The best horror movies of the 1980s

The Thing was technically a remake of a 1951 sci-fi film, but in John Carpenter’s hands it mutated into a grotesque new shape, at once familiar and totally alien. That is appropriate enough, given the plot concerns a shape-shifting alien running amok in an Antarctica outpost. The film’s intense sense of paranoia is matched only by its effective body horror, with practical effects work that continues to impress and unsettle to this day. Meanwhile Kurt Russell provides one of his signature performances as the helicopter pilot trying to figure out who – if anyone – can be trusted.

The original Alien was very much a product of the ’70s – patiently paced, moodily shot, and wallowing in a miasma of cynicism and paranoia. This 1986 sequel is similarly a product of its decade, offering a louder, brasher, and more action-packed expansion of Ridley Scott’s original vision. Instead of the original’s slasher-in-space, Aliens is a full blown schlocky slaughter-fest… in space. It’s arguably no less of a horror film for that fact, with several stand-out moments of pure terror.

While not a horror movie in the traditional sense, Gremlins ingeniously takes many of the signature elements of the genre and splices them together with dark humour and moments of slapstick comedy. Writer Chris Columbus and director Joe Dante take evident glee in setting a horde of demonic gremlins free on small town America. What’s more, the star of the show doesn’t turn out to be some dullard teenager (though there are a couple of those too), but an adorably cute little creature named Gizmo.

It feels every inch the ’70s film, from its languid pace to its auteurish tone, but Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining actually arrived slap bang in the middle of 1980. This Stephen King adaptation has gone on to become one of horror cinema’s key texts, thanks to its spectacular cinematography, creepy score, iconic set pieces, and a remarkable lead performance from Jack Nicholson. The star plays a writer who becomes increasingly unhinged and terrorises his family while looking after a haunted snowbound hotel during the off season.

Sam Raimi’s cult Evil Dead series might have started earlier in the ’80s, but it was this sequel that fully represented the director’s vision. It can be attributed to the fact Evil Dead 2 was essentially a remake of the original film, but with a significantly bigger budget and an amped up performance from Bruce Campbell in the lead role. While vacationing with his girlfriend in a remote cabin, Ash Williams (Campbell) unwittingly unleashes a demonic force, leading to all manner of schlocky happenings.

Was this 1982 horror movie directed by Tobe Hooper as per the official credits, or did Steven Spielberg himself call all the shots? In Poltergeist’s more horrific moments, it seems clear the creative force behind The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was firmly in charge, as a family contends with a malevolent spirit haunting their new home. But then, the film’s satirical edge and its finely observed snapshot of suburban life disrupted by extraordinary events seems like peak Spielberg. Whatever the case, this is timelessly brilliant horror movie.

Wes Craven spent the 1970s creating gritty and grounded shockers like The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes, but it was with A Nightmare on Elm Street he truly arrived in Hollywood. This was an altogether more frivolous and fantastical movie, though it’s scarcely any less bloody. The film owes its lasting cultural impact to a truly iconic villain in Robert Englund’s Freddy Krueger, a razor-fingered spirit who haunts the dreams of his victims. It’s also notable for offering the film debut of a young Johnny Depp, who plays one of Krueger’s unlucky victims.

David Cronenberg’s sci-fi remake, in which a brilliant inventor (Jeff Goldblum) invents a teleporter before accidentally splicing his genes with those of a common house fly, really ramps up the horror. The transformation effects as our anti-hero slowly mutates are the stuff of nightmares, while the way he handles his ‘food’ might just make you lose your lunch. This was the kind of body horror that Cronenberg had already made his calling card in earlier films such as The Brood and Videodrome (also on this list), but honed to a lethal point.

John Landis’s 1981 movie has been rightly lauded for its tremendous practical transformation effects, but it’s also an interesting film in its own right. It’s one of an emerging series of ’80s movies that combined classic horror themes with outright comedic beats. Two American students travel to England and are attacked on the Yorkshire Moors by a mystical creature. The surviving student awakes to discover he has become a werewolf, and at the next full moon proceeds to stalk the streets of London.

John Carpenter contributed one of the best horror movies of the ’70s with 1978’s Halloween, and he got the following decade off to a suitably scary start with follow-up The Fog. It’s an altogether more traditional ghost story about spectral fishermen returning to terrorise the inhabitants of an affluent coastal town, with the titular eerie fog heralding their arrival. Carpenter is in full command of his craft here, taking the time to create a murky and unsettled atmosphere before the maritime violence commences.

