The last time we saw Henry Morrison/Jerry Blake, he was all shot up and stabbed in the heart, mumbling “I love you” and falling down the steps. Who knew that he’d survive that and come back to do it all over again?

Jerry Blake is a survivor. Since the end of the last movie, he’s been recovering in a Puget Sound mental institution, one that he soon escapes. Before you can say “new identity” he’s become Gene Clifford and has moved into the planned community of Palm Meadows outside Los Angeles.

He’s already found a new potential family with Carol Grayland (Meg Foster, Masters of the Universe, They Live) and her son, Todd (Becca fave Jonathan Brandis). As the therapist to all of the local wives, he learns that her husband Phil ran away last year and when he tries to come back to his family, our stepfather hero kills him and covers it up.

The mail carrier, Matty Crimmins (Caroline Williams, Stretch from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2!) sees through his identity when she finds mail addresses to the real Gene Clifford that reveals him to be a black man. You know what happens to people who figure out the stepfather’s identity? Yep. They get removed and their wine gets taken.

Those bottles of wine and the song “Camptown Races” end up fingering Gene, with Carol confronting him just before they’re due to be married. Despite being stabbed, the stepfather almost succeeds in killing again until Todd stabs him with a clawhammer. Then comes the best part in this entire film: mother and son walk out to “Here Comes the Bride,” while a choir reacts in abject terror to the fact that they’re covered in blood.

Oh man — our kinda sorta hero isn’t dead yet. He makes his way to the altar before saying, “Until death do us part.” Oh man. Well done, dude.

After a test screening of the film, Harvey and Bob Weinstein complained about the lack of blood and demanded re-shoots. Director Jeff Burr (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, Puppet Master 4, Puppet Master 5: The Final Chapter, Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings) and O’Quinn refused, so the shots were added in by another director.

Stepfather 2 isn’t quite as good as the original. But hey — if you’re looking for one more movie where a dad wipes out his family…

Synapse Films has released this film on DVD if you’re ready to see it with your dad.

I couldn’t think of a movie to watch for Father’s Day and then I remembered this, the kind of movie that puts the fear of God into kids who are in blended families.

Henry Morrison (Terry O’Quinn, TV’s Lost, Silver Bullet) is introduced to us as he washes away the blood from killing his family, changes his appearance and leaves them — and his past life — behind. He throws all of the objects of his past life into the ocean and disappears for a year, resurfacing as a real estate agent named Jerry Blake.

Now, he has a new wife, Susan Maine (Shelley Hack from TV’s Charlie’s Angels) and a rough relationship with his sixteen-year-old stepdaughter, Stephanie (Jill Schoelen from Popcorn). His biggest worry, though, is Jim Ogilvie, a wannabe detective and his former brother-in-law.

As Henry/Jerry discovers an article from the newspaper about the death of his old family, he flips out at a neighborhood barbecue and flips out in his workshop. Unbeknownst to our hero, such as he is, his stepdaughter is listening to the entire episode.

She goes to her therapist, Dr. Bondurant, who tries to get Henry/Jerry to talk about the past. It doesn’t go too well, to say the least, and the doctor is murdered. That death ends up bonding stepfather and stepdaughter, believe it or not. That is — until he catches her making out with her boyfriend Paul.

The stepfather deals with things the only way he knows how. He starts setting up another identity and gets ready to kill this family. This leads to him starting to confuse his many identities and smashing his new wife in the face with a telephone.

Somehow, despite being shot twice and stabbed in the heart, Henry/Jerry survives and returns for not one, but to sequels. Spoiler warning: At least one of those will be up on this site later on today.

Loosely based on the life of John List, this movie rises above simple slasher to cult classic based upon the acting skills of O’Quinn, who can go from tender and nice to pure mania in the very same line of dialogue. Can anyone make working on birdhouses seem so evil?  I mean, all he’s trying to do is find the perfect American family!

Shout! Factory has recently released this one on blu-ray and it’d make a fine Father’s Day gift. That is, if your dad likes horror and you guys have a great relationship.

