Matt’s Horror Addiction

American Gothic – 1987, Canada, 90m. Director: John Hough.

Black Roses – 1988, Canada, 89m. Director: John Fasano.

The Prey – 1983, US, 80m/97m (international version). Director: Edwin Brown.

AMERICAN GOTHIC (1987) Yuppies crash their seaplane onto a remote island owned by fundamentalists Ma (Yvonne De Carlo) and Pa (Rod Steiger), who live in a pre-World War II time warp. Ma and Pa don’t believe in modern conveniences (such as running water or electricity), and treat their middle-aged offspring like children—their eldest, Fanny (Janet Wright), a demented woman with a Little Orphan Annie perm, believes she’s about to turn twelve. Fanny also happens to be a psycho and enjoys killing off the newcomers with the help of her equally disturbed brother (Michael J. Pollard). When Fanny doesn’t finish the job, Ma takes her extra-long knitting needles to send one of the wicked outsiders to Hell. The tables are turned when sole survivor Cynthia (Sarah Torgov) is revealed to be just as crazy as the rest of the lot, and does some housecleaning by laying waste to the family homestead. American Gothic won’t win any awards for originality, but it’s a colorful little film with rich characters and an atmospheric backwoods setting. B

BLACK ROSES (1988) The uptight parents of rock ‘n’ roll-loving teens are put on high alert when heavy metal hair band Black Roses breezes into town. Conservatives protest the band in fear of their children being turned into demoralized fiends, or worse—Democrats! And wouldn’t you know it? The members of Black Roses are actually demons with a mission to transform the young and impressionable into anarchists, degenerates, and murderers. A father (Vincent Pastore) is eaten by a monstrous stereo speaker (death by metal?) after berating his rocker son for getting his ear pierced. A nagging mom is run over with a car driven by her teen son, right before another (Frank Dietz) executes his father with a gun, post-coitus with a demon sporting teased hair and Penthouse-sized breasts. A student tries to fellate her teacher and turns into a deformed monster with sharp teeth. Egghead John Martin tries to stop the massacre by setting the band’s stage on fire, resulting in Black Roses shedding their human forms and showing the audience their true, hideous skin—rubbery makeup effects abound. Good wins in the end, but not before our heroes turn on the boob tube to see everyone’s favorite metal band from Hell back on tour and selling out Madison Square Garden. An amusing satire for the MTV generation. C+

THE PREY (1983) Filmed in 1979, this woodsy-terrain slasher originally predated similarly themed Don’t Go in the Woods (1981), The Forest (1982), and The Final Terror (1983), but because of distribution problems The Prey film wasn’t released until years later. The movie might have been conceived first, but in terms of quality The Prey doesn’t have much to offer in its story of backpackers being stalked by a disfigured woodsman. Dull actors portray even duller characters who occupy the dull narrative—although there are a few gory moments to cherish. A man gets his head sliced off with a double-edged axe in the opening, a camper gets his throat ripped open by the killer’s gnarled fingers, and another has his head twisted 180 degrees. An alternate cut of the movie (which runs nearly 20 minutes longer) includes additional footage depicting the maniac’s origins, and a couple of softcore sex scenes featuring porn actor Eric Edwards that were filmed without director Edwin Brown’s consent. The Prey isn’t the worst axe-wielding slasher out there, but it’s far from the best. C

Attack of the Beast Creatures – 1985, US, 82m. Director: Michael Stanley.

The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher – 1979, US, 72m. Director: Ray Dennis Steckler

Stripped to Kill – 1987, US, 88m. Director: Katt Shea.

ATTACK OF THE BEAST CREATURES (1985) (AKA: Hell Island) Survivors of a capsized cruise liner wash ashore a woodsy island in hopes of finding food and shelter. Instead the characters are met with doom in the form of vicious, pint-sized critters that resemble the Zuni fetish doll from Trilogy of Terror (1975). Several people are attacked the first night in a choreographed scene that would make Jim Henson proud. The creatures prove they’re just as smart as the humans by sabotaging the survivors’ lifeboat and stranding them on the island. Filmed in Fairfield, Connecticut in 1983 and barely released in later years, this clever independent production lacks competent acting but delivers plenty of gory delights thanks to energetic direction. The film’s saving graces are its low budget puppet FX, which—considering they were executed in the wilderness—are impressive. B–

