Fright Flicks

A retrospective by Nick Peron

Trading Cards seem to be the universal constant when it comes to kids collecting things. At least back when I was a kid. I collected all sorts, I went through a sports card phase for a bit (Even though I never really understood, nor cared what all the statistics on the back of them where, I was more interested in finding cards of popular athletes), but what I collected mostly were ones based on popular movies and TV shows of the time.

With most card sets being card games, and the purpose of having pictures of your favorite TV and movie characters negated by the fact that you can find pictures for free on the internet, the charm of the trading card is pretty much dead to this modern generation I suppose.

But not in the 80's, thanks to some genius back in the 70's figuring putting a picture of Chewbaka on a piece of cardboard the 80's were perpetually flooded with trading cards for just about anything and everything that was aired on television and on the silver screen. The trading card set that will always have a fond place in my heart, and will rank for me as one of the best trading card sets ever conceived will be Fright Flicks.

What were Fright Flicks? Simply, it was a horror movie trading card set. More specifically, it heralded a time where the horror movie was the king of the silver screen during the late 70's and early 80's. It was a card set that featured some of the most iconic horror movies of the time. The first three Nightmare on Elm St films, Fright Night, the first two Poltergeist films, the first two Alien films, Day of the Dead, The Fly, Pumpkinhead, Predator, and... uh... Ghostbusters (Which wasn't really a horror movie but anyway...)

This card set is responsible for turning me onto the wonderful world of horror movies (much like my uncle Ziggy turned me on to the wonderful world of haunting memories), and I'm going to try to explain to you why this magical little card set captured my heart for years.

1.) The Box: The box was an instant sell point, here is Freddy Kruger -- The most famous and iconic fictional child killer in history -- showing off his glove and asking you -- YOU -- if you want to see something gross. That my friends is casting down the gauntlet. That's suggesting to you, that perhaps you couldn't handle something that's gross. Perhaps, my friend, you are a big pussy that you will never --EVER-- be enough of a man to open one of those wax sealed trading card packages to see the grossness contained within. I ask you my friend, is that a challenge you want to back down from? I didn't think so.

2.) The packages: Are kind of funny, because they're poorly drawn renditions of Freddy, Pumpkinhead, the chick from Fright Night, Predator, and the like all wrapped in bright yellow wax paper. Yellow, being the universal sign of caution. This is about as close to a warning parents would get about the content of these wrappers my friends, this is the 1980's, we aren't in the politically-correct,-shield-our-children-from-everything-world that we're used to today. No sir. So the package is all the warning you get.

3.) The gum: Possibly the most frightening thing about this card set to be perfectly honest. I mean, what the hell is this shit made of? It's rock hard, tastes like shitty gum. And even then that shitty gum taste leaves after 30 seconds. If there is any kind of gum that takes away from the enjoyment out of chewing gum it's the kind of gum they stuck in with these trading cards. In fact, I found that it made gum chewing depressing and more of a chore. I wouldn't count out the possibility the gum was also giving me cancer as I chewed it either.

4.) The pictures: The great thing about these trading cards are the pictures, some of them are promotional pictures for the films in question, some of them are production stills, and some special effects shots that (to my better knowledge) weren't used in the film. I also like to point out that the set primarily focuses on the monsters, creatures, and scenes of gore in this set. You don't see one single still shot of Sigourney Weaver from Alien or Arnold Schwartzenegger in Predator, you'll get stills of the Queen alien or the Predator instead. Also, there were a lot of gore shots: The scene where the alien is ripping out the guys chest in Alien, the dude getting ripped apart by zombies in Day of the Dead, the melting face from Poltergeist. I was mostly impressed with the stills from Day of the Dead, as they focused on pictures of the zombies in the film, a lot of these zombies were also only exclusively seen in the backgrounds during the course of the film. You get a lot of interesting close ups that's for sure. The crowning star of the card set though however is Freddy Krueger, and as such most of the trading cards are focused on the first three Nightmare on Elm St movies, but there are still a good number of cards from other movies that are fantastic.

5.) The jokes: Each card would have a caption underneath that would amount to being a bad pun or a witty comment on the picture in question. Me, I love bad puns, and I love making witty comments (at least they are witty to me) during movies, so I find some of these priceless. Some people wouldn't get the finer points of the caption "Cheese!" under a grimacing picture of Pumpkinhead, or "Who Ate All the Bran Muffins?" under the Fly, or who could forget the "Got to quit this nibbling habit" under Bub from Day of the Dead (Which was my personal favorite as a kid because even to this date I'm a horrific nail biter.)

6.) Did it Ever Happen?: Each Fright Flicks card had the telling of some urban legend, or supposedly true story written on the back. Most of the stories were pretty lame, and weren't all that frightening. One that comes to mind was this story about a guy who was late getting home for dinner (or something) and he took a short cut through the haunted woods (or something to that effect), and when he finally got home he was shocked to find that he had been gone for 10 years. Pretty scary stuff huh? Nah, I didn't think so either. The cool thing though was that the picture had this really creepy guy with red eyes brandishing a rather large knife at you.

7.) The stickers/Puzzle: Like many trading card sets of the time there were a number of sticker cards that also had puzzle pieces on the back which you could form into a larger picture. Unless of course you lived in Canada (like me) in which case they weren't stickers at all but just normal cards just like the rest of the set. But the puzzle that formed in the back was a collage of a number of movie monsters from the card set, including Freddy, the Predator, the library ghost from Ghost Busters, Pumpkinhead and the girl vampire from Fright Night. The best sticker in the set was one that encouraged people to "Do the Freddy", I don't know what doing the Freddy is, but I'm sure it involves horribly murdering a teenager and making a bad pun about the inventive way you killed them.

Did You Know?: It's interesting to note that each card would note which film the picture was from on the back of the card. Even going so far as noting that the pictures from The Fly were from the David Cronenberg remake from 1986. However, it's interesting to note that at least two of the cards that featured pictures from the movie Pumpkinhead were said to be from a movie called Vengeance: The Demon. Vengeance was an alternate title for the film Pumpkinhead (Possibly the original working title to the film.)

And that about wraps it up for this little look back at the 80's, and why I think that Fright Flicks was possibly the best trading card series ever conceived If you want to try and find some for your own horror movie memorabilia, go poking around eBay, you can get them pretty damn cheap on there.

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