Boris has just been released from jail and has been agreed to do just one more heist — rob the mansion of paraplegic millionaire Lord Breston, who just so happens to be his ex-girlfriend Wendy’s boss. That’s the simplest explanation for a movie that is so much more.

This piece of Canadian strangeness was directed by B. D. Benedikt, who is also the “inventor of a brand new literary style, popularly called RELIGIOUS THRILLERS. But instead of OUR SPIES over-smarting THEIR SPIES, the invisible GOD’s and SATAN’s agents fight for our souls!”

Boris is played by Lazar Rockwood, whose name is nearly as amazing as his screen presence. It’s as if someone got a time machine and went back in time after saying, “You think Tommy Wiseau is strange? How my Molson.”

Seriously, Lazar is something else. So few of the things that he says are comprehensible to Western ears. He seems nervous and fidgety on screen, yet the things he mumbles and screams (yes, at the same time) are gloriously repeatable. He’s also wearing the finest Canadian tuxedo ever.

Our hero has been convinced by his ex-girl that her boss’s house would be easy to break into. However, when they sneak into the basement a few days later, a door slams shut behind them and a loudspeaker says that they must make their way past seven doors and through six chambers of elaborate deathtraps and deadly puzzles. That said — if they survive — they will gain the reward of their dreams.

So imagine if Indiana Jones was in a movie made by David Lynch with little to no budget, shot like a TV movie and with a virtual unknown in the lead instead of Harrison Ford. Now, ingest as many drugs as you can find in your home. There — you have a small idea of what this movie is like.

Can Boris make it through the various deathtraps? Will it have an insane ending? Are the extras on the disk even weirder than the movie itself? You’ll have to get the DVD yourself.

If it’s Canadian weirdness, Intervision usually releases it. Good news — they put this out this year and you can grab it on the Severin website. You should do so as soon as possible.

After the box office success of Prom Night, producer Peter R. Simpson wanted to create an “adult” slasher. After three troubled years, he had this film, which didn’t do all that well with audiences or critics. That said — after years of cable viewing and even more years where the film wasn’t available on DVD, it’s become something of a cult classic.

Samantha Sherwood (Samantha Eggar, Welcome to Blood City, The Brood, All the Kind Strangers) commits herself to an asylum so that she can prepare for the role of her lifetime: Audra. Yet once inside, she learns that her director and lover Johnathan Stryker (John Vernon, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Animal House) has actually left her there to rot.

That’s because a whole new group of young girls are about to audition for the role. Like Amanda, who has a dream that she sees a large doll in the road. When she goes to get it, she’s run over. And when she wakes up, a killer in an old hag mask stabs her and steals the doll. 

The five remaining girls show up to audition for Stryker at his mansion: Patti (Lynne Griffin, Strange Brew and Black Christmas, two of the most Canadian movies ever), a stand-up comedian. Brooke (Linda Thorson, Tara King from TV’s The Avengers), an actress. Laurian, a ballet dancer. Tara, a musician. And Christie (Lesleh Donaldson, Canada’s top screen queen, thanks to roles in Happy Birthday to Me, Deadly Eyes and Funeral Home), an ice skater. And then Samantha shows up!

The first night everyone is in the house, Tara and Matt, the caretaker, hook up in a jacuzzi. So does Christie and Stryker, but she pays in the price in the film’s best scene when she gets her throat cut while ice skating. Her head ends up in a toilet bowl, which is pretty shocking even for a slasher, and Brooke freaks out upon finding it. So of course, Stryker hooks up with her.

All Laurian wants to do is dance, so she gets stabbed. And while Brooke is banging Stryker, they’re both shot and killed, falling down through a window. Tara runs from the mansion and finds Matthews body in the jacuzzi. Even though she escapes the killer three times, the fourth time is never the charm because things don’t work in fours. She is dragged into a ventilation shaft and killed.

Samantha and Patti celebrate with a toast, as Samantha tells her about killing Stryker and Brook. Patti is shocked and reveals that she is the killer, then murders Samantha. We cut to her in a mental asylum where she acts out the film for the other inmates.

