The Boogey Man (1980)

A middling entry in the video nasty list. I don't really know why a slasher took a bizarre detour into haunted house and exorcism territory but I'm okay with that. Great soundtrack, decent gore, well shot and it's always a pleasure to see John Carradine even if the role is not his usual crusty old doomsayer. The end seemed a little rushed but overall The Bogey Man was pretty good.

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Doll Boy (2010)

A great little low-budget, indie horror short that's worth 30 minutes of anybody's time. Ellie thought it was ok.

[I was watching a few Tormented Imp-style Christmas films with my 15 year-old daughter, Ellie]

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Unhinged (1982)

Short (1:16). Open-matte 4:3. Nice synth score. Perky shower scene. Atmospheric rain. Car crash. Mrs Penrose is American Gothic spooky. Some weird dialogue ("Next time...") that goes nowhere. Mother doesn't like to be kept waiting... wooo! A Northern version of The Glass Menagerie's Amanda Wingfield in a wheelchair. An awkward dinner. Piano and dominoes. Peeping Tom. A rogue tooth under the bed! Nocturnal orgasmic heavy-breathing. Onanistic double-perky shower scene. Why haven't we seen the third friend? Walking on your own through a wood when you're a supporting actress is a bad idea. Don't go in the shed! I told you not to walk through the woods! Back-story. What is it about the salt-cellar that's so freaky? Mother is reminding more and more of the Wicked Witch of the West as time passes. Piano but no dominoes. Peeping tom again! More rain and thunder and heavy breathing. Our heroine investigates. A gun, a knife and some toys. Tom makes his bug-eyed appearance. More back-story. Missing girls? The third friend makes her re-appearance. More heavy breathing. The third friend leaves us. Searching in a thunderstorm. Don't go in the shed! Eew, body parts and jars of eyeballs! Running and screaming. The gun. What the fuck? No, this is a knife! Raining blood.

I know it won't be everyone's cup of tea and not a great deal happens until the end but I really liked this film's feeling of Northern Gothic decay and its crazy ending.

Nope-Tober: Random Shit for an Ill-disciplined Mind

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Night School (1981)

From the director that brought us Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Casino Royale and the terrible Mae West vehicle Sextette (which featured Alice Cooper).

A well-made thriller that rides the fine line between giallo and slasher. Although there are some tasty red herrings laid down, the identity of the killer is pretty obvious after the first 15 minutes.

Loved the "Is it? Isn't it?" beef stew scene :)

As usual, Rachel Ward's performance stinks to high heaven.

One thing I didn't really get was why the killer used a Nepalese Kukri when none of the clues point in that direction?

Nope-Tober: Random Shit for an Ill-disciplined Mind

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Satan’s Little Helper (2004)

A budding, Satan-obsessed psychopath gets some work experience as the apprentice for a panty-sniffing, wine connoisseur of a serial killer who uses the cover of Halloween to hide his nefarious doings.

There are so many highlights:

• Amanda Plummer and her weird, brittle voice. She pulls off the not inconsiderable task of being kooky without being irritating.
• Satan using a cat as a marker pen.
• Katheryn Winnick playing the hero in a skimpy "renaissance" dress.
• The silent Satan's hand-signs.
• Katheryn Winnick's terrible but adorable fake English accent.
• Satan's shoplifting spree.
• The disemboweling of Daddy.
• A sellotaped Carmen Miranda.
• Jesus!

All this plus a subtle subtext of theological versus mundane evil and Hume's logical argument for the non-existence of god:

"Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?" -- David Hume (quoting Epicurus), Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part X, 63

Horror-Comedy is a notoriously tough genre to pull off but Satan's Little Helper does it beautifully. I can see this becoming a staple of Halloween viewing in years to come. Goofy, blood-splattered fun for all the family!

Nope-Tober: Random Shit for an Ill-disciplined Mind

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Madhouse (1981)

Two twins. Julia, a beautiful saint who works with deaf kids, and Mary, a deformed psychopathic killer, reunite after many years apart! But wait... there's a twist!

