I had no expectations of what this movie would be like when I discovered it on YouTube. I figured that it would be about a high school class menaced by some sort of slasher villain, but I had no way to prepare for the gritty and just plain weird film that I would be confronted with. This is an incredible feeling and why I keep writing this site, as I want to discover these experiences and share them with others.

Unlike the typical slasher, this film finds itself spending time with the victim — high-school science teacher Miss Brook Storm (Maureen Mooney), who is barely keeping it together after some repressed childhoos trauma. It’s also about a former quarterback named Jon-Jon who grows sick of the game and his sinister teammates, so he falls in with the delinquents like Dickens, Queenie and Smiler.

Speaking of that childhood trauma, it starts the film. In a swamp, a man and a woman are making love when he decides to start beating her with a doll that belongs to a little girl. The little girl watches and grabs some mud, waiting for the two to leave the swamp. As they do, she throws it in the man’s eyes and he wrecks, sending the man and woman into poles which impale them as the little girl stares at the accident she’s caused. Yes — that’s Ms. Storm and this murder has now become an urban legend as some believe a swamp monster is the real cause of these two killings.

As Jon-Jon becomes part of this new gang, they decide to ruin the football game by driving on the field in the middle of a play and stealing the game ball. It might seem like this movie has become a teen sex comedy at this point, but don’t worry. Soon, it will stop meandering and get even stranger.

The gang now puts on Halloween masks and belts Ms. Storm’s home with swamp mud before the shenanigans turninto full blown sexual assault on her. You’d think that Queenie, the lone girl in the gang, would be against this, but even she joins in, subverting the very slasher nature that you expect from this film.

Hey, but don’t take it from me how weird this movie is. Joe Bob Briggs himself did the intro to the DVD release of this film. And he featured it on his old Drive-In Theater show, too.

I agree with Joe Bobs’ commentary here. This is an amazingly original slasher that more people need to see. Please watch it and let’s talk about it.

While Amicus is mainly known for their anthology films, they also presented singular stories. Director Jim Clark may have also made the films Every Home Should Have One and Rentadick, but he’s better known as an editor. You’ll definitely recognize the films he edited — Midnight Cowboy, The Killing Fields, The World Is Not Enough and Marathon Man to name but a sliver of his list of efforts.

It’s also the sad end of the AIP cycle of films, as Samuel Z. Arkoff felt that due to its lower box office, it marked the end of the horror cycle. That makes sense — it seems a film at odds with the direction horror would take, present a character not unlike Dr. Phibes who must now deal with the new horror, styles like giallo and American independent films that would reinvent the rules.

Paul Toombes (Vincent Price) has been a horror star for decades and is set to make his fifth appearance as Dr. Death, a skull-faced killer. During the premiere, he announces his engagement to Ellen Mason, a co-star, who gives him an engraved watch. However, within no time at all, adult film producer Oliver Quayle (Robert Quarry, who was despised so much by Price in real life that it comes through in the film) reveals that Ellen had once been in his films.

Toombes explodes in anger and when Ellen returns to her room, before the sight of any credits, she’s attacked by a point of view killer. When our protagonist attempts to apologize, her head falls from her neck and into his hands, a shocking scene for the usually staid AIP world.

The world falls apart — Toombes is instituitionalized, unsure if he killed his love or not. He’s acquitted and the rest of the world moves on in his absence.

Years pass and Toombes is released. He visits London to meet his friend, screenwriter Herbert Flay (Peter Cushing), who is created a Dr. Death TV series with Quayle.

On the cruise ship that will bring him to the U.K., Toombes must deal with Elizabeth (Linda Hayden, The Blood On Satan’s Claw), an ingenue actress who wants publicity. She continues to follow him, as do her parents once she’s killed with a pitchfork.

Flay’s situation is no better than his former lead actor’s. In the basement, his wife Faye (Adrienne Corri, best known as the abused wife Mrs. Alexander in A Clockwork Orange), who was once the lead in a Dr. Death film, has gone mad, the result of her constant affairs leading to a car accident that has left to her being hideously burned.

Every time Toombes becomes enraged, someone dies, and they expire in a manner directly releated to his films. He finally goes mad and sets the set — and himself — ablaze.

