Before the internet, movies used to get sold at conventions and they’d give away pins and t-shirts after showing trailers. I had a Shocker shirt that I wore before the movie even came out and man, did I learn my lesson.

Here’s where I upset a good chunk of people by saying that outside of his TV movies, the first Freddy and The People Under the Stairs, I dislike just about everything that Wes Craven ever did.  His films feel pretty lazy to me and like the work of someone who had no interest in doing horror. Shocker is another cash-in on his part, an attempt to make a new slasher villain who, well, acts pretty much exactly like Freddy Krueger.

Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi) is that killer and he starts the movie by killing off Heather Langenkamp, pretty much using that whole old wrestling logic of jobbing out someone else’s archrival just to get over a new heel who will never really draw like the original. He also kills the entire family of Lt. Don Parker (Michael Murphy), except for his foster son Jonathan (Peter Berg, yes, the man who would go on to direct Friday Night Lights).

For some reason, Jonathan and Horace have a mental connection, which doesn’t help when the murderer kills the football star’s girl Alison. However, the dream world — umm, yes, this is not an Elm Street movie — leads Jonathan to Pinker who is executed in the chair but ends up escaping, just like House 3 (AKA The Horror Show). Or Prison. Or Destroyer. They all came out before Shocker.

In another example of “because horror movies,” Jonathan is Pinker’s son and the villain has sold his soul to Satan to keep killing via electricity, which is not as cool as getting to sniff Satanic cocaine like the similarly themed El Violador Infernal.

This is the kind of movie where you get bored and instead play spot the cameo of people like former Alice Cooper guitarist Kane Roberts or Ted Raimi or Dr. Timothy Leary.

Of course, no Wes Craven non-blockbuster — well, it did make triple its budget — would be complete without an excuse. This time, it’s the MPAA’s fault for cutting out all the gore.

Shocker was probably best known in my teenage years as providing the soundtrack in which Megadeth covered Alice Cooper’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” as well as a title song from The Dudes of Wrath, a metal supergroup made up of The Dudes of Wrath, a supergroup composed of Paul Stanley and Desmond Child on vocals, Vivian Campbell and Guy Mann-Dude on guitars, Rudy Sarzo on bass, Tommy Lee on drums and Michael Anthony and Kane Roberts singing back up. Dangerous Toys also submitted a song about the movie, so there’s that.

Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis came up with Back to the Future five years before it got made, but at that time, it wasn’t raunchy enough to get greenlit. After their film Used Cars came out, Gale was looking through his father’s high school yearbook. His mother wondered if he would have been friends with his father. Time travel was the only way they’d get the answer.

The duo wanted to make a time travel film that showed that the past could change the future. And sure, Professor Brown was once a video pirate and the time machine was going to be powered by Coke, but the main story remained the same as the movie was finally sold.

Then the movie went into turnaround and forty different studios turned down the movie. Other time travel films like Time Bandits and The Final Countdown had underpeformed and Disney was put off by the fact that the hero made out with his mom. I mean, well, yeah.

Steven Spielberg believed in them and the script. And that ended up being enough.

That and the fact that Zemeckis had a success with Romancing the Stone and had the clout to make the movie. And a grudge against the studios who turned him down, so he sold the movie to Spielberg’s Amblin, who set the project up at Universal Studios. However, that’s also where Frank Price, the first person to say no, worked. Spielberg didn’t like Price either — he’d passed on E.T. — so Sidney Sheinberg became the chief executive to oversee the studio’s investment.

For his part, Sheinberg wanted to rename the movie Space Man from Pluto because he believed Back to the Future wouldn’t sell. Everyone worried how to deal with the venerable elder man until Spielberg diffused the situation by sending a funny memo that said, “Hi Sid, thanks for your most humorous memo, we all got a big laugh out of it, keep ’em coming.”

