Once Upon a Time in VHS Hell Every decade produces its cinematic embarrassments. The ’50s gave us Plan 9 from Outer Space, the ’70s gave us Exorcist II: The Heretic, and the ’80s gave us The Video Dead—a straight-to-VHS clunker so devoid of logic it makes Troll 2 look like Citizen Kane. Written and directed … Read More “The Video Dead (1987): When Even the Zombies Look Bored” »
When Horror Meets Hairball There are many things one can say about Uninvited, but “competent filmmaking” is not one of them. Directed by Greydon Clark—who carved a career out of making movies that look like TV pilots rejected by CBS—this 1987 oddity takes place mostly on a yacht, features a mutant cat puppet that looks … Read More “Uninvited (1987): The Cat’s Out of the Bag, and So Is Any Hope of a Good Movie” »
Summer Camp: Where Fun Goes to Die Every generation gets the summer camp horror film it deserves. The ’80s gave us Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp, and The Burning—slashers filled with gore, teen hormones, and enough bad decisions to power a thousand PSAs. And then there’s Summer Camp Nightmare, a film so devoid of fun … Read More “Summer Camp Nightmare (1987): The Butterfly Revolution Nobody Asked For” »
Curtain Up, Bodies Down When you think of Italian horror in the 1980s, you usually picture Argento’s neon dreamscapes, Fulci’s oozing eye trauma, or Joe D’Amato’s… well, whatever the hell Joe D’Amato was doing. But nestled in that blood-soaked legacy is Michele Soavi’s Stage Fright (aka Deliria), a slasher that looks at the theatrical arts … Read More “Stage Fright (1987): Murder Most Fowl” »
Indiana Jones? No, Try Indiana Yawns In the pantheon of Italian horror cinema, you’ve got giants like Argento (Suspiria), Fulci (The Beyond), and Bava (Black Sunday). And then, in a moldy catacomb no one wants to visit, you’ve got Specters (1987). Directed by Marcello Avallone after a ten-year hiatus, this archaeological “horror” film is less … Read More “Specters (1987): Raiders of the Lost Boredom” »
Rock ’n’ Roll Nightmare Nobody Asked For The late ’80s was the moment when slashers started scraping the barrel. We’d already had summer camps, sororities, haunted houses, and homicidal babysitters. Enter Slumber Party Massacre II, a sequel so baffling it makes you nostalgic for the relative sanity of its predecessor—a movie where, let’s not forget, … Read More “Slumber Party Massacre II (1987): When Slashers Went Full Karaoke” »
The Bayou of Broken Plots Some horror movies scare you. Others bore you. And then there’s Sister, Sister (1987), which leaves you wondering if you accidentally tuned into a Lifetime melodrama that wandered into the bayou and drowned. Directed by Bill Condon (yes, the guy who later gave us Dreamgirls and Gods and Monsters), this … Read More “Sister, Sister (1987): Swamp Gas, Soap Opera, and Southern Gothic Nonsense” »
When Spring Break Goes South… Literally Ah, spring break: a time for college kids to hit the road, get sunburned in Florida, and make poor life choices involving tequila. Unless, of course, you’re in Shallow Grave (1987), where four college girls on their way to Fort Lauderdale make the worst pit stop since The Texas … Read More “Shallow Grave (1987): Southern Hospitality, Now With Bullets and Shallow Holes” »
Welcome to Creedmore: Population, Ghosts and Bad Writing There are horror movies that make you afraid of the dark. Then there are horror movies that make you afraid of the rental counter, because you just wasted three dollars on them. Prison (1987), directed by future Hollywood loud-noise specialist Renny Harlin, is one of the latter. … Read More “Prison (1987) – Review” »
A Western With Fangs Kathryn Bigelow wanted to make a Western. Hollywood, in its infinite wisdom, said, “Westerns are dead.” So she did the next logical thing: she added vampires. Thus was born Near Dark, a 1987 horror-Western hybrid that critics loved, audiences ignored, and VHS junkies turned into a midnight staple. Bigelow, in her … Read More “Near Dark (1987) – Review” »