That night, under the assumption that Toombes is dead, Flay signs a contract to take his place as Dr. Death. He celebrates by watching Toombes’ apparent death on film. That’s when the real Toombes walks toward him, burned but alive, and learns how his friend was behind it all. Flay’s wife reappears and stabs him, feeding him to her spiders, before she and Toombes sit down for dinner. Now, the actor has completed the makeup that will allow him to look like the traitor that tried to destroy his life.

Madhouse is an interesting film. At once, it’s a best of retrospective of AIP films, featuring moments from Tales of Terror, The Raven, The Haunted Palace, The Pit and the Pendulum, Scream and Scream Again, and House of Usher. It even points out that it was made thanks to special participation by Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff, who had died in 1967 and 1969, as they make appearances from the past of AIP.

Then, it feels like a meditation on the past ending and a struggle to keep pace with the new world. Within a half-decade, horror would be filled with slashers and the Price films would feel charming and quaint, not movies that terrified the world. And at the very same time, Italian giallo was doling out movies filled with equal measure of brutality and shifting identities.

Finally, it’s also a movie in love with the idea of horror films themselves, willing to show both Quarry and Cushing dressed as their vampiric alter egos at a cast party.

The whole thing just made me sort of sad — as I know that no one today really thinks of films such as this and can see the magic inside them. It’s as if Price is playing Toombes as himself, going out one last time to try and wring out whatever he can from a dying genre of film.

Midnight is the movie Rob Zombie keeps trying to make. It’s seriously demented and filled with so many truly unlikeable characters. Most of them make you want to take a shower just watching them.

Written and directed by John Russo, one of the creators of Night of the Living Dead, Midnight was shot on location outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and features special effects by Tom Savini. While never prosecuted, the film was seized and confiscated in the UK as a section 3 video nasty.

How can you not love a movie that starts with a girl caught in an animal trap getting killed by a bunch of children who all pray to Satan while they murder her? And hey look — one of the killers is John Amplas, Martin in the flesh.

Midnight is really about Nancy Johnson, who runs away from home after her police officer stepfather Bert (Lawrence Tierney, berserk as always) tries to assault her. She gets picked up by two guys, Hank and Tom, who also grab a Baptist preacher and his daughter.

As they stop to see the preacher’s wife’s grave, the older man is soon killed. To top that off, the killer delivers the body to his daughter’s door and then kills her with the same machete.

After racists in the town refuse to serve Hank, the three heroes steal groceries before they’re stopped by some even more racist cops. The two men are quickly gunned down and Nancy goes on the run. Of course, the house she ends up in just so happens to be the one where her friends are being cut into pieces.

The movie then descends into even more depravity, like locking our heroine in a cage to witness a Black Mass, her insane stepfather tracking her down and finally, our heroine discovering herself in time to wipe everyone out with extreme malice.

The original ending had the crazed family — who had already killed the cops and stolen their uniforms — getting away with the murders. However, the distributors demanded that the film have a more uplifting ending, which is why the one that is in here happens so quickly. It works for me — it’s really shocking.

While the film was released as Backwoods Massacre, I’d compare it to more of a Western Pennsylvania Texas Chainsaw Massacre in tone.

UPDATE: I’m beyond happy that Severin has released this on blu ray and even used a quote from our site on the back cover!

How much do I love this movie? This poster is in our movie room.

Also known as Time Warp Terror, this movie was inspired by 1950’s horror films. On this island where the kids get trapped, it’s always 1959. It also has the band Cry No More all over it, lending it the perfect bit of 1980’s cheese that you may be looking for. Imagine The Beyond, but for kids. That’s pretty much what this is.

The final feature film directed by legendary British horror filmmaker Norman J. Warren (a long-time resident of the video nasty list), Bloody New Year is about a bunch of kids named Rick, Janet, Lesley, Spud and Tom, who save American tourist Carol from the bouncers and a ride operator of an amusement park. They end up stealing a boat and making their way to an island which has The Grand Island Hotel, a place where its always been New Year’s Eve 1959.

There’s even a movie theater that’s showing Fiend Without a Face, which plays before Spud gets offed. Actually, just like Shakespeare, everyone dies, becomes a zombie and all end up back at the New Year’s Eve party. Such is life and death in the resort areas of the U.K., I guess.

You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome.

Ruggero Deodato, how I love you. I love that you somehow convinced a real actor, Michael York, to be in an insane film about a man getting progeria way past its due date and murdering people left and right. I can get how you got Donald Pleasence. I can even sort of understand how you got Edwige Fenech. But Michael York?

