Bacon, 65, teams up with Mia Goth for the new slasher MaXXXine, which serves as the third movie in a trilogy of horror films starring Goth, 30, after the 2022 movies X and Pearl. The new movie takes place in Los Angeles in 1985, just one year after Bacon's own star rose to the top in Hollywood with 1984's Footloose.
"It was a crazy time for me -- you know, 84 is the last time I was invited to the Oscars," Bacon tells PEOPLE. "I was a presenter in 1984. I haven't been there since, you know; it was like a kind of a magical time for me. Magical, but also a little frightening when you feel your life changing so dramatically."
in MaXXXine, Bacon portrays a private investigator from Louisiana who travels to Hollywood to confront Goth's lead character Maxine Minx, an aspiring film actress. Bacon's character John Labat tracks down Maxine to remind her that law enforcement -- and a mysterious villain -- are still searching for the perpetrator behind the violence that engulfs the trilogy's first film X just as Maxine appears poised to receive her big break in the film industry.
"I often would come to L.A. and end up living, right in Hollywood, right where the movie takes place, right on the right on the strip and renting a car," he says of his own memories of life in Hollywood during that time period. "One of the cars that I rented when I'd come to L.A. was exactly the car that Maxine drives [in the movie]. Same model."
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Though the movie depicts a fictional story set in '80s Hollywood, Bacon -- who marked one of his earliest onscreen roles in another slasher with 1980's original Friday the 13th -- tells PEOPLE the film's production design proved accurate to his memories of the decade.
"When we walked out one night onto Hollywood Boulevard, we had closed off two blocks or three blocks of Hollywood Boulevard. It was dressed with '80s cars and '80s extras; and it was crazy," he says. "It was a real kind of time travel experience."
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