Shot with the ArriVision 3-D camera system, Silent Madness wasn’t just late to the 80’s 3D revival, it was late to the slasher madness too. It was directed by Simon Nuchtern, president of August Films. He brought over plenty of foreign films and had them re-edited for American tastes, like the film that the Findlays shot in Argentina called The Slaughter, which was released as Snuff. He also brought Karate Kiba to U.S. theaters with a new open and called it The Bodyguard and that’s why we call marijuana chiba, as well as directing New York Nights and Savage Dawn.

You have to love how Wikipedia has the writer of this movie, Bob Zimmerman, linked to Bob Dylan. Nope. This Bob was part of the camera crew for Don’t Go in the House and Nightmare. His co-writer was Bill Milling, who may be better known as an adult director using the names Philip Drexler Jr. (A Scent of Heather) and G.W. Hunter (Heart Throbs), Craig Ashwood (All American Girls), William J. Haddington Jr. (When A Woman Calls), Chiang (The Vixens of Kung Fu (A Tale of Yin Yang), Jim Hunter (Up Up and Away), Luis F. Antonero (Temptations) and Bill or Dexter Eagle (Virgin Snow). Some of the dialogue was written by Nelson DeMille, who would go on to write the book The General’s Daughter. They were all working from a story by Nuchtern.

The Cresthaven Mental Institute is, charitably, a mess. It’s also packed with patients, so they decide to just declare several of the patients cured, which means that Howard Johns (Solly Marx, Honcho from Savage Dawn, the Samurai from Neon Maniacs and plenty of stunt work too) is let go instead of John Howard. Years ago, after peeping on some sorority sisters, they had decided to strip for him — because that’s how we dealt with Me Too moments back then, kind of like giving someone a whole carton of cigarettes to smoke when all they wanted was one, and that’s a bad euphenism and I don’t condone this kind of behavior — and he lost it and killed them all. So to prove that the nature vs. nurture argument is a joke and the seventeen years of treatment did nothing, the very first thing John does when he gets released is kill an aardvarking couple in their van with a hatchet and a sledgehammer.

Dr. Joan Gilmore (Belinda Montgomery, who has been the love interest for The Man from Atlantis, Crockett’s ex-wife on Miami Vice and Doogie Howser, M.D.‘s mother) realizes that something smells bad in Denmark — or Cresthaven — and starts looking into this, only to learn that Howard Johns was already dead when the computer snafu happened. She teams up with a reporter and goes undercover as a legacy at the sorority where everything when wrong all those years ago, because she obviously realizes that she’s in a slasher movie and the killer always comes back to the scene of the crime.

There are so many plot threads going on here. There’s also the conspiracy at the mental hospital and the cyborg experiments being done on the patients that goes nowhere. Additionally two killers hired by Dr. Kruger* (Roderick Cook, who shows up in two of Becca’s favorite childhood films, 9 1/2 Weeks and Spellbinder, movies no seven-year-old should be watching and that’s why I love her) are on hand to kill off our protagonists. And there’s the killer coming back to the sorority house.

I’ve gotten this far and forgotten to inform you that Sydney Lassick (sure, he was Mr. Fromm in Carrie, but he’s also in Skatetown U.S.A.; 1941; Alligator; The Unseen and shows up as Mr. Lowry in Lady In White) plays the law in this and the house mother is Viveca Lindfors (The Bell from Hell, Creepshow). And two of the teens — Janes and Paul — are played by Katherine Kamhi and Paul DeAngelo, who we all know better as Meg and Ronnie from Sleepaway Camp.

Oh! One of the sorority girls — Barbara — is Elizabeth Kaitan from Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, Roller Blade Warriors: Taken by Force and, of course, Candy from Vice Academy 3 through 6.

Shot under the title Dark Sunday, with alternate names thrown about like Beautiful Screamers, The Omega Factor” and The Nightkillers, I have really no idea why this is called Silent Madness.

Teens are killed by vice, by steam, by nailgun and by aerobicide, while drills and crowbars and broken mirrors take out some of the antagonists. You’ll wonder, when we knew that toxic masculinity and the health care system were both the biggest issues we’d be facing as a society way back in 1984, why did we just concentrate on making sure the slasher killer was dead instead of working on the root cause? And that’s why we are where we are, except you know, there’s no real Jason Vorhees. Or Howard Johnson. Or John Howard.

Vinegar Syndrome has announced that they are putting out a 3D movie this year. This would seem to be the right one, seeing as how it fits perfectly into the other films they’ve released.

