marcialyon

Jackie's mom might have just gotten out of the asylum after killing and eating several people, but that doesn't mean she's cured and Jackie and her father try their best to appease her appetite. Frightmare is gory and bleak with an excellent central performance by Sheila Keith as the murderous matriarch of this very disturbed family. It has an ending you won't forget.

Out of all the early pre-Halloween semi-slashers, Blood and Lace stands out as a mix of soon-to-be tropes like the group of young teens set up for the slaughter, a distinctive weapon of choice for the killer (here, a hammer), and the camera taking on the point of view of the killer with a heavy helping of soapy melodrama involving incest, child abuse, and all kinds of other fun stuff. Gloria Grahame kills any kid who runs away from her creepy orphanage and stores their bodies in the freezer in case they can, one day, be brought back to life. And to think this was originally rated the modern day equivalent of a PG rating.

Cult favorite actress essentially signed over her soul to be in horror films for the rest of her life after she did this TV movie where she plays 4 different characters in 3 different stories of suspense and horror. The first two are well told and somewhat interesting, but it's the third story where she plays a woman terrorized by an evil doll in her apartment that people will remember the most. The low budget doll effects are covered up well by inventive camera work, a booming score, and Black's excellent performance.

Director Ti West does more here than simply ape the look and feel of a 70's.80's horror film. He nails the pacing, the atmosphere, the music, and the creeping dread that's not as popular anymore, but far more effective than your average CGI jump scare fest. Jocelin Donahue is effortlessly likable as the lead damsel in distress and your heart palpitates for her as you being to find out why she's really been brought to this isolated house in the middle of nowhere. Hint: it's not just for the pizza and babysitting.

An underappreciated urban fairy tale/freaky funhouse by Wes Craven involving a young boy who gets wrapped up in a plan to rob his wealthy landlords with his sister's boyfriend who they can pay for his mother's operation.

It doesn't get all the fanfare of Scream or A Nightmare on Elm Street, yet it's one of Craven's creepiest, smartest, and campiest horror films.

Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie give the performances of their careers as a teenage girl and her religious mother whose terrified of the day she'll become a woman and her demonic powers will be unleashed. To make matters worse, Spacek's Carrie is abused at school by her classmates and is being set up to be the laughing stock of the school on prom night.

A memorable story by Stephen King is highlighted by the excellent performances all around and De Palma's wild direction which keeps all the emotional moments grounded in reality while letting the more fantastical elements terrify and entertain.

Following Kevin Tenney's Witchboard, Night of the Demons is a somewhat imaginative effects fest, but one that's perfect for the Halloween season.

High schoolers (and some who look like they were supposed to have graduated 15 years ago) ditch their school dance to party at Hull House - a former mortuary that was the scene of several nasty crimes. They end up waking up the angry spirits and demons that reside there and they're terrorized and possessed one by one and forced to do all sorts of wild things like dance provocatively with strobe lights and stick lipstick containers into their nipples.

It's well made film, but I wish I loved it more than I did. The pacing feels off in places and you're just waiting for the next cool effect. The effects are definitely impressive, but after awhile, I was hoping for something more to keep me engaged.

Waxwork is an engaging and fun monster mash up with something for every horror fan. If you enjoy vampires, Waxwork has them. Werewolves? Check! How about the mummy! Yep!

It all centers around some college friends who attend a special midnight opening of a new wax museum and soon find themselves trapped inside the exhibits themselves if they dare to cross the red rope that's there to keep them out. Before long, the blood is flowing freely.

Zach Galligan and Deborah Foreman make for an attractive and sweet pair and Michelle Johnson camps it up with the best of them as China, the film's good time gal.

Margot Kidder is great at playing two French-Canadian twins in Brian De Palma's eerie thriller, Sisters.

De Palma is still working with a fairly low budget on this film, but his talent shines through as he weaves his yarn about a nosy reporter played by Jennifer Salt who happens to view a brutal murder across the street from her. She discovers it came from an apartment shared by Kidder's twins - one is good and the other is a little bit evil. Salt's reporter decides to take on the case herself which leads her down a dark road she might never find her way out of.

Bernard Hermann's score is great and De Palma was already trying out of some of his famous tricks like split screen.

Anthony Perkins steps into the director's chair this time and turns in a stylish, well made sequel that he should be proud of.

A suicidal nun goes on the run after accidentally killing one of her sisters and takes up with a mysterious musician. They end up at the Bates Motel where Norman instantly takes a liking to her because of how much he reminds of her of Marion Crane. They start a romance, but mother just won't let him be happy as more and more bodies turn up at the hotel.

Perkins and Scarwid are sweet as the mismatched, doomed couple and Fahey is memorably sleazy and darkly funny as the opportunistic musician. Perkins' directing style is wonderfully theatrical and operatic.

