SLASHER MONTH: Nightmare Weekend (1987)

Made by the French in Florida — because why not — Nightmare Weekend is all about that tale as old as time, a brilliant computer scientist whose super computer can transform the personalities of bad and disobedient people. He asks one of his friends to test it on a group of debauched young women, but before you can say direct to video, they’re all mutants.

The professor also has a shut-in daughter named Jessica who discusses losing her virginity with her puppet George who makes most of the decisions in her life.

How Henri Sala got to Florida, why it was made and why I watched it are all beyond me. Life is a mystery and everyone must stand alone. Despite the Troma logo appearing, I soldiered on and kind of ended up enjoying myself.

You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome.

SLASHER MONTH: Terror Night (1987)

Cameron Mitchell, Alan Hale Jr., Aldo Ray and Dan Haggerty all in one movie? Are you trying to give Bill Van Ryn a heart attack, Nick Marino?

Actually, Marino may not have even directed this. Instead, it may have been a combination of Fred J. Lincoln (who in addition to playing Weasel Podowski in The Last House on the Left directed 310 movies like Garden of Eatin’ and A Place Beyond Shame and also owner Plato’s Retreat at one point) and the eyepatch-wearing Andre DeToth, who shot House of Wax in 3D despite not being able to see in three dimensions.

A bunch of no good kids — hey look, effects expert William Butler and there’s Michelle Bauer and adult star Jamie “the Brat” Summers — sneak into the mansion of Lance Hayward (John Ireland), who has gone mad and loves to dress up as his old characters and kill people.

This movie sat and collected dust for twenty years before it finally escaped. All of the old footage in it had copyright issues, so it’s back to no one talking about it. Seek it out, check it out, enjoy the old Hollywood killing.

SLASHER MONTH: Lunchmeat (1987)

Lunchmeat is not pretty — although it does have Kim McKamy, the actress who would one day become Ashlyn Gere, in the cast — and it looks like it was filmed by the same gigantic home camcorder that your dad once used to tape your prom.

Directed, written and produced by one and done auteur Kirk Alex, who drove cabs for years to raise money for this movie, which tells the story of Paw and his three kids: Elwood, Harley and Benny, the gigantic man on the cover of the VHS release.

The kids that are fated to die first have to eat human meat within the burgers of Wilbur’s Bar and Grill and then they’re off to be part of a USDA Grade — trust me, that’s the lowest grade that can be legally sold to humans — remix of Texas Chainsaw Massacre that isn’t as good as even Blood Salvage. If you’re gong to remake something already made, make it weirder. Make it different. Do something.

For everyone proclaiming this murderdrone, all the killing happens off screen and at no point did I use this movie to find a higher plateau of reasoning. I sure tried, however! Maybe I have such a disdain for movies that instill a distrust of the Southern accent, particularly when this movie takes place in California.

SLASHER MONTH: Death Nurse (1987)

The health care crisis and the rising silver wave of seniors in the need of extended ambulatory care are major worries that our society will be dealing with for decades. What does not worry or deal in this would be Nick Millard’s 1987 Shot On Video scummiest Death Nurse, which gives us the Shady Palms Clinic, which is run by the brother and sister team of Doctor Gordon Mortley and Nurse Edith.

Their John Waters-style plan is to take in physically and mentally ill patients that no one wants, do surgical experiments and then keep billing for their care. The only patient that has survived their madness is Louise Kagel, who is always drunk and regularly services the ungood doctor sexually.

There are so many problems in the way they do business. Why would they believe that a dog’s heart would work inside a man’s? Why would they have a cat running around that would steal that heart? And then, they throw the body to the rats, which means more and more rats arrive, as if this is one of those we replaced this predator with this predator and now we need a new predator situations and when the law sends an EPA man down to check, they stab him because no one keeps track of government agents, right?

Everyone has to pay, whether they eat rats, get injected with poison or just get stabbed. The bodies pile up, the cops find the bodies and we end with Edith just sitting on the couch, knowing the end is coming soon.

I kind of love that this movie has 35 minutes from Criminally Insane in it, so that when I watch Death Nurse 2, I know that I will think I’m, well, insane and that I’m rewatching the same movie. Because I will be, if you think about it.

This is a movie made for…someone. I don’t know who. But I’m very afraid of them.

SLASHER MONTH: The Stay Awake (1987)

A South African slasher set in a Catholic girl’s school. The Stay Awake has a killer that is either a cat or a rat headed human being and you know, that’s the first time I’ve seen that in a movie, much less one where the slasher is felled by a thrown javelin. So, you know, despite the ineptitude of the film, the bad acting and the goofiness of having a title that invites headlines for negative reviews, I soldiered through this and finished my tour of duty.

Also: the rat/cat/lizard thing is the ghost of serial killer William John Brown, who is killed in America in 1969 but for some reason goes to Europe for these murders, despite making Elm Street claims of tracking down the children of the people who put him in the gas chamber.

Also also: a stay awake is like a lock in and you raise money by working out all night.

You can watch this on Tubi.

SLASHER MONTH: Coda (1987)

Coda is an Australian TV movie that never made it to the theaters but man, there are still great slashers out there that I haven’t seen and that gives me some hope for the rest of this life, right?