Michael J. Fox was the first choice to play Marty McFly, but the producers of his hit show Family Ties didn’t even let him see the script. Eric Stoltz ended up with the role, but he was too intense. The filmmakers realized they hired a great actor for the wrong role. Stoltz also was a method actor and stayed in character the entire time, refusing to answer to any name but Marty, which led to the crew hating him. 34 days of shooting were lost — they kept shooting with the actor despite Fox being hired — and Stoltz was paid his entire salary.

Another perhaps exaggerated story is that Thomas F. Wilson, who played Biff, almost had his collarbone broken in the scene where he fights Marty in the cafeteria. Take after take, despite Wilson asking Stoltz to calm down, the actor kept roughing him up. Wilson planned to get a reciept in the car parking scene outside the dance, but Stoltz was gone before that happened.

Despite the issues behind the movie, audiences loved the story of Marty McFly going back in time thanks to Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) and having to put back together the events that introduced his parents (Lea Thompson and Crispin Glover). What audieces really liked was the DeLorean, a car that was unlike any time machine they’d ever seen in a movie before.

The one thing I never liked about this movie is that it posits that a white man now creates rock and roll. I know it’s a minor part, but even as a kid, it upset me.

Speaking of music, when Marty pretends to be Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan, he plays a tape labelled “Edward Van Halen.” It’s not any existing Van Halen song, but an untitled song that was written for The Wild Life, which also starred Eric Stoltz (and where producers discovered Lea Thompson as they studied Stoltz’s work).

Bonus: You can listen to Becca and me discuss this movie on our podcast.

For all the love that people have for Rad, let me tell you, Trashin’ was just as big in the video rental stores of my youth. Maybe it’s because I skated and so much of my culture came from Thrasher Magazine, but this movie is just as good to me, if not as celebrated today. I mean, Vinegar Syndrome isn’t rushing out a 4K of this one.

Corey Webster (Josh Brolin!) is an amateur skateboarder new to L.A. who wants to win a downhill competition when he meets Chrissy (Pamela Gidley, Cherry 2000 herself!), a girl who knocks him for a loop. She just happens to be the sister of Hook (Robert Rusler, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge), the leader of The Daggers, a punk rock skateboard gang who now wants to knock out our hero.

Sure, it all works out, but along the way, some of the greatest skaters of the 80s show up, like Tony Alva, Tony Hawk, Lance Mountain, Christian Hosoi and Steve Caballero. There are also appearances by Brooke McCarter (Paul of The Lost Boys), Brett Marx (Jimmy Feldman from The Bad News Bears movies) and Josh Richman, who directed several Guns ‘n Roses videos. Oh yeah — Sherilyn Fenn plays Velvet, one of the Daggers’ girls.

The soundtrack to this is kinda all over the place, with a theme song by Meat Loaf, of all people, yet there are plenty of scene correct punk and metal shirts, as well as Fear and the Circle Jerks songs. Perhaps the best music part of this film is an appearance by the Freaky Styley-era Red Hot Chili Peppers, back before anyone cared who they were and they’d show up in movies like this and Tough Guys.

Director David Winters started his career as an actor, showing up on Broadway in West Side Story and Gypsy before becoming a choreographer — he was the first to choreograph the Watusi, originated the Freddie and helped Elvis and Ann-Margaret dance in Viva Las Vegas. His first directorial effort was the Alice Cooper film Welcome to my Nightmare and he also was behind the Joe Spinell movie The Last Horror Film. His producing credits are insane, with everything from Linda Lovelace for President* to Young Lady Chatterley, Killer Workout and owned Action International Pictures, where David Prior made all manner of films.

So yeah. Thrashin’. Go find it.

*Lovelace dated Winters after divorcing Chuck Traynor. She credited him for introducing her to culture.

Yeah, I have no idea how we haven’t covered this yet.

Actually, we try to avoid movies that everyone has seen and said things about, because I often worry, “What else can I add to the conversation?”

In truth, I’d seen Evil Dead II before the original and preferred the comic take on the same story. And Army of Darkness takes that goofiness, mixes in some peplum and Harryhausen and gets even cooler. I’ve ever seen — and been coated with gore during — the stage play. And we even talked about Within the Woods, the proof of concept that sold this movie.

