Tag: 1980s
How Much Have Black Horror Roles Increased?
Tracking the number of modern horror movies per year with significant* Black roles. For details on specific movies, refer to:
1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s
*Admittedly, "significant" is a subjective term that varies by era.
While Terror Train has a good reputation among horror fans, until the hectic climactic battle between “final girl” and killer, it’s mostly run-of-the-mill slasher fare that distinguishes itself by A) having Jamie Lee Curtis as the final girl and B) being set on a train. But there’s one other,...
Ostensibly a forgettable creature feature, Scared to Death is noteworthy as an egregious case of W.M.H.S. (White Male Hero Syndrome). That’s when an otherwise bland, unlikable, undeserving character is elevated to hero status just because he’s a White man -- sort of like how Rudy Giuliani became "America's Mayor"...
Black Is Boo-Tiful
When Jordan Peeele’s Get Out became a breakout success in 2017, earning him the first Original Screenplay Oscar awarded to an African-American, "black horror movies" suddenly became the new hot property in Hollywood, with many people seeming to believe that this was an entirely new subset of...
Remember when the most controversial thing about the cast of The Cosby Show was Lisa Bonet's sex scene in Angel Heart? Ah, the good ol' days.
The year was 1987, and the Huxtables were America's family, but their facade of upper-middle-class sitcom perfection took a hit when word came that...
I will go to my grave saying that The Blob is one of the best horror movies of the 1980s. It combines the throwback alien invasion mayhem of the 1950s with the grisly creature feature effects of the '80s and tosses in some fun, Spielbergian adventure overtones to boot....
Revolving around a series of deaths in a health club and featuring lines like "I'm Beta, and you're VHS," Death Spa is a movie that's so '80s, it's got Drakkar Noir seeping from its pores -- which is odd, because according to IMDb, it actually wasn't released until 1990...
While the standard cinematic mystical darkie is a benevolent being who uses his or her powers to aid a Caucasian in need (CIN) -- see The Legend of Bagger Vance, The Family Man, The Green Mile, The Stand, The Shining, etc. -- The Offspring paints quite a different picture....
Night of the Demons is a cult classic of the '80s, but its lone black character, "black guy" Rodger (Alvin Alexis), is a confounding conundrum wrapped in an enigma (Where my enigmas at?!?). On the one hand, he bucks the black death tradition that would seemingly have his name etched...
The phenomenon of black people dying in horror movies didn't really come into its own until the 1980s, when the slasher film hit its stride and trickle-down Reaganomics, yuppie elitism and Izod shirts rendered persons of color utterly disposable. Witness Piranha II, a film that has heretofore derived its...
