Posts Tagged ‘Slasher Search’
Monday, October 29th, 2012
“I hate all this scary stuff you guys, come on!”
This one’s from ’88 and the premise is that some kids sneak into the furniture store owned by one of their dads to have a sex party or something. So it’s like CHOPPING MALL minus the robots. As great as robots obviously are I think that could still work, but unfortunately this movie is doing nothin to support the theory.
It starts out really strange, though. There’s a dude wearing a suit and a fedora, putting on makeup, thinks he’s Joel Grey or somebody. He goes out to a weirdly stylized street, picks up a hooker, fucks her up against a brick wall, stabs her. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: arguably homophobic, Slasher Search, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 16 Comments »
Saturday, October 27th, 2012
THE POOL is from 2001 and is one of these slick studio style slasher movies that came out because of SCREAM. I guess Australia got CUT and Europe got THE POOL. (I’m giving it to the whole continent because it’s got British stars, takes place in Prague, and is a German production). It’s another whodunit slasher, with the unknown killer in a skeleton mask and all black clothes stalking a group of rich kids who’ve broken into some rich person’s extravagant swimming facility for an after-hours graduation party.
The opening is definitely modeled after the Drew Barrymore section of SCREAM, but instead of a teenager home alone it’s a rich lady preparing for a dinner party. And she’s more with-it than Drew: she goes right to the shotgun, and knows how to use it. But not well enough, obviously.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Isla Fisher, James McAvoy, Scream rip-offs, Slasher Search, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Wednesday, October 17th, 2012
THE MUTILATOR is a pretty good one about a guy mutilating other guys and their girlfriends. That is why he is called the mutilator, I believe. Well, nobody calls him the mutilator in the movie but out here in the real world we call him the mutilator on account of that is the name of the movie. It’s hard to explain but I think some of you get it. The Mutilator.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Slasher Search, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 31 Comments »
Tuesday, October 16th, 2012
I don’t know anybody that’s heard of MALEVOLENCE, so it’s weird that it has a prequel. Same writer-director (Stevan Mena), similar pretentious title, totally different feel, way better in pretty much every conceivable category. It looks great, the acting is good, the characters are way more likable, the mood and atmosphere are stronger. The mostly unoriginal content is elevated by strong filmatism and confident pacing that tells you to be more concerned about the characters than the screaming and blood.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alexandra Daddario, Brett Rickaby, Michael Biehn, prequels, Slasher Search, slashers, Stevan Mena
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 17 Comments »
Friday, October 12th, 2012
This MALEVOLENCE is from 2003, not my preferred era of slasher picture, but it was recommended to me by a weirdo, I’d never heard of it before and I didn’t know anything about it. Seemed like a decent lead. Turns out it’s a low budget horror thing but it mixes in a little bit of a true crime influence. It starts out with a kid being kidnapped in 1989, bringing back memories of all those gloomy based-on-a-true-story-if-you-have-seen-a-missing-kid-call-this-1-800-number TV movies from the ’80s. I thought oh shit, did some motherfucker convince me to rent a movie about kids getting tied up in a shed? But then it quickly switches it up and skips ahead ten years.
Some guys are robbing a bank, and their rendezvous point afterwards is an isolated, abandoned house… which they don’t know is by the abandoned slaughterhouse where that kidnapper took that kid in the prologue. And this is just one possibility I’m offering to you here, but maybe there is still a psycho wandering around that area that those guys might run into? Could be. Nobody knows. Could go either way. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Slasher Search, slashers, Stevan Mena, synth score
Posted in Crime, Horror, Reviews | 7 Comments »
Thursday, October 11th, 2012
There’s a pride that comes with renting a movie that I never heard of, that you never heard of, that nobody ever recommended to me before, and finding out it’s something interesting. Man, this one is not what I expected. I’m not saying I discovered an unheralded classic like I did when I stumbled across that Billy Dee Williams movie HIT! when it was only on VHS, but I definitely found an unusual one here.
And it’s all because of Slasher Search. As most of you know, every October I try to find some good slasher movies (preferably from the ’70s or ’80s, but I’m having to get lenient these days) that I’ve never seen before. Every year it gets harder, because the pool gets smaller, and I gotta look for more and more obscure ones, like the ones that haven’t even made it to DVD yet. In this case I got real desperate and ventured out of the horror section and I found this tape in Murder/Mystery/Suspense. It looked like it might be a slasher movie, seeing as how it showed a dude wearing a plastic baby mask holding an ax. Which can be used for slashing, is my contention. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Janusz Kaminski, John P. Ryan, Maureen Teefy, Michael St. Gerard, Slasher Search, slashers, Zero External Reviews on IMDb
Posted in Horror, I don't know, Reviews | 9 Comments »
Saturday, October 29th, 2011
I’m including this as part of Slasher Search ’11 because that’s why I rented it. But it turned out I was wrong, it’s more of a ghost or haunted house type movie.
The opening ten minutes or so really leave you guessing what the hell this movie’s gonna be about. It starts on a plantation in 1800s Virginia, something about some slaves giving a stone mask to the slave master’s wife to protect her from a curse that some guys they keep cutting to on the Ivory Coast are working up. Then we go to modern day (well, 1980s) Virginia, where the house still exists, and a lady is filming a music video, and a psychiatrist is dealing with crazed patients in an asylum. How does this all tie together? Not well.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Andrew Stevens, Mark Frost, Mary Page Keller, Slasher Search
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 7 Comments »
Friday, October 28th, 2011
SILENT MADNESS is another song in the key of HALLOWEEN, with little melodies from a few other slasher favorites. A psychotic mute inmate from a mental asylum gets out and returns to the scene of a 20 year old massacre. Like A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET there’s a boiler room involved, like BLACK CHRISTMAS he kills some sorority sisters still on campus when most students are on vacation, like HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW there’s a cranky old sorority mother, like SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE the killer (played by stunt coordinator Solly Marx) is a regular looking dude with no mask or anything, and there’s a twist ending that’s kind of a nod to FRIDAY THE 13TH’s nod to PSYCHO. But it’s nowhere near as good as any of those movies. I don’t want to call it Z-grade, but it’s pretty low on the alphabet. Maybe W-grade? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Paul DeAngelo, Simon Nuchtern, Slasher Search, slashers, Sydney Lassick
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 6 Comments »
Monday, October 24th, 2011
Here’s a weird one. Martin (Pierre Lenoir) comes home one day to find his wife Alice (Lynne Adams – “Yakuza with rocket launcher” in JOHNNY MNEMONIC) cutting his suits into little squares. After Alice has a stint in a mental hospital the couple comes to live in a new house, still undergoing some refurbishment.
One night Alice wakes up and hears power tools being used in the basement. She investigates and finds a dude (Wings “Ramrod” Hauser) still working on the house. He explains that he has a strong work ethic and won’t stop until the job’s finished. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: ghosts, Slasher Search, slashers, Wings Hauser
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 25 Comments »
Thursday, October 20th, 2011
While almost all of the slasher movies I find on VHS are low budget and low skill level, NIGHT SCHOOL actually seems like a higher budget studio take on the genre. Released in 1981, just enough time for the studios to notice how much money HALLOWEEN made and start cashing in, it’s slickly made with nice, deliberate camera moves and high production values (even a vehicle chase on the streets of Boston). And it’s pretty good, too. I thought I’d discovered one of the last VHS-only gems, but then I found out it just came out on DVD from Warner Archive.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Ken Hughes, Rachel Ward, Slasher Search, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 46 Comments »
