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.

Also known as Murder by Phone, this Canadian slasher — of sorts — boasts an interesting pedigree, as it features actors like John Houseman and Richard Chamberlain, as well as a score by James Bond series composer John Barry.

The U.S. print of this — Murder by Phone — is 17 minutes shorter than the Canadian and international The Calling cuts. You’ll miss out on so much of a disgruntled phone employee using the phone lines — is he using a Captain Crunch whistle? Any phone phreaks reading this? — to kill people.

This will be part of my telephone-based drive-in horror night that I am curating, so…I guess stay tuned for that. These are the movies you never knew you wanted but here they are, calling and calling until you pick up. Consider this a not-as-good Scanners with Chamberlain looking very Gibb brother who is way too invested in solving this case. Gotta love the end freeze frame as he just has to answer that phone.

You can watch this on YouTube.

The third National Lampoon movie* to reach theaters — it was filmed after National Lampoon Goes To The Movies — this was written by John Hughes, who was pretty unhappy with the final product. He’d tell the Chicago Tribune, “They didn’t even want me around, and I was shocked when I saw the movie”. My screenplay had been completely butchered, and my name will nevertheless be on the credits forever.” That said, I think no one but me remembers this movie and Hughes ended up doing just fine.

The film failed at the box office and the Lampoon name would end up being hit and miss, with films like National Lampoon’s Animal House and National Lampoon’s Vacation being all time comedy classics and others like National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1, National Lampoon’s Barely Legal and National Lampoon Presents Surf Party (amongst many, many others) became a series of dwindling returns, much like the magazine would be after most of its talent left.

If you’re hoping for the wit of the infamous National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook Parody, know that P.J. O’Rourke and Doug Kenney had nothing to do with this film. No, instead this is the tenth reunion of the class of Lizzie Borden High School and they’re being haunted by Walter Baylor, a student who had a prank played on him, ala Terror Train and Slaughter High.

The film certainly has a great cast. I’m always pleased to see Gerrit Graham (Phantom of Paradise,TerrorVision) on my screen. Plus, there’s Michael Lerner (Barton Fink), Misty Rowe (Hee-Haw, SST Death Flight), Blackie Dammett (the father of Anthony Kiedis, who is awesome in Nine Deaths of the Ninja), Miriam Flynn (Cousin Catherine from the Vacation movies), Stephen Furst (Flounder from Animal House), Mews Small (who was in the original Broadway production of Grease) and Anne Ramsey (Mama Fratelli from The Goonies).

It also has an on-screen performance by Chuck Berry performing a medley of his songs (“It Wasn’t Me”, “My Dingaling”, and “Festival”) and a theme song by Gary U.S. Bonds.

In a world of slasher silliness — I’m looking at you, Wacko, Pandemonium, Student Bodies and Saturday the 14th — this one isn’t all that good. It does, however, posit something that no other slasher in my memory really has done before. It redeems its killer.

In the very same year of this film’s release, director Michael Miller would make another strange slasher hybrid, Silent Rage, which features Chuck Norris against an unstoppable killer. MIller would use most of the crew from this movie and Stephen Furst for that one, too.

*I’m not counting TV movie Disco Beaver from Outer Space in the list of National Lampoon films.

How many names can one movie have? A bunch, because this is also known as X-Ray, Be My Valentine Or Else and Ward 13. It’s directed by Boaz Davidson, the man who was behind Lemon Popsicle and its depressing as anything American version The Last American Virgin. That name brought me joy when it was on screen, just as much as seeing the Cannon name before the credits sent me into paroxysms of joy.

Back in 1961, a boy named Harold gave Susan Jeremy a valentine and when she made fun of it with her friend David, he breaks in and hangs her friend from a hatstand.

Susan grew up to be four-time Playboy covergirl Barbi Benton (Deathstalker). Well, that’s who is playing her. She’s just gotten divorced and has to head in for some routine tests at a hospital. Literally, the minute she walks in, an evil doctor laughs while looking at pictures of her as a kid.

