Tag Archives: 1980

April Ghouls Drive-In Monster-Rama 2026 Primer: Funeral Home (1980)

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April Ghouls Drive-In Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre in Vandergrift, PA on April 24 and 25, 2026. Admission is still only $15 per person each night (children 12 and under free with adult) and overnight camping is available (breakfast included). You can buy tickets at the show, but get there early and learn more here.

The features for Friday, April 24 are Prince of Darkness, Popcorn, Fade to Black and Evilspeak.

Saturday, April 25 has Halloween 4, Halloween 5, A Bay of Blood and Funeral Home.

Oh, Canada. Your horror movies are so strange, so unlike anywhere else. You remain such a polite country, our neighbor to the north, yet you’ve given us Cronenberg’s body horror, a black Christmas and more tax-shelter slashers than one human can possibly consume. What strange horrors have you brought to me today? Oh look—it’s 1980’s Funeral Home, otherwise known by the much better (and far more Giallo-esque) title Cries in the Night.

Heather—played by Lesleh Donaldson, the quintessential Canadian scream queen who also graced Curtains and Happy Birthday to Me—is spending the summer in a small town with her grandmother, Maude (Kay Hawtrey). Maude has turned her home, which was once a funeral home, into a quaint inn. It’s the kind of business plan that only works in horror movies or if you’re looking to attract the kind of tourists who find the smell of formaldehyde rustic. Maude’s husband has been missing for several years, so she also makes ends meet by selling artificial flowers. She even has her own handyman, Billy (Jack Van Evera), who is mentally challenged in that way that 80s horror movies always portrayed: wearing overalls and acting as a giant, walking red herring.

The only problem is that when people check in, they end up missing. Like that unmarried adulterous couple—because in 1980, checking into a motel for a tryst was basically a signed death warrant. And that real estate developer who wants to buy the land. You know the rule: if you have a briefcase and a suit in a slasher movie, you’re getting a sharp object in your chest before the first act is over.

And when Heather comes home at night, she hears her grandmother talking to someone who isn’t there in the basement. It’s like Psycho, but with more maple syrup and a much slower pace.

Director William Fruet—who gave us the absolutely harrowing Death Weekend (AKA The House by the Lake) and went on to direct episodes of Goosebumps and Friday the 13th: The Series—keeps things atmospheric, even if the “shocker” ending feels like it was lifted directly from Mother Bates’ diary.

Well, it seems like Heather’s grandfather was having an affair with Helena Davis, a fact her grandmother denies to everyone, including Helena’s husband, Mr. Davis (played by Barry Morse, the Inspector from TV’s original The Fugitive). Unfortunately for the Inspector, he doesn’t find the “one-armed man” here; he just finds a pickaxe to the head.

Heather and her boyfriend Rick start investigating, finally finding the corpse of her grandfather in the cellar. Turns out, Maude hasn’t been lonely at all. She’s been keeping Grandpa’s remains in a box and developed a split personality to keep him alive. Now, Maude speaks with his gravelly voice and comes after them with an axe. It’s a total Grand Guignol moment that reminds us that grandmas in horror movies are never just baking cookies. Luckily, the police arrive just in time to stop the family reunion from getting any bloodier.

As the credits roll, the cops explain the entire plot to us in an exhaustive monologue. It’s such a weird ending, with an overly long explanation fighting for screen time with the names of the gaffers and best boys. It’s like the movie didn’t trust you to understand that “Grandma is crazy,” so they brought in the local PD to give a PowerPoint presentation.

And if you’re a purveyor of films with ripped-off artwork—and let’s be honest, who isn’t?—then check out the 1988 supernatural flick Through the Fire. It steals the Funeral Home theatrical and VHS artwork of the screaming face in the window almost pixel for pixel. In the world of regional horror and budget distribution, why pay for a new painting when you can just trace someone else’s nightmares?

Funeral Home isn’t going to change your life, but for fans of slow-burn Canadian creepiness and Lesleh Donaldson’s lungs, it’s a solid double-feature pairing with The Hearse. Just don’t go in the basement. Or the garage. Or Canada.

April Ghouls Drive-In Monster-Rama 2026 Primer: Fade to Black (1980)

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April Ghouls Drive-In Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre in Vandergrift, PA on April 24 and 25, 2026. Admission is still only $15 per person each night (children 12 and under free with adult) and overnight camping is available (breakfast included). You can buy tickets at the show, but get there early and learn more here.

