I guess I should’ve known about this one, but I didn’t. 1981’s generically titled NIGHTMARE (sometimes called NIGHTMARES IN A DAMAGED BRAIN) is apparently pretty notorious due to getting banned in the UK as a “Video Nasty.” That’s not the same as being good. But it has a sleazy, unhinged feeling to it that makes it stand out. It feels like it is definitely not made by slick professionals, but possibly by actual crazy people.
It begins, appropriately, with a guy dreaming he wakes up in his underwear with a woman’s severed head in a pile of guts at the foot of his bed. This will be our killer, George Tatum (Baird Stafford), an often sweaty, always confused mess of a man constantly in agony because of his extremely messed up sexuality. He’s haunted by childhood memories of walking in on his mom (or a mistress or hooker, it seems like, but the credits say mother) in a corset on top of his tied-up dad, slapping him. And then he remembers Mom getting decapitated.
Not surprisingly this is a problem in George’s daily life. For one thing, he likes to go to the Times Square peep shows to jerk off, but he keeps seeing head stump flashes and falling to his knees in anguish. Ruins the whole night, I’m sure.
THE INITIATION is yet another sorority-themed slasher movie (see also 
THE BURNING is a slasher movie I like, and I can acknowledge that it’s not great but it just fits into my wheelhouse (you know, the house where I store all my wheels as well as some of the movies I like). Something about those 
“Don’t go. Please! I want a baby.”
This director Jonathan Glazer, I can’t really put my finger on him. 
Hey, I’ve admitted it before. I’m a Modern Man, I can dig on the cartoons sometimes. But I don’t always gotta go public about it. For example I didn’t need it on record that I thought FROZEN continued the evolution of the Disney Princess formula in smart, pro-girl ways. The rest of the world took care of that, I didn’t need to say anything. Stoicism. But I just saw THE BOXTROLLS which was amazing and I don’t trust the rest of the world to make a big deal about this one, so here I am.
At one point there were rumors that Seagal was going to co-star with Lundgren. Instead we ended up with the more acrobatic all-star team-up of Dolph and Tony Jaa (in his first English role). As you can see, Michael Jai White is also there in a supporting role, along with Peter Weller and Ron Perlman as the skin trader. According to IMDb we should also look out for Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Conan Stevens. The second unit director/action and stunt choreographer is Dian Hristov was Dolph’s stunt double in THE EXPENDABLES 3 and ONE IN THE CHAMBER. He’s also been Seagal’s double through most of the DTV era.
Before I officially kick off Slasher Search 2014 I thought there should be an official spot for the annual Recommending of the Horror Movies. As always I already have a bunch of things picked out to watch this month, but will be open to fitting in some suggestions, and I’m sure other people here will be looking for ideas too.
