Editorials
The ’80s Came to a Close With a Slasher Slump [1989 Week]
Presented by Lisa Frankenstein, 1989 Week is dialing the clock back to the crossroads year for the genre with a full week of features that dig six feet under into the year. Today, Alex DiVincenzo revisits the great slasher slump of 1989.
While horror fans often look back on the ’80s with a nostalgic glow, 1989 was not what most would consider a strong year for the genre — particularly when compared to the embarrassment of riches spawned by the rest of the decade. Not even Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger were safe from the slasher slump.
Each franchise had its ups and downs across a cumulative 17 movies in the ’80s, but the decade came to a close with low points — creatively and financially — in all three sagas: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers.
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan — the eighth Friday flick in nine years — sailed into theaters on July 28th. With $14.3 million, it’s the poorest-performing film in the franchise to date. Paramount subsequently sold the rights to New Line Cinema, who went on to give the series a soft reboot with 1993’s Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.
While the effort to move the slashing away from Crystal Lake after seven movies with the same setting was admirable, Jason Takes Manhattan fails to live up to its premise. The titular killer doesn’t arrive in the Big Apple until the final 20 minutes. Aside from an all-too-brief glimpse of Times Square, Vancouver serves as a generic city backdrop due to budgetary restrictions.
What’s more, most of the film takes place aboard a cruise ship; that a small lake in New Jersey inexplicably connects to the Atlantic Ocean is only the tip of the iceberg as far as the film’s ill-conceived decisions go. Jason teleports, young Jason appears as an average boy with a full head of hair, unmasked Jason looks like a slimy Muppet, and the New York sewers flood with toxic waste every night at midnight.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child opened on August 11th. Although it was the most successful slasher of the year, its $22.1 million gross was a steep decline from its predecessors. Diminishing returns prompted New Line Cinema to “kill” (albeit temporarily) their golden goose with the follow-up, 1991’s Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.
Although less insulting to fans than Jason Takes Manhattan or The Revenge of Michael Myers, The Dream Child is bogged down by superfluous backstory and uses the dream motif as a cheap excuse for illogical storytelling. It only has three kills, but they’re each fairly inspired: one character is fused to his motorcycle in a body-horror nightmare; a model is force-fed to death; and a comic book nerd is shredded in 2D by Super Freddy.
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers hit the big screen on October 13th. A far cry from the original Halloween, which was one of the most financially successful independent movies ever made, its meager $11.6 million makes it the lowest-grossing entry in the series. Despite its cliffhanger ending, The Shape would lay dormant until 1995’s Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.
There are many grievances to be had with The Revenge of Michael Myers: Michael is nursed back to health for a year by a hermit, Jamie Lloyd is a mute with a telepathic link to Michael, returning final girl Rachel is unceremoniously killed off, bumbling cops are accompanied by circus sound effects, the Myers house is drastically different, Michael sheds a tear… But its worst offense is the hasty addition of the Man in Black, a flagrant “mystery” with no intention of a resolution.
The beauty of these long-running series is that every entry is someone’s favorite, and each one has its merits. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 features beautifully stylized production design throughout; Halloween 5‘s laundry chute sequence is an undisputed highlight; and Friday the 13th Part VIII gave us Jason Voorhees’ guest appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show.
Disappointing box office performance and divisive fan reception may have temporarily hobbled the horror icons, but 1989 proved that you can’t keep a good franchise down. As we know 35 years later, each misunderstood monster was reworked and reanimated to continue their reign of terror.
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It’s been 75 years since The Thing From Another World first warned us to “watch the skies”, and filmgoers have done just that by showing up to multiple instances of extraterrestrial contact on the big screen. This makes sense, as a recent CBS news poll estimated that 63% of Americans believe in intelligent life on other planets, and the ongoing disclosure movement aims to raise that number with each passing day.
With Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day leaving many genre fans hungry for more alien footage (preferably of the spooky variety), today I’d like to share a list recommending six underrated alien invasion thrillers for your viewing pleasure. After all, regardless of whether or not you believe that we’re alone in the universe, it can be fun to dream about the worst-case scenario if our cosmic neighbors ever decide to visit.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be focusing on lesser-known invasion stories rather than the popular extraterrestrials of franchises like Alien and Close Encounters of the Third (or even Fourth) Kind. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own alien favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling movie.
While it won’t be featured in this article, I’d highly recommend checking out Dean Alioto’s UFO Abduction/The McPherson Tape if you’re up for some ufology-inspired found footage thrills.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. The Arrival (1996)
Not to be confused with Denis Villeneuve’s Academy Award-winning Amy Adams vehicle about learning to communicate peacefully with extraterrestrial life, David Twohy’s The Arrival is a much more straightforward (but no less entertaining) genre romp where Charlie Sheen faces a global conspiracy involving hostile alien invaders.
It’s not exactly up there with Close Encounters or even Independence Day, but Twohy’s conspiratorial thriller plays out like an exceptionally fun episode of The X-Files that I’d recommend to sci-fi/horror fans who don’t mind a little bit of wonky CGI and 90s excess alongside their alien thrills.
5. Extraterrestrial (2014)
The Vicious Brothers made a name for themselves with the success of 2011’s Grave Encounters, but that was far from the Canadian duo’s only collaboration. And while it’s not exactly a fan favorite, I always point out 2014’s Extraterrestrial as one of their most underrated projects simply because I agree with the filmmakers’ opinion that there aren’t enough ‘cool alien abduction movies’ out there.
Admittedly, the majority of the picture functions like a run-of-the-mill creature feature with paper-thin characters and familiar horror tropes, but I’d argue that the cosmically-terrifying final act elevates the experience to new and memorable heights. The movie also boasts great performances by both Michael Ironside and Emily Perkins – a combination that more than makes up for the occasionally janky CGI.
4. Alien Raiders (2008)
Director Ben Rock has gone on record lamenting how his John-Carpenter-inspired creature feature was forcefully renamed from Supermarket to the painfully obvious Alien Raiders (a change which likely resulted in many potential viewers skipping out on the experience), but the new title doesn’t change the fact that this single-location thriller is something of a hidden gem.
Taking place entirely within a supermarket, Alien Raiders tells the story of an ensemble of customers and employees who are taken hostage by a group of armed men looking for something far more dangerous than an easy payout. I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoiling the experience, but I’d highly recommend this criminally underseen flick to fans of John Carpenter and the Resident Evil games.
3. Phoenix Forgotten (2017)
You’d think that a Ridley-Scott-produced retelling of one of the most infamous real-life UFO sightings of all time would have a bigger following, but I rarely see Justin Barber’s Found Footage period piece brought up during discussions about extraterrestrial-focused horror movies.
This is a huge shame, as Phoenix Forgotten is just as spooky as it is convincing, with this well-researched dive into the Phoenix Lights incident benefiting from surprisingly believable special effects as well as an appropriately horrific finale.
2. Communion (1989)
I wouldn’t blame you for disregarding Whitley Strieber’s controversial book about his alleged close encounter as sensationalist slop, but I’d argue that Phillipe Mora’s 1989 adaptation of these events is much better than the source material. After all, the movie works as a standalone piece of speculative fiction while also benefiting from an incredible performance by the one and only Christopher Walken!
Mora’s take on Communion may not be particularly scary, but the film is still an unforgettable character study regardless of whether or not the abduction really happened. Not only that, but the flick also paved the way for plenty of future sci-fi stories where the extraterrestrial invaders aren’t as evil as they initially appear.
1. Altered (2006)
Originally envisioned as a Sam Raimi-style horror-comedy titled Probed, Eduardo Sánchez (of The Blair Witch Project fame) eventually realized that it would be much more interesting to turn the film into a serious exploration of the emotional aftermath of a traumatic abduction incident.
That’s how we got Altered, a clever inversion of the standard abduction narrative that follows a group of troubled friends as they capture and experiment on an alien in order to enact revenge for their own abduction years prior.
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