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The 1980’s vogue of body-horror; Narcotics, neoplasm, novelty and necrosis

As an infant in the 80’s it would appear obtuse to say I remembered it. Nonetheless, its political evanescence bubbled-up into the nineties, hauling its consumerist ideologies along with it. For example, if you were a school-kid growing up in the 90’s and you’d turned up to non-school uniform day wearing a ‘Fruit of the loom’ t-shirt when everyone else was wearing ‘Adidas’, I (ahem) you were bound to get bullied.

The 80’s were a materialism laden playground for prosperity and wealth: the cold war(s) on the brink of an icy extinction, the baby-boomers a mouldable platter for the media to economically capitalise, incomes on the increase, distinct perseverances with computing and the ‘Yuppie’ was conceived - the bohemian bourgeoisie - such developments evocative of a time in which anything was possible as long as you worked hard for it. Conformity was non-conformist, in a way, a proposed communist agenda sidelined by a capitalist democracy. In a time often described as one of greed or excessiveness, it was also a time of distinct class separation - that of upper class volcanicity and lower class volatility. The middle classes just dissolved.

The ‘Reagon-eighties’ were undoubtedly the birth of the all-empowering image. Pop symbols on MTV decreed an opulent glitz and glamour through adornments, lavish and luxurious. Empty relationships with brands and retailers decreed a false heterogeneity and garnered accomplished recognition. If people were successful, they’d have to look it. If a new toy were to surface, they’d have to buy it. And buy it they could. Rich or not, the introduction of the credit card allowed for all households to increase their disposable income.

Flaunting and snobbery defined a decadent decade of uncertain promise. The rags to riches tales of Ronald Reagan’s electoral designation proved just this, as well as proving power is commodity, a product that can be bought.

For the horror film, issues regarding society were often ambivalent - much alike the cultural milieu at the time. Whilst independent video nasties were banned in the UK after a sneaky loophole allowed for VHS releases to avoid BBFC censorship, it was a ripe epoch for the horror genre - for over-the-top experimentation amidst Reagon’s inadvertent ransacking of technocratic totalitarianism in fore-fronting the ‘American dream’. This dream was about having more, doing more and being more. The media and its constituents listened, the avant-garde of horror that befell a depthless and unbridled culture without restraint was an anted-up torrent of fantastically extreme disgust - largely due to the innovations in special effects. A material for the materialistic. I'm talking, of course, about liquid latex. The epiphanic element to the short lived body-horror sub-genre that (in stark contrast to a preoccupational shallowness and equidistant exteriority amongst western societies) posited an antithetic resonation - stressing ‘it’s what is inside that matters’.

So, what is body-horror?

The most cursory google search will reveal body-horrors as penetration of the corporeal - modification, customization, mutation, cyborgification, transformation et al. Being coined predominantly with liquid latex and with so many ‘tions’ subverts the form into a vague proliferation of tropes that encompass far too wide a spectrum, to which I would disagree. For example, I would not consider every zombie film or every vampire film to be considered a body-horror, though (in contestation) films of this category do fit this regulatory classification. Whilst body-horror IS largely focused on transmutation and transformations, I defer to the paradigmatic discourse of the body-horror in exemplifying its uniqueness as a sub-genre rather than an offspring trend of horror itself. This can be identified via commutation and the manifestations of the abject. The generic horror (per-say) facilitates its monstrous other in regards to the socio-spatial - where the evil resides - and allows for the antagonistic to belong to a form of domestication or sphere of residence. I.E., the slasher positions the abject as an (exterior) infiltration into the domestic sphere for expulsion, the found-footage horror presents the abject as already (integrated) within the domestic sphere. The body-horror is ambiguous in that it technically adheres to neither yet through implicature applies to both. The body-horror constructs abjection through the evil within - within the veins, the cortex or blood of the organic human being. What thematically dignifies the body-horror is the introvert collision of duality, the implosion of the nemesis code (the subject vs the abject becomes the subject = the abject), the protagonist being the breeding ground for the antagonist and an existentialist exploration into the cultivation of the self.

MY TOP TEN BODY-HORRORS (1980 - 1989)

10. The Stuff (1985)

DIRECTED BY LARRY COHEN

Why does it make the cut?

An accidentally discovered pro-symbiotic organism, that just so happens to be deliciously tasty and as addictive as crack-cocaine, possesses its host and devours humanness rendering them vacuous shells. As much as the film conveys the ‘just say no’ attitudes of Reagan’s legislations, the film provides an interesting insight into the glut of gormandising and implies a covetous thirst that cannot be quenched. The yoghurts addictive nature, much alike narcotics, (or Willy Wonka’s semen) is in tandem with the contemporaneous revealings of drug abuse through medical examination. Relatively received as far-fetched B-movie fodder, ‘The Stuff’ raises an empirical inquest into propaganda and bureaucracy and acts as a cautionary tale to those who could attain too much of a good thing.

Best scene?

The creepy midnight snack at the film’s opening. An innocent child opens the fridge to find an overturned pot of the gooey stuff slithering about on its own, crawling back into its yoghurty capsule.

