Posts Tagged ‘slashers’
Tuesday, January 30th, 2018
HAPPY DEATH DAY is a nice little high concept horror movie. 90 minutes, fast paced, upbeat. When I first saw the teaser I thought “I can’t believe nobody’s thought to do that before!” and sure enough these people did it ably.
See, it’s GROUNDHOG DAY meets a slasher movie (specifically SCREAM 2 I would say). Oddly named sorority girl Tree (Jessica Rothe, LA LA LAND) wakes up hung over on her birthday in the dorm room of some geek she barely knows. She shame-walks out of there in her shoulderless sequin blouse, squinting at the bright sun, and goes through a busy day (rushed changing of clothes, late for class, awkward run-ins with guys, sorority meeting, avoiding her dad, attempted tryst with a teacher) before being stabbed to death by an unknown person in a baby mask (weird school mascot, good slasher mask). And then she wakes up in that dorm again, on her birthday again. So she has to keep re-living this day, but also solve her own murder so that maybe she can see tomorrow. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Blumhouse, Charles Aitken, Christopher Landon, Israel Broussard, Jessica Rothe, Ruby Modine, Scott Lobdell, slashers, time loop
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 15 Comments »
Tuesday, December 20th, 2016
Just when the night crew is closing up at the Walnut Lake Market, cashier Jennifer (Elizabeth Cox, NIGHT OF THE CREEPS, THE WRAITH) gets assaulted by crazy ex-boyfriend Craig (David Byrnes, WITCHCRAFT 7 and IX). Most of the staff get in a big brawl with him and he runs off. They think he’s still hiding in the store somewhere, but they’re not sure, and the police come and prove to be incompetent.
That’s a solid slasher movie set up. It has that all important sense of time and place – a limited location with all kinds of possibilities for horror gimmicks and gags, a set of characters doing their duties in different parts of the building where they can be picked off, a reason why other people aren’t around and the cops are no help. The few minutes of searching for Craig near the beginning sets up the geography of the store and all the potential hiding places that will become important locations. Though not necessary, INTRUDER also sets up a mystery, because we have the easy-to-jump-to conclusion that this abusive asshole is the murderer, but not showing his face gives us the unsettling feeling that we’re being tricked. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Burr Steers, Dan Hicks, Lawrence Bender, Renee Estevez, Sam Raimi, Scott Spiegel, slashers, Ted Raimi
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 27 Comments »
Thursday, December 1st, 2016
Man, I don’t know about PIECES, you guys. This is another one I first saw in an all night horror marathon. I remember liking it. But this kind of crudely-presented-brutal-fucked-upness plays better with a crowd who are rowdy and dazed and trying to stay awake than alone in my living room. Maybe I should’ve woken up a bunch of people in the middle of the night and made them come over.
It’s a Spanish movie, but it takes place in Boston. It’s kind of like GOOD WILL HUNTING in my opinion. (I have not seen GOOD WILL HUNTING). I wasn’t sure which version you’re supposed to watch, so I went with the original. The Spanish is not spoken with a Boston accent. It turns out this version also has a different score that’s mostly piano and pretty good, I thought.
This is the style of slasher movie like NIGHTMARE or SLEEPAWAY CAMP or even HALLOWEEN now that I think about it where the killing dates back to childhood and the walking-in-on of a sex act. In this case though it’s a boy’s mother taking away his best porno puzzle and rather than fighting for his right to party he chops her up. He gets away with claiming it wasn’t him, though. Being a kid is a good alibi. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Christopher George, Edmund Purdom, Franke Brana, J. Piquer Simon, Jack Taylor, Lynda Day George, Paul L. Smith, slashers, Spanish horror
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 23 Comments »
Wednesday, October 26th, 2016
By HALLOWEEN 5: THE REVENGE OF MICHAEL MYERS, it is clear that we’ve fully transitioned into HALLOWEEN, an ongoing series from producer Moustapha Akkad, as opposed to the creation of John Carpenter. We still have Carpenter’s characters of Michael Myers and Dr. Loomis, but we’ve forgotten all about Laurie and moved on to the story of her daughter Jamie (who it’s hard to associate with Laurie, since we never saw them together). This one is much less of a rehash of the original than part 4, and it digs into the series tradition of really fuckin stretchin it in getting themselves out of the corner they painted themselves into last time. They actually went into production before part 4 came out so they could have it done the next year, yet it seems like separate people trying to figure out how the fuck to follow up a part 4 ending they had no control over. That gives it kind of an adventure serial cliffhanger type of feel, I guess. How will The Shape get out of this mess? Find out next time!
