Posts Tagged ‘slashers’
Wednesday, October 16th, 2013
Here’s a crazy movie. It’s pretty unique but it has many of the standard elements of a slasher movie. It takes place in the world of young people, with adults not really catching on to what’s happening. At the beginning a teen couple are making out in a cemetery and get murdered. At another point a couple we’ve never seen before are having sex in a parked van and get murdered. There is a Final Girl (and Final Little Brother) and like in HALLOWEEN she’s a buttoned up, responsible babysitter with a wilder best friend whose dad is the sheriff.
But there’s not some unseen slasher, or masked maniac, or supernatural force. There’s just three little ten year old kids who are total assholes and love to murder people. They are not quiet, creepy killers like VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, CHILDREN OF THE CORN or young Michael Myers. They’re seemingly normal kids. The only explanation given is that they were born on the same day, during an eclipse. The Final Girl Joyce (Lori Lethin from RETURN TO HORROR HIGH) studies astrology throughout the movie, so you assume it has something to do with that. They were just destined to go on a murder spree. And to rack up pretty impressive numbers.
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Tags: Julie Brown, killer kids, Lori Lethin, Michael Dudikoff, Slasher Search, slashers, Susan Strasberg
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 21 Comments »
Monday, October 14th, 2013
Here’s a much dryer and less fun sorority-pledge-in-house-where-somebody-died-a-long-time-ago movie than KILLER PARTY. Actually, I’m not sure Beth (Angela O’Neill, ALIEN NATION) is technically a pledge. She’s a family friend of the house mother or something? Her aunt who raised her died recently, she’s staying with this lady who’s going out of town and leaving her with the sisters, who are very welcoming and keep saying she’ll like it and want to stay. Like they’re trying to sell her on their sorority instead of scare her away like in other movies.
In the KILLER PARTY review I talked about the fraternity/sorority movies, but this one is different. It might be trying for a more positive portrayal of sororities, but my guess is the rookie filmatists just didn’t put much thought into the story, or just wanted to have “sorority” in the title, because there’s no reason why these girls can’t just be friends or roommates. There is no hazing, no competition, no parties other than an upcoming “Pow Wow” with teepee that never happens, little drinking, less sex than HALLOWEEN. They’re not jerks, they look after each other, or at least after their guest. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Angela O'Neill, Carol Frank, Roger Corman, Slasher Search, slashers, sororities
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, October 8th, 2013
American movies of the ’80s were so fascinated with fraternities and sororities. Was that just an offshoot of the popularity of ANIMAL HOUSE? They saw that and realized the Greek system was a good way for a movie to have a bunch of young people drinking beer and having sex?
Maybe that’s all they wanted, but this world also has alot of built-in conflict in the rivalries between fraternities, or (as in this case) the new people going through hazing to try to get accepted. It’s a pretty good microcosm of the way alot of us remember the age of yuppies and Ronald Reagan: you got these good looking assholes in charge, coming from rich families, re-enacting weird fetishistic rituals of cruelty while excluding people different from themselves from their superficial, hedonistic lifestyle. Usually we’re supposed to identify with an underdog or outsider who’s trying to be accepted into this world, not opposing it. Here it’s two good looking girls (Joanna Johnson and Elaine Wilkes as Jennifer and Phoebe) and their quirky bespectacled friend Vivia (Sherry Willis-Burch, whose only other movie was FINAL EXAM) who the sorority sisters clearly don’t like. So there’s that tension that they might turn against her to get in, or after they get in. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: April Fool's Day, Canadian, Elaine Wlikes, Joanna Johnson, Ralph Seymour, Sherry Willis-Burch, Slasher Search, slashers, William Fruet
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 10 Comments »
Friday, August 30th, 2013
In YOU’RE NEXT, a group of adult siblings and their significant others gather at their rich parents’ big ass, miles-from-where-anyone-can-hear-you house to celebrate their anniversary, but get invaded by 3 or more maniac killers wearing plastic animal masks. This is kinda the new subgenre, isn’t it? Faceless killer home invasion movies, like ILS (THEM), THE STRANGERS and THE PURGE. ILS was genuinely pretty scary, THE STRANGERS was for a while, and I didn’t watch THE PURGE but it looks hilarious. YOU’RE NEXT isn’t quite as tense as those other two I saw, but it’s more fun.
All of the web guys have been hyping this one up since it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and Fantastic Fest two years ago, so I’m not surprised that I’m seeing a little mini-backlash from people I know. But I don’t really blame anybody. It’s easy to see how people at a film festival see a brand new movie, are excited to tell everybody about it, it takes forever to come out, but they really want people to see it so they do everything they can to promote it, and by the time everybody else finally gets to see it it sounds like it’s supposed to be the Second Coming when it’s really just a fun horror movie. Which, in my opinion, is worth telling people about, so I appreciate the tip.
For me this was not a KICK ASS situation where it seems like you must’ve had to be there at that one midnight screening to have any idea how people could enjoy the movie that much. My smaller 7:50 multiplex audience for YOU’RE NEXT was laughing and enjoying themselves too. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adam Wingard, Barbara Crampton, home invasion, Joe Swanberg, Rob Moran, Sharni Vinson, slashers, Ti West
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 58 Comments »
Sunday, August 25th, 2013
I’m not gonna try to convince you that NO ONE LIVES is a new horror classic or anything, but I enjoyed it. It’s from the prestigious WWE Studios and it has a level of absurdity and audacity that makes it a worthy successor to their first horror production, SEE NO EVIL. The British advertising even uses an Empire quote calling it a “guilty pleasure.” They’re not trying to fool anybody.