Abridged tagline: You are what you eat!

9. Re-Animator (1985)

DIRECTED BY STUART GORDON

Why does it make the cut?

If there was to be a serum to immortalise, it would have been bought in the 80’s. ‘Re-animator’ is an intriguing, darkly comical film that has a discernible candour and cataclysmic colloquialism to it. Bottled revitalisation, the aspirational intents of monetary wealth and unprecedented acclaim are symptomatic of a culture ignorant to consequence - Gordon satirises such concepts in suggesting society (under a microscope) yearns for more life. Whatever the cost.

Best scene?

Though the penultimate scene is superbly climatic - a morgue full of decomposing deadeyes resuscitating in bodybags, a squashed head and intestinal strangulation - the scene whereby Dr Hills is decapitated to then be questioned upon the administration of the reagent is hilarious. So too the following escapade in Dr Hills’s headless body operating on his own head and lobotomising others.

Abridged tagline: Life is just another commodity.

8. From Beyond (1986)

DIRECTED BY STUART GORDON

Why does it make the cut?

Loosely based upon H.P. Lovecraft’s technophobic warning of the same name, ‘From Beyond’ represents a prominent incursion into the self and disassociation therein. Retrospectively affluent, Gordon’s pineal-probing palette of parallel dimensions connects by issuing attack upon utilisation of ‘new media’ devices; upon the insatiable, strangely sexual and fetishistic addiction for technological advancement to enhance sensory perceptions. To experience ‘more’: the drug for anthropomorphic decay. Bearing in mind that computer sales had risen exponentially (people persistently plunged their trust into machines to explore new hopes and graphic new worlds), the notions of living within a separate reality were becoming increasingly more viable. ‘From Beyond’ makes privy such notion and presents this new reality as one of nightmare and humanistic regression.

Best scene?

In the final act, Crawford Tillinghast sacrifices himself to slimy, velociraptor-esque latex trifle Dr Pretorius who sucks his head clean off of his body. As Tillinghasts’s mind fuses within the goo of the Dr Pretorius, he is reborn through the mad doctor’s monstrous embodiment. Crowning from its mouth.

Abridged tagline: Doctors and dimensions.

7. Tetsuo: Iron Man (1989)

DIRECTED BY SHINYA TSUKAMOTO

Why does it make the cut?

Tetsuo is far from an easy watch, described by film critics as ‘like being hit over the head with a hammer, repeatedly’. For all of it’s insanely crafted disunity and incoherence, beneath the amalgamative cyperbunk/body-horror is a worryingly lucid fable of man and machine - an assimilative chaos in metamorphosis. In unison with the vast advancement of technological gadgetry, Tetsuo brings to light the notions of cyborgification in an era saturated by impossible possibilities. Tsukamoto’s text is rife with allegory, disjointed notions of identity (schizophrenia and narcissism) and offers an uncomfortable journey through fetishism, mutilation and modification.

Best scene?

The animated scenes are a revelation (an ode to Svankmaer), yet the sex scene is the one that sticks to mind. Though there are many points of revulsion throughout this film (to which ‘Tetsuo’ is uncompromisingly unrelenting) the copulation between woman and metal man - with erectile ‘dick drill’ - is an absurd yet ingeniously contrived comment upon the post-human condition. Also, it’s madcap, tongue-in-cheek candy.

Abridged tagline: Man and metal matrimony.

6. Hellraiser (1987)

DIRECTED BY CLIVE BARKER

Why does it make the cut?

Clive Barker’s sadomasochistic endeavour mirrors the fascination with pleasure derived from the new-found accessibility of pornographic material (its peak of popularity in the 80’s after legislation) and the modish compulsions of bodily customisation - specifically piercings. Barker’s intelligent text is a ritualistic enlightenment into the ‘masturb-eighties’ presented through the allegorical myth of ‘Pandoras’s box’, collaging a bleak and austere outlook upon a despondently lax and irresponsible social milieux too consumed by an enticingly limitless self-euphoria.

Best scene?

Frank re-materialising up through the attic floor from a single drop of blood. A putrid, gory and sinewy reanimation bolstered by a triumphantly buoyant musical score.

Abridged tagline: The Rubix cube of pleasure…and pain.

5. An American Werewolf in London (1981)

DIRECTED BY JOHN LANDIS

Why does it make the cut?

Caramelised in referentiality, rationality and mythological parody, Landis’s highly entertaining logical lycanthrope tale is typically British. Upending Thatcher’s prejudicial nationalistic fear and threat of immigration, ‘AWIL’ combats foreign fortay with a very dry sprinkle of fascism whilst also denouncing busking Britain as an island of stupendously feeble bewilderment by comparison to the ‘American Dream’. The film is a riotous romp from start to finish but ascertains notoriety for something other - the evolution of the perennial image of monstrous abjection. Rick Baker’s Oscar winning werewolf transformation.

Best scene?

A full (unadulterated and mildly edited) animatronic and latex-laced metamorphosis from man to werewolf. Graphic. Gargantuan. Great.

Abridged tagline: The wolf of Warren street.

