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seven horror movies from the golden age of practical effects (aka the 80s). [halloween movie fest 2020.]

It may be 2020, but the 1980s are alive and well. Neon lights and retro logos are in, synths and new wave are ascendant, and pop culture is saturated with nostalgia for the shows, films, and franchises of the decade.

Now, any celebration of 80’s culture would be incomplete if we left out the incontrovertible truth that the decade was the golden age of practical effects in horror. The era was hugely significant for the genre because of the other incontrovertible truth, practical horror effects are vastly superior to their CGI counterparts. This is known.

Seriously, you go find all the outdated CGI that’s still scary, and I’ll go find all the old practical effects that are still horrifying, and we’ll compare lists. It would be a fun exercise, because after you can’t find any examples we can just watch 80’s horror movies all night.

On second thought, let’s not waste time, and instead skip right to the part where we watch 80’s horror. Here are five movies from the golden age of practical horror effects you should watch this Halloween.

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Alien

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Okayokayokay, I know, Alien came out in 1979, but I’m including it because, a) it’s a brilliant movie with terrifying practical effects, b) it’s part of the dawn of the golden age, and it transitions out of the 70s, a decade with amazing practical effects in its own right that set the tone for what was to come, c) I can do what I want.

Obviously, the chestburster scene is one of the most iconic moments in film history, but it doesn’t end there. All of the physical realizations of H.R. Giger’s disturbing artwork of phallic alien monstrosities are scary as hell. Alien is the precursor to a decade that would use practical effects to give us monsters that still haunt our nightmares in 2020.

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The Thing

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The Thing is an all-timer, featuring one of my favorite final scenes, ever.

John Carpenter effectively immerses you in the horror and paranoia of being trapped in the middle of Antarctica with a monster who can look like anyone. A monster who just so happens to be hellbent on killing and assimilating you and whichever of your friends are still actually your friends. Even worse, it will then use your likeness to get back to civilization and murder the whole planet.

As great as the concept is, the deep psychological horror is rooted in how terrifying the Thing itself is to behold. Without Rob Bottin’s remarkable effects, the movie would likely have fallen flat and become another example of a potentially great sci-fi horror film ruined by visual inadequacies and limitations. Instead, Bottin and his team delivered one of the most horrifying monsters ever committed to screen.

In the case for the supremacy of practical effects, The Thing is Exhibit A.

Not so fun fact: Bottin worked so hard that he ended up in the hospital from exhaustion at the close of filming.

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An American Werewolf in London

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If you ever come across a list of great practical effects in film that leaves off John Landis’s 1981 horror-comedy, throw it right in the trash.

An American Werewolf in London features the undisputed greatest werewolf transformation scene of all time. Almost four decades later, with huge leaps forward in what can be rendered onto our screens, and no one else has even come close.

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The Fly

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He’s the master of body horror, so David Cronenberg’s entire filmography is a cornucopia of disturbing practical effects. Videodrome and Scanners are notable mainstays on ‘best of’ lists, but for my money, The Fly reigns supreme.

It’s overflowing with disgusting practical effects, with each gross-out scene topped just moments later by something even more horrifying. But what I love most is that it’s all used to tell a focused, tragic, character-driven story of a man’s transformation into a monster.

Bonus: we’re living in the midst of a glorious Jeff Goldblum renaissance, so whether you’d be revisiting The Fly or experiencing it for the first time, now is a great time to watch one of his absolute best performances.

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The Evil Dead films

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Practical effects aren’t just superior in films aiming to shock viewers for genuine scares. They’re also best when it comes to horror more interested in being darkly silly and ridiculous with its gore, and there is absolutely no better example than the Evil Dead films.

These movies are so over-the-top, so delightfully and unrelentingly insane, and the practical effects are what make the whole thing work. CGI never could have done justice to the vile, unholy magic of the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis

It should also be noted that Bruce Campbell is the human embodiment of practical effects. The world would be a sadder place if it didn’t have Ash Williams in it.

