A lot of my attachment to the 80s product may be rooted in nostalgia. I wonder how I'd feel about that era had I not, quite literally, grown up in it. Indeed, for a long time I vocerferiously turned my nose up at the various FRIDAYs, HALLOWEENs and ELM STREETs, taking a sort of "Universal, were are you?" attitude. But, somewhere along the way my preteen self mellowed and I began to collect the legions of Freddy board games, Jason hockey masks, etc. that were haunting the shelves back then. I even had that Matchbox Freddy dress-up doll that was pulled from the shelves in no time.

But it was always...ah, let's see...an amused interest rather than real, burning passion. The latter has always been reserved for the Golden Age classics. Nothing's changed on that score, but these days I daresay I've begun to maintain something more than amused interest in the 80s. I see how well they hold up, how very entertaining many of them are. Far moreso than Hammer...or even, heaven forgive me, Universal...at its worst. I think some reevaluation of this era is in order; it truly is an epoch with its own heroes and villains, trends and traditions. Ones that have garnered relatively little scholarly examination.
.'. Earl Roesel .'.