The same Bob Clark that did Porky’s did A Christmas Story and also made Black Christmas and Deathdream. He even produced the film Moonrunners, which inspired TV’s The Dukes of Hazzard. He also made Turk 182! (if you had HBO back in the day, you saw it), Rhinestone and the Baby Geniuses series. Yep. Bob Clark pretty much did it all. And here’s one more completely great thing he created.

Alan (Alan Ormsby, who would go on to write Deathdream, Deranged, My Bodyguard and direct Popcorn) leads a group of actors who have all gone to an island together for a night of shenanigans. Sure, the island is a cemetery for criminals. And of course, he’s going to do a seance to raise the dead. And while the whole thing is a joke, Alan is genuinely upset that the dead aren’t walking the swamp.

They do find a corpse — Orville — and Alan uses it to continually harass his actors. And the ritual really did work, as the dead begin killing everyone off one by one.

The shift from comedy to drama to horror in this film is startling. The cast is amateur, but the terror feels real. The dread and doom at the end, as the zombies board a boat as the lights of Miami are in the background and atonal music plays are as perfect as film can be.

Clark shot this movie at the same time as Deathdream, using some of the same cast. A surprising moment in the film is that while there are two gay men — and they stereotypically lisp — they play an integral role in the film. That’s pretty woke for 1972.

Stick with the slowness at the start of this film. It will pay off by the end. I give you my promise. You can check this out on Amazon Prime.

Killer Workout is not the same movie as Death Spa. Sure, they’re both about a killer let loose inside a health club, but they’re totally different movies.

Originally titled Aerobicide, this is all about a fitness club in LA owned by Rhonda Johnson (Marcia Karr, Savage Streets). The co-owner is her twin sister who was burned in a tanning salon two years ago and is presumed deceased. The action kicks in when members of the gym start getting killed in horrible ways. And by that, I mean a giant safety pin. Yes, this is the second movie I’ve seen in the last few months where a pin is used to kill people (Lucio Fulci’s Murder Rock, stand up and take a bow).

This is the second David Prior movie I’ve endured in the past few days (The Final Sanction will be posted soon enough). It’s also worth mentioning that even after the final kill and reveal, there is still an extended aerobics number. If you miss the 80’s, particularly spandex and people wearing outfits that put their entire butt on display, I’m pretty much telling you that this is the exact movie you’re looking for. Unless you were thinking of Death Spa.

You can get the Slasher // Video blu ray at Amazon or watch this for free on Amazon Video with a Prime membership.

Armand Mastroianni brought us the screen debut of Tom Hanks in He Knows You’re Alone. Here, he combines a cast of people who will make you say, “Hey isn’t that…” and puts them up against an army of undead Confederate soldiers.

During the Civil War, a Confederate town is taken over and all of the soldiers are ordered to walk a minefield, including young Jeremy, who is forced to do so because he has on the uniform. Only he and his mother survive.

Fast forward to 1986, where the Army’s 44th division — the same one that screwed over the southern soldiers in the past — are conducting war games under the command of Sgt. Leona Hawkins (yes, that’s Nichelle Nichols from Star Trek). There’s also Pvt. Ellis (Maxwell Caulfield, Rex Manning himself from Empire Records), Pvt. Lejune (Talia Balsam, Crawlspace and the first wife of George Clooney, as well as the daughter of Psycho‘s Martin Balsam), Pvt. Osgood (Levar Burton, uniting the original and TNG Star Trek casts), Pvt. Cort (Bobby Di Cicco, The Philadelphia Experiment), Pvt. Mendez (Scott fucking Jacoby from Bad Ronald) and Maurice Gibb in a cameo as a Union soldier (he also wrote a soundtrack that wasn’t used).

Of course, someone fucks around in the woods and the undead rise to claim the living. Everything feels rather low rent, which is fine, because the actual zombies look rather good and the reveal of who is behind the actual return of the dead is rather interesting.

This is way better than it should be and in the hands of a better director would have been pretty interesting. As it is, it’ll definitely pass an afternoon.

You can find it streaming on Amazon Prime. Otherwise, this has never come out on DVD, only a VHS release. They must have just taken one of those copies for the one that’s streaming, because it’ll remind you of renting a 1986 film after twenty years of rentals, tracking problems and all. If that makes you happy to read, thanks for being one of our readers. You’re on the right website.

Harry Thomason and his wife, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason created TV’s Designing Women and were a 1990’s power couple, playing a major role in getting President Bill Clinton elected. But way before that, he wrote and directed this Rod Serling narrated film.

This movie presents its tales as true, set up by not one narrator, but two. Yes, Rod Serling was not enough. Let that sink in.

“The Heptagon” starts at the funeral of a college student. It turns out that three guys all played a prank that led to his death. A curse from his mother — the seventh daughter of a seventh son — leads to every one of them dying.

