The Sender is a movie akin to The Dead Zone, released one year later and does have many same kind of interesting properties to it including the final events of the movie.
But it does not have the same kind of sharpness in writing that Stephen King was able to put into his work. As for someone who enjoyed The Dead Zone, I did find The Sender interesting indeed, even with its needlessly convoluted plot.
80s-o-meter: 81%
Total: 68%
After the early 80s flood of slashers the sub-genre suffered a quiet death which quite honestly was not a bad thing. The slashers did see a small scale comeback towards the end of the 80s, and although none of those slashers got anywhere near as much fame as the previous generation did, at least this time around the movies were generally more interesting, and not just blatant copies of the genre icons.
Rush Week is one of those movies that definitely gains a lot of being a late 80s release. The movie looks good, is entertaining for the most parts, the lead and the events are likeable, and all that sweet 80s culture from yuppies to home computers can be found here.
On the downside the movie is quite forgettable and typical to the late 80s slashers Rush Week also suffers from featuring a weak antagonist.
80s-o-meter: 93%
Total: 70%
Pieces, a Spanish horror movie shot in Spain with American actors gained cult fame with its cruel depictions of deaths by chainsaw, and inexplicable encounter with a martial artist, totally detached from any events in the movie.
The movie does a fairly good work presenting itself as an American movie, and even if the movie isn’t anything extraordinary, it’s still one of the better and more original slashers of the era, and definitely earns its place alongside the most iconic examples of its genre.
80s-o-meter: 56%
Total: 60%
Another Troma release where the plot is so convoluted (read: a mess) that it’s genuinely hard to keep track what’s going on.
Apparently there is some sort of computerised puppet (hence the scifi genre) that sends out some metal balls and affects people’s minds around it and people turn evil and then they get nakkid.
Nightmare Weekend looks better than your average Trauma releases, with absolutely gorgeous female cast to feast your eyes on – even that doctor dude from Pet Sematary is present here in one of his few rare 80s movie roles. All that does little good when the movie is a hopeless mess otherwise, though.
80s-o-meter: 89%
Total: 19%
When I introduced Deep Space to my self I could not contain my excitement. A nice looking Scifi B-movie with Charles Napier (of the Rambo: First Blood Part II fame) and Bo Svenson (of too many great B-action movies) starring in the same movie.
Then I saw that the director was Fred Olen Ray (of too many cheap movies), which cast deep a shadow over the whole movie.
But luckily this is one of the movies where Fred Olen Ray started to be good in his craft, and this Aliens copy is not bad at all. Sure, it’s still firmly in the B-movie territory, and the directors canny ability to make all the actors deliver their lines in a wooden fashion is still there, but one can’t deny this all isn’t entertaining. Napier is very charismatic in one of his rare lead roles, and chainsaws: there are actually effin chainsaws in this movie – got to love it!
80s-o-meter: 92%
Total: 83%
Deadly Daphne’s Revenge kind of shouldn’t be in this Halloween feature, but little did I know it wasn’t strictly speaking a horror movie, but more of a thriller. It seemed to be made in the vein of I Spit On Your Grave and its numerous 80s copies, but what it ends up is kind of a made for TV style movie that looks like it was shot in mid seventies, with quite terrible acting, a few quite interesting plot twists, and an ending gone horribly wrong.
It’s in this ending that the movie finally claims its name, and introduces some horror elements, but .. well … it’s just plain stupid, isn’t it.
80s-o-meter: 50%
Total: 43%
Award for the most interesting horror concept for this Halloween goes to The House Where Evil Dwells, taking a place in not just a haunted house, but a Japanese house haunted by Japanese samurai warriors who met the end of their day in a violent love triangle. The house and the Japanese landscapes have a great cinematic quality to them, and the whole premise of the family starting anew in an exotic location is interesting to say at least.
But, they made the wrong movie. Out of all the options I can think of, this story has the least amount of interest in it, and cheap looking superimposed ghosts aren’t really convincing at all. If they had to stick with ghosts option, it would’ve been a much more interesting option to see them try to communicate with the deceased, for example. Anything but with the movie ended up.