Perhaps Cronenberg's best film has Jeff Goldblum as a scientist who becomes obsessed with teleporting live, human flesh to another location. Just as it seems like he's going to succeed, a tiny fly get into the teleporter with him and their DNA merges on the other side and he starts to turn into a monster much to the horror of his girlfriend (Geena Davis)

Nothing about The Fly should work. The story is silly and, at best, it could possibly end up being a great FX reel for a makeup effects artist. In Cronenberg's hands, The Fly becomes grand tragedy and Goldblum's afflictions could be read as a metaphor for drug addiction, AIDS, cancer, dementia, or anything else that wreaks havoc on the body and mind and forces their loved ones to watch them as they slowly deteriorate and turn into someone unrecognizable. Because of this, The Fly is about as moving as any horror film I've seen and it's anchored by Goldblum and Davis' magnificent performances.

After a thrilling opening sequence where a young nurse (Sarah Polley) wakes up to find her entire neighborhood overrun with zombies, she meets a rag tag group of survivors who decide to hide out at an abandoned mall where they meet even more survivors and they all have to band together to survive this ordeal.

The scope of this Dawn of the Dead is slightly larger than Romero's original (there were only a tiny handful of characters in Romero's film) and there are some great action sequences, but there are times when it feels a lot more hollow than the original film and some of the humor doesn't always work. While most of the CGI is decent, there's one effect involving a zombie baby that should have been left out altogether.

An exciting and occasionally terrifying chiller from Dario Argento - the first in his "animal trilogy" that follows an American in Italy who's forced to stay in the city by the police when he witnesses a brutal attempted murder at an art gallery on his way home one evening. Wanting to get out as soon as possible, he decides to take on the investigation himself as more bodies pile up and he and his girlfriend are put in harm's way.

While stylish, Crystal Plumage isn't quite as heightened and over the top as many of Argento's other films, so it could serve as a great gateway into his work. It does feature several of his scariest scenes and one of his best twists as well, so there's a ton to recommend here for horror fans or just fans of mysteries and thrillers. There's something for everyone.

An average and mostly bland thriller in a similar vein as Psycho where Jennifer Lawrence plays a young girl who moves to a new town with her mother (played by Elizabeth Shue in a thankless role) and she falls for the sad, loner next door who could have some deadly secrets in his past.

House at the End of the Street has an alright premise, but the script offers nothing that we haven't seen before and, even worse, it's all been done better. The cast certainly has nothing to be embarrassed about and the film is well shot with a professional polish. It's just sad that nothing much interesting happens until the last act.

Claude Chabrol directs this fantastic adaptation of Ruth Rendell's A Judgement in Stone that milks the story for every twist, turn, and surprise it can.

When Sophie becomes the housekeeper for a wealthy family, she must bend over backwards to keep them from finding out that she's illiterate. Soon, she begins to resent them and this resentment is only fueled by Jeanne, a local busybody who hates the family and everything they stand for. Together, they begin a most unhealthy friendship that could lead to some very dangerous places.

The chemistry between Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert as Sophie and Jeanne is off the charts and they carry the entire film as the two anti-social sociopaths. It's a fascinating relationship and one you won't soon forget.

Mary Woronov and Lynn Lowry are usually watchable in anything and that's still true for Sugar Cookies - a sleazy sexploitation thriller without many thrills.

It's too silly and campy to be taken seriously as a sex film, but there aren't enough genuine thrills to enjoy it as a straightforward thriller. I'm still not sure what the chubby cross dressing guy had to do with anything. Was he just there for filler?

Anyway, it's about a sleazy sex film producer who kills one of his stars during a sex game and makes it look like a suicide. The star's lesbian lover searches for someone who looks just like the dead star so they can carry out some form of revenge. There are a few too twists and turns to keep us interested and the ending just sort of dribbles out, but it's always nice to see Woronov and Lowry.

Most movies don't leave me at a loss for words but #Horror sure does. I find myself unable to even comprehend what they were going for here. On the one hand, you have some very beautiful and well thought out cinematography, but on the other, you have a script that has no idea what it wants to be. As an art film, it's empty. As a satire, it doesn't have anything to say. As a horror film, it's not very horrific or frightening. It seems as if it wants to say something about today's spoiled generation of children and how their parents are equally responsible, but the film ends and we're left with nothing to hold on to. It's a total misfire on almost every level.

A compelling spotlight on reclusive actor Mark Patton who disappeared right after he seemed to be getting put on the Hollywood map. Scream, Queen deals with his fall from the graces of Hollywood due to the fear of AIDS and homophobia.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 has been one of the black sheep of the franchise for awhile and, in some ways, the hate is justified. The script has its weak spots, but let's get one thing straight - Mark Patton was never one of those weak spots. He turned in a committed, memorable, and game performance, going places that a lot of male actors are too scared to go. He wasn't scared to appear weak or genuinely frightened. Unfortunately, the world wasn't ready for it (and some would say they still aren't) and he paid the price.

