Dorothy Irene Adams came into the world on January 8, 1900, in Hannah, North Dakota — a place colder than a tax collector’s handshake and just about as cheerful. Her father was a hardware salesman, the kind of man who probably spent his life tightening bolts for other people’s dreams, and her mother was Rachel … Read More “DOROTHY I. ADAMS: THE QUIET HAMMER WHO BUILT HOLLYWOOD’S BONES” »
There are bad horror movies, and then there is Mikey, a film that feels like “Home Alone” remade by someone who misunderstood every single part of it. Replace the slapstick charm with dead goldfish, exploding houses, and a child actor who looks like he’s thinking about lunch during every murder, and you’ve got yourself a … Read More “**Mikey (1992): When the Real Victim Is Your Will to Keep Watching**” »
There are bad movies, and then there are movies that feel like a dare. Sorority House Massacre II is the latter—a film that looks you dead in the eye, slaps a $2 wig on, tapes a butcher knife to the wall, and asks, “You scared yet?” The answer, of course, is no. But you are … Read More “**Sorority House Massacre II (1990): A Cinematic Crime Scene With More Holes Than the Victims**” »
Some movies aim for prestige. Some aim for pathos. Some, like Dr. Giggles, aim for your chest cavity with a bone saw while delivering a one-liner that would make Freddy Krueger blush. Manny Coto’s 1992 slasher is a proud, gloriously unhinged celebration of camp, carnage, and the kind of medical malpractice that gets you on … Read More “**Dr. Giggles (1992): A Joyfully Deranged Slasher With a Medical Degree in Mayhem**” »
Most serial-killer movies are content to throw around some moody lighting, a few grisly clues, and maybe a trench-coated detective muttering about “patterns.” Copycat looks at that formula and says, “That’s cute,” then proceeds to deliver a thriller in which the killer is not only horrifying, but alarmingly studious. It’s a film where doing the … Read More “**Copycat (1995): A Smart, Stylish Thriller Where Even the Murderers Do Their Homework**” »
Sometimes a movie is misunderstood. Sometimes it’s ahead of its time.And sometimes… sometimes a movie is Pandemonium, a 1982 slasher parody so catastrophically unfunny, so structurally allergic to coherence, that it’s not ahead of its time—it’s not in any recognizable time zone. It exists in a pocket dimension where jokes die quietly and plotlines wander … Read More “**Pandemonium (1982): A Comedy-Slasher So Inept It Accidentally Satirizes Itself**” »
Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill is one of those movies that struts into the room with complete confidence, looking gorgeous, smelling expensive, and sounding like it just swallowed a film-school editing textbook… only for you to realize, after about twenty minutes, that there’s nothing inside its head but soft-core fantasies, clumsy shock tactics, and … Read More “**Dressed to Kill (1980): A Sleazy, Stylish, Spectacular Mess of a Thriller**” »
There are “bad” movies, and then there are movies so deliriously committed to their own nonsense that they loop all the way around and become deeply, weirdly delightful. Cutting Class belongs proudly in the second category. It is not a good slasher. It is not a serious slasher. It is not even a particularly coherent … Read More “Cutting Class (1989): A Cheerfully Deranged Slasher Whose Greatest Victim Is the American Education System” »
There are stupid action movies, and then there is Cobra—a film so aggressively dim that you could show it to a lightbulb and the bulb would file a restraining order. It’s 90 minutes of macho posturing, empty calories, neon lighting, and Sylvester Stallone speaking like he’s allergic to enunciation. It is, in short, a perfect … Read More “Cobra (1986): A Trigger-Happy Fashion Show Masquerading as a Movie” »
Every so often, a horror movie comes along that reminds you the 1970s were a lawless era—an age when you could finance a cannibal film with a handful of coupons, a broken camera, and three wigs, then still convince a studio to release it. Terror at Red Wolf Inn is one such relic. It’s a … Read More “Terror at Red Wolf Inn (1972): A Cannibal Comedy So Toothless It Probably Gums Its Victims to Death” »