The House Where Evil Dwells is a missed opportunity that would have gained from going through a few more rounds of audience screenings, and rewrites.
80s-o-meter: 87%
Total: 42%
Some old buggers start a game where young people staying in a mansion have to face their fears.
The Game is an amateurish mess devoid of any movie magic. The plot is all over the place and it’s hard to keep up with what’s going on. I quite get what they were after, but phew, what a mess this one is.
As bad as it was, I guess I did not hate it. Hating it would’ve required me to care enough, and The Game really set the expectations low in the very first minutes to the film.
80s-o-meter: 23%
Total: 3%
At this point I’m not looking forward to slashers to offer anything new, but just hoping to see at least a small spin to the tired subgenre.
The Initiation offers at least two and while neither are something I would call original or particularly good, but enough for me to give them some credit for not just making ”that movie” one more time. It does still feel like a pastiche with tons of elements borrowed from left, right and center.
The nocturnal mall as the location works better than forest and Daphne Zuniga in the lead role brings the movie up a notch or two.
80s-o-meter: 84%
Total: 57%
No Halloween without sneaking in at least one Canadian horror movie in. This time around the reason for including one is the awesome looking poster, plus of course film including Michael Ironside as the main antagonist, as well as William Shatner in a smaller side role.
Too bad the movie is once again a good reminder that nice covers do not a good movie make, and Ironside can’t really do much in his role if the manuscript and directing is not up to his skill level.
A far cry from a haunting psychological horror thriller, Visiting Hours has violently intensive moments in it that might make your heart beat a bit faster, but the lack of dimensions and depth in everything shines through.
80s-o-meter: 70%
Total: 43%
Eroticism, lust and decadence are the main themes here, and the movie is more of a cheap late night peep show rather than a horror movie. I know it was Perkins himself that has agreed to make the movie, but still seeing him in a humiliation like this almost turns my stomach.
The worst Halloween movie and quite possibly one of the worst horror movies I’ve seen to date comes from a very unexpected place. Anthony Perkins of the Psycho fame stars in this erotic Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde movie, but unlike the quite capable 80s Psycho sequels, Edge of Sanity is an irritatingly bad movie.
Edge of Sanity is one of those rare movies that one does not only without any merits or redeeming qualities, but that you start to hate so much you hope they never actually existed.
80s-o-meter: 1%
Total: -1%
A bullied girl takes on a challenge to spend a night in a Mausoleum to be accepted by a small sisterhood. Little does she know that a man in possession of strange powers has been just sealed inside one of the crypts, and he’s about to make the bodies reanimate this same night.
The premise in the movie is super interesting and there’s certainly a good tension and atmosphere to be found here at times, but the obvious padding and buildup just takes much too long, making One Dark Night one of those horror movies that would’ve worked better as a short film.
The finale isn’t quite the fireworks I hoped it to be after the lengthy buildup, but the tension is definitely there.
80s-o-meter: 72%
Total: 61%
..and Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes is where the series gets stupid again. The evil has escaped from the Amityville house in a form of a brass floor lamp(!) and is now tormenting a new place.
Other than that the movie plays heavily with typical the genre clichés, like priests teaming up against the evil.
Amityville 4 is the first movie in the series to be made for TV – and frankly that should’ve been a cue for the team to leave skip the project and dedicate their time on something else.
80s-o-meter: 81%
Total: 35%
Another movie that took part of the early 80s 3D craze, Amityville 3-D (like the formerly reviewed Silent Madness) has since then seen a Blu-Ray release in good old 2D. Excluding the overall blurriness towards the edges of the screen, and the few awkward scenes obviously set up with 3D in mind, the movie luckily does not suffer from its 3D origins much.
And as the case was with Silent Madness, this third installation in the Amityville series is actually surprisingly potent horror movie – contrary to all the expectations. The ominous hole in the room, the various types of scourge in the house and possessed daughter; it’s all good classical horror that relies more on the eery presence of evil, instead of them cheap jump scares.
80s-o-meter: 70%
Total: 71%
Apparently a cult classic of some sort due to its inventive use of horror FX, the effects are nice (even great) – but pretty much all of what Spookies has to offer.
