Why April Fool’s Day is a Cut Above the Rest
Warning: This post contains spoilers! By the mid-1980s, the so-called “golden age of the slasher” was essentially coming to an end. Jason Voorhees was dead and buried. Michael Myers had been replaced by a mask-making witch. And college dorms had…
SLASHER MONTH: Destroyer, Final Exam, Hatchet, and Silent Madness!
DESTROYER (1988) d: Robert Kirk. c: Anthony Perkins, Deborah Foreman, Clayton Rohner, Lyle Alzado, Tobias Anderson, Lannie Garrett. A muscle-bound mass murderer (Alzado), executed 18 months earlier, seemingly comes back from the dead and stalks a group of filmmakers making…
SLASHER Spotlight: SCREAM 1-4
SCREAM (1996) d: Wes Craven. c: Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox, David Arquette, Matthew Lillard, Skeet Ulrich, Rose McGowan, Jamie Kennedy, Drew Barrymore. Scream is the movie that revived the horror genre at a time when it had stalled with endless…
SLASHER MONTH: Death Valley, Prom Night II, and More!
DEATH VALLEY (1982) In an era when Hollywood was trying to cash in on the slasher boom, Universal released this gem about an 8-year-old boy (Billingsley, A Christmas Story) who, while on vacation with his divorced mother (Hicks) and her…
SLASHER MONTH: Cold Prey II, New Year’s Evil, and More!
COLD PREY II (2008) Good sequel to the Norwegian original picks up immediately where the first movie left off with final girl Jannicke (Berdal) being transported to a nearby hospital, along with the body of the pick-ax swinging mountain man…
Christmas Horror Movie Roundup
Happy Holidays! With the Christmas season upon us, I decided to write about a myriad of holiday horror flicks that I usually watch (or avoid) every year. In order, from my favorite to least favorite, here is a list of…
Special Guest Review of the CHILD’S PLAY Series, Part 1
By Frank Pittarese Child’s Play (1988) Serial killer Charles Lee Ray (a.k.a. the Lakeshore Strangler) is shot in a toy store by a detective — but before dying, he transfers his soul into a Good Guys doll using a voodoo spell.…
Mini-Reviews: THE STRANGERS and PREY AT NIGHT
The Strangers (2008) An annoying couple (Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) returning home late at night from a wedding are terrorized by three masked sociopaths who try to get inside their house. Writer-director Bryan Bertino does a good job at…
URBAN LEGEND and URBAN LEGENDS Mini Reviews
Urban Legend (1998) One of the better post-Scream horror offerings with enjoyable shades of ’80s slasher tropes about a college tormented by a hooded ax killer who uses famous urban legends as their modus operandi. Good characters and excellent atmospherics…