As the title suggests even though this film was made in the 90s it was one of those 80s teen vampire movies like Fright Night, Lost Boys and Vamp and should have been made in the 80s. Unlike Fright Night and Lost Boys which were Bram Stoker's Dracula modernized Buffy was different because unlike those two movies it wasn't a modernized Dracula awhich made it original.
shareThe movie was made in 1992. That's the VERY early '90s. Not much different than the '80s.
Have to agree with the above poster. I didnt notice it until I watched the movie tonite, but it was definately heavily influenced by 80's thems, something I didnt notice when I originally saw the movie in 1992. I guess its like saying whats the difference between the 90s and 2002, not a whole lot.
shareHeck, it was RELEASED in 1992, which means filmed (mostly at least) in 1991. 1991... until Nirvana's Nevermind came out in the Fall, WAS the 1980's!
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First of all, what's wrong with being nostalgic for the early-90's? I for one have nostalgia for the early-90's, because I remember the pop culture fondly of that time when I was just a little kid. Secondly, it seems like everyone in the world feels the need to group everything neatly into decades, when in my personal opinion, it just doesn't work that way, so I see things in terms of pop culture, not decades. For instance, how is the 90's considered to be an era when 1992 had so many differences from 1999? I agree however that, in viewing it as a time frame of 10 years and not an era, this is a 90's movie seeing as that it was released in 1992. But why must one draw a sharp line between this and movies released in 1989? Know what I mean?
shareI've got to agree with Calicowboy in that decades aren't neatly grouped together. Things can have the feel of a different era.
shareIf you look at the groupings such as the 90's, 80's, 70's, and 60's it normally takes a couple of years for the decade to really get going. Like "the sixties" as everyone knows them started in 1963 with Kennedy's assassination and lasted until the fall of Nixon which was in 1974. With the 80's the same thing could be said. The 80's didn't truly end until grunge hit the mainstream with Nirvana's Nevermind. So, a movie released in 1992 would have been filmed in 1991 and the script and the direction of the movie would have been more akin to films filmed before that drastic change in popular culture.
But then again, the whole sectioning off eras thing isn't that cut and dry, with different events being important to different aspects of society.
by CALICOWBOY1017 (Fri May 18 2007 23:21:54)
UPDATED Fri May 18 2007 23:23:18
First of all, what's wrong with being nostalgic for the early-90's? I for one have nostalgia for the early-90's, because I remember the pop culture fondly of that time when I was just a little kid. Secondly, it seems like everyone in the world feels the need to group everything neatly into decades, when in my personal opinion, it just doesn't work that way, so I see things in terms of pop culture, not decades. For instance, how is the 90's considered to be an era when 1992 had so many differences from 1999? I agree however that, in viewing it as a time frame of 10 years and not an era, this is a 90's movie seeing as that it was released in 1992. But why must one draw a sharp line between this and movies released in 1989? Know what I mean?
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I feel the same way as you do! And I loved the 80's vampire comedy films like 'Fright Night'!
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I fyou notice real decades and REAL decades are different.
Late 1950s to mid 1960s = 50s
Mid 1960s to mid 1970s = 60s
Late 1970s = 70s (disco)
Late 1970s to very early 1980s = 70s (punk)
Early 80s = 80s
Late 80s to mid 1990s = 90s
Late 90s to early 00s = 00s
Late 00s = Well that's now
That's how I'd group them anyway (especially the 1960s ones)..so I think of Buffy and the other things like it as being 90s.
I actually miss the 90s a little...
"Nothings gonna change my world!"
Watching this film for the 1st time, not sure why I haven't watched before....huge fan of the TV series, I guess it was always trashed by the people involved on the TV series.
Anyway, it does have an 80's feel about it...which is interesting because the BtVS TV series seems like such a 90's icon.
Agree with the previous poster (that decades sort of overlap sometimes) "pop-culture" wise the 1950's as we think of them was probably 1953-1964, the 1960's: 1965-1973, the 1970's: 1974-1982, the 1980's: 1983-1991, the 1990's: 1992-2001 and we're living in the 00's now.
So I'm not the only one who thinks this early 1990s Buffy movie has a very strong 1980s hangover, like Total Recall, Terminator 2, or Point Break - like many here I also really think 1991 is much closer in feel to 1984 than it is to 1998, the decades overlap with each other heavily. This how I break down the decades:
1930s: 1933 to 1946
1950s: 1947 to 1962
1960s: 1963 to 1972
1970s: 1973 to 1978
1980s: 1979 to 1992
1990s: 1993 to 2003
2000s: 2004 to 2015
Pretty interesting breakdown...I agree for the most part, I might extend the the 60's into '73/'74 (Watergate/Nixon resigning/ending of the Vietnam War) and push the 70's into '81/'82 (Reagan elected/recession of the early 80's receding).
90's have to have ended on 9/11/01 and '00's begin there.
Interesting discussion/topic.
