Might I just add, The Gate was one of the many horror movies from that decade that didn't treat kids like idiots. You really had a lot of movies that respected kids during that decade. They didn't treat them like second class citizens, but like real people(like The Goonies, E.T., The Explorers, Stand By Me...). And a lot of them don't sugar coat the experiences they go through(when there's danger, there is a fear of death, even in The Goonies). The Gate doesn't pull it's punches. These are terrifying things happening to kids and I respect the hell out of it! There should be more child-based horror movies like that.
Oh shit Spookies. I thought I was the only one that knew about the movie. My parents had that movie and I would always sneak ad watch it when I was like 4 or 5. Movie was nightmare fuel back than. Such feels right now. I haven't seen tht movie in almost 25 years, from what I understand it's never been released on DVD or and streaming services.
A lot of awesome horror movies weren't even released on DVD or Blu-ray. Shame.
To me, Spookies was cheesy as fuck, but I LOVE the "horror funhouse/haunted house attraction" type vibe. It's like those haunted house attractions that spring up around Halloween(in October) where you are bombarded with all sorts of different scary things(zombies, werewolves, vampires, skeletons, mutants), but it's a HORROR MOVIE where the "haunted house" is a REAL haunted house, inhabited with REAL monsters. It's similar to Waxwork(which, I guess you could say, Waxwork is similar to Spookies),
This thread reminds me of walking around in the video rental store as a kid, browsing the horror section while waiting on my parents to pick out something. Horror movie box art of the 80's is so good.
I'd always be afraid of walking down the horror aisle as a kid, because some of those VHS box arts scared the shit out of me. I remember vividly holding the A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors box up and flipping it around and being disturbed(as much as a child could) by the picture of the Freddy snake devouring Patricia Arquette.
I think a lot of the decades BEFORE the 1980s set the stage of what you could do in horror, while the 1980s just took ALL of those concepts and rolled with 'em like a big ass Katamari ball. Because of this, there was a WIDE variety of what horror could be in that decade that pulled inspiration from EVERYTHING before it, from the classics(nods to old school horror, Monster Squad, Waxwork) up till the present(80s). It was kinda like the "love letter" decade. I love that. Everything now seems more toned down, streamline and lacking that daring spirit or quest for wide variety and originality. The majority of these movies could ONLY have been made in this decade.
