Retro Slashers

1986′s Dreamaniac was a product of the times – made during the genre’s infatuation with Freddy Krueger, it was a Faustian tale that reversed the mainstay gender roles – the main character is a male, a rock musician who makes a deal to achieve personal success, at the cost of all the women around him being offed [...]

There’s a camp not far from here, just across the lake. It was called Camp Blackfoot. No one goes there anymore. Everything burnt down. This camp had a caretaker. His name was Cropsy. Now, this cropsy was a sadist, and he got real pleasure out of hurting people. Scaring them. And he had these… garden [...]

Our Christmas present to you last year was Thomas Ellison’s investigation of the uncompleted early 80′s slasher Jack M. Sell’s Black Christmas (featured in skit movie Outtakes). We now have a present from Retro Slashers‘ reader Wesley Skelly who after reading the article, obtained the director’s cut and now pays forward the lengthy trailer to us.

As we approach All Hallows Eve I’m struck by the annual feeling that Halloween: Season Of The Witch is the most “Halloweenish” of the whole series. It always bothered me on one level at least – it’s a holdover from the ‘robot duplicate takeover’ plots from the 70′s that by the early 80′s was mostly [...]

Intruder (1989) is a personal favorite of mine for use of isolated locale and inventive killscenes. I reviewed Wizard’s Director’s Cut a few years back and often go back to it for it’s blue collar charms. I’ve often wondered what a real supermarket/grocery store clerk thought of the movie, so don’t you know I was [...]

Admirers of Pieces (1982) know you don’t have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre. But did you know a continuation of a certain gory campus massacre was once on tap? Original director Juan Piquer Simón announced in 1991 that “there will be a continuation of Pieces entitled Two Pieces. This one will be [...]

In 1983, Hikmet Avedis & wife Marlene Schmidt wrote & produced Mortuary, which Hikmet directed. A year later they were back in the same capacity with They’re Playing With Fire. Taking the plot of their 1974 movie The Teacher, and Eric Brown – the star of the popular Private Lessons (1981), it starts off simple [...]

Joe Giannone’s Madman (shot in 1980, released 1982) has experienced a resurgence with slasher fans in recent years similar to the Sleepaway Camp movement. Yet this has all been contrary to the increasing rarity of the film since Anchor Bay’s DVD went out of print. But that’s about to be remedied as Code Red DVD [...]

Here’s the original script for Bill Lustig’s MANIAC COP, titled simply “Cordell” by master screenwriter Larry Cohen. Cordell (aka Maniac Cop) (3.16meg) July 7th 1987 Draft by Larry Cohen – PDF format Innocent people are being brutally murdered on the streets of New York by a uniformed police officer. As the death toll rises and [...]

Here we go again, another gem that’s been lambasted by critics armchair and professional alike: BCI Eclipse have dug up Robert Hammer’s 1980 sleaze-o-rama Don’t Answer The Phone and given it an uncut release. I do like my slashers but serial killers employing strangulation instead of the good ol’ butcher’s knife struck me as too [...]