Tag Archives: best 80s horror posters

Horror Movie Posters I Love: Mortuary (1983)

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Show me a good 80’s horror movie poster and I will pretty much be putty in your hands. And speaking of hands, one of my favorite posters from the 80’s horror genre involves a hand!  Yes, the 1983 movie called Mortuary has one of the more striking posters to involve a hand raising up out of a dirt grave.  Check it out below:

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Yeah!  How about that hand?!  Not only is that artwork boner worthy, but the taglines are classic too.  Even the font on the title of Mortuary is making me drool.  And you all know how I love to drool.  This movie is best known for one of the first on-screen performances of the late great Bill Paxton.  And honestly, that’s the only real reason you should seek it out.  But, we’re talking posters here – and the Mortuary poster is top notch Grade A goodness.

I often sit and daydream about if today’s horror movies had posters that looked this good. I really have no life, so I have the time.  Some do go the retro route, but nothing will beat anything from the original decade where a crappy movie could have such a kick-ass poster.  So, kudos to you Mortuary, and all of your snazzy poster artwork and clever taglines.  Oh, and RIP to Bill Paxton.

Horror Movie Posters I Love: Blood Beach (1980)

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I’ve always been a bit scared of going into the ocean and I guess I have Jaws to thank for most of that fear.  Truth be told though, I think I’m more scared of jellyfish.  But what about the sand????  What if something besides crabs lurked in the sand????  Newsflash in case you didn’t know, but in 1980 there was a movie called Blood Beach that explored that very thought.  It’s a ‘so crappy, so good’ type of movie, but boy oh boy – what a poster it had!

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She’s really selling that ‘Oh my god I’m being swallowed into the sand!‘ expression, isn’t she?  Kudos on the Jaws-biting tagline btw.  This was at the beginning of the booming 80’s horror craze where basically anything went. Including killer sand apparently.  Gotta love it though, and I absolutely LOVE this poster!  It embodies everything that was great about 80’s horror movies and it definitely catches your eye for more than one reason.  That’s a pretty snazzy purple leopard-print bikini by the way.  Go seek out Blood Beach if you haven’t seen it (screen vets John Saxon and Burt Young are involved), and I apologize if I’ve given you Eremikophobia.  That’s the fear of sand – see, you learned something from this post.

Horror Movie Posters I Love: I, Madman (1989)

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What the hell happened to the good horror movie posters?  They seem far and between now unfortunately, which is pretty depressing since they’re sometimes the best thing about a movie.  Not the case with the cinematic gem I’m highlighting this time around on ‘Horror Movie Posters I Love‘ though.  Ladies and gentleman, I present to you the poster for the 1989 underrated slasher flick:  I, Madman

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I used to have this poster hanging on my closet door when I was 13 years old.  True story.  Now, I could honestly go on and on about my love for the actual movie, but I’m focusing on the poster here.  It’s captures exactly what the film is about in it’s style and even has a couple cheesy 80’s taglines to round the awesomeness out.  I’m always a sucker for a good hypodermic needle too.  I, Madman is a fairly original horror gem if you haven’t seen it, and this poster does the movie tons of justice.  Seek the movie out if you can my friends (you can find a cheap copy on Ebay), and until then just keep dazing up at that horror poster goodness.

Horror Movie Posters I Love: Ghoulies (1985)

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I love a good pun.  And something that I love even more than good puns are slimy green creatures with bad teeth that stick their heads up out of toilets.  So, naturally it was a win-win situation for me when I first gazed upon the poster for Ghoulies back in 1985.

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Take a good look at that beauty of a poster……because the actual movie is pretty awful so the poster is really all that we have going for us unfortunately. Yes, Ghoulies as a film is not good.  But dammit if those involved with the marketing knocked it out of the park, because the poster and cover art for the VHS lured people into watching this crap.  Sure, it’s an 80’s guilty pleasure to some and uncomfortable toilet paper to others – but you can’t deny the sheer genius of the tagline ‘They’ll Get You In The End!” along with the image of that green Ghoulie coming out of the crapper.  Speaking of crap and crappers, they rode that toilet theme all the way to Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go To College. That’s right….they actually went to college.

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Horror Movie Posters I Love: Terror In The Aisles (1984)

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If I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again:  I love Taco Bell.  Oops….wrong revelation. What I meant to say is that if you throw a skull up on a horror movie poster, more than likely I’m going to love that poster.  So to no surprise, I loved the poster for the 1984 documentary, Terror In The Aisles:

Sure the tagline ‘It’s A Cute Above The Rest‘ is kind of cliche and cheesy.  But who cares.  Look at that skull!  I love the simplicity of it and if you look close, you can see a ton of horror titles within the skull.  For those who don’t know, Terror In The Aisles was a documentary that was surprisingly released in theaters in 1984.  With commentary both on screen and off from genre vets Donald Pleasence and Nancy Allen, it was basically a walkthrough of horror movie history, featuring a lot of ‘best of’ clips.  A huge guilty pleasure of mine, it was recently released as a special feature for the Halloween II Blu-ray release.  Even though the focus is on the poster, I’ll leave you with a TV commercial promoting Terror In The Aisles, just to give you more of a nostalgia fix.