By 1988, the giallo fever of the early 70s was over for some time. The genre then began to embrace the feel of the erotic thriller, but inside their heart, they all remain giallo.

Directed and written by Remo Angioli (who also wrote the Joe D’Amato-directed The Hyena as Harry J. Ball and this movie and Intimacy as Bob J. Ross) and Beppe Cino (The House of Blue Shadows), this is all about restaurant owner Paolo Piattelli (John Armstead, Interzone), an unfaithful husband to Silvia (Loredana Romito, You’ll Die At Midnight) who is blinded in a car accident where he is caught with his lover (Carmen Manzano). His wife then meets Alessio (James Villemaire), the motorcyclist who caused the crash, and hires him to be their driver. Despite being blind, Paolo still has a working Italian libido and equipment, so he gets caught again with his mistress, which causes Silvia to ask Paolo — who she has already fallen for, but so has a cook at their restaurant named Cosetta (Ann Margaret Hughes, Top Model) — to kill Paolo.

Silvia goes from a faithful wife to someone who has sex with her husband’s killer moments after he’s shoved that man off a cliff, as well as ordering the death of her new man’s other girl and then shooting him right in the head. It’s an arc, as they say.

In the 80s, giallo forgot the black gloves, the knives, the music and often, the plot. They did remember the synth and sax-heavy sex scenes as well as the outfits, because Loredana Romito has fur coats long after people were protesting them, as well as long nails and big 80s hair. She also smokes throughout the movie, something that may not be as much a part of a giallo as J&B, but it’s close. It also has so much nudity that you’ll wonder why anyone wears clothes.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Trapped Alive was the first film to come out of Wisconsin’s now-defunct Windsor Lake Studios. Ah, the days when video stores offered a ready-made place for horror. I know we have streamings but allow me to be the old man yelling at a cloud and say, “It’s not the same.”

Robin (Sullivan Hester) and Monica (Laura Kallison) are on their way to a holiday party when they’re carjacked by escaped prisoners Randy Carter (Mark Witsken), Mongo (Michael Nash) and Louis Napoleon (Alex Kubik). Taken hostage, the cops soon give chase which leads them directly down the shaft of the Forever Mine.

Now, the girls are trapped with the criminals and — can it get worse? — a cannibal mutant (Paul Dean) is looking to feed. His daughter Rachel (Elizabeth Kent, who is in another Windsor-Lake movie, Mindwarp) has to allow the town’s only cop Billy Williams (Randy Powell) into the mine after Robin’s father (Cameron Mitchell!) begs for help.

It’s like someone watched My Bloody Valentine and Madman as a double feature.

Directed by Leszek Burzynski, who wrote the story with Julian Weaver, Trapped Alive was made as Forever Mine. The original VHS box art had two models on it. Neither of them are in the movie.

On Christmas Eve, Alex Torme (Mitchell Anderson) watched with his brother Jack (Xander Berkeley) as their parents were killed by his father’s business partner Norman Perkins (Duane Whitaker) who was wearing a mask made from the fur of a fox. The man then kills himself but for years, Alex has dreamt of being chased by him.

Now grown, Jack has taken over the family business. Alex is having issues; he’s convinced his friend Danny (Thom Babbes) has been wearing a fox mask to upset him and his girlfriend Maggie (Juliette Cummins) has been lying about her dance company, which his brother figures out and accuses her of trying to take their money. The truth is that she’s really with Jack and the two of them are trying to make Alex lose his mind so that they can get all of the fortune. Danny figures it out but is killed by them.

Jack and Maggie hire a fox-masked hitman to chase down Alex, eventually tying him to the hood of a car like he’s a deer. She shows no emotion when his throat is slit. And spoiler warning, she’s really the daughter of Norman Perkins and has been lying all along, using Jack to get to Alex and then gets someone to murder him. Now, her father has his revenge.

Director Kristine Peterson was a member of the staff at Zoetrope Studios for the filming of Apocalypse Now. She was on second unit for movies like Chopping Mall and Tremors before directing Body Chemistry, Critters 3 and Redemption: Kickboxer 5.

Writer Thom Babbes came up with the story after taking a trip to Vermont during the wintertime. He based the character of Maggie on an ex-fiancee, so…maybe that was a good relationship to get out of.

Mondo Cane kept influencing movies a quarter a decade after it was released, as this film uses its all over the place format — in this case, a girl explores New York City — to showcase a variety of performance artists and give you an idea of what was happening in the late 80’s art scene. It was produced by Night Flight creator Stuart S. Shapiro.

This movie includes performances by Charlie Barnett (who was nearly selected for Saturday Night Live; Eddie Murphy was picked instead. He’s also Tyrone in D.C. Cab), drag star Joey Arias (Big Top Pee-Wee), Rick Aviles (who in addition to hosting It’s Showtime at the Apollo, also killed Swayze in Ghost), Phoebe Legere (the Toxic Avenger’s girlfriend), poet Karen Finley, Robert Mapplethorpe collaborator Veronica Vera, no wave star Lydia Lunch, shaman artist Frank Moore, performance artist Ann Magnuson and Joe Coleman, who eats mice heads and nearly blows himself up.