A slow but well-crafted Giallo-tinged slasher that can be quite unnerving at times and has a great finale - yes, I even liked the dog hand-puppet! There's a decent amount of blood with a face smashing, some dog kills, stabbings and a nice hatchet job.

Not bad at all.

Nope-Tober: Random Shit for an Ill-disciplined Mind

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The Slayer (1982)

Two couples go on holiday to a remote island: Eric, a fishing-obsessed, helium-voiced irritant and his nagging wife Brooke; poodle-haired doomsayer Kay and her dull and almost invisible husband David. As far as they know, they are the only people on the island, apart from... The Slayer!

What starts off as a slow and pedestrian slasher with a few tasty kills, picks up in the second half to become an effective, atmospheric and tense thriller. Much better than I thought it would be.

Note that the score will batter you repeatedly over the head with its sledgehammer cues.

Nope-Tober: Random Shit for an Ill-disciplined Mind

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A Bay of Blood (1971)

Where the Giallo becomes the Slasher.

Another great film from Bava with twisty-turns, a high body-count, grisly death scenes (Bobby's billhook to the face was a beauty and the double-spear-death would be resurrected nearly 10 years later in Friday the 13th), those octopuses, and what an ending!

Nope-Tober: Random Shit for an Ill-disciplined Mind

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Visiting Hours (1982)

It's... always... a-pleasure-to... SEE... William... Shatner... in-a-non... STAR-Trek... production.

An above average, polished and progressive slasher/thriller starring Michael Ironside as a quietly scary killer with Mummy issues. Lee Grant as the stalked reporter can sometimes come over as a little shrill and Ellen "The Exorcist" Burstyn-like but she carries the moral heart of the film well. Linda Purl provides strong support as a nurse and mother.

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The Prowler (1981)

The well spaced, Savini created kills are extremely effective if, occasionally, a little uninspired - I guess there only so much you can do with a bayonet and garden fork. The shower cubicle and final kills are beauties though.

The identity of the killer was a little obvious but overall the Prowler ticks all the right slasher boxes. One question: where does Rosemary's killer keep his roses?

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My Bloody Valentine (1981)

Another of those films that for some reason escaped my attention back in the 80's. My Bloody Valentine has been sat on my shelf for a year or so and I thought it high-time I gave it a watch; but then I did something stupid. You know those DVD's and Blu-Rays that have different versions and that sometimes it's quite hard to tell which version is highlighted? Hmm, I thought I started the uncut, restored version and instead watched the nine minute shorter, theatrical release. What a dick! What to do? I ended up watching the uncut version on fast-forward afterwards and what a difference it made! While the theatrical cut was a fine little bloodless slasher that you could play for your Granny, the full length version added a a full star and a half to bring it up to five stars. On with the review...

A psychotic miner starts killing the citizens of a small Canadian town on Valentine's Day.

I live in a town surrounded by mines. In fact we had to have test holes drilled beneath our house to check for adits and shafts when we bought the place. Never known of a Cornish serial killing miner though. We do have a bloke that gets arrested regularly for masturbating in piles of cow shit though. Not sure if it's a Valentines Day only hobby but I very much doubt it.

The killer's mining gear is undeniably scary and his heavy breathing though the gas mask adds to the spookiness. There is a nice turn on the obligatory shower scene with a bunch of naked male miners. The intro  is funny and light-hearted start and introduces a likeable, though pretty moronic, bunch of would be corpses. There's bonus point for a doom-saying bartender introduces a great little flashback sequence showing the origin of the town's Valentines curse.

For once in a slasher movie the kills aren't punishment for sexual transgressions and substance abuse. This time we get an equal-opportunities killer who doesn't respect gender or age. The small town feel is captured brilliantly with everyone knowing each other and great character development with little back-stories and quips between people that hint at a real history.

The final act really picks up the pace and is truly filled with tension, blood and plot twists that keep you guessing until the killer's final unveiling.

What should be an unoriginal slasher flick ends up witty, clever and full of well spaced, gruesome kills (the eye-popping pickaxe scene being my personal favourite). Sure the performances, as in most slashers, range from adequate to poor but My Bloody Valentine is an excellent and original Canadian slasher film finally restored in all its bloody glory!

