Late 80's Horror

SO tonight I am thinking about late 80's horror and where the big guys
where at that period of time. A lot of them had already made their
little gritty films, and then made something that gave them some sort
of recognition, made them into the masters of horror that we consider
them to be.

So in the late 80's and early 90's, we had Carpenter with Prince of
Darkness and Thay Live, Craven with Shocker, Serpant and the Rainbow,
and People under the Stairs, Romero with Monkey Shines, Raimi with
Darkman, and Cronenberg with Dead Ringers. I used to feel like these
were minor films, beloved but not the kind of thing to keep you up all
night.

But now, with Shocker on TV right now, and me just reflecting in
general, these movies are great in that they finally allowed these
guys to work on descent budgets and not have to struggle just to get
something resembling a film together. This is them finally able cash
in on a lifetime of struggle and make a nice little movie.

I used to hate Shocker, but it is actually one fun little movie. And
that is the way a lot of this late 80's stuff is, they don't blow you
away, but they are like fun little comfort food horror films.
Carpenter will have his zeneth with The Thing, Craven with Elm Street,
Romero with the zombie movies, Raimi with Evil Dead 2, Cronenburg with
Videodrome. This is their enjoying success phase. More creative
freedom. More money. More professional toys to play with. Some had
made big movies by this point, and had been handled poorly by the
suites, and this was their return to a middle area, not big budgets,
but adequate, and small enough for them to do what they wanted with
out studio interference. Sound like the best possible conditions, but
the results are just cool, not COO HOO HOO OOL!

These guys were making movies, getting covered in Fango, and being
worshiped by the legion of horror nuts. Any director will have "the
one". That one movie where they knocked it out of the park. So what if
the rest are just base hits. They are the dependable all stars, where
even when they have a bad day, it is still interesting and
entertaining.

Not deep, just typing stuff out.
SD

PS - Tobe Hooper, after the beauty of TCM2 and Lifeforce, I can
forgive Spontanious Combustion. Who the hell can even talk after
watching those two. And SponCom does have Smoldering Douriff, and
someone should make that their band name.