The features for Friday, April 24 are Prince of Darkness, Popcorn, Fade to Black and Evilspeak.

Saturday, April 25 has Halloween 4, Halloween 5, A Bay of Blood and Funeral Home.

A movie about a socially awkward, totally obsessed film fan whose love of old films borders on the obsessive, with nights filled with movie after movie after movie? This one hits a little too close to home.

Eric Binford (Dennis Christopher, Breaking Away) works in a Los Angeles film distributor warehouse by day and watches movies by night. He’s the guy I was referring to earlier — someone so into movies he gets bullied by his family and co-workers. And when he meets Marilyn O’Connor, who looks like Marilyn Monroe, he finally finds someone whose looks are similar to the movie ideal that life does not always achieve. Or maybe he’s just so crazy that when he sees her, he goes into a fantasy fugue state and only sees what his brain will allow him to see.

Somehow, Eric is able to ask her out, but she stands him up by accident. This drives him completely out of his mind, transforming him into various film icons to destroy his enemies.

First, he re-enacts Kiss of Death by pushing his Aunt Stella (who is really his mother) down the steps, then shows up at her funeral as Tommy Udo, the role Richard Widmark played in the film. No one gets it. No one has seen the movies that Eric loves. There is no one to discuss them with. They can’t even put her grave next to Marilyn Monroe’s grave in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.

Eric then becomes Count Dracula and attends a midnight showing of Night of the Living Dead. Eric then goes to Marilyn’s house in a scene inspired by Psycho. She screams, he drops his pen into the water, and the ink becomes the blood. “I only wanted your autograph,” he yells as he runs.

Eric then goes back to find a hooker who had been rude to him. He chases her, she falls and dies, then he drinks her blood. Obviously, Eric has not seen Martin. Actually, the way this scene is intercut with scenes from old black-and-white horror films, I am certain the makers of this film have seen Romero’s vampire film.

Now that Eric has gone this far, why not dress up as Hopalong Cassidy and kill off Richie (Mickey Rourke in an early role), a co-worker who bullies him.

Oh yeah — Tim Thomerson is a criminal psychologist who is working with a policewoman (they’re having sex, because 1980 and all) to find what he believes is a serial killer. The big problem is that his captain wants all the glory for himself.

Eric talks to his aunt as if she were still alive, then, after watching Halloween (producer Irwin Yablans also produced that film), he pleases himself while looking at a photo of Marilyn Monroe.

Eric’s dream has been to own his own movie theater and to make his own movie. He tells a sleazeball named Gary Bially his idea, Alabama and the Forty Thieves, and you get the feeling that not much good can come of it.

Eric’s boss fires him and won’t allow him back into work to get his posters. As his everyday self, even when trying to talk like a movie character, Eric is impotent. But when he’s dressed as The Mummy, he can frighten his boss into a heart attack.

After seeing Gary Bially on a talk show, where he talks up the movie Eric created as his own, Eric shows up at the producer’s birthday party. Dressed as James Cagney’s character from White Heat, he fires a submachine gun at everyone in the room before killing the man who stole from him.

The cops are on to Eric, but he’s hired Marilyn for a photo shoot and is all set to re-enact The Prince and the Showgirl when Thomerson’s character arrives. Eric runs to Mann’s Chinese Theater and makes it to the roof before dying just like Cagney in White Heat, yelling, “Made it, ma! Top of the world!”

Director and writer Vernon Zimmerman also created Unholy Rollers, but this movie is way beyond that. It shows how seeing the world only through movies can be dangerous to yourself and everyone else. Eric goes from shy and withdrawn to dark and mean by the end of the movie, becoming a new character. I wonder what he would have thought about the movie made from his life?

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Kill or Be Killed (1980)

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Martial arts movies make little to no sense most of the time. Then, there’s this movie.

Steve Chase is a martial artist who goes to the desert for what he thinks is an Olympic style meet. Nope. An ex-Nazi general was defeated at the 1936 Olympics by a Japanese martial artist named Miyagi, so he’s out for revenge.  Luckily, Steve and his girl Olga escape.

To fix up his team, von Rudloff’s miniature henchman Chico goes around the world to recruit a new team. And Steve ends up meeting Miyagi and joining his team, which leads to the madcap fight between he and his girl when she is kidnapped and forced to join his team.

