City of the Living Dead, Fulci’s grim little ode to maggot-infested chaos, where the phrase “Italian horror” is less a genre and more a polite warning. If you’ve ever wondered what happens when someone decides, “Let’s take every creepy Lovecraftian trope, cover it in decaying corpses, and set it to an aggressively echoey soundtrack,” then … Read More “City of the Living Dead (1980) aka The Gates of Hell” »
Cannibal Terror (1981), or as it might more accurately be subtitled, How to Make a Jungle Exploitation Film with Zero Subtlety and Questionable Moral Compass. This is the kind of movie that makes you question not only human decency but also why Europe ever thought France should attempt a cannibal film without the Italians’ charming … Read More “Cannibal Terror (1981) How to Make a Jungle Exploitation Film with Zero Subtlety and Questionable Moral Compass.” »
Beyond Evil (1980) — the cinematic equivalent of a haunted house with a “please leave now” sign nailed to the front door. This is the kind of horror film that treats possession, colonial mansions, and midlife marital crises with the same subtlety a jackhammer brings to fine china. John Saxon plays Larry Andrews, an architect … Read More “Beyond Evil(1980) – A Haunted House with a Please Leave Now sign at the front door” »
Altered States (1980) — Ken Russell’s fever dream of a film, where science fiction, horror, and the kind of intellectual pretense that could give a professor a hernia collide in a spectacular mess. Picture this: a man floats in a tank, stares at his own consciousness, and gradually turns into everything from a Neanderthal to … Read More “Altered States (1980) A Spectacular Mess” »
Vampire (1979) — a made-for-TV horror flick that somehow manages to be both classy and accidentally hilarious, like a bloodsucking Dracula with a bow tie and bad timing. Imagine San Francisco: foggy, charming, and completely unaware that a Hungarian prince has been sneaking around its streets in various disguises, hiding in coffins like a real … Read More “Vampire (1979) a bloodsucking Richard Lynch” »
A “Weekend” You’ll Wish You Skipped Savage Weekend is one of those films that makes you appreciate modern horror only because it’s less exhausting than watching a bunch of upper-class people stumble toward their own grisly fates. Directed by David Paulsen and released in 1979, the film pre-dates Friday the 13th, but it isn’t so … Read More “Savage Weekend (1979) When a weekend getaway turns into a DIY lesson in murder, and the script refuses to keep its hands off the table saw.” »
A Deadly Bacteria, A Questionable Film “Plague,” also known under a buffet of alternative titles like Induced Syndrome, M-3: The Gemini Strain, or simply Mutation, promises the terror of a global epidemic. Unfortunately, what it delivers is more akin to a poorly attended science fair with homicidal intentions. The premise is straightforward enough: scientists, fiddling … Read More “Plague (1979) When science meets hubris, the germs win—and your patience evaporates.” »
A Flight into Ridiculousness Arthur Hiller, a man who once made genteel, polite dramas about families and moral dilemmas, decided in 1979 that the best way to challenge his audience was to let vampire bats run amok on a Hopi reservation in New Mexico. The tagline, “Day belongs to man, but night is theirs!” promises … Read More “Nightwing (1979) When bats go bad, the Hopi can’t catch a break—and neither can you.” »
Jaani Dushman—the 1979 Bollywood horror epic that proves you can cram more stars into one film than the Milky Way contains planets, yet somehow still deliver a story more confusing than assembling IKEA furniture blindfolded. Rajkumar Kohli clearly thought, “Why have a coherent plot when you can have everyone in red bridal sarees running around … Read More “Jaani Dushman (1979)” »
The Haunting of M, the cinematic equivalent of wandering through a foggy Scottish castle in slippers, muttering “I could have been doing literally anything else.” Anna Thomas’s 1979 one-and-done effort is the sort of independent horror that feels like a passion project… if that passion project involved mist, tedious exposition, and ghosts who clearly had … Read More “The Haunting of M (1979)” »