Director Harvey Keith also was the creator of the Fat Boys’ video for “Are You Ready for Freddy,” which is just one of the many pieces of art he’d created.

The MVD blu ray release of this movie has a brand new 2K HD transfer from the original camera negative. It also has interviews with Joe Coleman, Joey Arias, Shannah Laumeister and producer Stuart Shapiro as well as a photo gallery, a soundtrack CD, a 2-sided poster, an 18-page book and a limited edition slipcover. You can get it from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood was on USA Up All Night on March 13 and 14, 1992; May 14, 1994; January 13, 1995; September 13, 1996 and June 13, 1997. It usually played with Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning or Friday the 13th Pari VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. 

Associate producer Barbara Sachs helped dream up several concepts for this film and according to writer Daryl Haney, “She wanted it to be unlike any other Friday the 13th movie. She wanted it to win an Academy Award.” GQ ran a great article on this film.

Originally intended as a crossover with Freddy Krueger, the logline for this film was, “What if Carrie fought Jason?” What ended up happening was one of Becca’s favorite films in the series.

Directed by John Carl Buechler (Troll, The Dungeonmaster), who also contributed to the special effects, this film establishes the definitive Jason. This is also because it’s the first appearance of Kane Hodder in the role.

Jason is still at the bottom of Crystal Lake, but as Tina Shepard watches her alcoholic father abuse her mother, her mental powers emerge and she drowns her father.

Fast forward and she’s a teenager (Lar Park Lincoln, House II) whose mother (voiceover artist Susan Blu) and Dr. Crews (Terry Kiser, Bernie from Weekend at Bernie’s!) have taken her back to that house to study (exploit) her powers.

Dr. Crews bedside manner is, in a word, the shits. He screams at Tina until her powers start working. She gets upset and runs outside, wishing that she could bring her father back from the dead. The only problem? She brings Jason back instead.

There is also — can you even be surprised at this point — a house of teens throwing a party for Michael (William Butler, the 1990 Night of the Living Dead). They include Russell, Sandra (Heidi Kozak, Slumber Party Massacre 2), Kate, Ben, Eddie (Jeff Bennett, the voice of Johnny Bravo), David, Maddy, Robin (Elizabeth Kaitan, who was in the Vice Academy movies), Nick and Melissa.

Tina can foresee that they will all die and Jason lives up to her visions. She’s the Final Girl and has to lose everything, even her mother. As she fights back with her powers, she pulls the mask off his face, revealing it to be decayed and near demonic. Finally, her father rises from the dead and drags Jason back underwater. Yet even after all of that, we can still hear the theme song as someone finds the killer’s mask.

The working title for this film was Birthday Bash, but the original script was even titled Jason’s Destroyer. There were 9 different cuts sent to the MPAA to avoid an X rating, which is still amazing to me. Even more upsetting is that Paramount threw away all of the cut footage, so there’s little to no chance that an uncut version will ever be seen. I still think that the rumored 1989 Dutch release on VHS, which includes all the gore, is an urban legend.

A cool bit of trivia for Friday the 13th fans: the narration in the beginning of the film is by Walt Gorney, who played Crazy Ralph in the first two films.

Kane Hodder really proves why he should be Jason here, as he almost died in a stunt where he fell through the stairs and achieved the record for the longest uninterrupted on-screen controlled burn in Hollywood history at 40 seconds.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Troma’s War was on USA Up All Night on March 14, April 17 and July 17, 1992.

Troma’s War was the movie that made me fall out of love with Troma. Yes, 16-year-old Sam loved The Toxic Avenger and the sequel and devoured everything that came out of this New Jersey-based company, but young and cynical me was so let down by this movie that I started to hate everything after. Now, thirty years or so away, it’s not all that bad.

A commercial airliner crashes on an uncharted island that ends up being a terrorist training facility. That means that Vietnam vet Parker (Michael Ryder) and Taylor (Sean Bowen) have to get it together and save their fellow passengers. Some of them are captured, tortured and killed by neo-Nazis led by conjoined twins, who include amongst their number Senor Sida (Paolo Frassanito), whose name means Mr. AIDS and who wants to start a one-man STD epidemic in the U.S. Actually, all of his soldiers have AIDS, so maybe he’s just leading that assault.

Jessica Dublin, who plays Dottie in this, spent most of her career in Italy where she was in Fragment of Fear; So Sweet, So Dead; Sex of the Witch and Death Steps In the Dark. She was also in a sort of remake of The Wasp Woman — Rejuvenatrix — as the older woman who wants to be young again and is Mrs. Junko in the second and third Toxic Avenger movies.

Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman — as Samuel Well — are responsible for this. As I watch it as an older person, I can appreciate just how over the top it is, as nearly every scene has nudity, gore, breasts being shot or genital mutilation. At $3 million, it was Troma’s biggest movie and when it had issues with the MPAA, that group’s president Richard Heffner said that it was “no fucking good.”

You can watch this on Tubi.