Satan himself releases snakes on a small town, all to get back at the ancestor of St. Patrick. If this sentence makes you say, “And then?” you are the person that this movie was made for.
The majority of director Bob Claver’s work is on the small screen. So if this feels like a TV movie to you, that’s fine. Is that even a bad thing? Not in these parts.
Father Tom Farrow (Fritz Weaver, Creepshow, Demon Seed) has lost his faith. His town? It’s getting a new dog track. And then the devil makes all the snakes go crazy! He teams up with Dr. Maggie Sheridan (Gretchen Corbett, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death) and herpetologist Dr. Paul Hendricks to save his town before its too late.
This is the debut of Christina Applegate. Her mother, Nancy Priddy, also appears in the film.
It was shot by Dean Cundy (Halloween), so there are some moments of artistic flourish despite the low budget. There’s also a scene where a snake gets its head shot off that had me fall on the floor in a fit of hysterics.
Honestly, I’ve never seen a movie that somehow rips off Jaws and 1970’s occult cinema at the same time. It also has some elements of rural backwoods melodrama, so if you like that sort of thing, this would be the movie for you. Also — a drunken priest! I’m sure here’s an IMDB search list for that!
Shout Factory released this on blu-ray along with Empire of the Ants. Talk about a double feature!
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!
Get ready for a movie completely overflowing with blasphemy shot in the Convento di Santa Priscilla in Rome (once owned by FIAT but now owned by the Secret Service). Then again, the print that Severin used for the blu-ray was found behind a false wall in a Bologna nunnery! I sum up this movie with these three words: Not fucking around.
Written by Claudio Fragasso (Rats: The Night of Terror) and directed by Bruno Mattei (The Seven Magnificent Gladiators, Robowar), this is a pull no punches nunsploitation shockfest. You think mother! was bad? Then you are by no means ready for this one. A baby gets boiled alive and that’s the very least of the shocks in store. And if you’re Catholic, well, get ready to go to confession.
Boasting a Goblin score stolen from Beyond the Darkness, you’ll get a Mother Superior who rants and raves while locked in the basement, a gardener who is up to no good, possessions, a nun bragging about having sex with the Devil and so much more. And why the fuck are dolls hanging from the ceiling of a convent? Who knows!
Oh yeah — between priests being set on fire and a nun’s severed head in the sacristy, this movie is every nightmare you had in CCD class. When Mother Vincenza yells, “The genitals are the door to evil! The vagina, the uterus, the womb; the labyrinth that leads to hell; the devil’s tools!” you’ll either cheer or recoil in terror, depending on whether or not you ever sat through a five hour Good Friday mass.
Can the young scientific priest (Carlo De Mejo, City of the Living Dead, The House by the Cemetery) stop all of the screaming nuns and bring the fear of God back to this convent? Or will an evil cat bring his doom?
Seriously. This movie tested even my resolve of how far is too far. Which is just another way to tell you that I loved it.
Severin released what is the definite version of this film. And you can also watch it at Amazon Prime. It’s on Shudder too! You have plenty of options. Just make sure you’re ready to explain this one to your family and your clergyman.
By 1981, all manner of slasher had been slashed. From dates on the calendar to holidays to high school, college, probably every trade schools, if you could kill someone someplace on some special day, there was a great chance that cinemas, drive-in and video stores had documented evidence of the murders. But a track team getting offed? What a twist!
At one of their track meets, star runner Laura Ramstead collapses at the finish line, pushed too hard by her coach and dying of exhaustion. Soon, her sister Anne is on leave from the Navy, back home with the mother and stepfather she desperately wanted to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a killer is wiping out the track team one by one, complete with giallo-like black gloves and a stopwatch. With each kill, he or she uses bright lipstick to cross another member off of the team’s photo. If Anne has gloves just like the killer, is it all a coincidence? Hmm?
There are all manner of people of interest, from Kevin, Laura’s boyfriend, to Dolores (Linnea Quigley!) the team’s bad girl and Principal Gugilone (Michael Pataki, who is in almost every movie that we watch), who has a stopwatch and plenty of knives in his desk drawer. And oh yeah, Coach Michaels (Christopher George, Gates of Hell/City of the Living Dead, Day of the Animals, Mortuary, Pieces, pretty much every movie that I watch that doesn’t have Michael Pataki in it, so this is a rare crossover), who isn’t allowed to coach any longer, despite the fact that it was a blood clot that really killed Laura.