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Bonus: 1992’s Braindead [aka Dead Alive]

Okay, this one isn’t an 80s movie, but if we’re going to talk about practical effects creating absurdly gory slapstick, we have to mention the bloodiest practical horror film of all time: Braindead (released as Dead Alive in the US).

Before Peter Jackson became internationally famous for adapting The Lord of the Rings, he made The Frighteners with Michael J. Fox, an underrated bit of genre fare that would fit right into any Halloween Movie Fest.

But before that, he made one of the dumbest, goofiest, weirdest, most ludicrously over-the-top gross-out gore-fests of all time. Try to imagine what that would look like and you still wouldn’t be close. Forget the same ballpark, you wouldn’t even be in the same galaxy.

Anyway, the film reportedly used 80 gallons of fake blood, making it objectively the bloodiest movie of all time. The lawnmower scene alone makes that easy to believe.

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this ‘dune’ trailer is everything i needed today! [trailer park.]

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

How beautiful does this movie look?! It’s even better than I’d hoped the first Dune trailer might be, and I had high hopes!

Villeneuve’s genius is on full display. It’s visually and tonally perfect [at least compared to how I imagined it], and the trailer is overflowing with delightful glimpses to tease the book’s fans, without giving everything away to newcomers.

I know, I know, we’ve all been burned before. Even with a brilliant director and an amazing trailer, there’s still a chance this movie sucks, but I’m all in! I’m choosing unbridled optimism that this is going to be amazing. After all, fear is the mind killer.

Now, back to watch the trailer again five more times.

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reynolds and gyllenhaal. [a month of happy.]

I feel like this is cheating a little bit, since I already included the Pratt/Lawrence press relationship. But this is just something that made me happy this month. When is the comedy starring Pratt/Lawrence/Reynolds/Gyllenhaal coming out?

The people who do these interviews are often intolerable, and Reynolds and Gyllenhaal were amazing in their tireless ability to subvert the inanity of the press junket life with their own absurdity.

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fantastic four. [trailer park.]

o-FANTASTIC-FOUR-TRAILER-facebook

They’ve waited for longer than usual to release any images or video, but the first trailer is here. It’s been easy to assume the lack of footage and whatnot shared was a bad sign, but so far so good… or at least, so far not bad.

Director Josh Trank says that the film will have more of a hard sci-fi feel, which could be perfect, especially because of how absurd all previous iterations have been.

This could still be terrible, the trailer is in no way overwhelming evidence to indicated the reboot will be superior to those godawful previous films. But it is enough for me to wonder if this might actually be pretty good.

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and i will wait… [2013 movies i’m most excited for, part 2a.]

Friends, it has been a long time. Where do I even begin? Now that I FINALLY finished graduate school everything is in transition. What on earth should I do with the rest of my life? Much to think on.

First, I might as well start sharing awesome shit on Roused again, no?

Emily and I went to see Pacific Rim last week (which for all its many flaws was still really fun and uncommonly badass). With each new movie poster we passed, Emily asked me what the film was about and if I had heard anything about it. I realized that without RtM my own wife hadn’t seen all the trailers I normally share. It’s a travesty. So, if for no other reason than to share them with Emily, and of course because I promised to make this post back in January, here are the second half movies I am most excited about. Clearly, omitting most of July because it is already behind us. It’s a massive content dump for you to pick and choose those that interest you. To try and make up for lost time, I am going to share a ton of films. That being the case, I’m going to split it up into two posts.

P.S. – For obvious reasons, I haven’t done the usual scouring of the interwebs for new movie info, which means this list is far less knowledgable than those of the past. I’m 100% positive I am missing some great ones. For that reason, PLEASE send along recommendations. FEED ME!

Check it all out after the jump.

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gravity. [trailer park.]

Gravity-Poster

This is one of those movies where it feels like I’ve been reading about it forever. Finally, a trailer. It’s got enough going for it that I was still excited after Sandra Bullock signed on. For me, that’s saying something!

[via@Josué Blanco]

There are more late trailers coming this week. It’s probably about the most blogging I can do in May with my course load. But soon… graduation!!

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