Also called Deadly Possession and Symphony of Evil, this has a white faced, black gloved killer watching his intended victims from afar, hiding amongst the sheets on a clothesline while synth music plays and if you think, “Is this the Australian Halloween?” then yes, you’d be correct. It’s also the sequel, because there’s a jacuzzi attack and the killer sitting back up after being stabbed in the neck.

Then again, isn’t The Day After Halloween the Australian Halloween?

Then, the movie turns into a whodunnit based around classical music, which feels like something out of a giallo, which is kind of cool, because things had been moving very slow and then suddenly, the story really picks up.

The formula of Hitchcock (DePalma + Argento) is what this film is all about. And man, how many great movies keep getting discovered many years later out of Australia? Also, unlike so many slashers — and movies, when you think about it — all of the central roles are played by women.

SLASHER MONTH: City of Blood (1987)

2000 years ago, two African tribesmen walking through a forester killed by a masked man wielding a spiked club, the same weapon that is being used to murder prostitutes. Then, the killer uses the spikes on his fist to paint pictures.

Chief medical examiner Dr. Joe Hendersen is now obsessed with researching the murders, but then he’s told to shut it down. Why? He’s also dealing with pressure to falsify a death certificate to keep a race war from happening. This could honestly be the entire plot of a different film.

Actually, this movie is a bait and switch, because the description and the opening have you ready for a police movie mixed with a slasher and then it becomes a political film and forget that it was sold as a slasher.

South African director Darrell Roodt has made a ton of movies from the Ice Cube-starring Dangerous Ground to Dracula 3000 and Lake Placid: The Legacy.

You can watch this on Tubi.

SLASHER MONTH: Shallow Grave (1987)

Four college coeds are on their way to Florida for vacation and pass through a small Georgia town where one of their number watches a couple have sex in the woods, argue and then the man kills the woman. It just so happens that he’s the town’s sherriff, which means that they’re trapped in the town overnight and perhaps headed to an early demise.

This is the kind of movie that starts like a comedy and progressively gets meaner, nastier and much sleazier as time goes on and any hope of a happy ending starts running out.

Director Richard Styles has going to be the film’s producer and never intended to actually be directing, but he did and turned out something unique in the slasher genre; the killer shows signs of remorse, but he knows that if he wants to keep his position in town, everyone in his way must die.

You can get this from Vinegar Syndrome.

SLASHER MONTH: Twisted Nightmare (1987)

Directed and written by Paul Hunt (Wild, Free & HungryThe PsychedelicsThe Clones) and shot by Gary Graver, which is pretty much the whole reason I picked it, Twister Nightmare comes very, very late to the slasher cash-in year of 1981, but oh well, right?

Look, if you get a letter telling you that you won a weekend at Camp Paradise and at some point in the past someone whose mom may or may not be a friend of the Christy’s died there and all sorts of rumors of doom keep smacking you in the face, you should probably not go.

That said, there are a lot of dudes in half shirts and Graver knows how to shoot a monster in the woods, all blue lights and fog. If this movie were just those scenes on a loop, I would probably like it more.

This movie is so thirsty to be a Jason movie that it was shot on the same set as Friday the 13th Part III and even has homage, err, rip-off of the pitchform 3D kill from that movie. It also takes a kill from Silent Night, Deadly Night and then decides that its killer can call down lightning as if it were Christopher Lambert whitewashing a movie role.

That said, not many movies have their slasher use hot stones to beat someone to death.

SLASHER MONTH: White of the Eye (1987)

Donald Cammell reportedly spent his childhood on the knee of Aleister Crowley, he went from a painter to a writer to a director. While a good chunk of his career was confounded by trying to make multiple movies with Marlon Brando, he did leave us with Demon SeedPerformance and this movie before killing himself with a shotgun.

Rich young women keep getting killed in Globe, Arizona and this movie in no way skimps from the horrific carnage that they are treated to. Even though this is from 1987, it’s still shocking. The first kill has an incredible 55 cuts in two minutes and twenty seconds, making it seem even more violent than it is.

Detective Charles Mendoza to visit Paul White, a sound expert to the rich and famous that is able to make an echo that he hears inside the air cavities of his head — yes, Cammell definitely made this — and that’s how he picks where the speakers go in each room.

Paul stole his wife Joan from an old friend Mike on a hunting trip in which he mutilated a deer and covered his face in its blood. Again, Cammell definitely made this movie. Oh yeah — and Mike is haunting the couple, ten years older and walking. the streets constantly eating peanut butter and claims he has the ability to see the past and future, which may come in handy because Paul has definitely been murdering women and hiding them in his bathroom, explaining to his wife when he’s caught that the universe has picked him because its heart is female and destructive like a black hole and demands destruction. And also because…you know who made this movie.

Paul then decides to lock his wife in the basement, dress in Kabuki makeup with a vest covered with explosives and chases his wife, daughter and even Mike into a cave where he keeps making his echo sound to please himself and further explains how the universe wants him to kill women.

Yeah — you know that I totally loved this absolutely berserk movie.

For all Brando screwed with Cammell professionally, he did take the time to write a letter to the MPAA to ensure that this didn’t get an X rating. So there’s that, I guess.

You can watch this on Tubi.