Hey look! There’s Vanna White as a school bully! And more dead bodies! Soon, Kevin and Coach Michaels get into a huge argument over who the killer is, but the cops get there and shoot the wrong guy. Yep, it’s Kevin and he has Laura’s corpse all made up in her graduation cap and gown. He also has a sweet Vampirella poster on his wall.
A fight ensues and Anne ends up pushing Kevin into spikes — but not before body after body is revealed. That night, he comes back to kill her — an undead version of him at least — but it’s all a dream. It’s just her asshole stepfather, which makes it even easier to leave the town behind forever.
I ended up liking this one way more than I thought that I would. It has some elements of style, plenty of gore and lots of ridiculous moments, like a bed of spikes killing a high jumper. Plus, there’s a heavy metal concert with the band Felony, a roller disco scene and a combination football/knife murder weapon. Truly, something for every member of the family to enjoy. Director Herb Freed also gave us Tomboy and Haunts.
Want to watch it? It’s free with an Amazon Prime membership!
In 2015 — remember when — the US government outlawed gasoline, only allowing the elite, the military and law enforcement to use it. No one is allowed to own or use a car and those who go against the law are called Burners, who are policed by the DVC (the Department of Vehicle Control).
Red (Darren McGavin, Carl Kolchak himself) is a Burner who loves his 1980 Trans Am. His son, Cameron, has no interest in cars and continually gets upset at his father for breaking the law.
Another Burner is working with a Senator to make civilian use of cars legal again, but as he’s on his way, a DVC squad led by McBain (Doug McClure, SST: Death Flight, TV’s The Virginian) intercepts him. Dolan, one of the crazier DVC members, blows the guy up with a grenade launcher. Shana, another team member, is upset about this and how the matter has been handled.
Red keeps trying to get Cameron into cars, including having him watch a race between him and Indy, a Burner who races a Mustang. But Cameron is more into Indy’s daughter Jill, who shows him how to drive a dune buggy. While the two older men race, they run afoul of the DVC.
Cameron and Jill have better plans — they go to a barn to have sex. Of course, the DVC attack them, kicking Cameron’s wimpy ass and stealing Jill. It’s up to the two Burners to save her.
Shana helps them out and Cameron and Jill use Red’s Firebird to drive the Senator to the meeting while Red gets to know Shana better.
Is it a coincidence that this Canadian movie — and the Canadian band Rush in the song “Red Barchetta” — both created a world where racing cars were illegal?
This movie never gets as good as the poster. Or as what it should be about. That said, Darren McGavin does this material a favor and seems like he’s having fun. It’s an interesting concept and I wish it had been better, but there you go. As Orange Goblin says, “Some you win. Some you lose.”
Looks like we’re staying in Canada for another day, thanks to this 1981 slasher, directed by J. Lee Thompson (the original Cape Fear, Conquest for the Planet of the Apes, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, 10 to Midnight, Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects…man, J. Lee, what a resume!).
Virginia “Ginny” Wainwright (Melissa Sue Anderson, TV’s House on the Prarie) is popular, rich and pretty. She’s a member of the biggest clique at the fancy pants Crawford Academy — the Top Ten. These snobbish, rich and rude assholes rule the school and — if you’re anything like me — you’ll celebrate their brutal deaths. Just look at how they act at their local pub, the Silent Woman. Total dicks.
One night, Top Ten member Bernadette (Canadian scream queen Lesleh Donaldson, who has been in several films we’ve featured recently) is attacked in her car by someone without a face. She plays dead, then finds someone she knows. As she explains what has just happened, the real killer slices her throat.
The rest of the gang? They could give a shit. They’re all at the bar, putting mice into old men’s beer. It’s enough to make you want to be the killer and wipe them out. But it gets worse. They play chicken on a drawbridge and are all nearly killed. Ginny even yells “mother!” as the car goes over the opening bridge. Everyone survives, but Ginny runs away, all the way to the cemetery where she tells her mother that she’s been accepted by all of the rich kids.
When she gets home, her father yells about how she’s out past curfew. And while that’s happening, Etienne, one of the Top Ten, sneaks out a pair of her underwear.