THE HOLLYWOOD STRANGLER MEETS THE SKID ROW SLASHER (1979) A woman-hating photographer (Pierre Agostino)—whose babbling voiceover is of the Travis Bickel variety—strangles his pin-up subjects because they remind him of his cheating ex. A man-hating bookstore owner (Carolyn Brandt) slashes vagrants and drunks for bringing down the property value of her not-exactly-thriving business. Eventually, Agostino and Brandt cross paths within their seedy downtown locale and realize they were just made for each other. Yet another primitive opus from Ray Dennis Steckler (The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies), and featuring all of the director’s trademark chintz, including the use of stock music and post-production audio recording. This is about as exciting as watching… well, a Ray Dennis Steckler movie. Which is to say not exciting at all. D+

STRIPPED TO KILL (1987) The murder of an exotic dancer sends a pretty undercover detective (Key Lenz) into the world of stripping in order to catch the killer. Proving she has the body but not the skill, Lenz lands a job at a seedy strip joint operated by Norman Fell and frequented by a creep (Peter Scranton) who leaves origami flowers for the strippers before they meet their ends. The next dancer is strung up on the back of a semi rig and dragged to her death. Lenz believes the victims were part of a lesbian love triangle but is proven wrong. Lenz gets in over her head, but as these movies usually go, is brought back to her senses after getting bedded by a man—the very cop (Greg Evigan) who got her into this mess to begin with. Strong acting and some actual surprises help the film rise above its mediocre screenplay, although the emphasis on naked bodies over blood and guts gives the film a sleazier vibe. Followed by Stripped to Kill 2: Live Girls. C+

The Stepfather – 1987, Canada/US, 89m. Director: Joseph Rubens.

Stepfather 2: Make Room for Daddy – 1989, US, 93m. Director: Jeff Burr.

Stepfather 3 – 1992, US, 105m. Director: Guy Magar.

THE STEPFATHER (1987) Clean-cut suburbanite Jerry Blake (Terry O’Quinn) is a loving family man by day—and a psychopathic killer by night. When things get too disagreeable on the home front, Jerry takes a knife to his wife and kids, changes his identity, and marries into a new family with the prospect of turning them into the American Dream. A slip of the tongue at a neighborhood barbecue sends Jerry into a rage witnessed by his new stepdaughter (Jill Schoelen)—which eventually escalates to murder. A slick and chilling film, The Stepfather relies on suspense (especially in the white-knuckle climax) to make its story work, which is highlighted by a genuinely scary performance by O’Quinn. The film was whitewashed into a kid-friendly remake in 2009 featuring Nip/Tuck‘s Dylan Walsh as the stepfather. O’Quinn returned to the role a few years later in Stepfather 2 but smartly bailed before the concept turned into another gimmicky slasher series with the inevitable Stepfather 3. B+

STEPFATHER 2: MAKE ROOM FOR DADDY (1989) Serial monogamist Jerry Blake (Terry O’Quinn) survived his stab wounds at the end of Stepfather 1 and now resides in a high-security hospital where, after unloading a bunch of hogwash on his psychiatrist, kills the man and escapes to California. Posing as a marriage counselor, Jerry immediately sets his sights on pretty divorcee Meg Foster as his next bride-to-be—that is until Foster’s ex comes back into the picture, which has Jerry bringing out the cutlery. Suspense is replaced with a higher body count as Jerry annihilates half of the cast with knives, needles, glass bottles, and an industrial car crusher (although the film is relatively low key in the gore department). O’Quinn is good but has little to do other than feed into audience’s expectations of his character turning into another quip-throwing slasher madman. The film’s director, Jeff Burr, would go on to helm Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3. C+

