80s Horror Movie Trivia
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60 free 80s Horror Movie trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
One, two, Freddy's coming for you. These 80s horror movie trivia questions and answers cover the decade that gave us the modern slasher and the golden age of practical effects: The Shining and Friday the 13th in 1980, The Evil Dead, The Howling and An American Werewolf in London, The Thing and Poltergeist, Elm Street, Gremlins, Re-Animator, Return of the Living Dead, Fright Night, The Fly, Hellraiser, The Lost Boys, Near Dark, They Live, Child's Play and Pet Sematary. The 60 questions start with the ones any Halloween-party crowd can shout out, like who played Freddy and what Gremlins must never do, then dig into the makeup Oscars, the Razzies, the budgets, the box-office bombs that became classics, the sequels that reinvented their monsters and the directors, from Carpenter and Cronenberg to Raimi and Barker. Some are easy; the last third will test the people who own the Blu-rays. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on each film and character, and each question links to the page and sentence that supports it.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed The Shining (1980)?
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick changed the novel so much that its unhappy author made his own TV miniseries of the story in 1997.
Q 02Which room in the Overlook Hotel is Danny warned to avoid?
237
Kubrick's film moved the novel's room number. The Overlook's earlier caretaker, Grady, had murdered his wife and daughters there.
Q 03The Shining got two nominations at the first Razzies: one for its director and what else?
Shelley Duvall as actress
Shelley Duvall as actress: the Razzies rescinded her Worst Actress nomination in 2022, citing the director's treatment of her during the shoot.
Q 04Where was The Shining almost entirely filmed?
EMI Elstree Studios in England
EMI Elstree Studios in England held the Overlook's interiors and even its hedge maze; Oregon's Timberline Lodge supplied only the exterior shots.
Q 05Which future star appears in the original Friday the 13th (1980)?
Kevin Bacon
Kevin Bacon plays Jack, one of the counselors who ignore the locals' warnings and are picked off one by one.
Q 06Which summer camp do the counselors reopen in the original Friday the 13th?
Camp Crystal Lake
Camp Crystal Lake carries a history of murder, so locals warn the counselors to stay away, and they ignore the warning.
Q 07In which film did Jason Voorhees first wear his hockey mask?
Friday the 13th Part III
Friday the 13th Part III gave Jason the mask; in Part 2 he had hidden his face under a sack.
Q 08Who was the killer in the original 1980 Friday the 13th?
Pamela Voorhees, Jason's mother
Pamela Voorhees, Jason's mother, played by Betsy Palmer, kills to avenge her son's drowning; Jason himself turns up only in a closing nightmare.
Q 09Who played Freddy Krueger throughout the original Nightmare on Elm Street series?
Robert Englund
Robert Englund was starring as a gentle alien in the TV hit V and auditioned for Freddy during a break in filming the show.
Q 10Whose film debut came in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)?
Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp was a musician, not an actor, when he auditioned to play Nancy's boyfriend Glen, and the part started his screen career.
Q 11Wes Craven loosely based Elm Street on news stories about which group dying in their sleep?
Southeast Asian refugees
Southeast Asian refugees who had fled war were dying mid-nightmare; Craven recalled a newspaper story of a boy who fought sleep for days, then died screaming in the night.
Q 12Which studio earned the nickname 'The House that Freddy Built'?
New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema had mostly distributed other people's films until Elm Street, one of its first productions, became its first big hit and paid for everything after.
Q 13The Evil Dead (1981) was shot on location in a remote cabin in which state?
Tennessee
Q 21In An American Werewolf in London, which pub's locals warn the two backpackers to stay off the moors?
The Slaughtered Lamb
The Slaughtered Lamb's regulars send David and Jack back into the night with that warning, and the pair wander off the road and onto the moors anyway.
Q 22The Howling was one of three high-profile lycanthrope films of 1981. What were the other two?
An American Werewolf in London and Wolfen
Its success got Joe Dante the Gremlins job. Rob Bottin did the makeup a year before The Thing.
Q 23In Gremlins, what happens when a Mogwai gets wet?
It multiplies
Tennessee hosted the main seven-week shoot in a cabin near Morristown, though the young crew came from Michigan and finished the film back home there.
Q 14Whose rave review helped The Evil Dead land a US distributor?
Stephen King's
Stephen King's rave, written after he saw the film at Cannes, called it the most ferociously original horror film of the year, a line the film's ads then carried.
Q 15Which actor plays the chainsaw-wielding Ash in Evil Dead II?
Bruce Campbell
Bruce Campbell met director Sam Raimi as a teenager, and the two friends were making Super 8 movies together long before the Evil Dead films.
Q 16The Thing (1982) is based on which science fiction story?
Who Goes There?
Who Goes There?, John W. Campbell Jr.'s 1938 novella, had already been filmed once, loosely, as 1951's The Thing from Another World.
Q 17Which 1982 hit did John Carpenter blame for The Thing's failure at the box office?
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial gave audiences a lovable alien two weeks before The Thing offered a monstrous one, and they chose the friendly visitor.
Q 18Who is credited as director of Poltergeist (1982), amid long-running debate over Steven Spielberg's role?
Tobe Hooper
Tobe Hooper, who made The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, holds the credit; Spielberg wrote and produced, and his constant presence on set fed decades of argument.
Q 19What does five-year-old Carol Anne say after talking to the static on the TV in Poltergeist?
'They're here'
'They're here' comes as the bedroom shakes, and at breakfast the next morning a milk glass shatters and the silverware bends on its own.
Q 20Which director of An American Werewolf in London did Michael Jackson then hire to make Thriller?
John Landis
John Landis was asleep in London when Michael Jackson phoned at 2am, praised the werewolf film and asked for a video in which he could turn into a monster.
It multiplies: spilled water makes furry balls pop out of Gizmo's back and grow into new mogwai, and feeding those after midnight is what turns them into gremlins.
Q 24Gremlins helped prompt the creation of which movie rating?
PG-13
PG-13 was Steven Spielberg's own suggestion after parents objected to the PG ratings on Gremlins and his Temple of Doom; Red Dawn was the first film released with it, that August.
Q 25The Return of the Living Dead introduced which now-standard zombie idea?
Zombies specifically eating brains
Zombies specifically eating brains came with a reason: one captured corpse explains that it eases the pain of being dead, and a shot to the head does not stop these zombies.
Q 26What is the name of the toxic gas that raises the dead in The Return of the Living Dead?
Trioxin
Trioxin sits in Army drums sent by mistake to a medical supply warehouse in Louisville, Kentucky, until a worker showing them off to a new hire lets the gas out.
Q 27Re-Animator is loosely based on a serial by which author?
H.P. Lovecraft
H.P. Lovecraft wrote his 1922 serial 'Herbert West–Reanimator' partly as a send-up of Frankenstein; Jeffrey Combs plays West in the film.
Q 28In Fright Night, teenager Charley Brewster recruits which TV horror host to fight his vampire neighbor?
Peter Vincent
Peter Vincent, played by Roddy McDowall, takes his name from two horror stars, Peter Cushing and Vincent Price.
Q 29Cronenberg's The Fly (1986) won an Academy Award for what?
Best Makeup
Best Makeup was the film's only nomination, so Jeff Goldblum's performance under that makeup went unrecognised by the Academy.
Q 30What is the name of Jeff Goldblum's scientist in The Fly?
Seth Brundle
Seth Brundle tests his teleporter on himself without noticing a housefly has slipped in, and the machine merges man and insect.