In part 4 they had to undo Loomis (Donald Pleasance) having blown himself and Michael sky high in part 2. They handled that by just having both of them alive but burnt. This time they have to undo part 4’s ending, where Michael was shot to death by cops and collapsed into an abandoned mine, but his evil spirit and/or curse was passed on to his little niece Jamie Lloyd, and she stabbed her step mom in the tradition of little Michael killing his sister in the opening of part 1. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Danielle Harris, Dominique Othenin-Girard, Don L. Shanks, Donald Pleasance, Ellie Cornell, Jonathan Chapin, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 34 Comments »
Tuesday, October 25th, 2016
These days we got that thing of the remaquel, where they try to get an old series going again with new characters but they’re kinda just tracing over the first movie, because they know we’d get scared and cry if we had to accept something new that we weren’t already comfortable with from having seen it a bunch of times before. That seems kinda natural in a pop culture landscape where people demand regurgitations of their favorite “properties” and even the “new” things they like pay fetishistic tribute to old movies through retro style and nostalgic references. But it’s not a new trick.
Take, for example, 1988’s HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS. John Carpenter had not intended to turn his 1978 smash hit into a series of slasher sequels, nor had there been much of a precedent for that type of thing. After producing, scoring and reworking the direct continuation HALLOWEEN II (1981), he went to his preferred idea of producing HALLOWEEN III as an unrelated, Halloween-set horror story, turning it into an anthology series, causing confusion and disappointment at the time.
That was 1982. Next thing you know it’s 1988, ten years after the first one. Freddy is appearing in his fourth movie. Jason is appearing in his fifth (part 7 of a series that started after HALLOWEEN). John Carpenter is off making THEY LIVE and wants nothing to do with this slasher icon shit. But HALLOWEEN is financier Moustapha Akkad’s job now, so he’s gonna make another one no matter what and he’s gonna call it THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS just so everybody is clear. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alan B. McElroy, Alan Howarth, Danielle Harris, Donal Pleasance, Dwight H. Little, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 26 Comments »
Monday, October 24th, 2016
SEE NO EVIL was the flagship title for the prestigious WWE Films banner. Directed by porn industry legend Gregory Dark, it’s a trashy, ugly slasher movie about a big sexually repressed oaf (WWE Superstar Glenn “Kane” Jacobs) who lives in an abandoned hotel and collects the eyeballs of people he catches having sex. I enjoyed it in a FRIDAY THE 13TH sequel type of way and I have no excuse for why it took me this long to catch up with the 2014 sequel, especially since in my review I swore “on Jacob Goodnight’s piss-smelling grave that I would pay money to see him undead in a sequel.”
Though made eight years later, the sequel picks up immediately after the original as the bodies start arriving at the morgue. It’s not a 2006 period piece, though – there are up-to-date phones, and a mention of Twitter (which was launched about 2 months after part 1 was released). It would be interesting to watch them back to back and see if it works. I can’t really remember if the first one mentions MySpace or says “Gerald Ford is still alive” or anything dated like that.
This one is about Amy (Danielle Harris, MARKED FOR DEATH, THE LAST BOY SCOUT), a medical examiner working a long shift on her birthday. Geeky co-worker Seth (Kaj-Erik Eriksen) surprises her with a cake. I’m not sure about eating something that was put under a blanket on a slab in the morgue for a surprise, but I guess movie morticians are always eating big sloppy sandwiches while they work to show how over it they are. This is tame in comparison. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chelan Simmons, Danielle Harris, DTV, DTV sequels, Greyston Holt, Kane, Katharine Isabelle, Michael Eklund, slashers, Soska Sisters, WWE Films
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 11 Comments »
Friday, October 21st, 2016
In the late ’80s there was a mini-slasher-subgenre about killers who continue their careers post-execution, including PRISON (1987), THE HORROR SHOW (1989), SHOCKER (1989) and THE FIRST POWER (1990). Before all of those that were not directed by Renny Harlin was DESTROYER starring ex-NFL star Lyle Alzado as insufficiently electric-chaired killer Ivan Moser. He’s pretty much the worst guy to ever meet: a giant muscleman convicted of “the rape and murder of 23 men, women and children” who thinks killing is hilarious and likes to cackle about it.