Better slashers have started with less.

This is the kind of movie that really uses its environment in the best way possible, as orthopedic saws send heads flying and sinks filled with acid melt faces.

If you recognize the kids from the beginning, they’re Billy Jacoby and Elizabeth Hoy who were the murderous children in Bloody Birthday, which came out the same year as this one.

You can watch this on Amazon Prime.

Robert A. Burns was the art director* of films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, Don’t Go Near the Park and The Howling, all movies that feature grimy and cluttered near-chattel houses filled with carnage. Just think of Eddie Quist’s apartment or the home of the Sawyer family. Burns’ artistic eye made all that happen and this is the one and only film he’d direct** (he also wrote the script).

This film takes place inside a Texas boardinghouse that has the spirit of S.F. Brownrigg hanging heavy over the place. When one of the tenants decides to tease the dog that lives in the basement, he ends up getting bit and the dog is put down. This upsets the quiet editor named Jerry (Terry Evans) who tries to keep his life orderly but keeps getting beaten on by nearly every scumbag that lives in this fleabag rattrap. His only good connections are Sharon, who he shares books with, and the latest renter, a handsome man named Ken. He’s attracted to both of them for different reasons, but it seems like Ken is the one who has his heart. However, Jerry isn’t fully human — more on that in a bit — and even the slightest attention from people sends him spiraling out of control. It doesn’t help that every single other person in this movie is vile, with the worst being Woody (a young Mitch Pileggi).

Jerry was also connected to that dog who died after Toad, one of the more insipid residents, teased its owner Ian about it until the dog gets loose. Jerry also had a major incident where a dog attacked him as a child, so he loses it and Woody guns the mutt down. Our protagonist starts to take on the characteristics of the dog — is he possessed by it? Does he see that he needs its feral nature to augment his shy demeanor? — which gets even worse when a prank goes wrong.

The men are jealous that Ken has just come in and ended up getting the girl of their dreams. So they send him a note that Sharon is waiting for him in bed. He runs to her room, strips and discovers the body of the dead dog dressed in lingerie. Shocked, he falls backward and is electrocuted.

This sends Jerry beyond the edge, his ideal man and the third and perhaps most crucial part of his mental menage a trois relationship deceased, he succumbs to the call of the wild and begins killing everyone one by one, his voice replaced by the raspy, growling sounds of the werewolf (while remaining totally human).

If you’re not excited yet, how about the fact that Aldo Ray runs this whole place?

Thanks to Ryan Clark, I can also discuss that this movie features a Deep Throat pinball machine that was custom made by Burns. This message board had the maker of the Rondo and Bob discussing owning the machine, which also shows up in Future Kill. 

This is a slasher by the end — albeit most of the kills coming off camera, but it has plenty of stalking — but almost seems like a stage play concerning the plight of the human condition within this Texas boardinghouse. It takes a long time to get to where it wants to go, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Quite the contrary, it’s a strange piece of filmmaking that would easily find a home in the Vinegar Syndrome re-release catalog.

*Burns also worked on Re-Animator, Mausoleum, Tourist Trap, Play Dead and plenty more movies. It’s astounding how many movies he worked on are held in such high regard by me. He was also a noted genealogist and the world’s foremost expert on Rondo Hatton. Sadly, he killed himself after finding out he had cancer.

**Burns also made an early found footage movie called Scream Test that remains unreleased.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Is that VHS artwork familiar? It should be, if you’re a metal head from the ’80s. It also served as the cover for the Arista Records debut of Ronnie James Dio’s cousin, David Feinstein, who was in The Elves/The Electric Elves with Dio.

The Forest is unlike any other slasher you’ve ever seen. Sure, it has murders in the woods, campers and stalking scenes. But it gets weirder than almost any other slasher would dare, pushing itself to the edge of absurdity while subverting anything you’d expect.