More fun than you can shake a pick at.

A rather large Margarita and several glasses of wine fuelled this review!

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Doll Boy (2010)

A few years back the forums were full of talk about Doll Boy and I was going to buy it on release but shipping to the UK made it way too expensive for a short film. Luckily the director, Billy Pon, has put it up on youtube preceded by a couple of trailers for his later, full length, work.

Doll Boy has some of the best set design I've seen in a low-budget indie horror film and the Doll Boy himself (weapon of choice - a big fucking sledgehammer) is an amazingly creepy character; with his frowny, child-like mask - we are well and truly in uncanny valley. The editing is nice and tight, the acting wasn't too shabby and the effects work was pretty good. The violence itself is mostly unseen but there are several "ewww!" moments. There are some really tense scenes and the films hurtles along at breakneck speed helped by a great soundtrack.

Doll Boy has a real grotty grindhouse feel too it without it being too obvious and at 31 minutes long (including two trailers) it's well worth a watch. I'd recommend tracking down a DVD copy if possible as this one's a keeper.

See if you can guess who the "final girl" will be :)

Original letterboxd review

Headless (2015)

Ok. First there was a film called "found", one of my favourite indie horror films of which I am the proud possessor of an original, uncut DVD. In "found", just like a rather gory Midsummer Night's Dream, there was a film within a film. A kid rents a obscure VHS movie called "Headless", of which we see a short and bloody excerpt. Shortly, due to demand, the director Scott Schirmer said they'd be filming a feature length "Headless" directed by the "found" special effects magician Arthur Cullipher. Yay! I was one of the Kickstarters and, before receiving a proper DVD copy, got to watch a pre-release on Vimeo. Here's what happened...

They've gone for a VHS grindhouse homage (similar to Tarantino and Rodriguez's Grindhouse) with a trailer for a non-existent film called Wolf Baby (which I'd love to see), a dirty, scratched celluloid look and nice period idents. It'll be interesting to see if they can hold up the late seventies feel for the whole 85 minutes. Thankfully the scratches are cleaned up a wee bit before we start the main feature... Headless!

The film starts with a bloody flashback to the original "found" in the opening title sequence which places us in familiar territory and sets up new viewers with a taste of what's to come. Just shy of a hour and a half later, Headless was an extremely gory exploitation flick, with eyeball eating, limb hacking, skull fucking and assorted other juicy, gruey shit. Freddy Krueger this isn't. Headless is relentlessly nasty with just enough narrative to get by. If there's one fault it's that some of the effects are over-used which lessens their impact. A few more imaginative kills would have spiced things up a little.

Cullipher does a good job of getting a real seventies vibe (there's beards, doobies, Farrah cuts and a fucking roller disco!) and there is a real dirty and grainy feel to the movie. Low budget, indie film making of this standard is hard to come by and I recommend it for all you nasty fuckers out there.

Original letterboxd review

StageFright: Aquarius (1987)

You could see this film as a indictment of the state of cinema, show-business and celebrity in the 1980s but I prefer to think of it as a great slasher with giallo touches and more screaming than you can shake an axe at. Stage Fright has everything you could want: tension, humour, great camera-work, decent performances, imaginative death scenes, and a killer soundtrack. Call me weird, but I'd say this could be the greatest date movie ever made?

Unfortunately Stage Fright, along with Opera, Demons and to a lesser extent The Church, was the death rattle of the glory days of Italian genre cinema.

Who'd have thought a owl-headed killer could be so terrifying?

Original letterboxd review

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

A film whose reputation is built on two things. One: the short and completely batshit crazy performance by Desiree Gould as Aunt Martha. Two: the final twist ending. Does the film offer more than just these two scenes?

Unusually Camp Arawak really does look like I imagine an American summer camp to look like. For one, unlike many of the other camp slashers, it's full of kids, and I mean kids, not twelve 20 somethings acting like 16 year-olds.

The kills are telegraphed in advance so we know what's going to happen and anticipate the action. They are however efficient, imaginative and of high quality.