What can I say about this movie that’s new and different? Do you want me to say something like, “It’s a less claymation version of Equinox?” Because, yes, I absolutely believe that to be true but I’m still pretty amazed by what Sam Raimi and his skeleton crew were able to get out of this movie.

How great is it that Raimi’s career started here, mounting a camera to a board and running through the woods chasing people to try and get the perfect shot? Evil Dead is infused with a heavy metal energy and blows through 85 minutes like a band blasting as many songs as it can in one set so it can rock your face off.

Where the later movies lose their edge slightly — there’s no way Ash is getting killed — everyone in this movie is fair game. It feels dangerous and unhinged, as only the best horror movies can be.

I mean, it must have worked out. They’re still making sequels and video games and toys, after all.

As Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally” blares, helicopters carrying Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Poncho (Richard Chaves), Billy (Sonny Landham), Mac (Bill Duke), Hawkins (Shane Black), Blain (Jesse Ventura) and Dillon (Carl Weathers) lands in Central America to free a foreign cabinet minister and his aide.

On their way to the target, Dutch discovers a destroyed helicopter and three skinned bodies of a failed rescue attempt. After Dutch’s team decimates the enemy, including some Soviet officers, they learn that it was all a set-up by Dillon to get information from the enemy. Only one is left alive — Anna (Elpidia Carrillo) — so the team takes her to the extraction zone.

And this is where Predator flips the script.

Written by Jim and John Thomas (Mission to Mars, Executive Decision) and directed by John McTiernan (Die Hard, Last Action Hero), this film starts as a testosterone-laced ode to American firepower and then becomes a slasher, as the team is followed by an invisible, nearly-unstoppable alien hunter (Kevin Peter Hall) who has come from space just for the sport of hunting these soldiers.

The inspiration for the film came from a joke that after Rocky IV, Stallone had run out of opponents on Earth. If they made another film, he’d have to fight an alien. Jim and John Thomas were inspired by that and wrote Hunter, which became Predator. One could argue that they had seen Without Warning, which is nearly the same idea, with an alien — armed with futuristic weaponry and also played by Kevin Peter Hall — on Earth to hunt humans.

There are so many stories about how JCVD was once the Predator. Why that ended is up for debate. Maybe it’s because Van Damme was ony 5’9″. Or it could have been because all Jean Claude did was complain about the suit being so hot that he kept passing out. Or maybe the original design just didn’t work. The Stan Winston redesign? It’s as iconic as the xenoomorphs of Alien, which the Predator would get to battling soon enough.

Predator just works. I’m a fan of Predator 2 as well, but the first film is absolutely perfect. The ultimate hunter against the ultimate soldier? Yeah, this is what an action movie should be.

The art for this article comes from Killian Eng.

Straight out of the suburbs of Montreal, Canada*, Zombie Nightmare was originally written to start black actors but the money people wanted white character names and actors. Yes, that really happened.

After baseball practice, William Washington saves Molly Mekembe from two thugs who kill him. A few years later, a similar fate befalls his son Tony (Jon Mikl Thor!) when he stops a robbery and is then hit by a car driven by Bob, Amy (Tia Carrere), Jim (Shawn Levy, who would goon to direct Big Fat Liar, Cheaper by the Dozen and the Night at the Museum movies), Peter and Susie.

Tony’s mother — wearing the same sweater as Pamela Vorhees — brings in Molly, who is now a voodoo priestess, and then uses her son’s zombie form to get revenge on the teenagers. As the murders begin, crooked cop Tom Churchman (Adam West) is on the case and man, he likes to shoot things. I guess that corruption and a love of guns are a few of the prerequisites of being a police officer.

Man, the casting for this movie makes me overjoyed. Tony was originally played by bodybuilder Peewee Piemonte, who I assure you is a real person and has been in Barb Wire, My Demon Lover, Under Siege, Weekend at Bernie’s II and over three hundred credits for stuntwork. Well, the story is that Piemonte was fired for eating all the craft services and the meals of crew members. Superstar Billy Graham was originally going to play Tony’s father, but no one picked hi, up at the airport. Yes, that really happened.