The killer — John — is played by Gary Kent, a stuntman whose work extends from his debut in Battle Flame through the films of Al Adamson and Roger Corman, emerging as the inspiration for Cliff Booth in Once…Upon A Time In Hollywood and the subject of the documentary Danger God. He’s not just a killer in this. He’s not just a cannibal. He’s a killer cannibal haunted by the wife and children that he murdered in a fit of rage.

Two couples — Steve and Sharon plus Charlie and Teddi — have decided to go into the woods for a vacation. The girls meet the ghosts the first evening, as they first meet the kids and then are confronted by their mother. If a ghost can be insane, hers definitely is.

When they were all still alive, the woman slept around on her husband to the point that he killed her, took off for the woods with his kids and watched them commit suicide, which was finally made him lose his mind and became the hermit human flesheater we meet in this film, the kind of maniac who’d feed a man his girlfriend.

The craziest thing about this movie is that Sharon ends up being the real hero — not just a final girl — and the two men are shown to be, at best, victims and at worst, total morons. Only she is capable, strong and able to survive, perhaps because she has connected to the dead children of the killer.

Even stranger, she was played by Tomi Barrett, who was the wife of Kent.

Shot in 13 days, this movie doesn’t get mentioned enough. Don Jones, the writer and director, would also Who Killed Cock Robin?, The Love Butcher, Schoolgirls In Chains and Sweater Girls — all quality films.

You can watch this on YouTube.

First off, the fact that one of the posters for this film rips off Night School‘s art makes me love it before I’ve even seen one second of footage.

Second, when I did watch it, it so shamelessly takes from other slashers that you’d very nearly be convinced that it was made in Italy.

Originally released as The Scaremaker, this was shot over the weekend at New Jersey’s Upsala College. That means that most of the scenes were shot in two takes or less.

After Dickie Cavanaugh kills his girlfriend in a jealous rage, gets committed and then hangs himself, all hell breaks loose. The men trying to bury him are killed and the school’s all-night scavenger hunt could not come at a worse time. Yes, I had no idea that when your college basketball team wins the big game that everyone has to engage in just such a contest.

There’s a killer on the loose wearing the school’s bear costume, using serrated knives as if they were bear claws. There are lots of POV shots as if you’re being attacked by the bear and I always enjoy being the participant in a bear battle.

For a movie made on a shoestring, they got some big names. Hal Holbrook is on hand! Julia Montgomery from Revenge of the Nerds and Stewardess School (yes, she’s a star in my world)! Lauren-Marie Taylor (Vickie from the second Friday the 13th)! Page Mosely (who is something of a scream queen, with appearances in Open House, Edge of the Axe and this movie)! And most importantly Rutanya Alda, who makes this film all hers in the last few minutes, despite the fact that this movie rips off Mrs. Vorhees’ motivation, as all lower level slashers must. I love Rutanya, who claims that she still hasn’t been paid her $5,000 fee for this movie.She should get way more than that, as the close is literally made so much better because of her commitment to more than one role.

If you’ve seen the trailers or poster for this, you may wonder, “Where are the girls in the artwork? Who is this girl in the trailer?” You are right to question these things, as the sales material was made reverse-Corman, in that it was created years after the film was complete.

Dr. Hugo Arranz (Paul Naschy!) celebrates his fiftieth anniversary with his wife and daughter before he finds himself cosplaying as Paul Kersey from Death Wish after they are both assaulted and killed while his tongue is cut from his mouth.

He survives. And he learns to work out. No, really.

Within minutes of running time, Hugo has emerged as a force of death, ready to wipe out everyone in his path. Despite this being shot in 1989, it didn’t get released until some time between 1992 and 1999. And to tell the truth, it may as well have been made in 1974.

This is one of the few times you’ll hear Naschy’s real voice in a film and the only time you’ll see him battle a final boss in an S&M mask. So there’s that, right? Right!