You know I love the slasher movies, but I admit that part of their magic is that most of them are transmissions from a bygone era. The ineffable chemistry of eager Hollywood outsiders trying to jump onto a specific bandwagon, either with great passion or comically overconfident cynicism, sometimes in some obscure neck of the woods we’ve never seen in a movie before, often with the freshness/awkwardness of beginners who don’t necessarily know the cinematic rules they’re breaking, is frozen in time on beautiful (or beautifully ugly) 35mm (or even 16mm) film. Most of that can’t be re-created in a computer lab. Usually when they try it looks too clean, also too cheap, they try to avoid needing many makeup FX, they’re too self conscious, or too gloomy, or too fucking boring. I’m generally suspicious of the new shit. This is all to explain why it took me eleven years to get around to LAID TO REST. In my defense it was released in 2009, the twilight of the nu metal era, with a metal skull on the cover. It was easy to make assumptions.
During the opening credits I was ready to write it off. It has the ingredients of a cool NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET style montage of the film’s wannabe-slasher-icon ChromeSkull (Nick Principe, “Slick,” AGENT CODY BARKS) preparing his implements (a shiny skull mask, a bunch of surgical tools, a camcorder), but it’s annoyingly smothered in corny fake glitches, Avid farts and shaky video of screaming and torture and shit. It lists the bands that are gonna be featured on the soundtrack before a naked lady gets graphically cut open. (read the rest of this shit…)
I did a couple extra reviews last week, so I ran out of back log and I don’t have anything new to post like I normally would on a Monday… but I sort of need to play it by ear this week anyway. I’ll see if I’m able to concentrate enough to finish the ones I’ve been working on or if it will even feel right to post anything. Like, I might not post a monster movie review right away if a new civil war starts. Maybe wait until a couple days after the first important battle out of respect or whatever. But I promise I have some good stuff coming soon.
Two Halloweens ago we discussed Tobe Hooper’s first masterpiece. This is his second. He didn’t even want to direct it at first, sort of got pushed into it, but damn did he rally. In many ways THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 is the Tobe Hooperest movie ever made.
A rare movie-watching phenomenon that I love: rewatching one I saw decades ago, and have always believed sucked, but discovering that I really like it now. It happened with 
Earlier in this year’s too brief Slasher Search, I reviewed 
Two years ago, but it seems closer to ten, a nice deputy editor for a new publication approached me to write a piece. He had been reading me forever and was working for this company with a bunch of money invested in it, could pay pretty well and expose me to some new readers not only on the web but a print magazine he compared to Rolling Stone. I said yes and we were going back and forth about what my first piece should be, and then my mom died.
THE MAN NEXT DOOR is a 1997 film that only came out on VHS. The cover has a big skull, a scary house and a very dated font choice. It’s written and directed by Rod C. Spence, known for his raw suspense. Or perhaps he’s known for editing 2000s reality TV shows like Survivor, The Apprentice, American Chopper and Jersey Shore, which he did for a while after this (and 
I don’t have a car and there’s not a drive-in near me, but I think it’s great that the drive-in movie experience is making a comeback in response to the pandemic. Nature finds a way. In honor of this great revival I offer you a drive-in double feature: two horror movies about a car. In fact, about the car.
As we’re all aware, this has been a hell of a year for the box office, with hits like BAD BOYS FOR LIFE, 