More precisely, it’s the better than expected effects that make the other, below the average aspects of the movie look quite bad in comparison: the werewolf like creature roaming the forest for example, laughable. The 300-year old owner of the house, plain bad. There are a group of quests constantly branching off to different sections of the mansion to make themselves easier targets for the evil, quite uninspired.
On the other hand the birthday party, farting mud monsters and the possessed lady: all pretty cool, with the rest of the segments falling somewhere in between.
Spookies is more of a theme park right than an actual movie, which makes recommending it without urging to jump to the juicy bits – and skipping the boring – quite hard.
80s-o-meter: 91%
Total: 61%
Ahem, so okay.. Apparently there’s a Necromancer living in this suburban garage who then helps one girl to take revenge on a gang of fellow high school students that raped her.
Necromancer is an exceptionally bad and credibility look into supernatural mumbo-jumbo, coupled with some piss poor special effects. And I’m being polite here.
I just skimmed through the movie once again before rating it to see if it would have any redeeming qualities to mention. But no – the movie starts ok but just keeps getting gradually worse and worse towards the end.
80s-o-meter: 89%
Total: 11%
Just as I wrote Silent Madness having the most pissed poor antagonist ever seen on the silver screen, along comes Memorial Valley Massacre, violently screaming Silent Madness to hold its beer.
What Memorial Valley Massacre tries to sell us is a concept of some sort of a prehistoric man living in the wilderness, who then starts to – you guessed it – wasting all the campers. Both the look and feel of the movie as well as the dodgy make up of the antagonist (think: someone remembered a costume party in the last minute, and had to make do with things found from home) made me wonder if this was some sort of weird joke I was witnessing, but it seems this wasn’t the case.
Memorial Valley Massacre is one of those movies that fail on all aspects, totally failing to scare or entertain. To try to make up for the bad sales the movie was later rebranded as Son of Sleepaway camp to try to ride on the success of Sleepaway Camp series, another severe faux pas for the movie.
80s-o-meter: 83%
Total: 11%
Silent Madness is another early 80s 3-D movie that I immediately anticipated to stink to high heavens – but that contrary to all the expectations turned out a-ok.
The fact that I enjoyed Silent Madness seems even more implausible given the fact that it has probably the weakest antagonist I’ve ever seen in a slasher. Honestly, it looks like they applied some eye make up up to the production company janitor and just send him in front of cameras.
Luckily he is not actually even the main source for the suspension in the movie; it’s the corrupt asylum, its rotten doctors and their henchman orderlies that provide Silent Madness most of its thrills.
80s-o-meter: 83%
Total: 72%
Let’s start off with a piece of trivia: this movie was at first called King Cobra, but later changed to Jaws of Satan in an attempt to try and piggyback on the Jaws movie series’ success.
In the movie Satan has taken the form of a snake, and after a small killing spree starts tormenting Father Tom. In other words, this is one of those scary movies that relies leans heavily on the religious, supernatural themes.
There isn’t much good to be said about the movie itself as it’s really quite uninspired, other than that Fritz Weaver does a performs well as the flawed man of spirit. The fans of Christina Applegate might be also interesting to her debuting in the movie.
80s-o-meter: 50%
Total: 33%
Preceding Blair Witch Project ten years, The McPherson Tape took that same home video approach to create a ”lost” tape, an evidence that documents the scary moments unfolding before our eyes.
The approach is powerful as it effectively makes the viewer one of the few eye witnesses to the incident, and also give the footage certain mythical and forbidden flavour. While McPherson Tape nails the home video look & feel and the overall flow of the tableside conversations feel genuine, the actual interesting content of the movie is just about two or three minutes out of the 62 minute running time.
More interesting the the movie content (it’s not very interesting) or its scariness (not very scary) is the viral aspect that McPherson Tape managed to gain: the movie got spread around as VHS copies for years, with people who were sure this was the official proof for extraterrestrial life. The actual, official truth only came out years later as the official release, long time after VHS was no more.
80s-o-meter: 85%
Total: 31%