“The Darkness” is about a boy’s dog disappearing into a hole to hell and his father going insane after he tries to visit the hole. This feels like a retelling of the Shaver mysteries (see our review of Beyond Lemuria to learn more), although one possibly insane IMDB reviewer claims that they’ve been to the actual hole. There’s also an IMDB review of the film from the voice of the hole itself! Does this have something to do with the voices from Hell that have been proven to be audio from Baron Blood?

Finally, “The Girl on the Bridge” retells the urban legend “The Vanishing Hitchhiker,” which has variations all over the country (check out this North Carolina one). Rosie Holotik from Horror High and Don’t Look in the Basement plays the title character, which takes this movie up several letter grades.

The end of the film feels like it keeps wrapping everything up, only to take us back to the beginning and tell it all again. It’s a really strange narrative device that probably was the only way that this movie got to a long enough running time to play in drive-ins.

This film is an odd duck. It’s so awesome in parts and so bad in others. Serling’s voice is perfect, but you can tell he had nothing to do with the writing. And yet, it all feels like something you’d love to watch all fucked up at a drive-in around 3 AM. So, you know, this would be a definite recommendation.

Thomason would follow this up with The Great Lester Boggs, a motorcycle film featuring ex-football player Alex Karras as a cop, The Day It Came to Earth and Revenge of Bigfoot, which starred Motel Hell‘s Rory Calhoun. Then, after writing and producing for The Fall Guy, he started moving in much more powerful circles.

If you want to see this for yourself, Diabolik DVD has the Code Red blu-ray that combines this film with Sasquatch. Or you can watch it for free on Amazon Prime.

Six strangers are thrown together as part of a slasher movie re-enactment. It seems like good fun, what with them being left in the woods and pursued by serial killers. But what happens when it becomes real? And who will survive? And, of course, what will be left of them?

Marcienne Dwyer starts with the heroine, Alex, who is filling in for her boyfriend’s best friend as they go to Slasher Sleepout, an escape room style weekend. The relationship between her and Nathan, as well as the event itself, are not what they seem. While Alex seems like the best girlfriend ever, the truth is much different. And Nathan’s reasons for bringing her aren’t all that pure either.

All manner of slasher tropes show up here, from the sinister gas station to the victims that are along for the ride, like the gothy and gore-obsessed Marina and Pitch, horror film lover Larry and Tim, who is a cipher and may just be part of the game. They’re all abducted and taken into the woods for the game, where there are set clues and objects that they all need to get to the next point.

Halfway through the movie, a stylistic change suddenly happens, taking the film from Friday the 13th to Saw. That’s also when we learn a lot more about our two main characters. There’s a lot of fan service to slasher fans, but if you’re looking for a film that recalls those movies and says something new, this isn’t it. It’s not a bad film, but the narrative switch veers from pure slash and stalk to psychological horror.

This is co-writer (along with Trysta A. Bissett) Preston DeFrancis feature directorial debut and he does pretty well with it. I’ve read other reviews online complaining about the poor acting of some of the characters in here, but I didn’t really notice. That said, if you look at most of the stuff I watch, I care more about being entertained than by the quality of the performances. I chalked it up to the slasher roots at the heart of this one.

To be honest, I liked where the film was heading before the shift, but I was still entertained by where things ended up. But hey, make up your own mind. You should watch it for yourself. It’s streaming exclusively on Shudder.

Ken Hughes directed Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Mae West’s Sextette. Did that prepare him for this Western take on a giallo?

As the last child is picked up from a daycare center, Anne is menaced by a man clad in black leather, wearing a motorcycle helmet and wielding a traditional African kukri. He or she chases her to a merry-go-round and spins her into being decapitated, her head found the next morning floating in a bucket.

Judd Austin (Leonard Mann, star of many Italian productions including The Humanoid) is the cop who wants to solve the case, which takes him to the night classes at Wendall College. This isn’t the first murder with a severed head being found in water and it seems like there may be a serial killer. But who could it be?

It turns out that many of the murdered girls all went to the school and were all involved with Professor Millett. Or maybe it was Gary, the mental busboy. Or it could even be Miss Griffin, the administrator of the school. But surely it isn’t Eleanor, Millett’s live-in love and a starring role for Rachel Ward.

There are the bones of a great slasher here. There’s a girl in a diving suit who gets decapitated and we see her head fall into a turtle tank. There’s a head that was used to make some soup. There’s even a head in the toilet.

What it does need is just a little bit more gore and plenty more style. It’s competently directed and the mystery is decent, but imagine how this film would have played out with just a little more panache. I’m not saying it’s a horrible film. I’m just saying that it could be so much more.

That said — you won’t waste your time watching it. And now, this hard to find film is now playing on Shudder!