STEPFATHER 3 (1992) Everyone’s favorite psychopathic stepdad is back in this less-than-stellar made-for-cable sequel featuring The Waltons‘ Robert Wightman in the title role previously occupied by Terry O’Quinn. Still obsessed with the idea of creating the perfect family unit, mass murderer Jerry Blake (Wightman) undergoes facial reconstructive surgery—his survival and escape from the events of Stepfather 2 are never explained—and changes his identity to Keith Grant. Pretending to be a gardener, Grant eventually courts and marries suburban single mom Priscilla Barnes and her wheelchair-bound son (David Tom), whose hobby (and foreshadowing) is solving internet murder mysteries. Barnes’s ex comes sniffing around and Grant takes a shovel to his noggin before burying him under a flower bed in the backyard. When things get too hot under the collar at home, Grant plans his next marital project with new-in-town divorcee Season Hubley, and plots the murder of Barnes and Tom. Grant’s actions are thwarted by Tom who, in the incredulous climax, manages to lift himself out of the wheelchair and toss Grant into an industrial wood chipper—and sparing the world from having to endure a Stepfather 4. C–

A Bay of Blood – 1971, Italy, 84m. Director: Mario Bava.

Mortuary – 1982, US, 93m. Director: Howard Avedis.

Women’s Prison Massacre – 1983, France/Italy, 89m. Director: Bruno Mattei.

A BAY OF BLOOD (1971) (AKA: Bloodbath; Twitch of the Death Nerve) A man kills his Countess wife only to subsequently get dispatched himself by a prowler. The deaths spark a fight over a lucrative piece of land involving a slimy real estate mogul (Chris Aram) and the Countess’s money-hungry daughter (Claudine Auger), as well as more murders. A quartet of teens partying at a nearby lake are slaughtered in gory fashion, including a couple who are, in the film’s most famous scene, impaled together while having sex. The characters are designed to be red herrings and aren’t terribly interesting. Luckily, the kills are highly inventive and gruesome—the discovery of a waterlogged body being eaten by an octopus is particularly gnarly. A Bay of Blood doesn’t have much to offer in the way of story, but as an early example of what would become the modern slasher movie, it delivers the goods. The black humored ending is delightful. B

MORTUARY (1982) The mysterious death of a prominent doctor leads to a series of murders committed by the unhinged son of the local mortician. The doctor’s teen daughter (Mary McDonough) thinks her father was murdered, but nobody believes her, including her mom (Lynda Day George) who earlier was seen at a Black Mass with the mortician (Christopher George). A mortuary employee stumbles upon one of the ceremonies and is subsequently impaled with an embalming trocar. Another victim is repeatedly stabbed to death with the same tool while sleeping in bed. Mortuary is highlighted by good acting and a creepy atmosphere, but the plot is often convoluted and rarely makes sense. The screenplay tries for a whodunit angle but the identity of the killer is obvious to anyone who’s seen even just one slasher movie. Look for a pre-Weird Science Bill Paxton in one of his earliest roles. C+

WOMEN’S PRISON MASSACRE (1983) A haggard Eastern European jailhouse is home to several female prisoners who are subjected to daily torture at the hands of the place’s sadistic correctional officers. Things are made worse when four escaped male convicts turn the prison into a war zone when their demands aren’t met by outside authorities. The scumbags waste no time in raping the ladies (prisoners and officers) repeatedly before the worst of the escapees (Gabriele Tinti) forces two of the women to play a game of Russian Roulette that ends with brains being sprayed all over and into the mouth of Tinti. A lesbian inserts a razor blade inside her vagina and tricks one of the men into raping her after she discovers he murdered her lover. Virtually everyone else is killed when a tactical team storms the building and shreds most of the cast with machine guns, including the evil warden (Lorraine De Selle) and the dirty district attorney (Jacques Stany) responsible for putting innocent protagonist Laura Gemser into the “big house.” This swan song to Italy’s Black Emmanuelle series might rank high in the sex and violence category, but in terms of acting, directing, and writing, Women’s Prison Massacre is strictly the pits. D

Fiend – 1980, US, 92m. Director: Don Dohler.

Nightwatch – 1994, Denmark, 107m. Director: Ole Bornedal.

Spasms – 1983, Canada, 90m. Director: William Fruet.

