Reviews

Most slashers play things by the book, but Sleepaway Camp is quirky from the beginning with tons of colorful and engagingly odd characters surrounding this tried and true tale of a misfit girl being bullied at a summer camp and a killer going after the nastiest of her tormentors. The final twist still shocks to this day.

A burned handyman returns to the scene of the crime that left him disfigured and chops up campers indiscriminately with his super sharp garden shears. Not a lot of the characters make a big impression, but Tom Savini's grotesque gore effects do and are the main reason to see this movie.

Samantha Eggar has to fight off a killer severed hand after her husband and his team accidentally stumble upon a cursed cave. The hand jumps from body to body, turning them into killers. The premise is silly and the film doesn't do a lot to bring any seriousness to it, but it's fun enough.

An aging actress employs a scientist to make her younger and it comes with drastic side effects. Whenever the potion wears off, she turns into a monster and needs human blood to rejuvenate. It's a fun concept that well executed with excellent special effects.

This Mick Garris directed prequel to Psycho isn't half bad. It cancels out the other two sequels and has it to where Norman has only recently been released from the mental hospital where he's fallen in love with one of his nurses. He calls in a radio show about mother killers and tells the hosts exactly why he did what he did as this plays out in lurid flashbacks. Olivia Hussey is great as Norman's abusive mother and Henry Thomas makes a vulnerable and convincing young Norman.

This one can be a lot of fun if you don't take into account the slow, uneventful middle. It features a disturbed farm boy who murders his father and goes on a rampage with his hook hand until he falls for a girl and decides to keep her captive in a house he's invaded. Not great performances, but the sleaze factor is off the charts.

A curse turns two elderly women into bloodthirsty monsters who want to kill everyone visiting them in their huge, isolated mansion. The effects are very creative and some are jaw-dropping. Some of the gore appears to have been crudely edited from the version I saw, but it's still a really enjoyable movie.

After his girlfriend dies, a disturbed young man can't handle it, so he steals her corpse and embalms her to keep her close by and starts killing other young woman as his smitten housekeeper cleans up after him. It's not a deep movie, but the gore effects are convincing and disturbing if that's something you're interested in.

Mario Bava accidentally created the modern body count film with Bay of Blood. It's a film that mostly exists to see a group of people get picked off one by one in a variety of clever and gory ways as the story switches from subplot to subplot every 3 minutes.

Covered with early 70's low budget grit and grime, this is one of Paul Bartel's more serious films, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its funny moments. It's a more psychosexual grindhouse take on Psycho filled with quirky characters such as Lucille Benson's Aunt Martha.

A camping trip with three friends turns to terror when they stumble upon two psychotic brothers and their even crazier mother who gets off on having her sons assault and kill people in front of her. It's a nasty piece of work that's much different from Troma's usual output, but it does pack a punch and isn't easy to forget.

Leave it to the Aussie to create a slasher film with class, suspense, and a visual style that calls to mind Kubrick at times. Nursing homes are natural choices for horror film locations and Next of Kin exploits every dark corner for maximum impact. It's slow going, but if you can make it past the first hour, things heat up pretty quickly.

What starts out as a normal horror anthology bookended by a wraparound story involving the devil and god debating which souls they get in the afterlife quickly becomes a confusing exercise in clever low budget filmmaking and marketing. It's clear that these three stories were intended as features and cutting them down to 20-30 minutes causes them to make little sense. After awhile, you'll think you're losing your mind.

A prostitute helps the police track down an evil and abusive pimp on the sleazy streets of L. A. For a film this seedy and sleazy, it's a surprising amount of fun and never forgets its main purpose is to entertain. Season Hubley is brassy yet vulnerable and Wings Hauser delivers a scary performance as the psychotic pimp Ramrod.

As her young nephew is about to head off to college, a woman has a complete break with reality and starts doing anything in her power to keep him by her side and that includes killing anyone who stands in her way. Susan Tyrrell's unhinged performance is the main reason to see this and she gives a show for the ages, but the script and story are pretty entertaining as well.

A murderer is let loose in a supermarket that's closing up for good which gives them access to lots of sharp tools and implements to plunge into unsuspecting flesh. Most of the characters aren't very fleshed out and some of the acting isn't terrific, but the gore effects are some of the best in the genre.

Dennis Christopher impresses as a hardcore movie fan with severe mental issues who finally snaps and dresses up like his favorite screen characters as he gets revenge on the people who have angered him. It's not a gory movie, but it's a nifty character study of a disturbed individual.

Lauren Tewes finds herself a long way from The Love Boat as an anchorwoman trying to solve a series of brutal attacks and slayings that are being committed by the loner across the street from her. Jennifer Jason Leigh has a tiny role as Tewes' younger sister and the film wisely puts suspense and tension over gore and body count.

A movie starring Karen Black as a madwoman who lures unsuspecting men to their doom with her stable of young girls and then turns them into meat pies should be a lot more fun than this movie is. It's really unfocused with a lot of padding and there are really only a few gore moments that stand out. Mostly a bore.

Actor Mark Patton finally gets to tell his story about the making of homoerotic horror cult classic, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2. He shares his memories of the set, the reception of the film, his trials and tribulations in Hollywood, and his battle with AIDS. It's moving and an important story that deserved to be told.

Dario Argento's spellbinding suspense film might not have much in regards to logic or traditional story structure, but it makes up for it with great visuals and a fairy tale-esque story centered around the Disney princess-looking Jennifer Connelly who communicates with insects in order to catch a killer.

They really don't make 'em like this anymore. Night of the Creeps is about as 80's a horror film as you can find and it mixes several subgenres seamlessly with class, humor, and wonderful special effects. A must see!

There's not a lot of memorable things in Phantom of the Mall and the concept is definitely stronger than the execution, but the mall setting and sheer 80's-ness of everything keeps things entertaining. It's always fun to see Morgan Fairchild pop up in something like this.

Thought it might seem to be a routine slasher film on the surface, Shallow Grave has a lot more than meets the eye and moments are bone-chillingly effective as a crooked cop goes after college girls who witnesses him kill a woman. You might be surprised how involving and intense this one gets.

A teenager playing with a ouija board unleashes a blood-thirsty demon who begins killing his friends. It's a mostly forgettable Mexican horror film, but not as terrible as it could have been. It sits right in the middle.