Finally, Steve must fight and defeat Luke, the ultimate fighter, leading the Nazi to killing himself rather than face defeat.

I’ve given you a straight reading of the film. To see it is to know how different it is, as it’s either filmed by someone who wants to be an artist or someone who has been in the sun too long. This is often the same thing.

This movie was a success for four years in its native South Africa, where many Japanese martial arts forms were done to perfection. It seems bizarre that a South African martial arts movie became a cult hit, but there’s a historical quirk here. During the 70s, international film boycotts due to Apartheid meant South Africa had to get creative. They produced a string of genre films (often dubbed for international release) that attempted to mimic Hollywood and Hong Kong trends with a fraction of the budget and ten times the weirdness.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Advent II (1980)

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JESUS IS COMING SOON… and you need to know the end time signs exploding NOW IN ISRAEL! It was the beginning of the end! No one knew when it would happen…Advent II – a chilling, realistic account of the end times – a foretaste of history’s incredible climax! This film vividly and dramatically shows how Israel – The Fig Tree – has blossomed, and the end times hour is near…and that Jesus will come in this generation!

I found this on Occult Demon Casette, and man, I want more people to watch it. Deep within the Middle East, Morris Cerullo explains how the end of the world will occur there. This is interspersed with imagery of people disappearing, like a family looking for their grandmother who has gone to Heaven and left her clothes behind. 

There are then news reports of 747 pilots vanishing mid-flight and massive automobile collisions caused by driverless cars. It gets better — we see a cemetery that has been shambled, with graves literally burst open as if a giant magnet in the sky pulled the bodies toward Paraadise.

Cerullo was a Pentecostal evangelist who traveled extensively around the world for his ministry and hosted a TV show, Victory Today. In 1990, he purchased the assets of Jim Bakker’s PTL ministry and the Heritage USA theme park.

This stars Don Galloway, who played Sgt. Ed Brown on Ironside), Claudette Nevins (from The Mask?), Tracie Savage (young Lizzie Borden from the TV movie?) and Israeli singer Irit Bulka.

I really wish there were more of these movies. This has a SOV look that I love and is genuinely frightening. Cerullo explains that in the Bible, the Fig Tree symbolizes the nation of Israel. He points to the rebirth of the country in 1948 and the reclamation of Jerusalem in 1967 as the blossoming” of that tree. Based on the Biblical promise that this generation shall not pass away until all is fulfilled, Cerullo argues that those who saw Israel become a nation will see the second coming of Christ.

The reason this film feels so strange today is the contrast between the sunny, 80s suburban family life and the sudden, silent transition into a world of martial law, looting and supernatural disappearances. It’s the ultimate What If story, told with the absolute conviction that it wasn’t a story at all, but instead a warning of what might happen about this time tomorrow evening.

You can watch this on YouTube.

ARROW VIDEO SHAW SCOPE VOLUME 4 BOX SET: Bat Without Wings (1980)

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The Bat looks like Gene Simmons, and that’s precisely why I chose to watch this. He’s some kind of martial arts supervillain who assaults and murders women and then sends back their body parts one at a time to their husbands. He’s also so strong that he kills twenty-six martial artists before he gets stopped. However, five years later, the killings begin again, despite the original Bat being chained up in a cave, surrounded by the dead bodies of his victims, kind of like a Far East Frank Zito.

Oh yeah, and the bad guy can fly and his real name is Red Baron. He also has a cave lair filled with traps, like exploding boxes and a pond filled with poison.

Look, this isn’t the best movie you’ve ever seen, but it does have a KISS-looking evil wizard martial artist in an insane cape that can leap hundreds of feet in the air, sucking the blood from women and killing men in combat.

If you can’t find a reason to enjoy that, there really is no hope for you.

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. It has a commentary by critic Samm Deighan. You can get this set from MVD.

ARROW VIDEO SHAW SCOPE VOLUME 4 BOX SET: Hex vs. Witchcraft (1980)

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Released the same year as Hex, this sorta sequel is less frightening and more gambling. And sex. Lots of sex. Sex where characters break the fourth wall and speak directly to you while they’re having it.

Chih-Hung Kuei directed this, yet there are hardly any of the maggots and worms and murder and weirdness that you want. Instead, it’s about a compulsive gambler named Cai Tou (James Yi Lui) whose bad luck is reversed when a mysterious elderly man pairs him with the ghost of his daughter.