*Seeing as how this was really shot in 1983, it’s prescient that the bad guy has that name and works out of a boiler room.

Kenta Osaka and Hirohito Takimoto have teamed up to direct this tale of three Americans who escape to Japan to have fun, but end up trapped in the home of a crazy family who wish to sacrifice them to their gods.

You have to give it to the sales team for the tagline: “You’re not in Texas anymore. Welcome to Japan.”

Once when I was staying in Japan, our friend’s mother spent all this time cutting up fruit for us and it was a tremendous gesture, as it wasn’t inexpensive to put this together for us. As she came upstairs to bring this gift to us, she noticed that one of our group still had on shows and even worse, was standing on her son’s bed. She let out a shriek of pure terror and ran crying from the room at the foulness of the gaijin who had infiltrated her humble home.

Therefore, this family going nuts can be explained by how baka baka Americans can be.

Of course, my friend Macky’s mom didn’t want to murder us all in the ancient Japanese tradition of Hitobashira (The Human Pilar), which was when ancient Japanese people cemented living people into walls to keep their homes safe from the disasters the gods would send their way.

If you’re in the mood for a strange comedy with lots of gore, as well as a fight between hammers and swords, well…I can’t stop you from wanting to see this. It’s available on DVD and on demand from CultureSHOCK JAPAN and Leomark Studios, who were kind enough to send us a copy to review.

Danny Trejo has a pretty solid gig these days. Show up for a few minutes in a direct to streaming movie, get the check and keep on being cool. He’s a dependable name above the credits even if he’s only in your movie for a little while.

Joan Campbell (Rachele Brooke Smith) must battle a demon from her past that has already destroyed her family and now has taken possession of the only relative she has left, her sister. She can be a priest in this alternate reality where the Catholic Church embraces women, so this movie has that going for it.

Writer and director Robin Bain has put together a film that hits all of the moments that you want from an exorcism film while also being smart enough to dress Trejo in holy vestments and put him up against the Left Hand Path. He and Joan are all that’s left, because a suicide bomber has taken out every exorcist that the Catholic Church has trained, which is a tremendous blow to them, one imagines.

This isn’t the best exorcism movie you’ll ever see — Lord knows I’ve seen so many that I’ve made a Letterboxd list to catalogue them all — or the worst. There are a bit too many flashbacks, but just enough Catholic songs to let me know that it’s heart is in the right place.

The Last Exorcist is available on demand and on DVD from Uncork’d Entertainment, who were nice enough to send us a review copy.

The editor of Loose Limbs has killed himself, so Edward Tor Swenson gets the job. However, the more that he works on the film, the closer he gets to insanity, as a mental patient tells him that he needs to “correct the world.” At once a slasher movie and a protest against Swedish censorship, Evil Ed made its way to video store shelves in the U.S. and made quite an impact. Pretty great for a movie that only played four theaters in its home country.

Screenwriter Christer Ohlsson was an editor whose job was cutting the violence from American slasher films for the European market. I would assume that he wasn’t working on them for Italy.

The title is obviously a play on Evil Dead, which is funny, because the villain of the third film, Bill Mosely, is the voice in the killer in the Loose Limbs films. They should have made those movies, because there was a scene where a woman is attacked by a beaver and then shot in the head with a bazooka.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime and Tubi or get the blu ray from Arrow Video.

The makers of 1982’s The Ghost Dance — don’t stop, don’t stop the Ghost Dance — deserve credit for their bold decision to create the first Native American slasher. The film tells the compelling story of a medicine man named Aranjo, who becomes possessed by the spirit of Nahalla, a warrior with a deep-seated hatred for the white man.

This being 1982, one of the Native Americans — Tom Eagle — is played by Victor Mohica, a Puerto Rican actor. I was stunned to learn that Chief Jay Strongbow was really an Italian named Joe Scarpa.

Frank Salsedo is in this and was the hereditary chief of the Mishewal Wappo Tribe. He also shows up in Creepshow 2 as Ben Whitemoon.

Written and directed by Peter F. Buffa, who has a TV documentary series to his credit, this film is a thought-provoking slasher. It delves into the rich history of Native American tribes, sparking discussions about their past and their representation in cinema.

This was shot in Tucson, Arizona’s Colossal Cave, the same setting for Night of the Lepus, Frankenstein Island, The Trial of Billy Jack, The Incredible Petrified World and the Suzanne Somers against Satan made-for-TV movie Seduced By Evil.

While there is potential for a compelling narrative, it’s unfortunate that this film falls short of expectations.