4. The Fly (1986)

DIRECTED BY DAVID CRONENBERG

Why does it make the cut?

The first Cronenbergian film to grace the list (though not solitary) keeps with the legacy of malleable manifestations in opting to divulge into the scientific ramifications of cross-breeding and teleportation. Jeff Goldblum’s man merges with insect in secreting metaphor for hierarchical implosion. On paper, it’s a concept that appears rather juvenile. In practice, the effects were overwhelming, the fear resounding and the prospect overbearing. A darkly romantic and macabre tragedy, ‘The Fly’ showcases a real talent in purporting the fears of generations to come and the morality/ethics therein.

Best scene?

The regurgitation scene. Goldblum’s half riddled insectoid visually demonstrates his newborn methods of consumption by coating his din-dins in vomit before sapping it up. Bon appetit.

Abridged tagline: I believe I can fly.

3. The Thing (1982)

DIRECTED BY JOHN CARPENTER

Why does it make the cut?

John Carpenter’s arc de triumph is a grotesque gem. Built around the premise of an unknown parasitic entity that contorts and manipulates corporeal form, the film is a visceral epitaph for the internally unaware. Wonderfully scripted and cast, ‘The Thing’s cult status within the vogue of horror remains untarnished and untouched in all its xenophobic glory and reduction of national specificity.

Best scene?

The defibrillator scene. A reverse chest-burster of an event, its a menacingly imaginative and unforeseeable act that sees the ‘thing’ in its true form - a contortion of terror.

Abridged tagline: You thing(k) you know me?

2. Videodrome (1983)

DIRECTED BY DAVID CRONENBERG

Why does it make the cut?

A particularly dystopian interpolation of pop culture and subordination of free will in a world plagued by the tyrannically obsolete media industry, ‘Videodrome’ blends realities with fantasies in creating a delirium akin to the immersive developments within the technological landscape. This is Cronenberg at his very best, exploring the futility of a singular plane of existence in a consumer-fuelled pulp of pluralism. A nihilistic prophecy, Cronenberg’s bizarre text utters the problematic assertions in defining the self within a virtual ruse of simulative affects and the essence of subjugation to which the media exploits. A landmark feature from a true pioneer of the sub-genre.

Best scene?

The multi-functional stomach scene whereby Mr Wood’s discovers a vertically vaginal crevice in his gut and has a nice old rummage around after it swallows his gun. In fact, all the scenes featuring his carnivorous, cassette clenching tummy are all hideous yet unforgettably formidable.

Abridged tagline: Video killed the radio star.

1. Society (1989)

DIRECTED BY BRIAN YUZNA

Why does it make the cut?

The ultimate depravity delve into a synergetic class conflict, Yuzna’s cannibalistic dinner of disgust not only resolutely obliterates implications of a fractured social ethos but quite literally turns them inside out. ‘Society’ is a film I have only mustered to watch on a couple of occasions, though once is more than enough. Stomach-churningly abhorrent and consciously provocative, the film is both an embellishment and primordial exacerbation of class dissolution and social status. Notably coined for having a problematic marketing campaign to advertise the film, the film’s mysteriously slow pace lulls the spectator into a certain palpability before inflicting a glut of gross that will scorch the retinas for a lifetime.

Best scene?

The end. It’s one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen, to put into words - an outlandishly anarchic, colonoscopic orgy with liquid latex. Watch and wince at your own peril.

Abridged tagline: Society? Fuck it!

So…where is it now?

A pre-requisite of the horror film is that it complies with fashion as a predominantly recursive genre. It must reflect issues of its time in order to survive, in order to create the allure of fear in cohorts to intensification. Halted by the emergence of computer generated imagery and restrained by its own obsessive limitations and plagiarisms, the body-horror became somewhat irrelevant. Though, its impact in remonstrating upon socio-political ideologies is undeniable and its digressions into postmodernism and the post-human an evident prognosis. The body-horror did continue - throughout the nineties with some acclaim - but has since slumped as a cameo in more recent decades. Body-horror is not strictly dead, it’s dormant. Lurking in the shadows. Tsukamoto’s ‘Bullet man’ (2009) is a rehash of his first ‘Tetsuo’ (though extremely difficult to obtain in the UK), Brandon Cronenberg’s ‘Antiviral’ (2012) echoes his fathers work, ‘American Mary’ (2012) passes judgement upon adornment, ‘Excision’ (2008) divulges into the body of the mind and Chris Nash’s ‘Zygote’ (2014) - the most repulsive short we are likely to see - is a true invigoration of the sub-genre. Its breed finely tuned, sporadic body-horrors exist with greater emphasis upon the medical and the surgical rather than the quasi-dimensional or the ‘mecha-transformational’. A momentary redux, Tom Six’s quintessentially infamous trilogy of grub grotesque’s pseudo-scientifically confer to elements within the body-horror experimentalism, but not quite in the same way.

Personally, I miss old-school body-horrors. They were always extreme and sat on the cusp of tacit regurgitation in vamping up new heights of disgust and now - ironically - the new-waves of horror have been somewhat tamed by the very thing that body-horror films warned us of - commodification. Long live latex - long live the new flesh.