FIEND (1980) A malevolent spirit infects the dead body of Eric Longfellow (Don Leifert) and reanimates the man as a murderous ghoul who must kill in order to attain a youthful appearance. Longfellow moves into a house in the guise of a music teacher and turns the dank basement into a demonic altar where he shreds photos of his victims with a knife. When Longfellow’s flesh begins to decay, he drives to the local A&P to snatch a housewife and strangles her with a chain. Even children aren’t safe from Longfellow’s despicable activities, a sinister detail that gives this shoestring production a boost in the story department. Although Fiend contains the usual elements of Don Dohler ineptitude, this is one of the Baltimore filmmaker’s more accomplished films—acting and writing are strictly amateur but the characters are likable enough to sustain interest, and the screenplay is coherent enough to, at times, generate suspense. Whether the 92-minute runtime is more than enough for such a slim concept is up to you. B–

NIGHTWATCH (1994) Law student Martin (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of Game of Thrones fame) moonlights as a security guard at a morgue during the graveyard shift, where he’s the subject of torment by a serial killer. The bodies are dumped at Martin’s place of employment, where the nervous young man gets an eyeful of the brutal nature of the crimes—the majority of the victims are stabbed and scalped. The killer taunts Martin by moving a body around the morgue and leaving bloody footprints that are, naturally, gone by the time the cops arrive. Martin’s girlfriend (Sofie Gråbøl) is confronted by a prostitute who claims Martin is a necrophiliac who killed her roommate, which doesn’t help Martin’s case when the cops start suspecting him of having sex with the morgue’s corpses. The movie’s flimsy plot is really just an excuse for the lurid activities of the killer, who in the years following The Silence of the Lambs presents a methodical modus operandi for dispatching young people, a plot point that would consume psycho-thrillers for decades. At one point, Martin tells a character he feels like he’s trapped in a bad movie. I can’t argue with reason. Remade by the same director in 1997 and followed by a recent sequel. C–

SPASMS (1983) Wealthy hunter Oliver Reed hires scientist Peter Fonda to help him understand his unexplained psychic link with a massive snake that bit him on a Micronesian island. Reed has the serpent brought to America, where its intercepted by a cult of snake-worshippers who believe the reptile is the Devil in earthly form and accidentally release the beast unto the public. People bitten develop large pustules that split open and bleed out. Three women are killed in their apartment in a sequence that’s fast paced and suspenseful—in a very Hitchcockian moment, the final victim is attacked while taking a shower. The snake effects are briefly glimpsed but effective. Reed, Fonda, and rest are good, and William Fruet’s direction taught, but the screenplay leaves a lot to be desired and builds to a silly, flashback-heavy climax. C+

Killer Crocodile 2 – 1990, Italy/US, 87m. Director: Giannetto De Rossi

In the Cut – 2003, US, 119m. Director: Jane Campion.

Road Games – 1981, Australia, 101m. Director: Richard Franklin.

KILLER CROCODILE 2 (1990) Another man-eating crocodile invades the waters near the Caribbean in this ludicrous follow-up that manages to be entertaining despite its many detractors. A wind surfer is bitten in half while her boyfriend helplessly watches—an actor of which has the emotional range of a rock. A boatload of orphans are swallowed up in quick succession. A stuck-up reporter (Debra Karr) comes face-to-face with the croc while doing an investigation on economical corruption. Anthony Crenna’s big game hunter (who successfully defeated the crocodile’s mother in the first film) returns to give this sequel some continuity amidst the high body count. Karr is inadvertently saved by the croc when it decapitates a rapist who tries to attack her on his motorboat. After a duel of man vs. reptile, Crenna shoves dynamite down the croc’s throat and blows the devil to smithereens in a scene that makes the special effects in Jaws: the Revenge seem good by comparison. In short, if you enjoyed Killer Crocodile you’ll probably enjoy Killer Crocodile 2. Filmed mostly in the Dominican Republic. C+

IN THE CUT (2003) This adaptation of Susanna Moore’s controversial novel might have the prestige of being written and directed by Oscar-winner Jane Campion (The Piano), but at its core In the Cut is nothing more than a low-grade exploitation film featuring more gratuitous sex and violence than most horror movies of the time. Rom-com queen Meg Ryan gives an unorthodox performance as a sexually frustrated teacher whose life is put in danger when she believes the homicide detective (Mark Ruffalo) she’s having sex with might be a serial killer. Ryan sheds her cookie-cutter image (and clothes) by giving a good performance, but her character is stuck in an aimless screenplay (co-written by Moore) that never develops its characters beyond women being needy victims and men being aggressive jerks. A handsome but disingenuous slasher movie made for the arthouse crowd. C

