Posts Tagged ‘slashers’
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 »
Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012
For my inaugural horror picture of the 2012 Halloween season I chose ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE, an internet-acclaimed indie from 2006 that still hasn’t been released in the U.S. yet because it was bought by the Weinsteins, who proceeded to pull a Weinstein on it. But I rented the UK blu-ray. Rookie director Jonathan Levine went on to direct the also-pretty-good non-horror indie movie THE WACKNESS and last year’s Joseph Gordon Levitt/Seth Rogen/cancer dramedy 50/50. The titleistical Mandy Lane is Amber Heard, who has since played the hot girl in NEVER BACK DOWN, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, ZOMBIELAND, THE STEPFATHER and DRIVE ANGRY.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Amber Heard, Jonathan Levine, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 42 Comments »
Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
Released in February of 2001, VALENTINE was one of the last of (the last of?) the post-SCREAM studio slasher movies. Its low box office totals, combined with the success of THE RING the next year, might’ve sealed the deal on that particular horror cycle. It’s directed by Jamie Blanks, who debuted with the similarly crappy URBAN LEGEND and later returned to his native Australia, where the spirit of the Tasmanian tiger or something blows in the wind, into his lungs, inspiring him to make much better movies (STORM WARNING, NATURE’S GRAVE). (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: David Boreanaz, Denise Richards, holiday horror, Katherine Heigl, Marley Shelton, slashers, Valentine's Day
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 60 Comments »
Monday, February 13th, 2012
aka I’m Still Waiting For You
I didn’t even realize it until I started watching it, but LOVERS LANE is a cheapass slasher movie shot in the Seattle area. Mostly Issaquah, I think. Anna Faris, who grew up in nearby Edmonds, is in the movie (not her first, but Wikipedia calls it “her first significant role”). It was filmed in 1999, but seems more like an ’80s slasher. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anna Faris, filmed in Seattle, holiday horror, slashers, Valentine's Day
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 9 Comments »
Sunday, February 12th, 2012
aka X-Ray
In 1982, a year after MY BLOODY VALENTINE, we got this Golan and Globus production which also begins with a murderous incident on Valentine’s Day, 1961. It looks like the ’80s and the kids even say “Omigod!”, but it says it’s 1961 so I’m taking their word for it. In this one a little boy named Harold leaves a valentine for a little girl named Susan and watches through her window as she reads it. When she sees it’s from Harold she laughs and her (brother? boyfriend?) crumples it up and throws it on the ground.
While Susan goes into the other room to cut two giant pieces of cake for her and the boy, Harold comes in and breaks the kid’s neck and hangs him from a coatrack. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Boaz Davidson, Cannon Films, holiday horror, slashers, Valentine's Day
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Saturday, February 11th, 2012
I know Valentine’s Day is one of those holidays that’s sort of made up to sell greeting cards, like Ziggy Day in May or Rehearsal Christmas in September. It’s based on an actual Christian martyr but the traditions got nothing to do that, it’s all a scam by Hallmark, the chocolatier lobby and Big Flower. Still, it’s enough of a real holiday to have a handful of slasher movies based on it, and therefore I am willing to acknowledge it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Canadian, holiday horror, slashers, Valentine's Day
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 36 Comments »