York plays Robert Dominici, a pianist who suffers from that previously mentioned genetic condition that causes him to rapidly age, and by that, I mean that his face starts looking like Klaus Kinski. To make up for the bad hand he’s been dealt, he starts killing people and targeting Inspector Datti ‘s (Pleasence) daughter Gloria.

Deodato would later say, “I did Phantom of Death because it was based on a true element — the idea of growing old. And I got to work with Michael York and Donald Pleasence.” He also threw in that the producer demanded Fenech, who was miscast. This is also one of the few movies where she isn’t dubbed, so you get to hear her real voice.

Back in the days of VHS rental, The Burning was my holy grail. That’s because its effects were featured in Tom Savini’s book Grande Illusions, his how-to guide to creating the gore he’d so expertly brought to the screen. Like any good little gorehound, I had an autographed, dog-earned, karo-syrup sticky copy (I still have it, barely held together and hidden away in my library) that I paged through nearly every day, wishing I could see The Burning, a movie that had to be completely and utterly awesome.

I built this movie up to the kind of hype that today’s always-on social media Hollywood can only dream of, so it could only be a letdown. And I’m sorry to say that every few years, I try and go back to this movie in the hopes that this will be the viewing that makes me fall in love with the actual film. It’s never really happened. I’m not alone in this — my wife has watched the 2018 Halloween in the double digits, hoping she’ll find the same love for it that she has even for the fifth and sixth installments.

Other than the Savini effects, which live up to every bit of their promise on the black and white pages of his aforementioned book, The Burning is probably most notable for its translation of the Cropsey mythos and for featuring early appearances of Fisher Stevens (Short Circuit and Eugene “The Plague” Belford from Hackers), Jason Alexander (Seinfeld) and Holly Hunter (who went on to become an accomplished Academy Award-winning actress in Coen Brothers movies like Blood Simple and Raising Arizona).

The film comes from people who would go on to become Hollywood power players. The screenplay was written by Bob Weinstein (along with Peter Lawrence, who would write for the cartoons Silverhawks and Thundercats), working from a story by producer Harvey Weinstein (yes, the very same), Tony Maylam (who also directed) and Brad Grey (who would go on to be the chairman and CEO for Paramount).

It all came about because Harvey was looking for some way, any way to break into movies. Along with his producing partner Michael Cohl, he knew that low budget horror was a great way to do that. Swapping old horror stories, Weinstein brought the legend of Cropsey that he had heard while camping as a teenager in upstate New York and they kicked off production in 1979 with a five-page treatment called The Cropsey Maniac that predated Friday the 13th. There must have been something in the water in 1980, as while both of these films were in their various stages of production, Joseph Ellison was finishing a film he wanted to call The Burning, yet retitled to be Don’t Go in the House.  Keep in mind that this was the very start of the slasher boom, before films began self-referencing one another to death. It’s just that the archetype of young campers being menaced by a maniac was, believe it or not, an untapped well at one point in time.

That also explains Madman, which was in casting when an actress told that film’s producers that her boyfriend was acting in another movie with the same story called The Burning. As a result, that film was delayed until 1982, when the slasher wave had already started to see lesser returns.

To fund the movie, the Weinsteins formed Miramax, named for their parents. They were able to get around $1.5 million, although the movie did go over budget. Ironically, while the film depicts a monster, perhaps Harvey ended up being the biggest one of them all.

I say this because this film’s production assistant Paula Wachowiak alleged that his predatory ways were already happening on this film. One night when Wachowiak needed Weinstein to sign checks for the accounting department, he answered the door wearing only a towel, which he dropped to reveal himself to her. When she refused his attentions, he allegedly continued to harass her throughout the film’s production.

The one thing you have to give the Miramax guys credit for is that they knew talent. Getting Savini meant an audience of Fangoria nerds — like me — would line up for this film. The special effects auteur had already turned down the second go-round for Jason Vorhees, unable to understand how the character would be able to survive for so long alone in the woods, and spent just three days creating the burn makeup for the villain of this film, basing his look on a homeless burn victim he’d seen walking the streets of his native Pittsburgh.