This one has an obvious SAW influence, but it’s not a so-called torture porno. It’s kind of a horror-formula moosh-up, combining the super-genius-psycho-with-ridiculous-death-contraptions with more of a traditional slasher movie formula (people in cabin being picked off one-by-one) as well as a little LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (class tensions and abduction courtesy of a family/gang of greaser reprobates).
It’s got one of these prologues that begins mid-terror, a screaming blond named Emma (Adelaide Clemens) chased through some woods, captured by booby traps. Turns out later she’s from a rich family, but judging by these traps the kidnapper is not in it for the money. He just likes hanging girls upside down and stuff. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Adelaide Clemens, Brodus Clay, Daniel Pearl, David Cohen, Derek Magyar, Laura Ramsey, Lee Tergesen, Luke Evans, Ryuhei Kitamura, slashers, WWE Films
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 35 Comments »
Saturday, January 5th, 2013
About a third of the way into TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D, when the sound of the heroes’ van rolling off the road faded and I realized that everybody else in the theater was laughing too, it was clear we were on the same page. This is a dumb fucking movie, but we’re enjoying it. That’s not what I want from a sequel to my favorite horror movie of all time, but it’s about the best I hoped for. So I’m chalking this up as a win.
I have long considered Marcus Nispel’s 2003 remake TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE to not exist, and now I’ve been proven right. If there really was a remake (and a prequel to the remake) then how do you explain this being a direct sequel to Tobe Hooper’s original 1974 masterpiece, smart guy? Nope. No remake. If there ever was one it doesn’t matter ’cause there isn’t anymore.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 3D, Alexandra Daddario, Bill Moseley, cannibals, John Dugan, John Luessenhop, Marilyn Burns, Scott Eastwood, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 74 Comments »
Monday, December 24th, 2012
I skipped BLACK X-MAS for six years ’cause everybody told me it was bottom-of-the-barrel, but after I heard Brian Collins and some guys discuss it on some podcast about their favorite horror remakes I decided to try it out this year. Of course it’s a disgrace to the pioneering original Bob Clark BLACK CHRISTMAS from 1974. But it’s a fun disgrace.
Like the original it’s about some sorority sisters (and one sorority den mother, or whatever it’s called) staying in the house on Christmas break, being harassed on the phone by some weirdo named Billy who stalks them and suffocates one or more of them with a plastic bag and leaves her in the attic in a rocking chair and nobody finds her for a while. It skips the original’s thread about a father going around trying to find his daughter, preferring to keep the cast mostly male-free and most of the running time isolated to the one location. But the biggest and boldest change was to give the killer a backstory.
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Tags: Andrea Martin, Christmas, Christmas horror, Crystal Lowe, Glen Morgan, Jessica Harmon, Katie Cassidy, Kristen Cloke, Lacey Chabert, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michelle Trachtenberg, remakes, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 31 Comments »
Wednesday, October 31st, 2012
STAGEFRIGHT (aka DELIRIA, or STAGEFRIGHT: AQUARIUS as the title screen says) is a very stylish slasher/giallo type deal from Michele Soavi, Dario Argento’s second unit director on TENEBRE and PHENOMENA who went on to be best known for directing CEMETERY MAN. This one is more obviously in the footsteps of his mentor than that one.
It begins in aggressive stylization, a big-haired model hanging out on a soundstage city street, suddenly strangled in an alley. But this is not real, these are all people working on some kind of avant garde musical or some shit like that. There’s an overbearing, pretentious director, a bunch of primadonna dancers and actors and choreographers, some stage tech types, etc. And of course somebody is unhappy with something so they all get locked onto the soundstage and murdered one by one. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: giallo, Michele Soavi, owls, Slasher Search, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 27 Comments »
Wednesday, October 31st, 2012
DEAD IN 3 DAYS is Austrian young people horror from 2006. The box art for the American release of it from Dimension Extreme makes a big deal about how a group of teens all get the same text message saying they’ll be dead in 3 days, so I thought maybe it was gonna be influenced by the Japanese phone related pictures such as THE RING and ONE MISSED CALL. Instead it’s a very solid whodunit slasher with alot of subtle distinctness in the ways it handles material that seems generic on the surface.
I don’t know if this is on purpose, but the basic themes are set up in a meta kind of way in the opening, because of the way it resembles the opening of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. The hands of an unseen man are building something sinister in a dark basement… but no, it turns out he’s not making a bladed glove or anything. He’s hanging himself.
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Tags: Australian cinema, Austria, Slasher Search, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, October 31st, 2012
See, it’s a double meaning. Death Valley, like the place. That’s the location of this story. But also Death Valley. Like death, you know? I think you get it.
Slasher Search 2012 has been pretty productive in my opinion, but not in the usual area. I haven’t done good on the older slashers. I’m just looking for a pretty fun FRIDAY THE 13TH or HALLOWEEN ripoff with a few twists or odd idiosyncrasies, you know? I’m not asking for the world. But every time I find one there’s one less out there that I haven’t seen, so it’s harder every year. Anyway, this is the last of this year’s VHS rentals, might be my last shot.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Catherine Hicks, Dick Richards, Peter Billingsley, Richard Rothstein, Slasher Search, slashers, Stephen McHattie
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 11 Comments »