Hellraiser is a rare British entry to this Hollywood-dominated list. It’s a true auteur production, written and directed by Clive Barker, and based on his own novella The Hellbound Heart. It concerns a mystical puzzle box that summons a bunch of sadomasochistic inter-dimensional beings, led by Pinhead, who has to be one of the most visually striking horror villains of this or any other decade. One thing’s for sure, horror had rarely been so kinky before Hellraiser came along.

It’s easy to forget about the original Friday the 13th movie with all of the (mostly terrible) sequels that flooded our screens throughout the ’80s. Indeed, the iconic hockey mask-wearing big bad that most people associate with the series didn’t even make a full appearance until entry number three. By comparison, the original is a lean, mean, yet extremely effective slasher built in the ’70s mould, in which a bereaved mother slaughters the young attendees of an American summer camp.

The stories of Stephen King have formed the basis of many horror films over the years, but none are as downright odd as Christine. How else to describe a story in which a 1958 Plymouth Fury motorcar turns out to be possessed by an evil spirit, inspiring bad attitudes and deadly ends in the people around it? In the hands of the maestro John Carpenter, however, Christine’s cinematic treatment is an unapologetically trashy, campy delight, topped by lashings of automotive violence.

Several years before he gave the world Child’s Play (also on this shortlist), director Tom Holland produced this effective suburban vampire movie. Like several other entries on this list, Fright Night signifies its ’80s horror bona fides by interspersing comedic elements among the blood-sucking mayhem. Young Charlie Brewster (William Ragsdale) discovers his next door neighbour (Chris Sarandon) is a murderous vampire, and enlists the help of his favourite TV host (Roddy McDowall) to help end his bloody reign.

Four years before he stormed Hollywood with the family-friendly Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Stuart Gordon made the decidedly un-family-friendly horror movie Re-Animator. This tale of a medical student raising the dead to life might have been R-rated, but the director’s not-so-light comedic touch still managed to shine through. Adapted from an HP Lovecraft short-story series, Re-Animator mutated from a stage show into a TV pilot, before finally being fully fleshed out into this riot of a feature film.

This 1983 sci-fi satire is pretty unorthodox, as horror movies go, with an off-kilter tone that would become writer-director David Cronenberg’s stock in trade. Trashy TV-station owner Max Renn (James Woods) discovers a rogue broadcast depicting torture and murder, and decides that it’s the future of television. Upon closer investigation, he discovers the violent broadcasts are real, and that its effects are more insidious than he realised. At once totally out-there and oddly prescient, Videodrome is the kind of horror movie that gets under your skin.

Written and directed by Tom Holland (not that one), 1988’s Child’s Play introduced the world to Chucky – an animatronic doll possessed by the spirit of a dying serial killer, and memorably voiced by Brad Dourif. As improbable as the set-up sounds, it led to a genuinely iconic little slasher movie, the influence of which can be measured by the number of times it has been referenced in pop culture. After six variable sequels, Child’s Play would be remade in 2019 to considerable critical acclaim, but the original still holds its own weird allure.

John McNaughton’s controversial 1986 film deals with the killing spree of a psychopathic drifter, played with creepy intensity by debutant Michael Rooker. The titular Henry’s casual disdain for life is relayed to his prison buddy Otis, who is steadily dragged into his cynical way of seeing the world. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is gritty, nihilistic, downright unpleasant stuff, which helps it to stand well apart from the larger-than-life tone that typifies much of the rest of the decade’s horror offerings.

There are plenty of weird films on this list – it’s a handy quality to have for a horror movie – but Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 film Possession really takes the biscuit. The movie stars Sam Neill as a spy who returns home from an assignment to discover that his wife, played by Isabelle Adjani, wants a divorce. That’s about where all normality ends, as the story descends into a nightmarish series of violent and uncanny events. Some of the more infamous scenes still have the power to creep out a modern horror-hardened audience.

Brian Yuzna’s satirical sci-fi body horror is the very definition of a cult favourite. While it was completed and released in the UK in 1989, it didn’t make its way to the US market until 1992, which explains its lack of mainstream cut-through at the time. The reason it eventually found its place in the horror firmament comes down to its bizarre and repulsive finale, as a privileged young man discovers that his family and friends might just be a murderous, shape-shifting bunch of aliens.