Wes Craven’s second full-length film — if we don’t include the porn film The Fireworks Woman that he directed as Abe Snake — is a trip through the Nevada desert that he wrote, produced and directed. You can see it as straight-forward narrative or you can choose to see it as a parable on how man will always be inhuman to other men.

The Carter family really gets it in this one. After being targeted by a family of cannibal savages in the Nevada desert, the family’s leader BIg Bob is crucified to a tree, the daughter Brenda is raped, numerous members are shot and stabbed and also killed, one of the family dogs is killed and even the baby is threatened with being a meal.

But they retaliate with just as much inhumanity as they battle back against the desert clan of Papa Jupiter, Pluto (Michael Berryman!) and Jupiter. Even the second family dog joins in and takes out his rage on the mutant clan.

The idea of an irradiated gang in the desert is intriguing and was inspired by the Sawney Bean clan in 1600’s Scotland, which claimed the lives of nearly 1,000 people.

Additionally, Craven was inspired by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and ended up making a film that — in my opinion — lives in its shadow. Interestingly enough, the films share product design from Robert Burns, as well as some of the exact same animal parts that decorate the homes of each film’s cannibal lairs. 

There’s a sequel, a remake and a sequel to that as well. In the late 1980’s, Craven even debated a third movie that was to be set in space, while his 1995 film produced for HBO, Mind Ripper, was originally intended as the third film in the series.

You can watch this on Shudder with commentary from Joe Bob Briggs.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is not a movie. It is a force of nature. Where Night of the Living Dead took 1960’s horror past giant monsters and gothic monsters into modern concerns within the conceit of zombies. This film doesn’t need to exist within the supernatural. In fact, it’s so outside the realm of the unreal that so many people think it’s based on a real story. Or even is a real film, years before movies like The Blair Witch Project tried to pull stunts like that.

The real stunt of this movie is that it was made in the first place. Filmed in an early 1900s farmhouse in Round Rock, Texas on a small budget, the crew shot the film seven days a week, 16 hours a day, with temperatures that reached 110° F. Gunnar Hansen, who played Leatherface, was really a poet. A poet wearing a dead skin mask for 16 hours a day for over twenty-five days straight. 

The house was filled with real animal remains, animal blood from a local slaughterhouse and furniture made from animal bones. As you can imagine, keeping all these dead things trapped within a poorly ventilated house led to conditions which were anything but fair to the actors.

Director Tobe Hooper envisioned this film as a PG related film, so he made each cut work so that you never see any of the actual carnage. But it backfired — as a result, the film’s entire feel is one of brutality. It’s actually hard to watch unless you properly prepare yourself for it.

“The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths, in particular, Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother, Franklin.” That opening dialogue, by future sitcom actor John Larroquette for the price of a joint, suggests that the film you are about to watch is true. While it has some basis in the stories of Ed Gein and Elmer Wayne Henley, there never really was a Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It was invented by Hooper and writer Kim Henkel. Yet there’s always someone willing to convince you that there was.

It’s actually a pretty simple film. A vanful of hippies comes face to face with a cannibal clan who are being forced out of their way of life by industrialized improvements to the meat processing industry. Despite their astrology, peace and love, they are utterly annihilated and even the strongest of them is driven insane by the end.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a film that ignores the rules of the hero’s journey and characters needing to undergo some personal growth. Everyone is lucky if they survive and even the villains and heroes that do won’t make it for long. Modern highways will push their way into the backwoods. Police procedures will improve. And the only work this clan will have is just trying to keep their way of life alive.

You can see the bloody influence of this film on nearly every horror film that came in its wake. Hell, Rob Zombie has made an entire career out of trying to remake something a tenth this good. This is a film that oozes malevolence and ill will from the very moment it begins to play.

I’m always struck by the fact that hardly anyone involved ever made their money back. The film’s original distributor was Bryanston Distribution Company, which turned out to be a Mafia front operated by Louis “Butchie” Peraino, who used Chainsaw to launder money that he had made from Deep Throat. The investors did make their money back, but the crew only made $405 each, scant pay for the hell on Earth they went through (Edwin Neal, the Hitchhiker, claimed that this film was more miserable than being in Vietnam and he’d wanted to kill Hooper for some time). After an arrest for obscenity, the cast and crew filed suit against Peraino and were awarded $25,000 each, which came from new owners New Line Cinema.

