Earlier in this year’s too brief Slasher Search, I reviewed OPEN HOUSE, and I wrote about the interesting career of its director, Jag Mundhra. And I saw that he directed HACK-O-LANTERN, which I had considered watching for many years, but I felt like it no longer qualified for Slasher Search, because it has a fancy remastered Blu-Ray release with extras and everything. And then Joe Bob Briggs played it on Shudder, so it became more notable, but was clearly not something that required searching.
Never fear. I’ve managed to find a substitute double feature, another director who did two obscure late ’80s horror movies. The first is on DVD (but an old and crappy one), the second only on VHS.
The director’s name is Allen Plone, and his first film was NIGHT SCREAMS (1987). It’s fairly serious and straight forward, very often laughable, but strange and vaguely competent enough to be entertaining. And filmed and set in Wichita, Kansas, giving it its own regional flavor. Pretty much the kind of thing I’m looking for here. (read the rest of this shit…)
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, 
This is a rare event for me, to watch a prequel to a movie I haven’t seen and don’t plan to see. The original OUIJA from 2014 was a PG-13 horror movie co-produced by ghost-merchants Blumhouse and remakers Platinum Dunes, “based on Ouija by Hasbro.” It’s the same writers as KNOWING, which could be a plus, but I didn’t know that until just now. So it didn’t seem like a movie for me, and nobody told me otherwise.
Well! Heh, heh! Hello there boys, ghouls and non-DIE-naries. It’s me again, your voluble villain of vivacious vicarious violence, Vern! I don’t tend to review the anthologies nearly as much as other types of horror, but this year two of the SCREAM-ing services have new ones that seemed promising. So I’ve prepared for you an anthology of anthologies, a little two-headed review I call THE PAIR-ER OF TERROR!
I had heard some not very good things about THE BABYSITTER, so I was surprised when I, a person who’s generally pretty picky about horror comedies, liked it more than my friends. And then as soon as I said that everybody told me “I liked the first one, but the sequel is terrible.”
It’s common during These Uncertain Times to say that time is moving slowly. I generally agree. But as a counterpoint, I sincerely thought McG’s straight-to-Netflix horror comedy THE BABYSITTER came out recently, and that I would get to it eventually. Turns out it’s been three years since it came out and there’s already a sequel where the main characters have grown like a foot taller. So eventually has arrived.