Lynne Griffin recalls filming an alternate ending where Patti would read a monologue to all of her victims while on stage. It was rejected, yet another issue in a production so tenuous that director Richard Ciupka has his name listed as Jonathan Stryker in the credits. Yes, the same person who is in this movie as the director.

To be fair: this movie is a mess. It barely came together and while there are moments of suspense and one great kill, it’s amazing that it came together to be a barely coherent movie at all.

After years of waiting and one multipack release with a bad transfer, Synapse finally released this on DVD and blu-ray. You can get it at Diabolik DVD. Or watch it for free or Amazon Prime.

If I’ve learned anything from Cathy’s Curse, it’s that when someone in Canada gets possessed, they just end up being rude and swearing a lot. This movie — no relation to Prom Night — only adds to my theory.

Originally entitled The Haunting of Hamilton High, this film is rife with horror trivia, such as lockers that look exactly like A Nightmare on Elm Street, allusions to Carrie and a character who references The Exorcist. Several characters are named after famous horror folks, too.

Back in 1957, Mary Lou Maloney goes to confession and doesn’t follow the rules at all. She’s disobeyed her parents, used the Lord’s name in vain and had sex with many boys — and she loved every minute of it. Then, she leaves her number for the priest.

At the prom that night, her boyfriend Billy (soon to be played by Michael Ironside) gives her a ring, but she just tells him to get her some punch. That’s so she can have sex with Buddy Cooper. They get discovered by Billy, who grabs a stink bomb and throws at her when she gets crowned prom queen, ala Carrie. Her dress goes up in flames and she dies in front of the entire class.

In 1987, thirty years later, Vicki Carpenter is having a rough time getting ready for the prom. Her mother refuses to allow her to buy a new dress and doesn’t approve of her boyfriend. She searches the school for a dress in the prop room and finds Mary Lou’s doomed gown. It starts claiming victims right away, like Vicki’s best friend Jess, who is killed by a beam from the tiara. Seeing as how she was despondent about being jilted while pregnant, everyone figures her death was just a suicide.

Vicki has nightmares every night and confides in her priest, who ends up being Buddy. He believes Mary Lou may be back, a fact that’s confirmed when a Bible bursts into flames at her grave. He tries to warn Billy, who is not the principal and the father of Vicki’s boyfriend Craig.

Vicki is at war with Kelly Hennelotter (Terri Hawkes, Killer Party), the meanest girl in school. Mary Lou takes over Vicki’s body at a detention caused by a fight between the two girls. She goes to confession at Buddy’s church and unleashes a torrent of obscenities before stabbing him in the face with a crucifix.

Mary Lou makes over Vicki to be a 50’s girl just like she was. When Monica tries to get to the bottom of everything, she’s killed by being crushed inside a locker.

Mary Lou seduces Craig, something that the virginal Vicki would never do. His father rescues him just as Mary Lou reveals herself. He knocks out his son once he ensures that he is safe and digs up Mary Lou’s grave. Inside? Buddy’s dead body.

Then it gets really crazy. Mary Lou takes Vicki home and makes out with her father and then tosses her mother through a door.

At the prom, evil girl Kelly gives Josh, the geeky horror movie fan, a blowjob in order to win the prom queen crown. Too bad for Josh, as Mary Lou electrocutes the poor geek and switches the outcome. As she takes the stage, Billy shoots her. That’s when all hell breaks loose, as Mary Lou turns into a charred corpse and tries to bring Craig into hell. His father saves him at the last minute by returning Mary Lou’d crown and kissing her.

That’s not the real ending, though. It turns out that Mary Lou is now inside the principal and he drives off with his son and Vicki!

I wasn’t expecting much from this movie, yet it more than entertained me. It surprised me with its sheer lewdness and language in the confession scene. There haven’t been many horror movies with a villain that doesn’t punish those that have sex but wants more of it.

Here’s a drink for this movie.

Prom Night Virgin (from Tipsy Bartender)

• 1 oz. Southern Comfort
• 1/2 oz.peach schnapps
• 3 oz. Mountain Dew
• 1/2 oz. grenadine

1. Fill a glass with ice and pour over the Southern Comfort, schnapps and soda.
2. Drizzle in grenadine…like blood.

Looks like we’re staying in Canada for another day, thanks to this 1981 slasher, directed by J. Lee Thompson (the original Cape Fear, Conquest for the Planet of the Apes, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, 10 to Midnight, Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects…man, J. Lee, what a resume!).