There’s a sequel to this film which exists in its own universe. I love that it’s everything that this movie isn’t. It’s a middle finger to expectations and ends with a final shot that is at least the equal of this film.

You can watch this on Shudder with and without commentary from Joe Bob Briggs.

Rose and Harry are on their way to visit Harry’s family cabin as a way to reconnect their fractured relationship. But just like Green Acres, Rose really doesn’t want any of Harry’s attempted return to his childhood. And just like a slasher, they’re not the only ones who have come back to the Swedish countryside.

The Cabin is the debut feature by director Johan Bodell and takes place in the countryside of his home country, Sweden. Once they get there — and argue at one another the entire way — it turns out that a maniac named Sven (Erik Kammerland, who also wrote the film) is also there.

Eventually, the couple starts bickering — thankfully, I was getting past relationship flashbacks — and engages in a cat and mouse battle with Sven. Everything you could use to describe this film makes it seem like one of a million others with the same premise, but Bodell’s skill as a director is what elevates the proceedings. The colors and scenery work together so well to give the film a sense of isolation, so you really feel it when Sven finally reveals just how horrible he can be.

The Cabin is a quick and brutal film. There isn’t a ton of new ground that gets broken, but it’s certainly done well and filled with plenty of decent gore. I’m looking forward to the next project from Bodell, as he seems to be a talent on the rise.

The Cabin is available on DVD and VOD on December 4. You can also visit the official site.

Dislaimer: I was sent this film by its PR team. That has no bearing on the review of this film.

When I was a kid, there was an urban legend that Lee Majors moved to a small town outside Youngstown, Ohio because the locals didn’t care what a big star he was. Everyone had an encounter with him, but many found his wife Farah Fawcett to be off-putting. I don’t know if these stories are true, but I want them to be. I do know that Lee and Farah did inspire the song “Midnight Train to Georgia,” though.

Let me sum this one up in short sentences: Priceless emeralds. Hidden jewels. Hungry piranha. Model shoot. Late 1970’s decor. Suspicion. Jealousy. More piranha.

Other than Lee Majors, this film is a cavalcade of my favorite stars. Well, maybe not favorite. But close. Karen Black is here! And there’s  Margaux Hemingway, who is as good at being a supermodel as she is bad as an actress. And here’s James Franciscus as the main guy you’re supposed to hate. And is that the doctor from Total Recall, Roy Brocksmith! Former NFL quarterback, NHRA drag racer and December 1980 Playgirl centerfold of the month Dan Pastorini come on down! Wow! It’s Anthony Steffen from The Night Evelyn Came Out of Her Grave! And finally, it’s the man whose The Sixth Sense ruined the syndicated episodes of Night Gallery, Hour Magazine host Gary Collins, the bane of my childhood!

This whole mess is directed by Antonio Margheriti, who we all know and love as the creator of perhaps the finest movie ever made, Yor, Hunter from the Future.

This is more caper than Jaws rip-off. But hey, how many movies have Lee Majors sitting in a limo with a cane that has a crocodile’s shrunken head on it, much less him swimming through piranha?

John “Bud” Cardos been behind so many movies that others would spit upon, such as The Dark and Kingdom of the Spiders. Now, he’s back with a movie for the hip now generation. It’s time to talk about solar energy. It’s time to talk about the world after this one. It’s time to be bored senseless.

The Williams family has moved to the Sonoran Desert to get away from the dangers of urban life. There’s Grant (Jim Davis, who many would know from TV’s Dallas but around these parts, we know him from being in Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter), the grandfather. And then there’s his wife, Ana (Dorothy Malone, who won a Best Supporting Actress for Written on the Wind and had to suffer through this film), son Richard (Chris Mitchum, who we know from Bigfoot), his wife Beth and their kids, Steve and Jenny.

The mysteries of this film start small, like the news talking about a triple supernova and glowing things behind the barn. But soon, we learn that that supernova has torn a hole in the fabric of reality, unleashing UFOs and shutting down the electricity in the Williams home. And before you can say “stop motion” there are miniature lizard creatures that look like they came straight out of Laserblast walking around.

All manner of creatures begin attacking the family, who take refuge in their barn. Then, they’re all beamed up in a UFO and taken thousands of years into the future. The film ends deus ex machina style with the grandfather saying that the domed city in the distance is why they must have survived…THE DAY TIME ENDED.

You know when you see Charles Band’s name on a movie that there are going to be all manner of stop-motion characters. This one delivers. And delivers. And…you get the picture.

