corpse" released in 1985 came out, it scared and amused the audience. The classic section of the film has several celebrity film histories. 10 Magic Movies! 10 major knots to smash the bridge section! Top 10 Horror Movies! Top 10 Horror Soundtracks! Top 10 Disgusting Makeup! 10 Bad Tastes! As long as it is related to b-grade films, in the C-world fan base, it is a Bible-level movie.
"Jumping Corpse" is a fusion of frankenstein + zombie genre films that emerged in the 80s. But the most special thing about it is that the black humor that always appears coldly in horror makes people cry and laugh, one second is frightened by dissolution and body explosion, and the next second it amuses you with comedic humor. Horror + glamorous + comedy, the three major film genres can be cleverly soft in a B-grade film, which is really an admirable five-body projection.
The story is a joke and a concern about modern medicine. The genius scientist West has invented a mysterious green drug that can bring people back to life. After the dead person is injected, it can restore the life characteristics, but it has no consciousness, and it becomes a living corpse that violently plunders the human body for survival purposes, which is similar to the current zombie.
Gordon's "Jumping Corpse" is a real pioneer, in the film, he perfectly blends horror and absurdity, finds the balance between genre films, and forms his own new film style. This kind of movie, not afraid of the baptism of time, you can still smile after watching it every time, and secretly applaud the classic scenes inside.
In the era of Hollywood's 80s group dance, such as "Texas Chainsaw Killer", "Tianshi Fighting Zombies", "Zombies Out of the Cage", "Thirteenth Friday" and other epoch-making movies of the collective explosion, "Fly Man" definitely has its special status.
The film was directed by geek David Cronenberg, and prior to his famed Naked Lunch, his horror films were distinguished from purely sensory slash-and-slash movies, zombie movies, or monster movies. In the era of C-films, which are all overheated and full of madness, his B-grade films have profound metaphors and rare philosophical thinking.
The film tells the story of the male protagonist who invents a particle transfer machine that can transfer people directly to different places. In a single transmission, the male owner and the fly are transmitted at the same time, causing the DNA of the two to fission and fuse. In this way, the male protagonist stepped into the irreparable abyss of deformation step by step. Why "Fly Changer" has trapped the audience with a cheesy story and become a classic. The first is its unpredictable genius makeup.
In order to show the appearance of the male protagonist's constant collapse, the crew spent a lot of time designing makeup for the male protagonist, and by the end of the story, the male protagonist's makeup time reached an astonishing 5 hours. In the era without CG computer special effects, those scenes that show pus, differentiation, and dissolution require the painstaking efforts of makeup artists.
It is these makeup artists, coupled with director David's special fetish, that create an alternative branch of the bizarre film, the body horror genre, which highlights the technological innovation and the extremes of the mentality, and the two elements that are mutually fascinating are also the biggest core of the film and the contemporaneous films.
Finally, the giant fly man that appears as a whole relies on the model to complete it. The giant monster that appeared for less than a minute took months in the play to make the model move through the drive shaft. Every head or arm turn is a huge and complex project.
The horror of "Fly Man" is not simply a liquid flying out and rotten flesh flying around, but from worrying about the future. Human nature degenerates under technology. In the case of unchecked technology, human beings are slaves or beneficiaries of science. Director David incorporated his own perspective into the film.
When it comes to the depth of the film's ideas, fat brother is most convinced by the British director Cliff Barker, known as the "dark philosopher". The title of "King of Terror" is not something that everyone can afford, and in front of Stephen King, only Cliff Barker can compete. Born as a writer, Cliff Buck started making films halfway through his career, and his first feature film, Hellraiser, directed in 1986, made him "a god of world war".
Self-directed and self-written, the film is based on his own novel. With his superb painting skills, the sub-shots of the film are all made by himself. "Hellraiser" is almost a complete embodiment of the author's directing style.
"Hellraiser" was translated as "Raising Ghosts and Eating People" (or "Fierce Ghosts Chasing Ghosts"), and the story is particularly bizarre and terrifying as its name suggests. It has the strange scenes created in "Fly Man" and "Strange Shape", relying on fine makeup skills and wild imagination, which can make people's hearts skip and shoot, and the brain crashes for a short time.
The scene of the evil demon returning to the soul, rising from the floor, from a pool of dirty blood, recovering into a rotten flesh body is still chilling, and the vomiting effect is still undiminished after decades have passed, and the evil taste has come across time and space. But Cliff Barker's films are higher than the 80s weird movies on the side, unlike ordinary mill films, which only pursue visual exaggeration and horror, and do not rely entirely on the exploitation of the body to create fear. His fears go deep into his heart, like the pathological embodiment of psychology.
A large number of horror pictures challenge the limits of many people's senses, bold and stubborn exploration and expression of darkness and desire, and those puzzle forbidden areas of the subjective world of human beings are even more spiritually ruthless. "Raising Ghosts and Eating People" represents the pinnacle of horror genre movies. There is no second person in the film world who can constantly explore and think about the nature of human fear like Cliff Barker.
While other directors use the theme of horror to narrate or empathize, Korif Barker uses horror and darkness to show the soul. His works emphasize not only the themes of madness, subversion, brokenness, and depravity, but he is like an ascetic who hopes to use physical pain to achieve the salvation of the soul, the state of entering the path of the devil.
The influence of the weird movies of the 80s was so great that many of today's Hollywood directors say they grew up watching them. For example, Hollywood prodigy Quentin Tarantino, "The Shape of Water" director Gilmour del Toro, and even a large number of Hong Kong directors such as Xu Ke have "thrived" under the infiltration of these films.
Due to the limited space, the fat brother can only click to the end, there are too many films to list. In the era of "superhero" movies, these small-budget B-grade film genre elements can still capture audiences at the moment and get good box office returns. This is a rich legacy left by predecessors to future generations, so that the film world is not too orthodox or monotonous.
When a genre film "dominates the world", it is definitely not a good thing for movie fans, and it can only be regarded as a nightmare for filmmakers.