There was a time when I had seen almost every horror movie on the shelves at my local Videomania. What can I say? I was influenced by cheesy 1980s horror – and I’m okay with that.
“O, wad some Power the giftie gie us. To see oursels as others see us!”
We are often the worst judges of ourselves, as the Scottish poet Robbie Burns noted back in the 18th century. We are oblivious to our quirks, overly critical of our strengths, and often brood too much on our weaknesses. To use an analogy, we are always driving the car and so we almost never see it from the outside as everyone else does.
While discussing cover art for my sci-fi/horror novel Invasion at Bald Eagle, my editor Ryan Thomas wrote in an email: “This book kind of reminds me of films from the ’80s, so I'm thinking of mimicking posters like Night of the Creeps, and Night of the Comet, etc...”
On first blanch I was appalled at this evaluation. Sure, my novel shared certain elements with ’80s horror flicks, but I was not Richard Laymon or John Saul. I had devised three-dimensional characters with proper motivations and I cared deeply about the language. How could it have reminded Ryan of movies that wouldn’t look out of place on BadMovies.org?
So I composed myself and wrote in reply:
“As much as I love posters from '80s horror movies (House and The Curse are two more that come to mind), I don't think it's something I'd like to pursue for the cover of Invasion at Bald Eagle.”
Around the time we were having this discussion, some endorsements for the book started to come in. The first one, from the author Matt Darst, read:
"Informed by Heinlein's The Puppet Masters, Cronenberg's Shivers, and 80s B-movie pulp, Invasion at Bald Eagle is a lightning read that delivers on the twin promises of gore and action. A fun, nostalgic romp in the vein of C.H.U.D., Night of the Creeps, and The Crazies."
Oh God, here it was again. From a second, independent source. C.H.U.D. for crying out loud? Well, I did enjoy it as a kid, but still…
I had always envisioned a simple but ominous cover for Invasion at Bald Eagle, with one of the ‘eggs’ from the novel reflecting something sinister. But with two different readers suggesting it had shades of an ’80s horror flick, I began to give the claim more serious consideration.
As time wore on and I started writing a blurb for the book, I realised Ryan and Matt were right. Invasion at Bald Eagle was influenced by those high-concept horror movies that I consumed ravenously between the ages of seven and 17. It also owed a lot to early Stephen King novels, which were the literary equivalent in some ways. So I decided to embrace the idea and sell the novel as what it was: an homage to those books and movies, albeit with an original sci-fi concept.
The truth is I still hold fond memories of the B-movies from that era and they did inform the sort of ideas that have appeared in my fiction. Their poster art and taglines are still visual poetry to me. Dawn of the Dead (1979) is undoubtedly at the core of my influences, but I’ve written about that elsewhere and it’s quite a bit more sophisticated than the average fright flick from the period. Here, then, are some of my favourite B-pictures from the 1980s:
The Curse (1987)
Based on the H.P. Lovecraft story ‘The Color Out of Space’, it sees a meteor crash on a family farm and infect their water source with some weird alien goo. All of them except the youngest son (played by Wil Wheaton) begin to go crazy and end up horribly disfigured.
I can’t express how much this movie disturbed me when I first watched it. Modern reviewers often dismiss it – not without justification – as laughable, but I think they overlook two ways in which it is effective. First, it taps into the fear children have of their parents as authority figures, (especially back then when corporal punishment was still the norm). Second, and related to the first, is being made to eat something you don’t want to eat. In short, The Curse is a ten-year-old’s ultimate nightmare.
The Evil Dead (1981)
That scene with the tree. Sweet Jesus. I didn’t even properly understand what rape was the first time I watched Evil Dead, but it left a permanent scar on my psyche.
House (1986)
Whenever I think about 1980s horror movies, this one, starring ‘The Greatest American Hero’ William Katt, is always right at the top. In retrospect, I don’t know why. It owed quite a bit to The Evil Dead in its “Who’s going to be possessed next?” formula and its comedy element was pretty much lost on the nine-year-old me. I actually wonder if it was the cover to the VHS tape that made it stick: a skeletal finger pressing a doorbell along with the tagline: Ding-dong, you’re dead.
C.H.U.D. (1984)
“Cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers!” That line is pretty much all I remember about my viewing of this film… but then that’s really all the film is about. ‘Homeless people are exposed to toxic waste and turn into monsters’ sounds just like the sort of stuff I started writing a few years later.
Demons (1985)
When you’re eight years old, a coherent plot in a horror movie is superfluous provided there are lots of shit-scary monsters. That is Demons in a nutshell. What really affected me were the transformations, which looked very unpleasant.
Alligator (1980)
It’s 36 feet long, it weighs 2000 pounds. It lives 50 feet below the city. Nobody knows it’s there… except the people it eats.
I haven’t seen Alligator in 25 or 30 years, yet I didn’t need to consult Google for that VHS tagline. God I loved this film. It became known among horror aficionados for its ‘wedding party’ bloodbath, but I think it’s most effective scene was this one. The years haven’t been terribly kind to Alligator, but it’s a lot better than a Thai knock-off of Jaws called Crocodile Fangs (released on video in Australia as Crocodile!, if I remember rightly). Even to young eyes that thing was pathetic.
Critters (1986)
This film became a bit of a cult classic and was one of the few horror-comedies to actually deliver horror and comedy. The ‘critters’, if you’re not au fait with the movie, are aliens that look cute and fluffy but are more like intergalactic piranhas. They have quills on their backs that they can fire at their prey to tranquilise them – and then it’s feeding time!
So those are the movies that still swim on the surface of my consciousness; I’m sure a quick Google search would bring up dozens more (Fright Night also came to mind while I was writing this). In hindsight I’m not surprised these movies wormed their way into my brain; there was a time when I had seen almost every horror movie on the shelves at my local Videomania.
What can I say? I was influenced by cheesy 1980s horror – and so was Invasion at Bald Eagle.