I mean, his last plan was to get his wife to sleep with the gangster he owed money to, which ended with her decimating his scrotum and then leaving Cai Tou. Now, he has a spectral wife who is jealous of other women, yet is only able to make love to her husband by possessing them.

We live in a weird world where some cultures have gambling movies as an actual genre. Let’s love the fact that so many odd and fascinating subcultures exist.

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. You can get this set from MVD.

ARROW VIDEO SHAW SCOPE VOLUME 4 BOX SET: Hex (1980)

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Chan Sau Ying (Ni Tien) is going to die from tuberculosis, and even then, her husband Chun Yu (Wong Yung) can’t stop abusing her. Her new servant Leung Yi Wah (Chan Sze Ka) takes pity on her, and they work together to drown Chun Yu in a pond, but then Sau Ying watches as her husband rises from the swamp and seeks revenge.

Kuei Chih-Hung was making his version of Diabolique here, but that movie didn’t end with a naked woman having blood slowly spit all over her and her entire nude body covered by painted spells. Instead, the climax delivers a shocking and visceral finale that leaves a lasting impression.

Ghosts that spit green vomit, animal guts falling like rain, and a grime-and-rain-filled swamp location make this movie feel just messy and gross, which quite often is how I like it. Sure, it moves slowly in parts — it is forty years old, after all — and some of the acting leans toward silly humor when the movie seems deadly serious, but when the last ten minutes give you the sleaziest exorcism you’ve ever seen, there are no complaints.

If you’re wondering why people are fans of this movie — and it may seem slow yet full of gorgeous filmmaking — stick around. The last 15 minutes are exactly what you’re looking for.

The Arrow Vide0 release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. You can get this set from MVD.

Windows (1980)

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Oh, Windows.

Gordon Willis defined the way we saw movies in the 70s with his work on the Woody Allen films and The Godfather trilogy. But he never directed, other than this movie. Vincent Carnaby said of it, “…everything about Windows is ridiculous; including the performances of Talia Shire and Elizabeth Ashley; it has remarkably little pace of any kind, partly because anything of any interest happens off-screen and what happens off-screen is consistently, nuttily irrelevant; the camera-work, which Mr. Willis did for himself, is technically O.K.”

I mean, he sold it to me with that.

But oh, there are problems. One is, well, the homophobia. David Denby of The New Yorker said, “Windows exists only in the perverted fantasies of men who hate lesbians so much they will concoct any idiocy in order to slander them.”

Emily Hollander (Talia Shire) is all her neighbor Andrea Glassen (Elizabeth Ashley) thinks about. Emily is also attacked by a man who doesn’t have sex with her. He just wants her to beg for mercy into a tape recorder; he does it again, but Andrea saves her. Of course, Andrea has set the whole thing up and thinks that eventually, Emily will come to love her.

This came out a month before Cruising, so 1980 was a banner year for representation, huh?

This looks nice, though.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Effects (1980)

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Pittsburgh is more than just my hometown. If you believe a source as vaunted as Joe Bob Briggs, we’re also the birthplace of modern horror, thanks to George Romero and friends creating Night of the Living Dead right here (well, actually Evans City, 45 minutes north of the city).

Horror may have laid dormant for a decade or so, but the 70’s and 80’s were packed with genre-defining creations made right here in the City of Bridges. There’s Dawn of the Dead, Martin and Day of the Dead just to name a few.

Then there’s the 1980 film Effects, made by several of Romero’s friends and all about the actual process of making a scary movie and the philosophy of horror. Much like every fright flick that emerged from the Steel City — let’s not include 1988’s Flesh Eater, a movie I’m not sure anyone but S. William Hinzman has any pride in — it goes beyond simple shocks to delve into the complex nature of reality, man’s place in the world and what it means to be afraid.

Pittsburgh is also a complex city, one that started last century as “Hell with the lid off,” died in the late1970ss and rose, much like the living dead, to become a hub for tech many years later. Effects is a document of what it once was decades ago and holds powerful memories for those that grew up here.

Joe Pilato (Captain Rhodes from Day of the Dead) stars as Dominic, a cinematographer who has traveled out of the city to the mountains — around here, anything east of the city is referred to as “going to the mountains” — to be the cameraman and special effects creator for a low-budget horror movie.

