Dinner and a Movie, but You’re the Dinner Cannibal Holocaust is the sort of film that makes you ask deep, existential questions—like “Why was this made?” and “Can I bleach my retinas?” Ruggero Deodato’s infamous ode to human depravity tries to masquerade as a scathing commentary on media exploitation, but mostly it’s just an endurance … Read More “Cannibal Holocaust (1980) When journalism ethics take a vacation to the Amazon and never come back” »
The Mummy Sleeps, the Audience Nods Off Mike Newell’s The Awakening wants to be an epic supernatural thriller about reincarnation, possession, and ancient curses. What it actually delivers is two hours of Charlton Heston looking stern while sand blows dramatically in the background. It’s based on Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars, but here … Read More “The Awakening (1980) Charlton Heston vs. an ancient Egyptian curse, and the curse wins” »
A Tail as Old as Time Lewis Teague’s Alligator is the kind of movie that takes an urban legend—“baby alligator flushed down the toilet grows up in the sewer”—and says, “Yeah, but what if it also got juiced up on illegal growth hormones and developed a taste for wedding guests?” It’s part creature feature, part … Read More “Alligator (1980) Jaws in the sewer—only grumpier, scalier, and with better one-liners” »
Free Admission to Disappointment Tourist Trap promises a blend of slasher horror and surrealism, but mostly delivers the cinematic equivalent of being trapped in a Spirit Halloween store that won’t stop playing prank noises. David Schmoeller’s film opens with the death of Woody—impaled in a gas station by a telekinetic pipe while mannequins giggle like … Read More “Tourist Trap (1979) Come for the wax museum, stay because your car broke down and the mannequins won’t let you leave” »
Don Coscarelli’s 1979 freak show isn’t just horror—it’s a bad dream that smells like gasoline, embalming fluid, and whatever cheap perfume the Lady in Lavender wears to funerals. It’s got the plot structure of a drunk guy telling you a ghost story at 3 a.m., but that’s the charm. It is part horror movie, part surrealist … Read More “Phantasm (1979) Funerals, a Lady in Lavender and a bad ass Barracuda” »
The Year is 1891, the Budget is 1970s Television Sergio Martino’s Island of the Fishmen kicks off with Lieutenant Claude de Ross surviving his second shipwreck in what must be the most cursed career in naval history. This time, he washes up on a mysterious Caribbean island that comes complete with convicts, a mad scientist, … Read More “Island of the Fishmen (1979) Shipwreck survivors, soggy monsters, and a plot that sinks faster than the Titanic” »
’Til Death (or Black Market Surgeons) Do Us Part Rainer Erler’s Fleisch (Spare Parts) opens with a promising hook: newlyweds in the American Southwest, romantic getaway, all smiles—until the groom is abducted by paramedics and thrown into an ambulance headed straight for an underground organ-harvesting syndicate. That should be tense, right? Unfortunately, this “cult” horror … Read More “Fleisch (1979) Organ trafficking, bad pacing, and a honeymoon from hell” »
The Curse of the Plot (and the Viewer) Directed by 19-year-old Lawrence D. Foldes, Don’t Go Near the Park feels like the kind of horror movie you’d get if a high school theater department tried to stage Conan the Barbarian using only whatever they found in the janitor’s closet. It opens in “prehistoric times” (or … Read More “Don’t Go Near the Park (1979) Cannibal cavemen, glowing amulets, and an ending that makes you wish you had gone near literally anywhere else” »
The Monster’s Greatest Disguise: Staying Off Camera Bill Rebane’s The Capture of Bigfoot asks the age-old question: what if Bigfoot was real, and also deeply boring? The answer: you get 92 minutes of snowbound tedium in which the most exciting event is realizing that the “wardrobe” was provided by Kmart. And yes, that’s in the … Read More “The Capture of Bigfoot (1979) Proof that some legends are better left unfound—and unfunded” »
House Hunting in Hell Few films capture the joys and terrors of homeownership quite like The Amityville Horror. In fact, the movie may be single-handedly responsible for a generation of Americans asking their realtors: “Any known structural issues? Oh, and also, is it built on a burial ground?” George and Kathy Lutz, played by James … Read More “The Amityville Horror (1979) When your dream home comes with a Satanic pig in the backyard” »
