Italian horror films are very much a hit and miss situation. For every Suspiria or City Of The Living Dead, there's a Rats: Night of Terror or The Black Cat (the 1989 Cozzi, not the Fulci). Massacre, directed by Andrea Bianchi, definitely qualifies as a miss, and a pretty big one ( Read more... )

Yes, I know I skipped a couple. (They were: #29 - The Slayer (1982), #30 - Samurai Resurrection, and #31 - Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures.) I'll get back to them eventually. But I wanted to do a bit about this joyously ridiculous piece of straight to video trash ( Read more... )

One of the films covered in Not Quite Hollywood, this is a bit of glorious 80's slasher trash which doesn't skimp on the gore, and doesn't wait very long to get to it ( Read more... )

More straight-to-video crapola from the late '80's. Linda Blair and her friend head up to Big Bear Lake to visit her parents. Her father(Guy Stockwell) is a Hollywood makeup artist who loves playing practical jokes. While on the way, they run into a VW van full of generic 80's punkers (including Robert Z'Dar and a Van Patten) who menace them, ( Read more... )

I have to say that I run hot and cold on Rob Zombie. I kind of liked some of what White Zombie did (More Human Than Human and Thunderkiss '65 are particular favorites) but his solo work leaves me cold. I didn't really care for his Halloween remake or its sequel (mostly because I think Michael Myers works better as a soulless automaton as opposed ( Read more... )

My first flick for 2011 is the gloriously cheesy 1987 horror flick Killer Workout, known in the UK and on the XVid version I am watching as Aerobi-cide. Directed by David Prior, and starring his brother Ted, along with a collection of people you've never heard of, Killer Workout is pretty much awful, though it is very, very 80's. Big hair, bad ( Read more... )

What can I say about Dario Argento? I've always been of two minds about his work. On the one hand, he is one of the most visually striking auteurs out there. On the other hand, his movies often make little to no sense. Argento's best work was all done prior to the advent of DVD, when his films often came to the US in badly cut and dubbed ( Read more... )

Hollywood has been accused for years of being out of ideas, and the horror genre is certainly no exception. Almost without exception lately, the only way you're getting a horror film into the theaters is if you're a sequel or a remake. In the last few months, we've seen remakes of Korean films (Mirrors and The Uninvited) and the latest in the Saw ( Read more... )