The story starts at Camp Blackfoot, where campers once pranked the caretaker Cropsey by placing a worm-festooned skull in his bed. This starts a massive fire that engulfs the man, who emerges with third-degree burns over most of his body. According to director Tony Maylam, who also helmed the Rutger Hauer versus Aliens film Split Second, he played this antagonist for most of the film to ensure that his trademark garden shears reflected the light in the right way.

Five years — and many failed skin grafts — later, Cropsey is released from the hospital. One wonders how insurance worked in the 1970’s, because a half-decade of hospital care would cost an astronomical sum today. He hides his scars in a long coat and hat as he walks the streets, ending up in the apartment of a hooker that he dispatches with a pair of Fiskars®.

Grabbing a shiny new set of garden shears, he heads over to Camp Stonewater where he soon makes short work of an entire crew of campers. There’s Sally, Alfred (Brian Backer, Mark “Rat” Ratner from Fast Times at Ridgemont High), Michelle (Leah Ayers from Bloodsport and the second Marcia Brady for the 1990’s The Bradys series, which took that happy family and placed them into a drama that went face to face with hot button issues with unintentionally hilarious results), Todd (Brian Matthews, who acted in plenty of soap operas before becoming a therapist and running for office in Texas), Tiger, Karen, Fish, Woodstock (Fisher Stevens) and Eddy (Ned Eisenberg, who is Roger Kressler on the Law & Order shows). I nearly forgot Barbara, Dave, Marnie and Sophie.

Actually, take it from me, there are way too many campers here. Luckily, Cropsey is around to wipe them out with his garden shears, which he jams into throats and uses to cut off fingers. The real star of the show here are the Savini effects, as gleaming blades are pushed into teenage flesh, resulting in showers of blood and gore.

Sure, it takes an axe to the face and a flamethrower to kill Cropsey, but his legend continues at the close, as a new group of campers tells his story. There were plans to make a sequel, but the film didn’t do well in its original theater run. After all, it was up against not just Friday the 13th Part 2, but also Happy Birthday to Me, Final Exam, Graduation Day and a re-released The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

It was distributed by Filmways, which wanted to rename it to Tales Around the Campfire, which is a pretty decent title, but not as great as The Burning.

There was also some great talent behind the scenes. The soundtrack comes from Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman who in addition to being a Freemason and Knight Templar also composed the scores for Crimes of Passion and She. Plus, it was edited by Jack Sholder, who would go on to direct Alone in the Dark, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge and The Hidden.

You can get The Burning from Shout! Factory.

You can watch Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio’s Cropsey, their 2009 documentary about the New York City urban legend, as a free-stream courtesy of Gravitas Ventures You Tube and Tubi Tv.

Fred Walton has directed some pretty decent thrillers, including When a Stranger Calls, The Rosary Murders, the remake of I Saw What You Did, When a Stranger Calls Back and The Stepford Husbands. He’s a great hand for this, a late in the game slasher that is much closer to an Agatha Christie novel than a blood splattered bit of mania.

It’s produced by Frank G. Mancuso Jr., whose Friday the 13th producing history led many to believe that this would be exactly one of those kinds of slashers.

April Fools’ Day is when some college pals all head to a ritzy island mansion and decide to play pranks on one another. There’s Nikki (Deborah Goodrich, Just One of the Guys), Rob (Ken Olandt, Summer School, Leprechaun), Arch (Thomas F. Wilson, Biff Tannen forever), Kit (Amy Steel, Friday the 13th Part 2), Skip (Griffin O’Neal), Chaz (Clayton Rohner, also in Just One of the Guys) Nan and Harvey, who have all gathered at the home of Muffy St. John (Deborah Foreman, Waxwork, Valley Girl).

Before they even get there, horsing around leads to a deckhand getting gravely injured. And the pranks keep coming once they reach the mansion, which escalates until dead bodies begin to pile up.

Soon, the phone lines are dead and there’s no way to get off the island. That’s when everyone still alive learns that Muffy has an insane twin named Buffy who wants to kill them all.

I’m not going to give the ending to you, but what ended up on the screen was a lot different than the original cut. You can learn more in the Jeff Rovin paperback novelization of the movie, which has an alternate ending in which Skip sneaks back onto the island to kill Muffy for his part of the family’s vast treasures. But it’s all a ruse and he stays behind to help her make the house into a bed and breakfast.

There was also a 2008 remake of this that really doesn’t have much to do with the original other than taking the name. If you read our article on slasher remakes, you know that this isn’t the first time that that ever happened.