In case you are from here, he’s going to Ligonier. For the rest of the world, imagine a rural wooded area, the area where Rolling Rock beer once came from — yes, I know it’s Latrobe yinzers — Anheuser-Busch bought it, moved the plant to Newark, New Jersey and stopped making it in glass-lined tanks. As a result, it now tastes like every mass produced beer out there. It’s also a place with a Story Book Forest theme park.

I tell you that to tell you this — imagine a team of horror maniacs descending on this quiet little town to make a movie about coked up psychopaths making a snuff film in the woods.

Director Lacey Bickle (John Harrison, who created the music for many of Romero’s films and directed Tales from the Darkside: The Movie) is a strange duck, one who wants to push his crew to film scenes days and nights.

Luckily, Dominick meets Celeste, a gaffer who is disliked by the rest of the crew. They quickly fall in love at the same time as our protagonist discovers that an entirely different film is being made, one whose special effects don’t need any technical wizardry. As secret cameras begin to roll, what is real and what is Hollywood by way of Allegheny County wizardry?

Dusty Nelson, Pasquale Buba, and John Harrison — the three main filmmakers — all met at public TV station WQED, the home of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood and all worked together on the aforementioned Martin. Inspired by their work on that film, they started an LLC and raised $55,000 from friends and family to make this movie.

Due to a distributor problem, Effects was never released in theaters or on home video. Its lone theatrical screenings were at the U.S. Film Fest — which is now the Sundance Film Festival — and it had its world premiere at the Kings Court theater in Oakland, right down the street from Pitt, on November 9, 1979.

According to the website Temple of Schlock, Effects was picked up by Stuart S. Shapiro, a distributor who specialized in offbeat music, horror and cult films like Shame of the Jungle and The Psychotronic Man. His International Harmony company distributed the film, but it played few, if any, theaters. Shapiro would go on to create Night Flight for the USA Network.  In October 2005, Synapse would finally release this film on DVD for the first time ever.

Pittsburgh is a lot different now. The Kings Court, once a police station turned movie theater transformed into the Beehive, a combination coffee shop movie theater, is now a T-Mobile store, a sad reminder that at one time, we rejected the homogenization of America here in Pittsburgh. Nowhere is this feeling more telling than at the end of this film, where the movie within a movie has its premiere on Liberty Avenue. Now in the midst of Theater Square, this mini-42nd Street went the very same way, with establishments like the Roman V giving way to magic and comedy clubs. As a kid, when my parents drove down this street, I was at once fascinated and frightened by dahntahn. But no longer.

ATTACK OF THE KAIJU DAY: Monstroid (1980)

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Directed by Kenneth Hartford (with uncredited co-direction from producer and writer Herbert L. Strock, who also directed The Crawling Hand, Gog, and so many more), this was filmed as Monster before also being known as Monstroid: It Came from the Lake and The Toxic Horror. 

Years ago, a woman in Colombia watched as a monster ate her husband. Now, Durado Cement has sent troubleshooter Bill Travis (James Mitchum, who we can debate is better or worse than his brother Chris) to their plant because anti-corporate people like Victor Sanchez (Aldo Sambrell) have been using fear of the monster to get workers to quit. After all, the lake and the fish have been poisoned. 

How do you solve a problem like Maria? I ask that because the villagers think she’s a witch. And oh yeah, there’s also a pesky reporter, Patty (Connie Moore), snooping around. Somewhere in all this drama, plant boss Pete Anderson (Anthony Eisley, I should have known) ignores his kids and their warning that there’s a monster in the water, which leads to his secretary Laura (Coral Kassel) getting eaten, just in time for him to make time with another woman, Juanita (Maria Rubio). I mean, Laura was even skinny dipping, at which point he just ghosted her before she got snuck on.

Glen and Andrea, Pete’s children, get photos of the monster, just as the villagers decide to burn Maria. Yes, she somehow survives being burned at the stake, just in time for Travis to fill a goat’s dead body with explosives and blow up this plesiosaur real good. And then the Andersons are having a picnic when their dog finds an egg that hatches, unleashing a new monster. 

Production began in 1971, but personnel, logistical, and financial problems — Keenan Wynn’s name was even on some press pieces, even though he had long ago dropped out — led to its shutdown. It was finally completed and released in 1979. And man, I nearly forgot that John Carradine shows up as a priest! There are so many people, so many unnecessary plot points and yet, I have a soft spot for this.

This is also based on a true story. Sure.

Check out what Bill Van Ryn had to say about this movie.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.