It really can't be a good sign if the movie poster has to reference a much better film to try and drum up an audience. No, this film has absolutely nothing to do with The Last House on the Left. In fact, the only real connection is being distributed by American International Pictures, and while … Continue reading Don’t Look in the Basement (1973)
Ladies and gentlemen, today is the first day of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, so I thought I'd celebrate by talking about a very particular horror movie filmed guerrilla style around the festival. Is it exploitative? Yes? Is it sleazy? Hell yes. Am I pandering? Of course. You should have figured out by now that … Continue reading The Last Horror Film (1982)
Molly's father was a sea captain. He built little ships, he had a tattoo, and sometimes he would read The Little Mermaid to Molly. He was also a mean drunk that would do terrible things to his daughter. Terrible, horrible things. The Witch Who Came from the Sea is the story of Molly, a woman … Continue reading The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976)
Italy made a lot of rip-offs and mockbusters in the 1970s and '80s, and Contamination is no different. If you can't tell from the poster art, this movie tried to pull heavily from Alien in its advertising. It also uses the idea of killer alien eggs that were inspired by HR Giger's work, though budgetary … Continue reading Contamination (1980)
Sometimes you just gotta sit down and watch a slasher film. I did so with Prom Night, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Leslie Nielsen in beautiful Toronto, circa 1979. That date is important for several reasons: Curtis was only a year out from Halloween but had found considerable success through that movie, which is how … Continue reading Prom Night (1980)
Finally, the erotic Frankenstein movie that nobody wanted. Flesh for Frankenstein, also known as Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, isn't as gory as a lot of films nowadays, or probably as shocking, but it is still a gross film. It's about Baron Frankenstein, played by a young Udo Kier, and his sister/wife Lady Frankenstein, and their perverse … Continue reading Flesh for Frankenstein (1973)
Yeah, that's an exploitative movie poster all right, but my favorite part is the pun in the tagline. It's one of the reasons why I occasionally mix this one up with The Driller Killer in my mind. That and that he's holding a drill too. The Toolbox Murders starts as a slasher film, but after … Continue reading The Toolbox Murders (1978)
A series of bizarre murders of outsiders is taking place in the lovely, foggy town of Potter's Bluff, and Sheriff Dan Gillis is at a loss as to how to explain what's going on. Now he must face both a hidden murderous violence and his wife's unusual behavior as he uncovers the terrible truth of what's happening to his … Continue reading Dead & Buried (1981)
This is the last of Lucio Fulci's Gates of Hell trilogy for me. They're gory flicks, with bad dubs, plots both incomprehensible and lost in translation, and story elements combed directly from classic American horror literature and film ranging from Shelley to Lovecraft, with a bit of Kubrick thrown in for good measure, all wrapped up in … Continue reading The House by the Cemetery (1981)
Did you know Lucio Fulci hates people's eyeballs? The Beyond is all over the place. Its plot ranges from incredibly awesome to barely coherent, its gore is excessive to the point of ridiculousness, and its acting varies depending on the person, though most of the characters do ok in that Italian schlock B-movie kind of … Continue reading The Beyond (1981)
Movie Reviews by a Mook 