The next day, Ginny and Ann arrive late to class, leading principal Mrs. Patterson to put the entire Top Ten on notice, threatening a ban on their favorite bar. Soon, a frog dissection leads to Ginny having flashbacks that she shares with Dr. David Faraday (Glenn Ford, slumming it after a career in films like Superman, Gilda and Pocketful of Miracles), her psychiatrist.
This is where Happy Birthday to Me pulls the rug out from under us — thirty minutes or more into the film. After the accident at the drawbridge, she underwent an experimental medical procedure to restore her brain tissue.
Meanwhile, the Top Ten are thankfully getting bumped off, one by one. Etienne dies like Isadora Duncan, his scarf caught in the wheels of his motorcycle. Greg gets killed lifting weights. Here’s where the film has a bit of a giallo feel — all of the murders are done by black-gloved hands, until Alfred (Jack Blum, Meatballs) follows Ginny to her mother’s grave, only for our heroine to stab him with garden shears. What?!?
During Ginny’s 18th birthday weekend, her father leaves town, so she goes to a school dance. There, she invites Steve (Matt Craven, Meatballs) home to smoke weed, drink wine and eat kabobs, as you do. However, while feeding Steve, she stabs him in the mouth, a murder so memorable it ended up on the poster and box cover.
The next morning, Ann comes over while Ginny takes a shower and has a major flashback. Four years ago, she was having a birthday party but none of the Top Ten would come. Her mother flipped out, got drunk and tried to take her to Ann’s competing party, where a groundskeeper told her that she would never be anything more than the town whore. Her mother gets drunker and drives off the bridge from earlier in the film, where she drowns and Ginny barely survives.
Ginny begins to think that she has killed all of her friends, including Ann who she finds in the tub. Dr. Faraday has no answers, so she kills him with a fireplace poker.
Whew! What happens next? Well, Ginny’s dad gets home and sees blood all over the place, as well as Amelia (Lisa Langlois, Phobia, The Nest) outside in shock. Running to the cemetery, he sees his wife’s grave has been opened and Dr. Faraday’s body is in it. Then, entering the guest quarters, every one of the Top Ten members’ bodies are arranged around a table, celebrating a birthday.
Ginny arrives with a cake, singing to herself, when she slices her father’s throat. He never sees that his daughter is really there, the only living guest at the party. The second Ginny, the killer, screams about having done all of this for Ginny, but it turns out that she is Ann! The girls are half-sisters, sharing a father! What?!?
Ginny escapes and stabs Ann, just as the police arrive to ask, “What have you done?” The film fades to black — never letting us know if Ginny will be jailed or proven innocent. Then the film closes with a goofy — yet awesome — closing song by Stevie Wonder’s ex-wife Syreeta.
Columbia Pictures went full William Castle promoting this movie, suggesting theaters re-create the film’s closing scene in their lobby, inviting people to celebrate their birthday party while watching the movie, preventing anyone from entering the film during its last ten minutes and scream contest for radio stations.
Happy Birthday to Me arrived in theaters at the height of the slasher boom, but it defies expectations. At times, it’s a giallo. At other times, it’s supernatural. And others, it’s a teen comedy. It’s also crazy that such a directorial talent made it — albeit one who was rumored to spray blood all over the set to make the film even gorier — and Glenn Ford are in a slasher!
It’s totally fun and a great watch, which you can find on Shudder.
Potter’s Bluff is one of those perfectly gorgeous New England coastal towns. You know, the kind where visitors are beaten, tied to a post and set on fire while people take photos of them. And then, when they survive, nurses stab them right in the eyeball with a syringe.
Dead and Buried was written by the Alien team of Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett and featured Stan Winston special effects, so the poster was justified in shouting, “From the people who brought you Alien…” Unfortunately, those people do not include Ridley Scott, as we have Gary Sherman directing this (he also helmed Poltergeist III). That said, O’Bannon disowned the film, claiming that Shusett had actually written it by himself but needed O’Bannon’s name on the project to get it made. He never made any of O’Bannon’s suggestions before it was produced.
Sheriff Dan Gillis (James Farentino, The Final Countdown) is our hero and he is working with Dobbs (Jack Albertson, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and TV’s Chico and the Man), the town’s coroner/mortician to solve the murders that have gripped their small town. And with each one, a photo of the murder is found.