I don’t get to pick movies that we watch. If I did, we would just watch The Car or 1990: The Bronx Warriors every night. Rebecca picks the movies. Tonight, she picked this.

Claire Bartel (Annabella Sciorra, Cadillac Man) goes to get a routine check-up for her second pregnancy, which ends with her molested by her obstetrician, Dr. Victor Mott (John de Lancie, the Q from Star Trek!), who gets #metooed decades before that becomes a thing. He commits suicide rather than face a trial and his wife (Rebecca De Mornay, Risky Business) goes into early labor and loses her child. Upon seeing a TV story that calls out Claire as the person who started the accusations, she swears revenge.

Soon, she’s become Peyton Flanders, the new nanny to the Bartel family. And she goes nuts as she undermines the family, from breastfeeding Claire’s new son Joey to winning the confidence of her daughter Emma and turning her against her mother. Seriously, the lengths she goes to are amazing, like making it look like Claire’s husband Michael (Matt McCoy, Sgt. Nick Lassard from the last two Police Academy movies) is having an affair with his ex-girlfriend Marlene (Julianne Moore, clearly in a movie well beneath her talents) and having Claire scream “You’re fucking her!” before a horrified house full of surprise party guests. And the way she treats Solomon (Ernie Hudson, Ghostbusters), setting the mentally challenged man as a child abuser, makes her a near supervillain.

Let me stop right here and tell you that this is the kind of movie that has no idea how to be subtle. Every single take is obviously the one that has the most mugging and over the top reaction. Every extra has been hired because they go out of their way to chew the scenery and call attention to themselves, nearly destroying scenes and making them comical. Witness the surprise party guest who randomly brings a flute. Who the fuck brings a flute to a surprise party? And DeMornay is near Mommy Dearest level here, as she decimates a bathroom with a plunger in a fit of pure rage.

There’s also a scene where falling glass wipes out Marlene in a scene that’ll make you realize just how much you wish you were watching Suspiria instead. Every shot in this movie has been chosen to be the absolute most boring way to show action, lulling you into stupidity as you marvel at just how completely insipid this film is.

I’m making it sound like I hated this. I didn’t. I’m just explaining that this is the most unrealistic film ever, one where Rebecca DeMornay in lingerie gets turned down by a guy who looks like the shitty version of Ron Silver. It’s also a movie where windchimes become the clue that fingers a killer, which caused me to remark, “This is just like a giallo, except it totally sucks.”

It gets worse. The address for the house in this movie, 808 Yakima, is the actual address for it in Seattle. And Rebecca wants to go visit it when we’re out there. Look for a photo of that soon, I figure.

If you want to experience this for yourself, HBO has it streaming. Rebecca also chided me that when I saw this in a theater 26 years ago, she was 8 years old. I was 20. The hand that steals the cradle seems like a more appropriate title, huh?

A prank goes wrong on April Fool’s Day and suddenly, the makers of Friday the 13th realize that the title is already taken, so instead, we have Slaughter High. Really. It actually had that title until they discovered it was taken.

Years ago, the cool kids screwed Marty the nerd. However, these pranks go way past Carrie level, the movie the early scenes rip off, with Marty being shocked, stripped and dumped head first in a toilet bowl. Here’s something this movie has that few slashers do — full frontal male nudity (Sleepaway Camp doesn’t count, that’s full frontal transgender nudity and a massive spoiler).

Marty is then given a poisonous joint, which he smokes while doing a chemistry experiment, which says to me that he’s no kind of scientist. One set up by the cool kids later and his experiment has gone up in flames and his face has been doused with acid. I wonder what the yearbook was like that year.

Sometime in the future, those very same social elite of the school are invited back for a reunion. That said — the school is closed and the reunion is only for them.

What follows is exactly what you expect — Marty is back and he kills the rest of the gang in various ways. There’s acid melting someone’s stomach, impaling, acid baths, an electrocuted bed while a couple has sex, death by lawnmower and so much more.

After he kills everyone, Marty sees them come back from the dead in a scene that is absolutely nothing like the end of Maniac. I lied — it’s exactly like that movie, minus Joe Spinell going bonkers.

Marty then wakes up in an insane asylum, where he strangles a nurse and stabs a doctor in the eye with a hypodermic needle as if he just watched Halloween 2 or Dead and Buried.

The cast is nothing to write home about (most of them are British and often slip back into their native accents), save Simon Scudamore who is pure menace in the lead role (and who also committed suicide shortly after filming ended) and Caroline Munro, who is obviously wonderful in everything she does, from Starcrash to Dr. Phibes Rises Again. Also — Munro was 36 years old when this movie was filmed, so it stretches believability to make her a teenager. I’m not saying that she isn’t gorgeous, however.

