There’s nothing special about the 80s. Post-apocalyptic movies have been around since the 1950s, after the atomic bomb suggested a quick and easy way to achieve the apocalypse. Science Fiction magazines were filled with stories (mainly short ones) set in a post-nuclear apocalyptic world. The movies were there, too, with Five, The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, On the Beach, and The Last Woman on Earth (among others), and a host of others. Movies set i n the future or on other worlds assumed a post-apocalyptic setting (World Without End, Terror from the year 5000, Queen of Outer Space, Beyond the Time Barrier, and plenty of others)
Huh? It was definitely the early 1990s (fall of 1991 in particular) when the Soviet Union finally collapsed. Even if the Soviets had been more or less impotent for a while before that, it sure didn’t feel like it until after the Soviet Union ceased to exist. And even then, most people didn’t trust Russia any more than the Soviet Union.
We had an idea that something big was going on in the Eastern Bloc when the Berlin Wall ceased to be, but that didn’t translate to the end of the Cold War.
(it was however, enough to make me think that if the Soviets did indeed fall, that the military would go to some sort of 1930’s reduced status and quit being nearly as attractive as it was to a 18 year old kid)
As I recall, aside from Reagan being one nap away from hitting The Button, we also expected the Soviets to do something big instead of just allowing the USSR to disintegrate.
But my memories may be inaccurate, as I drank a lot during the 80s.
These days, it seems, the apocalypse takes the form of a zombie invasion.
This. There were a gazillion movies set in post-apocalyptic wastelands because they were so fucking cheap to make. Set: abandoned industrial site (really cheap). Costuming: Goodwill Industries (even cheaper). Vehicles: beat up used cars. Plot: somebody has a can of beans (or equivalent) and somebody else wants it, so they chase each other around the industrial park shooting each other and hitting each other until the good guy gets it (and the girl). Not as cheap as making a porn film with just two actors and a videocam in a motel room, but … still very cheap!
Good point! is there any post-apocalyptic porn?
Yes. At least one. Café Flesh. Link to the wiki article spoilered, because the DVD cover they use for illustration is arguably NSFW: So very strange…
Wow, you just described “Cyborg” with Jean Claude Van Damme in one sentence.
COMMUNIST BRAINS…
Anyway, the USSR might not have fallen until the 90’s, but the Berlin Wall came down in '89, and that’s the point most people started thinking that hey, maybe we aren’t gonna take this cold war hot & nuclear.
There was a spoof of The Road Warrior titled The Load Warrior. If you want to count Terminator as post-apocalyptic (at least for the future scenes), there also was The Sperminator
I think what made the 80s post-apocalyptic movies unique is that they were set in contemporary times. Early movies like Logan’s Run and Solyent Green were set in the future. Mad Max was not specific, but closer to the present. Movies like Red Dawn and the Day After were taking place now - that is the year they were filmed. They were not post-apocalyptic - they were the apocalypse happening. The Day After also presented itself not as an action movie with heroes rising to save humanity, but showing ordinary people trying to cope with the effects. It’s message was “This is no laughing matter. There will be no heroes.”
As noted by fiddlesticks, the pre-Gorbachev leadership were hardliners. And a strong evangelical movement in the US was predicting the end of times and the Second Coming - some still around, see the Left Behind series. Armageddon was tossed around quite a bit. I still get queasy feelings that some of them are unhappy that WWIII didn’t occur and wipe out those dirty Commies and pave the way for the Lord to return. (Now they are hoping it will happen with Iran, and WWIII will wipe out all those dirty Muslims - I think they will be disappointed again.)
So I think the movies from the 80s resonated more with the public while the others remained ensconced in sci-fi and are mostly watched by fans of that genre.
End of the world movie? … Anyone ever see the movie with the radio broadcaster in the tower? He is driving home in his station wagon and The Beatles All My Loving is playing… his wife and children have been hemmoraging for days. She takes them to the bathroom, cleans them hardly wraps them in white towels and they are saturated with blood in seconds. Please help me, I think this may be Late 70’s or early 80’s.
That sounds like Testament which was released in 1983. A bleak and depressing film.
Why did they start? Two words: Republican Presidents.
Why did they stop? Two words: Slick Willie
But the 90s didn’t start until November 1991 
Cold War nuclear armaggedon fears peaked between the early 60s (Cuban missile crisis) and early 90s (breakup of the Soviet Union), so a lot of these movies naturally were made in the 70s and 80s. The irony is that we’re probably as close as ever due to the chance of an accidental launch. There’s been several in the past, but you can’t always rely on people manning the triggers to use their own sound judgment, and also, the nuclear technology is more advanced now.