Virginia “Ginny” Wainwright (Melissa Sue Anderson, TV’s House on the Prarie) is popular, rich and pretty. She’s a member of the biggest clique at the fancy pants Crawford Academy — the Top Ten. These snobbish, rich and rude assholes rule the school and — if you’re anything like me — you’ll celebrate their brutal deaths. Just look at how they act at their local pub, the Silent Woman. Total dicks.

One night, Top Ten member Bernadette (Canadian scream queen Lesleh Donaldson, who has been in several films we’ve featured recently) is attacked in her car by someone without a face. She plays dead, then finds someone she knows. As she explains what has just happened, the real killer slices her throat.

The rest of the gang? They could give a shit. They’re all at the bar, putting mice into old men’s beer. It’s enough to make you want to be the killer and wipe them out. But it gets worse. They play chicken on a drawbridge and are all nearly killed. Ginny even yells “mother!” as the car goes over the opening bridge. Everyone survives, but Ginny runs away, all the way to the cemetery where she tells her mother that she’s been accepted by all of the rich kids.

When she gets home, her father yells about how she’s out past curfew. And while that’s happening, Etienne, one of the Top Ten, sneaks out a pair of her underwear.

The next day, Ginny and Ann arrive late to class, leading principal Mrs. Patterson to put the entire Top Ten on notice, threatening a ban on their favorite bar. Soon, a frog dissection leads to Ginny having flashbacks that she shares with Dr. David Faraday (Glenn Ford, slumming it after a career in films like Superman, Gilda and Pocketful of Miracles), her psychiatrist.

This is where Happy Birthday to Me pulls the rug out from under us — thirty minutes or more into the film. After the accident at the drawbridge, she underwent an experimental medical procedure to restore her brain tissue.

Meanwhile, the Top Ten are thankfully getting bumped off, one by one. Etienne dies like Isadora Duncan, his scarf caught in the wheels of his motorcycle. Greg gets killed lifting weights. Here’s where the film has a bit of a giallo feel — all of the murders are done by black-gloved hands, until Alfred (Jack Blum, Meatballs) follows Ginny to her mother’s grave, only for our heroine to stab him with garden shears. What?!?

During Ginny’s 18th birthday weekend, her father leaves town, so she goes to a school dance. There, she invites Steve (Matt Craven, Meatballs) home to smoke weed, drink wine and eat kabobs, as you do. However, while feeding Steve, she stabs him in the mouth, a murder so memorable it ended up on the poster and box cover.

The next morning, Ann comes over while Ginny takes a shower and has a major flashback. Four years ago, she was having a birthday party but none of the Top Ten would come. Her mother flipped out, got drunk and tried to take her to Ann’s competing party, where a groundskeeper told her that she would never be anything more than the town whore. Her mother gets drunker and drives off the bridge from earlier in the film, where she drowns and Ginny barely survives.

Ginny begins to think that she has killed all of her friends, including Ann who she finds in the tub. Dr. Faraday has no answers, so she kills him with a fireplace poker.

Whew! What happens next? Well, Ginny’s dad gets home and sees blood all over the place, as well as Amelia (Lisa Langlois, Phobia, The Nest) outside in shock. Running to the cemetery, he sees his wife’s grave has been opened and Dr. Faraday’s body is in it. Then, entering the guest quarters, every one of the Top Ten members’ bodies are arranged around a table, celebrating a birthday.

Ginny arrives with a cake, singing to herself, when she slices her father’s throat. He never sees that his daughter is really there, the only living guest at the party. The second Ginny, the killer, screams about having done all of this for Ginny, but it turns out that she is Ann! The girls are half-sisters, sharing a father! What?!?

Ginny escapes and stabs Ann, just as the police arrive to ask, “What have you done?” The film fades to black — never letting us know if Ginny will be jailed or proven innocent. Then the film closes with a goofy — yet awesome — closing song by Stevie Wonder’s ex-wife Syreeta.

