The ’80s were an interesting era in horror movies. Most of the decade was spent with slasher horror movies, with Jason, Michael Myers, and Freddy Krueger and more appearing in sequel after sequel. However, that was just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to monsters scaring audiences in the ’80s.
The ’80s featured slasher killers, but there was also a good share of good old-fashioned horror monsters, aliens, demons, and more. Whether the films were superior remakes of classic horror movies or wholly original flicks, the monsters arriving in that decade left most movie fans with disturbing nightmares. Here is a look at the 10 scariest ’80s horror movie monsters, ranked.
THE BLOB
The Blob is the 1988 remake of a 1958 film that starred a young Steve McQueen. In the new version, Kevin Dillon is the big name here as the mysterious alien made of slime attacks a small town in California. The Blob, the monster in this movie, is a large pinkish gelatinous ooze that devours people. The film was a flop but has since become a cult classic.
AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON
Arguably the best modern-day werewolf movie is the John Landis 1981 film American Werewolf in London. The movie starred David Naughton and Griffin Dunne as David and Jack, two guys backpacking through Europe. When a beast attacks them, kills Jack, and bites David, things get out of hand.
David ends up becoming a werewolf himself, and it is one of the best depictions of a werewolf in cinema history. Special effects maestro Rick Baker masterfully created the transformation using practical effects, and it was a masterclass in horror filmmaking.
PUMPKINHEAD
If you are looking at the appearance of the ’80s horror movie monster, Pumpkinhead might top every list of the scariest and most disturbing. Released in 1988, Pumpkinhead was directed by one of the greatest special effects creators in history, Stan Winston.
The film itself was not a great one, but Winston’s design was impeccable, as expected. He knows how to make scary, and that is the perfect word to describe this grotesque vengeance demon.
JASON VOORHEES
Jason Voorhees barely made the cut, as he was one of the first slasher killers to debut in the ‘8os. Friday the 13th arrived in 1980, a few years after Michael Myers debuted in the Halloween franchise in the ’70s. While Myers was a creation of the ’70s, Jason took things much, much further.
After the first movie where the killer was just a regular person exacting vengeance on camp counselors, the second movie brought Jason Voorhees into the picture. While he was, at first, just a maniac killer, he morphed through the years into an unbeatable and terrifying monster that proved evil could never truly die.
THE PREDATOR
While Predator was a science fiction action series, it was also a solid horror movie. The entire premise of the first movie was taking a bunch of guys, putting them into a jungle, and sending a monster/alien after them to kill one by one.
The Predator itself was a scary creation, as well. It was a master at all sorts of weapons, it could turn invisible, and when it took off its mask, it was one heck of an ugly creature. In no surprise, this was another Stan Winston creation and one of the scariest monsters in ’80s horror movies.
DEADITES
The first Evil Dead movie was a brilliant creation by indie filmmakers with no money, and in that aspect, it was an incredible accomplishment. Everything that Sam Raimi accomplished with practical effects was brilliantly done, and the Deadites were some of the scariest creatures to exist in ’80s horror movies.
The sequel Evil Dead 2 added more money and more special effects and allowed Raimi to add even more grotesque additions to the already creepy creatures. By the time Army of Darkness came along, it was all for fun, but the Deadites never stopped being scary monsters.
CENOBITES
The Cenobites were scary for more than just their look, although some of them had designs that brought more nightmares than anyone could ever desire. However, what made them scary was what they did to their victims. The Hellraiser movie franchise, based on Clive Barker’s story, was all about sadomasochism.
The films saw the Cenobites, worshipped by many humans, using chains to rip people’s skin off their bodies. They were all about the torture, and everything the movie pulled off was cringeworthy. The Cenobites were scary, and nothing else in the ’80s was quite as disturbing.
FREDDY KRUEGER
What makes Freddy Krueger so scary is what he is all about. A person can run from a slasher monster like Jason Voorhees and hope to escape. A person can hide from a werewolf and hope to live until morning. However, there is nowhere a person can hide from a dream demon.
Wes Craven created Freddie Krueger based on a memory he had when he was a child, seeing someone downstairs from where he lived who looked up and made eye contact with him. That fear, mixed with newspaper articles about people mysteriously dying in their sleep, was the genesis of Freddie. This is a monster that kills you while you are sleeping, and that is the worst thing to think about before heading to bed at night.
BRUNDLEFLY
David Cronenberg knows a little bit about body horror, and he created one of the scariest monsters in the ’80s when he chose to remake The Fly. The original movie came out in 1958 with Vincent Price, but the remake was a superior film in every way.
Jeff Goldblum starred as a brilliant scientist who believed he had created a machine to help teleport a person to another location. He tested it on himself, without realizing a fly flew into the pod when he did it, and he ended up morphing into what he called the Brundlefly. The creature was grotesque, very scary, and one of the most iconic monsters of any ’80s horror movie.
THE THING
In 1982, John Carpenter decided to remake the 1951 film The Thing from Another World based on the novella Who Goes There? What resulted was arguably the greatest horror movie of the ’80s and one of the best horror remakes in movie history. Known as John Carpenter’s The Thing, Kurt Russell starred as part of a research facility in Antarctica.
When a monster that can assume the shape of any other form infiltrates their facility, it starts to kill and work its way through the men there. While no one knows if someone is infected, it is when they attack the creature that it morphs into one of the scariest monsters in all of horror movies.
