Poché Pictures

By 1989, Freddy Krueger was less of a child-killing dream demon and more of a pop-culture mascot who should’ve been selling lunchboxes and doing PSAs about dental hygiene. The Dream Child tried to drag him back into something “dark” and “gothic,” but instead it delivered a film so murky, muddled, and joyless that it plays … Read More “A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 (1989): The Dream Child – Freddy Krueger Babysits the Franchise to Death” »

Every once in a while, a movie comes along that is so gloriously trashy, so defiantly ridiculous, that you can’t help but salute it like a beer-soaked flag flapping in the wind of a Daytona bar at 2 a.m. Nightmare Beach (1989) is one of those movies. On the surface, it’s a cheap Italian-American slasher … Read More “Sun, Sin, and Electrocution: A Love Letter to Nightmare Beach (1989)” »

The Setup: Radioactive Swamp Things The premise is simple: a group of ecologists travel to a tropical swamp, discover barrels of radioactive toxic waste, and instead of immediately calling Greenpeace or the EPA, they decide to go camping. Naturally, a giant crocodile mutated by the waste emerges to kill them one by one. So yes, … Read More “Killer Crocodile (1989) – Review Jaws, But If It Lived in a Radioactive Swamp and Looked Like a Pool Toy” »

From Haunted Houses to Electric Chairs The House franchise started as goofy horror-comedy—campy fun with rubber monsters and surreal humor. By the time we get to House III (The Horror Show in the U.S.), the producers said, “You know what would make this series better? Cutting out all the comedy, hiring Lance Henriksen, and letting … Read More “House III: The Horror Show (1989) – Review When Your Franchise Runs Out of Jokes and Just Throws a Cleaver” »

Satan Called—He Wants His Movie Back If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if The Exorcist hooked up with Friday the 13th in a cemetery behind a Televisa soundstage, congratulations—you’ve just described Grave Robbers (Ladrones de tumbas). Written and directed by Rubén Galindo Jr., the film tries to be a Mexican gothic slasher about Satan, … Read More “Grave Robbers (1989) – Review When Raising the Antichrist Feels Like Weekend Camping Gone Wrong” »

Perkins, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Us? Anthony Perkins will always be remembered as Norman Bates. Unfortunately, he’ll also be remembered for spending the late ’80s slumming it in movies like Edge of Sanity—a Victorian fever dream so drenched in cocaine, sex, and bad lighting that it feels less like a film and more like the … Read More “Edge of Sanity (1989) – Review Anthony Perkins Snorts the Victorian Era into Oblivion” »

The Premise: Cape Fear for the Bargain Bin In the late ’80s, horror was desperate. Slashers were played out, sequels were everywhere, and filmmakers were scraping the bottom of the VHS barrel for ideas. Enter Curfew (1989), a home invasion horror-thriller so uninspired it makes When a Stranger Calls Back look like Citizen Kane. Directed … Read More “Curfew (1989) – Review When Home Invasion Horror Needs a Bedtime” »

When Horror Runs Out of Ideas, It Mows the Lawn By 1989, the slasher genre had given us masked maniacs, dream demons, killer dolls, and homicidal hitchhikers. Then came Blades, a film distributed by Troma Entertainment that asked the question nobody wanted answered: What if Jaws, but on a golf course… and instead of a … Read More “Blades (1989) – Review The Killer Lawn Mower That Couldn’t” »

A Fever Dream Shot Through a Sandpaper Lens Some movies scare you. Some move you. And then there’s Begotten, a 1989 “experimental” film by E. Elias Merhige that doesn’t scare or move so much as make you wonder if you accidentally swallowed expired NyQuil. Shot in grainy, overexposed black and white, Begotten looks like a … Read More “Begotten (1989) – Review When Art Films Decide They Hate You Personally” »