ROAD GAMES (1981) A truck driver is pursued by a serial killer in this animated homage to Hitchcock’s Rear Window. The trucker in question, Quid (Stacey Keach), inadvertently stumbles upon the murderer’s antics while driving through the backroads of Western Australia—the perfect barren landscape for the maniac to dispose of his victims, who he chops into pieces and buries in garbage bags. Quid not only puts himself in danger, but also a young hitchhiker (Jamie Lee Curtis) who joins in on his cat-and-mouse games. Richard Franklin directs with confidence and an eye firmly placed on suspense over gore—a key component that landed him the directing gig for Psycho II. The film’s tense climax (in which Quid desperately tries to save Curtis from the killer’s clutches while simultaneously dragging a trapped cop under his moving rig) works because the filmmakers took care in writing thoughtful and likable characters, especially Keach’s Quid who could’ve easily been misrepresented by a lesser actor. Slick and enjoyable. Curtis apparently replaced another actress at the last minute. B

Blood Orgy of the She-Devils – 1973, US, 73m. Director: Ted V. Mikels.

Hell of the Living Dead – 1980, Italy/Spain, 100m. Director: Bruno Mattei.

Psycho from Texas – 1975, US, 89m. Director: Jack Collins, Jim Feazell.

BLOOD ORGY OF THE SHE-DEVILS (1973) Ted V. Mikels, the director of Astro-Zombies and The Corpse Grinders, strikes again with this psychedelic oddity that doesn’t have much to offer beyond its schlocky title. The grand witch (Lila Zaborin) of an underground coven is assassinated by the people who hired her to carry out a murder via black magic but returns from the grave to enact revenge. By using voodoo dolls, Zaborin takes out her enemies through drowning and a fall out the window. A professor of the occult notices the murders and uses his student to infiltrate Zaborin’s lair. Too talky for what it is, and with endless “past life” flashbacks that don’t amount to anything other than filler. D

HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980) (AKA: Night of the Zombies; Virus; Zombie Creeping Flesh; Zombie Inferno) A chemical weapons factory in Papua, New Guinea accidentally releases a toxic gas known as “Operation Sweet Death,” promptly turning the building’s scientists into flesh-eating zombies. A SWAT-like commando team gets lost in the nearby jungle where they bump into a television reporter and some tourists—tourists?!—fleeing from the growing zombie invasion. The commandos quickly learn the importance of a shot to the head when they come across a zombified child gorging on his father’s innards. In a truly imbecilic scene, the TV reporter (Margit Evelyn Newton) sheds her clothes and paints her face in order to secure safe passage through native territory. This is bookended by stock footage from an Italian/Japanese “shockumentary” dubbed The Real Cannibal Holocaust. Seeking refuge from the walking dead, our protagonists hide inside a Colonial house, but despite everything they’ve been through, the characters are too dumb to secure the place from the zombies and are overcome, including Newton who gets her eyes gouged out in one of the film’s most notorious moments—a fittingly gruesome ending to this ridiculously contrived but unabashedly entertaining Dawn of the Dead/Zombie ripoff. B–

PSYCHO FROM TEXAS (1975) (AKA: Wheeler) An unhinged loon named Wheeler (John King III) is hired by seedy individuals to dispose of a local oil mogul (Herschel Mays) in some deep Texas woods. Mays tricks Wheeler’s idiot accomplice and escapes into the countryside. Back in civilization, Wheeler keeps himself busy by raping and killing the sheriff’s daughter, and terrorizing a barmaid (Linnea Quigley) by stripping her naked and pouring beer on her because she refused to dance with the creep. Why is Wheeler such a psycho? Because when he was a wee lad he saw his hooker mom in bed with a redneck in one of the weakest flashback expositions in the history of negligible screenwriting. But don’t fret—Wheeler gets his just desserts in the form of a shotgun blast to the chest, supplied by the vengeful sheriff. But, does anyone really care? Quigley’s scene was apparently added years after the film’s initial release to give the movie a little more excitement. It didn’t work. A genuinely miserable experience. D–