For any gay horror fans or Hollywood historians, this is a must watch!

There's a ton to love about Boom. It's well filmed, the costumes are bizarre, and the production design is gaudy in the best way. It's also, screenplay-wise, not an awful adaptation of Williams' The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore. Where Boom fumbles is with it's two leads.

Elizabeth Taylor is far too vibrant and young to be playing an old maid on her death bed and Richard Burton is too old and world weary to be playing the handsome young drifter. Since these two dominate the entire film and everyone just offers support here and there, this shoots them film in both feet and it can't help but limp along. Because of this, the entire film feels unbalanced and off kilter. These characters stop making sense altogether.

On the plus side, there's some good camp here and there (especially Taylor's hideous costumes and head dresses) and Noel Coward shows up to steal a few scenes.

Annabelle is a downright insulting horror film from the word "go." Well, maybe that's not true. It does have a great prologue where a crazy woman terrorizes a boring suburban couple and ends up possessing their already creepy doll. The rest of the movie feels like Rosemary's Baby-lite, but far less effective. Alfre Woodard shows up to collect a paycheck and her final exit from the film is one of the most ridiculous, borderline offensive things I've ever seen.

The good news is - it could only go up from here and the film's sequel/prequel isn't half bad.

There's a moment in the middle of Slumber Party Massacre where one of the would-be victims is inspecting the body of an eyeless pizza delivery man who's lying cold on their living room floor, pizza in hand. She reaches into the pizza box, takes out a slice of pizza, and takes a bite of it. This is when The Slumber Party Massacre won me over.

Before that point, it's honestly hard to tell what the film is going for. It's shot, edited, and scored like just about any other slasher film from this time period and any humor seems unintentional for the most part, but it was that moment that I realized it was going for parody and the whole thing came to life for me.

The characters feel like real young women and there's even a little bit of suspense sprinkled in. Maybe it doesn't lean into the parody aspect as much as it could have, but the whole thing is so entertaining that it doesn't really matter in the end.

It's admirable that they decided to make a more faithful, two-movie adaptation of Stephen King's It, but by relying too much on tacky looking CGI, they destroy any potential for fright or mood. The film is basically tension-free and has no build up, feeling more like a series of effects set pieces that don't add up to much. Some of these set pieces are better than others, but none of them are truly frightening or have a smidgen of intensity. If it weren't for the occasional splash of blood or f-bomb, one could easily confuse this for a PG rated children's film.

The child actors are wonderful and create a believable rapport that keeps you invested and Bill Saarsgard as the evil Pennywise is best when the film allows his performance to breathe in real time and doesn't overload him with CGI gags and effects.

There's something both cozy and deeply unsettling about My Bloody Valentine. In essence, it sticks to the tried and true slasher film formula by sticking a bunch of young people in a secluded location (this time, an underground mine after hours) and has someone dispatch them one by one in a variety of ghoulish ways, but there's some legitimate human drama at play here and the characters feel a bit more down to earth than the usual victims in these kinds of films. Because of this and the general mean spiritedness of the death scenes (even in their horribly edited R rated versions, they pack a bigger punch than most of the death scenes you'd find in these movies), My Bloody Valentine feels incredibly bittersweet.

These are people who look and act like the people we went to school with, work with, go to church with, go to bars with, etc. There's a great attention to making the characters as real and salt of the earth as possible, which took me aback a bit. To seem them offed in such awful ways does tweak the heartstrings a bit at times.

Of course, if you're just in it for the gore and inventive set pieces, My Bloody Valentine has you covered there, too. In it unrated form, My Bloody Valentine is easily one of the goriest and meanest of the big 80's slasher pictures and it has mood to spare. Shot of the vengeful Harry Warden crossing through the steam and fog-filled alleyways of Valentine's Bluff are images you won't soon forget.

One could easily shrug off Sleepaway Camp as yet another teen summer camp slash 'em up, but that would be rather rude since the film seems to be working so hard to make it an unforgettable experience for the audience. Unlike a lot of slasher movies, it's not the inventive death scenes you leave remembering, but the strange characters, their dynamics, and the insane twists. Many a time, I've seen a slasher film and forgotten everything about it within a day or two, but Sleepaway Camp dares you to try and forget it. Trust me, it's impossible.

Come for the slashings and teenage hi-jinx and stay for the psychosexual weirdness and colorful cast of characters.

This is a movie that opens with a man erotically blowing a saxophone up against a woman's vagina. That's really all you need to know. If that offends you, best to leave now before your head explodes. If it sounds like a hoot to you, come sit by me.