As Gillis rushes to a suspected attack, he accidentally hits a man, whose arm is stuck in the grill of his car. The man attacks the sheriff, then takes his arm and runs away. Further research shows that a tissue sample of the man shows that he has already been dead for four months.
The sheriff begins to suspect everyone, including Dobbs, who he learns was fired from his last job for conducting unauthorized autopsies, and his wife Janet (Melody Anderson, Flash Gordon), who has begun to teach witchcraft to her students.
It turns out that Dobbs has learned how to reanimate the dead and that nearly everyone in town — I’m looking at you, Robert Englund — are under his control. He considers himself an artist who improves the lives of the dead after he controls them. Just then, the sheriff notices that his hands are rotting and Dobbs offers to repair him. That’s because he’s been dead all along, as his zombie wife had killed him during sex, a scene he watches as its projected on the wall.
Dead & Buried has a great trailer that it lives up to. While it feels very Carpenter-esque, it lacks the style and verve of his films. That said, there are some interesting touches, such as the director avoiding the color red throughout the film so that the murders would be more shocking.
If you can find a copy, I’d certainly recommend this movie. I’d been wanting to see it for years and while it’s not the best horror film of the 80’s, it’s something different that isn’t so well known.
Director Joseph Zito really cranked ’em out in the 1980’s, with films like Invasion U.S.A., Red Scorpion, the original Missing in Action and 1984’s Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. This one’s an interesting tweak to the slasher formula, plus it has what all gory movies need most: the imaginative grand guignol artistry of Tom Savini.
June 28, 1945: World War 2 may be coming to an end, but Rosemary Chatham is also ending her relationship with her boyfriend. The war’s gone on too long and she can’t wait for him any longer. As she attends the Avalon Bay graduation dance with her new boyfriend, they decide to slip out and make out at the point. Mid-tryst, a man in an army uniform impales them both, leaving behind a rose.
June 28, 1980: Pam McDonald has finally convinced the town to have a graduation dance, the first since Rosemary was murdered. Her boyfriend, Mark London (Christopher Goutman, who went on to be a soap opera director) is the town’s deputy and in charge as his boss, Sheriff Fraser(Farley Granger, Strangers on a Train, What Have They Done to Your Daughters?, Amuck!) is heading to his cabin for the weekend.
Pam has some help — or well, she did — in Lisa, Sherry and Carl. The latter two are killed by The Prowler from the opening — Carl with a bayonet through his brain and Sherry by pitchfork. The blood is copious in both murders and the murderer leaves behind a rose.
At the dance, Pam gets upset when Lisa dances with her boyfriend and she gets a drink on her dress. Back at her dorm, the Prowler chases her, but at the last minute, she runs into Major Chatham (noted Hollywood crazy person rulebreaker Lawrence Tierney, who was arrested a dozen times in seven years and claimed he “threw away about seven careers through drink.” You may know him as the boss of the Reservoir Dogs and as Elaine’s dad on Seinfeld. During the shooting of that episode, he stole a butcher knife from the set and when Jerry Seinfeld asked him about it, he made threatening motions toward him while claiming he was just imitating Psycho. I could — and can and will and do — go on about Lawrence Tierney), a war veteran who grabs at her.
That’s when Pam realizes that the major’s daughter was Rosemary, the girl killed 35 years ago. Right around then, Lisa and Paul argue and he gets arrested for public drunkenness. Lisa decides to go swimming and gets her throat cut by The Prowler. Another girl, Allison, tries to find her and is killed as well.
Mark tries to call the Sheriff, but can’t get through. A shopkeeper tells the deputy that there are some kids up in the graveyard and when he investigates, Lisa’s body is in an open grave. They go to the major’s house to investigate and Mark is attacked and left for dead. Pam is chased through the house, learning that none other than the Sheriff is the Prowler. She is able to turn his gun on him and blow his head his shoulders.
After its all over, Pam returns to her dorm and discovers the bodies of Sherry and Carl. Carl comes to life and grabs her, but she’s just in the end of the movie hallucination shock scene that we all know and maybe love from Carrie.
