Raised by Monsters: How Horror Became Part of Growing Up Gen X

Growing up in the ’80s was a weird time. Adults warned us about strangers, staying out too late, and hanging around places we had no business being. Meanwhile, some of the biggest movies of the decade showed teenagers doing exactly that stuff, and the penalty was a lot worse than being grounded.

By the early ’80s, horror had left Dracula’s castle far behind. Psycho moved the terror into a roadside motel, The Exorcist dropped it into a family home, and Halloween turned a sleepy suburban street into a hunting ground.

Carpenter’s low-budget horror movie made a ton of money, and Hollywood took notice. Suddenly there were killers at summer camps, proms, graduations, birthday parties, and anywhere a filmmaker could put a bunch of teenagers together.

Then came VHS, and that changed everything.

The horror aisle at the video store was almost as big a deal as the movies. You might’ve been too young to rent Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elm Street, but nobody could stop you from staring at the boxes.

Skulls, knives, monsters, all the stuff your parents were hoping you’d walk right past. Maybe your older brother rented it. Maybe somebody smuggled a tape to a sleepover. Maybe the guy behind the counter just didn’t care.

The horror boom of the 80s turned Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger into something more than movie villains. They were celebrities. Their faces ended up on posters and Halloween costumes and kids argued over who’d win in a fight, Freddy or Jason.

Of course, the grown-ups noticed. Critics trashed slasher movies, parents picketed Silent Night, Deadly Night, and politicians in Britain went after the so-called “video nasties.” Some of that worry was warranted. A lot of us watched stuff we weren’t ready for. But horror also became part of the glue that held our generation together: the sleepovers, the video stores, Halloween, and the thrill of watching something we knew full well we shouldn’t.

I dig into all of it in the latest episode of the Gen X Archives Podcast, Raised by Monsters: How Gen X Grew Up with Horror. We cover the rise of the slasher, VHS culture, practical effects, the Final Girl, and the strange road that turned Freddy, Jason, and Michael into pop culture icons.

Give it a listen at GenXArchives.com/2