They put a whole bunch of electricity into that bastard, but a riot causes the power to go out and he gets up out of the chair. Or at least something like that happened if we can believe the opening sequence that turns out to be the nightmare of stuntwoman/Final Girl Susan Malone (Deborah Foreman, VALLEY GIRL, APRIL FOOL’S DAY, WAXWORK), who’s spooked by her screenwriter boyfriend David Harris (Clayton Rohner, JUST ONE OF THE GUYS, APRIL FOOL’S DAY, THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE III)’s research into the Moser case. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Anthony Perkins, Clayton Rohner, Deborah Foreman, electric chair, Jim Turner, Lyle Alzado, Pat Mahoney, slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 15 Comments »
Wednesday, October 19th, 2016
EDGE OF THE AXE is a 1988 slasher movie that looks and feels a few years earlier to me. It’s got a masked killer and a whodunit and most of what you need besides some imagination.
It starts pretty legit with a nurse getting her car washed, enjoying a cigarette inside when suddenly a dude in a featureless white mask appears and axes her through the windshield. Blood drips down the inside of the passenger side window while suds drip down the outside.
This same masked man (or at least a guy in the same outfit) starts chopping up people in a small town nearby, and the cops and citizens try to figure out who it is.
Gerald (Barton Faulks, FUTURE-KILL) is a young man who rides a motorcycle, so he’s a rugged individualist, but he wears a helmet, so he’s unusually safety conscious for a movie character of the time. He just bought a new computer and he’s excited about it, so he’s also a genius or a nerd or something. He works as an exterminator with his buddy Richard Simmons (Page Mosely, GIRLS NITE OUT) who is not the famous aerobics instructor, but a tail-chasing jock dude who wears bodybuilding shirts and plays darts. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Alicia Moro, Barton Faulks, Jose Ramon Larraz, Page Mosely, slashers, Spanish, whodunit slashers
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, October 18th, 2016
THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN (2014) is not exactly a remake of the cult classic, and not exactly a sequel. It starts with a narrated montage about the real life 1946 unsolved murder spree and the filming of the 1976 movie about it. And then it’s a fictional story in the same town of Texarkana circa 2013 and the annual Halloween night drive-in showing of the original movie.
A young couple, Jami (Addison Timlin, DERAILED) and Corey (Spencer Treat Clark, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, and Bruce Willis’s son in UNBREAKABLE) are on a first date, but she doesn’t like this kind of movie, so they leave. To me they were immediately likable enough to be the leads, so as I watched them drive away I told myself I better not get used to them, they’re gonna be the ones that get killed at the beginning to kick off the story. Sure enough they go park and out of the woods comes a guy with a bag on his head just like the infamous local serial killer nicknamed “The Phantom.” (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Addison Timlin, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, Anthony Anderson, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, slashers, sort of remakes, Spencer Treat Clark, Travis Tope
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Thursday, October 13th, 2016
a.k.a. AN EYE FOR AN EYE
In my experience as a slasher searcher I’ve found that unknown movies from the ’70s are the biggest risk because 1) it’s mathematically less likely that there’s a great one you’ve never heard of and 2) they were made before the slasher formula really set in. I didn’t realize when renting THE PSYCHOPATH that it was from 1973, too early to be influenced by THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, let alone HALLOWEEN. It feels more like a BAD RONALD or WILLARD type of ’70s-TV-looking weirdo movie, but it does have some of the slasher elements: a freaky killer, a gimmicky motive, one-dimensional victims.
It didn’t take long for the movie to throw me a what-the-hell!?. The title comes up over ominous sounds and a scary closeup of an eye. The sort of thing you’d expect. But then the happy music comes on and the credits use a font similar to My Three Sons. Throughout the movie the soundtrack, credited to “Country Al Ross,” alternates between very upbeat country jams and straight up funk (which I’m guessing is library music).
The titleistical psychopath is children’s TV star Mr. Rabbey (Tom Basham, COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT), who figures out some of the children from his studio audience and hospital visits are being abused, and decides to murder their parents. He bashes a woman’s face in with a baseball bat, for example. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Country Al Ross, John Ashton, Margaret Avery, slashers, Tom Basham
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 1 Comment »
