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Posts Tagged ‘regional horror’

Ogroff

Friday, October 9th, 2026

Here we go with another October, and another struggle to continue the tradition of Slasher Search in some way. The shadowy corners of the shelves have been excavated, the bottoms of the barrels have been scraped squeaky clean, and I don’t know where else to look for vintage slasher movie gold that’s still obscure. If there’s any of the kind of stuff I was looking for left undiscovered, the boutique blu-ray labels are better at finding it than I am. So I’m not really searching for slashers as much as I’m searching for new approaches to Slasher Search.

This year the answer came in a comment from “Dan the Man” on my FACES OF DEATH (2026) review:

“Very long time reader, first time commenter. I have scoured the site and as far as I can tell you’ve never reviewed the French slasher film Orgoff. Slasher Search must continue!”

I had maybe seen the title before, but didn’t know what it was, so I figured this is what I’ll do this year: all requests. If you suggest a movie that I haven’t heard of or at least seems obscure, and I can find it, I will try to review it. (Please try to make it slasher or slasher adjacent and preferably not well known enough to be released on blu-ray.) CJ Holden has already recommended a few more, and I invite you all to add any others in the comments.

Upon further research I learned that Bleeding Skull Video is about to release the first blu-ray of OGROFF, calling it “the zenith of accidental avant-garde horror.” That’s a label that goes for only the most underground of movies (usually shot on video), and it’s currently only up for pre-order, so I’ll say Dan the Man made it just under the wire for OGROFF to be considered eligible for Slasher Search. Theirs is sourced from “the newly discovered U-matic tape masters,” and I don’t know what that means other than it will look better than the Videonomicon dvd I rented. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Reviews, Horror | 22 Comments »

Blood Beat

Tuesday, December 15th, 2020

BLOOD BEAT (1983) is another Christmas-set (as opposed to Christmas-themed) horror movie that I watched on Shudder. This one I had heard of as a notably crazy movie, and I knew it had been released on blu-ray by Vinegar Syndrome. It’s about a family being stalked by the spirit of a samurai. I believe.

It’s a low budget movie shot in Wisconsin – on film, though. Don’t worry. It has a little bit of the awkwardness and amateurishness that can make regional horror charming, which serves to make it more impressive when some of it seems pretty legit. The lead couple give fairly natural performances, the most inconsistent actor turns out to be an endearing character anyway, things that wouldn’t be impressive in a bigger production – like a guy jumping through a window and hitting the ground, or getting a nice shot of the fog or a frozen lake – seem triumphant. And it’s very weird. Sometimes in a goofy way, usually in a pretty cool way. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Horror, Reviews | 7 Comments »

Backwoods

Thursday, October 8th, 2015

slashersearch15 tn_backwoodsa.k.a. GEEK

This year during Slasher Search I’m hoping to find a few more woods/camping/cabin based slashers, because I’m working on a novel that relates to this subgenre. So I started with one that actually had the word “woods” as part of the title.

BACKWOODS is a very routine low budget movie about a young couple who go on a camping trip and get into trouble with a feral mountain man type dude. Things do not look promising when the movie goes from the opening credits – with a hillbilly folk tune about racoon hunting creepily whisper-sung over black (you’ll be hearing this song alot) – to a shot of the protagonists riding bikes with cheesy drum machines and music so inappropriately upbeat it sounds like it comes from an old educational film strip. This is a pretty bad movie, but at least it’s not as bad as this music cue had me convinced it would be.

Karen (Christina Noonan, no other credits) and Jamie (Brad Armacost – holy shit, he was on an episode of Empire! I love that show!) are visiting Kentucky. Karen insists on riding their bikes through a mountain trail, then chaining them to a tree and hiking further until they set up a tent and have some sex and what not. Of course this is after a friendly local tells them definitely not to go up in that direction. No specific reason I want to mention but, you know, trust me on this.

The first sign of trouble: they keep finding chicken heads everywhere. Kinda weird. Then it seems like somebody’s watching them have sex. (read the rest of this shit…)

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Posted in Horror, Reviews | 19 Comments »

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