If you want to see this yourself, prepare your brain for pure ennui. Then you can either watch it on the new season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 or order it from Full Moon.

A Roger Corman produced ripoff of The Abyss? I’m not sure that there’s anything that sounds worse. How bad is it? Two-time Academy Award winner Janusz Kamiński (those Oscars are for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan) worked on the movie for a few weeks before being removed because the stuff he filmed looked too good.

In the near future which is probably today, an undersea lab is trying to figure out new places to live, as the ozone layer is completely gone. Claire (Priscilla Barnes from TV’s Three’s Company) has found an unknown life form that gives her psychic visions. Nothing strange there. Nope. Not at all.

Then there are all these manta ray creatures that keep wiping out the crew and their subs. One of them even gets transformed into a jelly man. Or a gelatinous mass, but I like the phrase jelly man.

Commander Dobler (Bradford Dillman, who also shows up in Piranha and The Swarm, so obviously he is an enemy of nature) quarantines the ship and refuses to allow anyone to study the jellified crewman. This happens several times, as Claire undergoes several psychic visions. Can she and her boyfriend (played by Daryl Haney, who wrote Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood) save the day? Will Roger Corman show up in a cameo? Will the ending completely rip off The Abyss?

Probably the only interesting thing I can tell you about this movie is that the crew members are all named for New York Mets players.

You can watch this as part of the new season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 on Netflix.

There are many reasons why I love my parents: they allowed me to read, listen to and watch pretty much anything I wanted to, but still would discuss it with me and encourage me to have an open mind. Their sense of humor and fun helped make me who I am today. Yet for all the reasons and more, one of the biggest is that they never forced me to watch movies that were made for kids.

A NASA vehicle is taking soil samples when it ends up vacuuming four aliens and taking them back to Earth. Quickly, that family of Sea Monkey looking aliens escapes, because they can heal or destroy anything they touch. However, the youngest gets seperated and ends up tagging along with the Cruise family: wheelchair-using Eric, older brother Michael and their mother Janet (Christine Ebersole, whose career is filled with horror, like the 1980-81 SNL season and the Bill Cosby vehicle Ghost Dad).

The Cruise family has moved from Chicago to Sacremento, but the alien ruins most of their new home near instantly. Eric tries to catch him, but his wheelchair goes flying down a hill (if you’ve seen Paul Rudd on Conan, you know this scene).

The alien, now known as MAC (Mysterious Alien Creature), is on the run from the FBI. That doesn’t stop them from going to a McDonald’s birthday party — more on that in a bit — with MAC disguised as a teddy bear.

The journey to reunite MAC with his family ends up getting Eric killed. Yep, this is a kid movie where the main kid gets shot in the crossfire between an alien and the police. Look for George “Buck” Flower as a security guard!

Seriously, if you get the Japanese VHS of this, Eric is graphically shot.

Luckily, those aliens can heal anything they can touch, right? Once the government sees this, they just forget using the aliens as a weapon and harvesting their organs. No, they give them American citizenship and let them live in peace. Obviously, this is the kind of insane border policy that President Trump is railing against.

So about all the McDonald’s — the producer of the film had worked with the fast food titan on several ad campaigns and with their Ronald McDonald House Charities. He also wanted to create an E.T. for a new generation, which is strange considering that Spielberg’s film had only been made six years earlier.

That’s when he hatched his scam. He could use the McDonald’s brand throughout the film, the restaurants would promote it and the proceeds would go to the charity. These are the kind of ideas that advertising professionals — trust me, I am one — do lots of drugs after they come up with, as they realize they have no soul left.

While McDonald’s didn’t expressly finance the film, Golden State Foods, their food service arm, did fund some of it. The brand didn’t want their mascot, Ronald McDonald, to appear. However, he’s all over the dance sequence in the film and its trailer.

The film doubles up on endorsing products, with Sears and Coca-Cola showing up in nearly every scene and Skittles — instead of Reese’s Pieces — being consumed by MAC. Hell, even his name suggests McDonald’s! The shrapnel ended up exploding all over Ronald, with him winning Worst New Star in the 9th Golden Raspberry Awards.

This is the kind of movie you love because you grew up on it. Or hate your parents. Probably both. I’m glad I didn’t watch it until I owned my own home and had discovered my own unique identity.

Want to see it for yourself? It’s part of this season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and you can also grab the real movie from Shout! Factory.