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I was very young during the early-'90's, so I don't have too clear a concept in my mind of exactly what they were like. But I think that it actually depends on the movie, and that it was a mixed bag in terms of styles and pop culture. One of my favorite movies is PARENTHOOD, released in August 1989 (a comedy-drama that was one of the hugest hits of '89 and it's a really great movie--highly recommended). That movie actually does not even look dated in spite of the fact that it's 20 years old...it doesn't look '80's at all in the sense that the '80's would come to be known as. But then there are movies like BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, which was released 3 years later, and it falls into the other category in spite of being in the '90's. So it seems to me that just as many eras are (even much earlier eras) it was a middle-period of overlap and a mixed bag. On a side note, to those that like BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER I also highly recommend the 1985 horror movie FRIGHT NIGHT, a great movie and one of my favorites, too!
shareI was very young during the early-'90's, so I don't have too clear a concept in my mind of exactly what they were like.
I was born in '85. I'm on second thought old enough to remember the early-'90s, and for some reason I'm remembering it better now. Anyways, I remember it being a transitional period with many lingering aspects that dated back to the mid-'80s and many other aspects that were very '90s; I think this movie just happens to reflect the much more '80s-ish side of '92.
shareI was just starting to enter adolescence in 1992, and I remember it being quite different from the 1980s, particularly the years 1983-1987. I remember rap music such as MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice being enormously popular at the time (and, of course, Public Enemy and NWA, although I wasn't aware of them at the time). Paula Abdul was probably the most famous female singer at this time (unless you count Madonna, and she was about on her way out by this point), and there were also high-energy dance-music groups like C&C Music Factory (whose "Keep It Comin'" Buffy and her fellow cheerleaders dance to in the movie's title sequence). That was all a far cry from the likes of Quiet Riot, Bruce Springsteen, Huey Lewis & the News, Berlin, or just about any other mid-'80s musical group you could think of. I remember being vaguely aware of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but I didn't quite know who they were. (In fact, I though Pearl Jam was a rap group because they had the word "jam" in their name!) All in all, I was aware at the time that I was living in an era that - at least culturally - was quite a departure from the years of my childhood.
So I think I'm going to have to disagree with a lot of posters here and consider BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER a '90s film, especially looking at it now.
Yes, much of the movie's production design has the new wave/glam look first popularized by Madonna and others around 1983. But just because a movie shows something doesn't mean it endorses it. Much of BUFFY is dedicated to mocking that aesthetic and showing that its time has passed. Most of the kids at Hemery High do seem to be cut from the John Hughes cloth: spoiled, smug, hedonistic, shallow. But BUFFY is still a '90s movie in that its two heroes are the title character, who comes to reject Hemery's social scene as "stupid"; and Pike, who could hardly look any more different from your average "preppy" mid-'80s movie protagonist. Pike is a blue-collar worker, wears simple clothing, and mostly keeps to himself (Benny being his only real friend). Could you imagine Michael J. Fox playing Pike? I certainly can't!
As described above, BUFFY marks a sort of '90s rejection of '80s materialism in much the same way that, say, EASY RIDER did of 1950s traditionalism. Of course, there WERE many films of the '80s that questioned contemporary values (just as there were such films in the '50s), but they don't tend to be brought up when people reflect on the stereotypes of that decade.
There's something else, too. I'm not going to pretend that BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER invented feminism, or even the concept of the action heroine. But it does mark something of a paradigm shift for that sort of character, and I'll explain how. I remember once reading an essay (in the mid or late '90s, as it happened) about the evolution of women's athletics. In the 1950s and '60s, so the essay claimed, girls couldn't be athletes (at least, not very GOOD athletes) because the schools discriminated against them. Then, in the 1970s and '80s, girls were allowed to play just about any sport they wished, but did so at the risk of being labelled "jocks" (and from the way the essayist used the word, she seemed to be implying that "female jock" carried the connotations of "freak," or even "lesbian"). Finally, in the '90s, this woman claimed, female athletes could finally be viewed through the prism of the complexity they actually possessed. Now, I don't think I agree with this point of view wholeheartedly, but in any case BUFFY certainly seems to reflect that evolution. The title character, after all, is a VERY "feminine" individual who becomes powerful - and then, at the end, is STILL proudly feminine. Plus, she's been rejected by all of her old friends, but doesn't give a damn because she's made a new and very different one (Pike). As corny as it might sound, I think this movie makes a very powerful social statement. It was probably the first encouragement given to many girls - and weak boys, too, for that matter - to stand up for themselves and not care so much about what the judgmental people of the world think.
Nice post Marcusman, with good angles on eras/decades.
My breakdown :-
1950s: 1950 to 1959
1960s: 1960 to 1969
1970s: 1970 to 1979
1980s: 1980 to 1989... and so on.
