Before Predator was making macho men sweat in the jungle, Without Warning was out here in 1980 giving us Kevin Peter Hall in his first turn as a tall extraterrestrial trophy hunter—only this time armed with what look like killer frisbees made out of jellyfish. Yes, this is the movie where Jack Palance glowers, Martin … Read More “Without Warning (1980): Predator’s Low-Budget Dry Run, Now with Flying Alien Pancakes” »
If you’ve ever watched It’s a Wonderful Life and thought, What if Clarence the angel had a garrote and Jimmy Stewart got decapitated?, then To All a Goodnight might be the seasonal cinematic gift you never knew you needed. Directed by David Hess—better known for terrorizing people in The Last House on the Left—this scrappy … Read More “To All a Goodnight (1980): When Santa Trades Cookies for a Body Count” »
If The Exorcist made you fear Ouija boards and Poltergeist made you side-eye your TV set, Satan’s Slave will make you question whether it’s worth hiring household help ever again. Directed by Sisworo Gautama Putra, this Indonesian supernatural horror is best remembered for being nearly impossible to find for decades—probably because it’s the kind of … Read More “Satan’s Slave (1980): When Your New Housekeeper is Basically Satan in a Blouse” »
If Hallmark ever tried to make a horror film about Mother’s Day, this would be the bootleg VHS you find in a dusty pawn shop with “DO NOT WATCH” written on the label in Sharpie. Directed by Charles Kaufman (yes, the brother of thatLloyd Kaufman of Troma infamy), Mother’s Day is a rape-revenge-slash-family-values-parody where the … Read More “Mother’s Day (1980): Flowers, Chocolates, and a Side of Bludgeoning” »
There are bad adventure movies, and then there’s The Island—a film so unintentionally ridiculous that it feels like someone tried to make Jaws again but forgot the shark and replaced it with 17th-century French cosplayers who smell like rum and disappointment. Directed by Michael Ritchie and written by Peter Benchley—yes, that Benchley, the man who … Read More “The Island (1980): Michael Caine and the Pirates of the Crapibbean” »
There’s bad horror, there’s so-bad-it’s-good horror, and then there’s Hell of the Living Dead, a movie so desperately trying to be Dawn of the Dead that it forgets to be a movie. Directed by Bruno Mattei under the pseudonym Vincent Dawn—because even he didn’t want his real name on this—I can only describe this as … Read More “Hell of the Living Dead (1980): When Stock Footage Eats Your Brain Before the Zombies Do” »
If Deliverance and a National Geographic travel special had a love child and then let it run feral in the woods for a few decades, you’d get Just Before Dawn. This is not your typical early ’80s slasher. Sure, people get stabbed, chased, and generally put through the rural wringer, but Jeff Lieberman’s film isn’t … Read More “Just Before Dawn (1981)– Backwoods Terror with Beauty, Brutality, and a Surprisingly Savage Punchline” »
Let’s get this out of the way—Incubus is not the kind of movie you recommend to your aunt, unless your aunt has a morbid curiosity about demonic sexual assault, small-town witch lore, and John Cassavetes looking like he’d rather be anywhere else but still giving a performance too good for this kind of sleaze. It’s … Read More “Incubus (1981)– A Sleazy, Supernatural Small-Town Murder Mystery You Can’t Look Away From” »
Some films are born classics, some achieve cult status, and some get yanked out of theaters because Universal Pictures’ legal department smells blood in the water. Great White falls squarely into that last category. It’s a 1981 Italian Jawsknock-off so brazen, so shameless, so joyfully plagiaristic that it’s a miracle Enzo G. Castellari didn’t just … Read More “Great White (1981)– The Shark That Ate Spielberg’s Lawyers” »
Roger Corman’s Galaxy of Terror is what happens when you hand a group of filmmakers a Star Wars model kit, a VHS copy of Alien, and a gallon of LSD, then tell them they’ve got three weeks to make a movie. It’s cheap, it’s sleazy, it’s confusing, and yet—somehow—it thinks it’s profound. Spoiler alert: it … Read More “Galaxy of Terror (1981) – Roger Corman’s Space Dumpster Fire from Beyond” »