This movie was written and directed by George Dugdale, Mark Ezra and Peter Mackenzie. Dugdale ended up marrying Munro and having two kids with her, so he probably did the best of anyone involved with this production. I always will remain forever jealous of him.

Slaughter High isn’t the best slasher ever. And it’s not the worst, either. It’s entertaining and a good one to put on at parties, where you don’t have to pay too much attention to it.

The newly revived Vestron Video re-released this on blu-ray last year and you can grab it at Diabolik DVD!

Giallo intrigues me because you often have an unreliable narrator whose credibility has been seriously compromised. In a 1981 study, William Riggan analyzed several types of unreliable narrators and in this film, I feel that we’re dealing with one of those types, the madman.

We open on a couple who is getting ready to make love on the beach. However, they meet a man who is parked there and suddenly notice a hanging woman that turns out to only be a mannequin. When they go to ask the man what’s happening, he drives away.

Christian (Robert Hoffman, A Black Veil for Lisa) and his girlfriend have similar romantic notions for the beach. That’s when they also discover a body facedown in the water. This body is still alive and belongs to Barbara (giallo queen Suzy Kendall, who appeared in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Torso and non-giallo Tales That Witness Madness), who can’t explain how she got there.

Christian becomes obsessed with her, following Barbara (along with his girlfriend) to a party where they find her with Alex, her current paramour. Our hero (such as he is) and Barbara both abandon their mates and leave the party, driving through a wooded area that is filled with numerous lingerie-clad mannequins that have been lynched. Christian confesses to her how his father treated him as a child while she tells him that Alex is more provider than partner.

That’s when Barbara makes a strange suggestion: before they have sex, Christian must shave. As he does, he’s attacked by Tatum. They fight and the man is killed with his own gun. Barbara is strangely fine with the whole thing and suggests that they run. He suggests that his brother can help, but she insists that no one can save them.

They then meet Malcolm and Clorinda, two squatters, who taunt Christian with news of a local murder. Thinking they are talking about him, he confesses and they laugh. Clorinda then mentions that she knows him and he rapes her. Or maybe he doesn’t. As I mentioned before, we’re starting to learn that we can’t trust our narrator.

When he wakes up the next morning, Christian can’t find Barbara nor any dead bodies or weapons. Then he sees Tatum and finds Malcolm’s dead body. Reality has stopped working. He becomes desperate and returns to his girlfriend’s apartment where he’s attacked by Tatum.

The man tells him that the plan wasn’t to kill him, but just to drive him insane. However, now things have gone too far. Christian escapes and hits Tatum with his car.

Convinced that he is in the middle of a conspiracy, he switches clothes with the dead man, puts the dead body in his car and shoves it off a cliff.

Barbara then arrives with another man — Luca — to see if Christian is dead. He follows them back to his family’s factory and learns that Tatum was correct. The plan all along was to make him go insane and lose his fortune to his brother. Barbara has fallen in love with him, but they tell her that she must go along with all of it. That’s when I realize who Fritz is…Ivan Rassimov! Man, next to George Eastman, I think we’ve reviewed more of his films here than anyone. If you haven’t seen him in anything, I’d recommend All the Colors of the Dark or Enter the Devil.

For some reason, Christian wanders the highways and acts as a male prostitute before a woman picks him up. Remember this.

Christian finds Barbara and tells her that he knows everything but still loves her. As they begin to make love, he looks at her face and it becomes the face of Clorinda, his girlfriend and the woman who picked him up as a prostitute. He kills her and runs away.

Meanwhile, Fritz has learned that Christian is not dead. As he watches family movies, we learn that Christian has had mental problems passed down from their father. Clorinda was really his nurse and Malcolm his doctor, but he raped and killed her, as well as every other woman he saw that had Barbara’s face.

Christian appears and is shot, but makes his escape, finally bleeding out on the same beach where he first met Barbara.

Fritz makes it back home and his closet is filled with the same lingerie-wearing mannequins that we saw in the trees, except these have been stabbed and disfigured. He begins to attack one of them as we learn that he is just as mentally unbalanced as his brother.

Directed by Umberto Lenzi (Orgasmo, Nightmare City, Ghosthouse/La Casa 3, Cannibal Ferox, Eaten Alive! and many more), this is an effectively tense film. Lenzi wanted to up the suspense by never showing the actual murders, but American producers felt that audiences would be too confused by this and added about ten minutes of footage with the murders and other elements to clarify the plot. According to Louis Paul’s Italian Horror Film Directors, George Romero may have shot this additional footage. Also — Lucio Fulci was the original choice to direct this film.

Scorpion Releasing put out a blu-ray of this recently that you can find at Diabolik DVD. This movie has my complete and total recommendation. You may figure out its plot and the fact that you can’t trust Christian’s grip on reality, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not enjoyable.