That's how a decade works. Sorry to be a bit sarcastic, but being from the UK (a few sarcastic people live here!), some decades have significant change at their turn, to varying degrees I must admit. The 70s are one of the best examples. In Dec 1969 a BBC programme called "Pop Goes The 60s" was made, with a look back on the last decade's music but some very 70s looking fashions. Also, the Rolling Stones had their Altamont festival disaster ("The End/Death Of The 60s") which was obviously in America, though 1970 saw the UK's 3rd Isle Of Wight Festival which culminated in the hippie movement pretty much going out of fashion. Within weeks Hendrix and Joplin died, along with the hippie dream. Also the Beatles officially split early that year. To cheer us up, T-Rex dropped their hippie image and unwittingly started the 70s Glam-rock fashion with Ride A White Swan towards the end of 1970. Music recording technology was going through some hefty improvements, 4 tracks to 16 or more - listen to something mainstream recorded in '67/'68 then something of a similar budget from '70/'71. This was followed by an immediate slow in that area of technological development. The UK TV channels had just gone full colour. The original 70s-style disaster movie, Airport was released.
I don't see how 1972 can still be regarded as the 60s as some posters think, when you see images and music from then that are used to define the 70s! Flares, big collars, long hair/afros... Bowie, T-Rex, Slade, Roxy Music, David Cassidy, The Osmonds, The Jackson 5! Nixon was president for the last year of the 60s and over four years of the 70s (and more famous for events that happened in the latter), how that makes him more of a 60s icon, or define his time in office as the 60s, I don't know.
The 80s in the UK had some fairly clean breaks from the 70s. Gary Numan in '79 kicked some of us into the 80s a little early, and Bowie's Ashes to Ashes started the decade with a very New Romantic pop video (in themselves immediately becoming important compared to the basic promo-film). Many of the original British punks morphed from New Wave into New Romantics. Flares went out. Disco records burned. Charles and Diana. Reagan and Thatcher(!) When a new decade starts, I think a lot of people sense change, or the need to change or develop- so it can be a lot more than just a change of the tenth digit. I agree there are obvious overlaps, and I realise my examples are mostly music-related, but that's where my useless knowledge lies.
Someone else mentioned 1991 as being closer to 1984 than 1998. I think that's down to the individual and the events of your life. I was a very different person in '84 than '91, they seem totally different times to me. Less changes happened between '91 and '98. Going back to the core subject, the Buffy film and its era, it looks from a Brit's point-of-view mostly 1991 but a bit dated in style even for then. A better example, Terminator 2 (released 1991) seems very 90s to me- the CGI effects were pretty much impossible even just a couple of years earlier. As with Luke Perry in Buffy, I remember most of us at college at the time wearing lumberjack-type shirts fully undone with, in our case a Happy Mondays / Jesus Jones or even an early Nirvana T-Shirt underneath. Happy times for me in the year 'nineteen-eighty-ninety-one' or should that be 'nineteen-eighty-eleven'?!
"So this is the planet Houston"
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No, no I never said 1992 was closer to 1984 than 1998--I said 1992 was closer to 1989 than 1998. I actually feel -- no, I know -- that there was a MUCH larger difference between 1980 and 1990 than between 1990 and 2000. Different - yes but not nearly as different as between the early-to-late-'80s, my point being I absolutely do NOT think that 1984 is closer to 1992 than to 1998. For some points of reference compare 1984 hit movies such as GREMLINS and FOOTLOOSE to any movie from 1992 (stylistically speaking & in terms of fashions/styles/pop culture).
shareNo, it was a different user (page 2, gregforttmags I think) who suggested 1991 was more similar to 1984 than 1998.
I agree that some decades have more stylistic change than others. Where there's a slower period of change, e.g. the 1970s, it's often because there were such huge changes previously (the late 60s particularly). And again, the 80s as you say went through big changes at the start and throughout, especially in fashion, music and technology. An 80s movie - well, they stick out like a sore thumb, some in a good way, others not so! Buffy doesn't reek of 80s to me, the fact it's set around a school and teens gives a little of that vibe that so many 80s movies have.
"So this is the planet Houston"
A lot of movies from 1990-1992 feel half 80's/half 90's.
The past decade was strange. Fashion and music changed from the late 90's, but nothing huge. Compare the late 80's to 2000. It's like 20 years had past.
My theory is that whichever era you first possess some level of self-awareness in is the first "normal" era to you. I was born in 1980, so most things from before about 1988 tend to look freakishly dated to me. And most things from before about 1955 - utterly incomprehensible.
shareI think that's a good point
born in 1979 and the early 80s were a LOT different than the late 80s
the late 80s bled into around Summer of 1991, then Nirvana/Pearl Jam hit and the 90s began, which lasted until about 1998
1999 sort of began the new era... Eminem, the Rams winning the Super Bowl, Woodstock 99 ending the big 1990s concerts, totally new types of films coming out like The Matrix which reflected a very different vibe
Yeah. Early 90s movies felt very 80s, for the part. Like someone else mentioned with Nirvana's Nevermind, the 90s didn't really become THE NINETIES until the rise of grunge.
Troll the respawn, Jeremy.