Classic Horror Movies: Best Scary Movies of the Early Eighties

Jason is one of the two most iconic characters in horror movies of the 1980s (the other being Freddie Krueger). Early 1980s chillers took horror movies in a new direction and this 1980 classic started the decade off in a way moviegoers will ever forget.

When a young woman named Annie enters a small-town diner and asks for directions to Camp Crystal Lake, the patrons in the diner are shocked. That place has been closed down for years. A concerned customer offers to drive her halfway there, and on the way, tells her the story of the boy (Jason) that drowned there and the double murders that happened at the same camp one year later.

Nonplussed, Annie continues to the camp where the other new counselors and freshening up the place, redecorating and getting it ready to open. One by one, the counselors are isolated by an unidentified killer. Who is this crazed person wielding a big knife, and why is s/he after the counselors? Could it have something to do with the death of Jason years before? You'll just have to see.

The Shining

Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film features Jack Nicholson as a recovering alcoholic who takes a job as a caretaker at the Overlook Hotel in an effort to get his life back on track. The hotel manager warns Nicholson that the hotel is located in an area of Colorado where winter weather will keep he and his family bound inside most of the season. He then relates the story of how the previous caretaker went crazy with cabin-fever and brutally killed his wife and young girls.

As the movie unfolds, you discover that Jack's son is telepathic, child abuse accusations are thrown around, Jack's mental health deteriorates, an apparition of a naked lady in a bathtub turns into a cackling, rotting corpse, and so much more.

This movie doesn't rely on gore to scare you... it's all about the suspense. Is Jack crazy? What is REDRUM and why is the boy saying that? Will they get out of that hotel alive? You have to watch to find out!

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Freddy Krueger has a past history of killing children in his neighborhood but a judge set shim free anyway. The parents of the children he murdered are outraged. Freddy gets a job in a boiler room but an incident happens in the boiler room and he is burned alive.

The group of parents are finding themselves in haunting, excruciatingly frightening, and deadly nightmares where Freddy, a burned and grotesquely disfigured character wearing razor blade gloves is confronting them for their part in the boiler room incident. If they can't figure how to stop the nightmares, they might all die in their sleep! You won't want to go to sleep after seeing this movie!

Poltergeist

This 1982 movie was written by Steven Spielberg and was actually nominated for Academy Awards for best sound effects and best visual effects. The plot of the movie centers around your all-American family. A typical middle class family living in a pleasant little neighborhood in a normal little house starts experiencing some abnormal things.

The daughter of the family, named Carol Ann, accidentally starts channeling ghosts through the TV. Not long after, the ghosts actually start appearing in the family home. But the ghosts seem friendly and non-threatening. They're just pranksters, or so it seems.

But eventually the ghosts show their true colors. They start terrorizing the family, using props found around the home like dolls and turning them into bloodthirsty, murderous beings. The ghosts kidnap Carol Ann away from the family and take her into her bedroom closet, which is a portal into the ghostly dimension.