Columbia Pictures went full William Castle promoting this movie, suggesting theaters re-create the film’s closing scene in their lobby, inviting people to celebrate their birthday party while watching the movie, preventing anyone from entering the film during its last ten minutes and scream contest for radio stations.

Happy Birthday to Me arrived in theaters at the height of the slasher boom, but it defies expectations. At times, it’s a giallo. At other times, it’s supernatural. And others, it’s a teen comedy. It’s also crazy that such a directorial talent made it — albeit one who was rumored to spray blood all over the set to make the film even gorier — and Glenn Ford are in a slasher!

It’s totally fun and a great watch, which you can find on Shudder.

After failing to sell Halloween producer Irwin Yablans on his pitch for a movie, director Paul Lynch ran with the suggestion that he set his film during a holiday. A prom seemed like a pretty big event and it tied in well with a story writer Robert Guza had created that was all about childhood trauma coming back to haunt people. Once Jamie Lee Curtis signed to be in the film (Brady Bunch star Eve Plumb was also up for the role), all that was left was to make the movie.

The film starts in 1974, when Wendy, Jude, Kelly and Nick are playing some weird game that seems like hide and seek but has them screaming, “The murderers are coming!” Maybe this is a game that kids play in Canada that teaches them that if they are not polite, they will be killed.

Another girl, Robin, tries to join in but they start chasing her while yelling, “Kill! Kill!” They back her up toward a window which she falls out of to her doom. Instead of telling the police, the kids make a pact to never reveal the truth. After Leonard Mench, a sex offender, is caught in the area, he is blamed and jailed for the crime.

Six years later, Robin’s family celebrate the memorial of her death while her twin brother Alex and teenage sister Kim (Curtis) prepare for the prom. Their parents will also be at the prom, as Mr. Hammond is the school principal He’s played by Leslie Nielsen, adding some star power before everyone would only know him as a serious actor. In fact, Airplane! would come out the same month as this movie.

Kelly, Jude and Wendy (Anne-Marie Martin, billed here as Eddie Benton, former wife of Jurassic Park creator Michael Crichton) have all started getting obscene calls while Nick never answers the phone. They’re all too worried about the prom, after all. Kim and Nick have been dating, Jude is going with goofball Slick Crane and Kelly is going with Drew (and he cannot wait for afterward, so they can have sex). Wendy used to date Nick and now, she is going to the prom with school bad boy Lou to embarrass her former friends.

There are so many bad omens: the locker room mirror is cracked and a shard is missing; Leonard Mench has escaped; and Wendy, Jude and Kelly have discovered their yearbook photos stabbed with glass and placed in their lockers.

Everyone still goes to the prom, where most of the drama is the triangle between Kim, Nick and Wendy. Disco was still somewhat around — it’s never really died to be honest — when this was released. Dig that dancing goodness.

Kelly and Drew are getting hot and heavy, but she refuses to go all the way. He leaves just in time for a giallo-style black-clad killer to slit her throat with a shard of the mirror. This same killer kills Jude and Slick after they share a joint and do some dancing — horizontal style — in his van.

The sex offender has been caught, so the police stop scrutinizing the prom. Yep, three kids are dead under their noses and they just move on. Maybe this really is a giallo with a police force this bad at their jobs!

Actually, that number is increasing, as the killer has an axe and he chases Wendy through the school, finally killing her just after she finds Kelly’s corpse.

Will Prom Night only be a slasher movie? Nope. It’s going to have a Carrie scene as well, in addition to trying to be Saturday Night Fever! Kim and Nick are just about to be crowned king and queen when Lou and his gang tie up Nick and steal his crown. Lou gets ready backstage and the killer thinks he’s Nick and well, his head rolls as the prom dancers run in abject terror.

Kim frees her boyfriend and they run from the killer, who only attacks him. She grabs the axe and hits the masked man in the head before realizing who it is — her brother! Turns out he watched the kids kill their sister and has been waiting for revenge. She tries to stop the cops from shooting him, but the axe wound does him in and our heroine cries at the death of her brother.