Some of the campiest (excuse the pun) camp outfits ever seen in a slasher. We've got muscle shirts, crop-tops, tight satin shorts, denim cut-offs, fishnet t-shirts. The whole film is is chock full of homoerotic scenes and the sexual politics, although incredibly fucked up in one particular scene, can also be quite interesting (macho males dressing and acting like the very people they hate and deride). There's also some great proto-mullets.

Worst thing: the open mouthed madness at the end. It's hard to discuss this without a MAJOR spoiler but if they'd shown a little vulnerability instead of insanity a huge problem that a lot of people have with the film would have been fixed.

So is the film better than just the two things? Most definitely yes. It's well paced, the acting is okay for the most part, the killings are superb. Sleepaway Camp is a great addition to the summer camp slasher film sub-genre.

Best thing: Felicia Rose's stare, She really is terrific and I can see why she's so popular at horror conventions.

Original letterboxd review

Halloween (1978)

Starting with one of the most iconic opening sequences in horror cinema, Carpenter effectively builds the tension steadily to a pulse-racing climax. After decades of horror abuse Halloween is one of the few films that can actually do this to me and the reason is that the progression is so slow and steady that you don't notice, until, at the end, you realise that your heart is beating faster than it should; and believe me, that's a huge thing for me.

I do disagree with Donald Pleasence's Loomis though. Michael Myers is not evil. He is a primal force of nature. He just is; he always has been and always will be. He is what we see in the dark shadows of night and in the flames of a fire. If Halloween was shown to our primitive ancestors they would be just as terrified as we are now.

One of the greatest horror films ever created from a master at his peak.

Original letterboxd review

The Toolbox Murders (1978)

Pretty poor excuse for a slasher/serial killer movie. Chock full of logical errors, poor plotting, dreadful acting, dull effects and unnecessary and looooong exposition. I'm giving the film 1.5 and an extra 1/2 star due the entertainment value of the various cock-ups throughout the movie. Maybe, one day, I'll list them all.

Original letterboxd review

Maniac (1980)

A brilliant film that is way above the usual slasher movies of the period.

This review is for the Blue Underground Blu-Ray, uncut version.

Spinell's performance is exceptional as Frank Zito, a man who kills women and scalps them. But why? Slowly we are introduced to Frank and, via implication and non-intrusive voice-over flashbacks learn of his background and motives. Is he evil? A born psychopath? Can we feel sympathy for a killer?

The effects are possibly Savini's greatest work. There is no no humour just quick, nasty and ever so bloody death scenes. Spinell's whimpering and growling remind you of a dog that has been kicked and beaten it's whole life. The blu-ray quality was a little off. The out of focus camera and grimy film-stock I can cope with but it seemed over soft in places.

Far too good to be labelled a mere exploitation or slasher flick.

“I’m just going to keep you so you can’t go away ever again”

Original letterboxd review

Murder-Set-Pieces (2004)

Bloody: yes. Disturbing: more uncomfortable than disturbing I'd say. I'm still not sure what I think of this film. I'm sure it's trying to say something, after all you wouldn't just make a film full of sex and violence for no reason would you? Would you? Hmm. The practical effects (supplied by toetag) were pretty damn good, the acting was, overall, awful, the dialogue was terrible, direction and editing were passable (I've seen way worse in an indie).

This review was for the uncut 91 minute version.

Original letterboxd review

The Orphan Killer (2011)

A decent modern slasher movie. Acting is fine, interior cinematography is actually very good in places, tension is held pretty well (apart from the obligatory, over-extended torture scene), but most of all the killer is memorable with an interesting back-story.

If there is one glaring problem it's the second unit work. Rather than link locations with a simple "car leaves one location - car arrives at next location" they managed to get hold of a helicopter and, boy, don't they want us to notice. Car leaves first location, car seen from helicopter driving down free-way, car seen from helicopter driving down free-way from another angle, repeat, repeat, repeat, car arrives and next location. It just didn't sit right with the camera work in the rest of the film.

Original letterboxd review