Movies of the eighties increasingly focused on violence; films featuring gangsters and the mob started taking centre stage.

Pakistani Cinema became loud and localized, wanting in artistic or aesthetic merits. The large number of films produced in various vernaculars speaks for itself about the decline of the film world during this decade. The cancellation of all censor certificates of all films issued prior to the imposition of martial law, the new code of censorship, Indian television and finally the influx of uncensored pirated movies from Hollywood and Bollywood resulted in the overall decline of film quality and good number of cinema houses were closed down – Mushtaq Gazdar