Wow. Who knew Canadians were so nihilistic? What a dark ending! Prom Night is a great slice of 80’s fun that really has nothing in common with any of its sequels. But that’s fine.

There were tons of deleted scenes that actually revealed that Alex and Robin were twins and others that made Mr. Hammond look like the killer. To pad the running time and make up for censored gore, many of these missing scenes and characters were added back into the film for the TV version.

If you really think about it, Halloween starts with Jamie Lee Curtis’ sister getting killed and then her brother ends up being the killer. The same thing happens here — except no one would know the family relationship between Laurie Strode and Michael Meyers until 1981’s Halloween 2.

Want to watch it for yourself? Grab the Synapse blu-ray or watch it on Shudder!

Oh Canada. Your horror movies are so strange, so unlike anywhere else, as you remain such a polite country, our neighbor to the north. What strange horrors have you brought to me today? Oh look — it’s 1980’s Funeral Home, otherwise known by the much better title Cries in the Night.

Heather (Lesleh Donaldson, Curtains, Happy Birthday to Me) is spending the summer in a small town with her grandmother, who has turned her home, which was once a funeral home, into a quaint inn. Her husband’s been missing for several years, so she also makes ends meet by selling artificial flowers. She even has her own handyman, Billy, who is mentally challenged.

The only problem is that when people check in, they end up missing. Like that unmarried adulterous couple. And that real estate developer. And when Heather comes home at night, she hears her grandmother talk to someone who isn’t there.

Well, it seems like Heather’s grandfather was having an affair with Helena Davis, which her grandmother denies to everyone, including Helena’s husband (Barry Morse, the Inspector from TV’s original The Fugitive)  — who is soon murdered with a pickaxe.

Heather and her boyfriend Rick start investigating, finally finding the corpse of her grandfather. Now, Maude speaks with his voice and comes after them with an axe. Luckily, the police arrive just in time.

As the credits roll, the cops explain all of it to us. It’s such a weird ending, with an overly long explanation fighting for screen time with the names of the gaffers.

This movie just felt like a slog. I continually kept checking to see how much more time was left. I hate when movies make me do that.

Sure, I may not have enjoyed Funeral Home. But you can check it out for yourself. It’s on Shudder and Amazon Prime.

Oh, and if you’re a purveyor of films with ripped off artwork, then check out Through the Fire, which steals Funeral Home‘s theatrical and VHS artwork. Becca, the “B” of B&S About Movies, chimed in with her insights as part of the film’s inclusion on Mill Creek’s Chilling Classics box set.

Jamie Lee Curtis. A train. A murderous slasher. And David Copperfield. Yes, Terror Train is unlike any other slasher that ever came before or since.

Directed by Roger Spottiswoode, who was also in the chair for Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, this movie was totally conceived as Halloween on a train. Jamie Lee had just finished filming Prom Night, so she jumped back on the slasher, err, train one more time.

Much like Slaughter High, a prank puts all of this in motion, as Alana (Jamie Lee) is coerced into pulling a joke on frat pledge Kenny Hampson that uses a female corpse, because you know, humor. Kenny doesn’t get the joke, goes nuts, gets put in a mental asylum and then, of course, breaks out and kills nearly everyone.

But what about David Copperfield, you may ask. Well, he’s all over this movie, both doing illusions and being a red herring. His scenes with Jamie Lee make the screen smolder with pure sex. I’m totally lying to see if you’re paying attention.

Ben Johnson, Captain Morales from the original The Town That Dreaded Sundown shows up as a train conduction. And hey! There’s Vanity (credited as D.D. Winters) years before she’d meet up with Prince, star in Action Jackson and Tanya’s Island, then got heavy into drugs and dating Rick James, Adam Ant (who wrote the song “Vanity” about her on the Strip album), Nikki Sixx and Billy Idol. After that, she went into renal failure, found God and later died because her body had endured a lifetime of drug abuse.

I really like the killer’s gimmick of continually switching masks. It’s pretty effective and leads you to wonder who really is behind things, even if the opening totally gives the identity away.

Shout! Factory re-released this on blu-ray recently, but it’s already out of print! Oh man! If you find a copy, grab one!