The 1980s was an exceptionally fertile decade for the cinema. In Hollywood violent action was very much in vogue, with films such as Die Hard, First Blood, Rohocop, Terminator, Top Gun and Lethal Weapon introducing the public to new, muscular stars like Stallone, Schwartzenegger and Tom Cruise.. Steven Spielberg contributed to this genre with Raiders of the Lost Ark, but also gave us the gentle E.T., which was equally in tune with a period which saw a whole raft of notable science fiction movies, including Dune, Blade Runner and Aliens. In the wake of Star Wars, everyone was eager to make use of the new special effects techniques that played a major role not just in the SF genre (including the Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back) but also in pictures like Ghostbusters, Gremlins and Poltergeist. For 80s audiences really liked to be scared and Hollywood duly stood their hair on end with The Evil Dead, Friday the 13th and Scanners, among others. For the first time America's film-makers were prepared to examine the nation's recent history and Platoon, Born on the 4th of July, First Blood and Good Morning, Vietnam all tackled, in their different ways, the trauma of Vietnam, while The Killing Fields documented the carnage that continued to wrack South East Asia. More distant history inspired the two bio-epies, Ghandhi and The Last Emperor. There was sex, of course, with 9 1 2 Weeks, American Gigolo and the steamy remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice. But comedy was thinner on the ground, though Hollywood contributed Airplane, the Brits chipped in with A Fish called Wanda and the Italians with the enchanting Cinema Paradiso, which was one of a number of foreign language films (Betty Blue, Ran, Kagamusha) which broke through into the international market. The wide variety of films on the screens of the burgeoning multiplexes was fully reflected in the poster art of the period, the cream of which features in this book