Beyond Thor contributing music from his band and doing the soundtrack under the name Thorestra, Motörhead, Virgin Steele, Girlschool, Fist and Death Mask songs are in this movie. There’s also a song by Thor’s then-wife and backup singer Rusty “Pantera” Hamilton (note that the cover of the DVD says Pantera, which isn’t a lie but isn’t the truth).

As for the director and producer of this movie, Jack Bravman, the majority of his film career was in the adult industry, using names like Wizard Glick, J. Angel Martini and Looney Bear.

You can watch this on Tubi.

*Writer John Fasano, who acted in Blood Sisters and painted the poster for Tenement, wanted to set this in his hometown of Port Washington, New York, but they could not get permits.

Jodea (Chloe Traicos, who wrote this film; she grew up in Zimbabwe and had to leave the country after making the documentary A Stranger in my Homeland due to how critical it was against leader Robert Mugabe) is a struggling actress who can’t seem to catch a break until she rear-ends the car of Zac Kawalski (Jeff Coppage), a movie director dealing with his past drug addiction and a famous wife (Yadira Pascault Orozco) who doesn’t want anything to do with her husband or his new movie.

Zac thinks his movie can be a blockbuster if he can get action hero Ethan Burns (Kayd Currier) in the lead. As for the female role, he thinks an unknown can handle it. That’s when fate places Jodea in his life and he makes a bet with his agent. If he can get Jodea ready for the role in thirty days, he’ll get Ethan to be in the movie.

Director Jon Cohen’s take on My Fair Lady may not break any new ground, but it’s a well told movie that doesn’t need big stars or special effects to be enjoyable.

Introducing Jodea will be released in theaters on June 4.

Three friends — Stephanie (Elizabeth Grullon), Alex (Damian Joseph Quinn) and Bryan(Clayton Farris) — are on a road trip when they run across a cult that likes to take the heads of its victims and always seems to show up when someone is engaging in the vehicular application of phallically obtaining a throat culture.

As Stephanie tries to get over a breakup, she joins Alex and Bryan, who are a couple, on a vacation to Isola Lake, which is now dry. That’s just the first bad thing that happens and things get worse when The Executioner shows up looking like he emerged from an Italian sword and sorcery film.

I don’t want to give too much away, because there were moments in this movie that genuinely surprised me, including the secret society that The Executioner belongs to. It’s not a perfect film — there aren’t too many people to root for — but the moments that work, like Stephanie hallucinating her ex. Not all of it comes together, but the parts that do work pretty well.

Director David Del Rio has acted in several movies, but this is the first that I’ve seen him create. It was written by Justin Xavier, who also wrote another Del Rio-directed movie, Sick for Toys. I’ll be keeping my eyes open to see what they do next.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime.

Dimitri Logothetis is still out there making movies. Just last year, he made the Nicholas Cage film Jui-Jitsu and before that he rebooted the Kickboxer movies. But way back when, he made this metal-themed film that finds a college kid named Alex Gardner (Nicholas Celozzi) reliving the murders of a vicious killer who died on Alcatraz.

You know, it’s your typical human drama where your friends find you floating above a bed and when a college professor finds out, instead of recommending therapy, they tell you to go to Alcatraz and face down the ghost of the killer.

Of course, Alex’s brother gets possessed by the killer, so our hero has to find a ghost for help. That ghost would be Sammy Mitchell (Toni Basil), who was once the singer for the band Bodybag. Seeing as how she’s played by the woman who was one of the original seven Lockers, a dancer in films like Head and the choreographer of the Talking Heads’ “Once In a Lifetime” — among so many other creative things — Sammy teaches our hero how to dance.

Dance your heart out Alex, so that your friends can blow your demon-addled brother up real good on Alcatraz! Now there’s a metal lyric that I just wrote, free of charge, that your band may use for inspiration.