The Prowler is mostly worth it for the extended gore sequences. It came out in the middle of the slasher cycle, so it has plenty of the hallmarks (maybe that’s not the right word) of the genre. You can catch it on Shudder and marvel at Savini’s handiwork for yourself. PLUS! They have it with Joe Bob Briggs commentary now!
Night of Fear and Inn of the Damned are two of Australia’s first horror films. Their director, Terry Bourke, would go on to create this film, a quasi-slasher stalker film that’s packed with plenty of weirdness.
Gordon Mason is a handyman that’s obsessed with Marie Coleby, a young singer who treats everyone around her with snarling contempt. The film starts with what seems like him taking care of her needs, but he really just has a blow up doll that he pretends is her. She treats everyone around her like garbage, but Mason demands an apology from her, unlike everyone else. Later, he spies on her being tied up by a boyfriend.
Later that day, he breaks into her apartment, continually plays one of her songs and rapes her, thinking that it’s what she wants from what he watched before. Oh yeah — this dude also spends much of the film wandering around in mirrored shades, wearing a speedo and showing off one hell of a porn mustache.
After all that, she ends up biting Mason, so he holds her upside down and drowns her in a fish tank. Welcome to Australian film!
Mason gets caught by a neighbor, so he kills the man and his dog, too. But the killer had no idea that Marie’s sister, Jenny, is coming to visit. She instantly finds Marie’s jewels in the fish tank and the neighbor’s dead dog. Soon, Mason has transferred his stalkerly affection to her and only two policemen (the younger one being Roger Ward from Mad Max and Turkey Shoot) can save her.
What follows are the kind of antics that set Australian films apart: cops being set on fire, dead bodies being hidden in sheds, people being shot over and over, cops trying to drown their suspects and so much more.
This film didn’t come out in the US until 1986 and has never been released on DVD or Blu-Ray in this country. Is it worth a release? There have certainly been worse films put out. It’s cheesy and not a little ridiculous, but it ends up being pretty tense by the end.
If an old man tells you to not open the old mine, you should just leave the old mine closed. No one tells you these sorts of things without a reason. After all, there could be turtle creatures lurking in there, ready to kill everyone.
Our friends at Jensen Farley Productions took a break from In Search of Historic Jesus and The Outer Space Connection to produce this film that is a strange mix between 1950’s science fiction and a slasher. It’s also filled with one of the horniest male characters in the history of 1980’s horror and that’s saying plenty.
Awhile back, a silver mine closed after everyone in it but one person died. Brian Deering (John Crawford, The Towering Inferno) and Dan Ostroff are in town to make it happen, along with two young guys, Roger Lowrie and Mark Kinner. They’re making the closed mine modern and also find tons of bones, but no one complete skeleton. It’s at this point that I would move on to the next mine. But I’m not in The Boogens. I’m just a viewer. And I’m also a viewer who was five beers in at the drive-in while watching it.
Roger and Mark are soon joined by Mark’s girl Jessica (Anne-Marie Martin, Prom Night, the TV version of Dr. Strange) and another girl named Trish (Rebecca Balding, Silent Scream). While this is all going on, the landlady comes to open up their house, hits a deer, goes into a ditch, walks to the house in the freezing cold and then gets pulled into the basement and killed by what we can only assume is a Boogen.
Roger has, by now, been the horniest dude ever and mentioned how many times he’s going to have sex with Jessica and how long it’s been since they have had sex (twelve days, trust me, I heard it a hundred times). Through whim of fate, Mark and Trish also hook up and we’re treated to some heavy petting. But as Dr. Dealgood once told to the fine folks of Bartertown, “Dying time is here!”
Also: Greenwalt (Jon Lormer, who gets his cake in Creepshow) is sneaking around and it’s revealed that his father was the lone survivor of the mine. He’s gonna blow up the mine real good to get rid of the Boogens.
The last fifteen minutes finally being the energetic fun that Stephen King’s blurb about it promised. That is, if you find turtle monsters scary. Or whatever that are. But you know, I’ve fallen in love with this strange movie the more I’ve watched it.
Director James L. Conway also directed Hangar 18, as well as numerous TV shows (he’s currently working on Orville and The Magicians, was a producer on Charmed and even married Rebecca Balding during the filming).
If you want to check out The Boogens, you can grab the DVD or blu-ray at Olive Films.
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