Retro Slashers

As Scream‘s token nerd Randy revealed, there are rules to surviving a horror movie. Although he would cover sex and drugs, there is another important point that he would neglect to mention… never, ever play a practical joke! With very few exceptions (Friday the 13th Part 2’s Ted being the most obvious example), this is [...]

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers has long since divided fans of the series, with some feeling that the movie failed to live up to the comeback of The Return of Michael Myers and others appreciating the European feel that Swiss filmmaker Dominique Othenin-Girard brought to the picture. Arguably the movie’s stand-out moment is [...]

Critics may scoff and most film fans may turn their noses up at them, but the slasher genre is the perfect training ground for a young, wannabe filmmaker. With an almost non-existent budget, a simple premise, aided by a likeable cast and some inventive special effects, can result in a modest performance at the box [...]

Although they had courted controversy throughout the latter half of the 1960s with a string of sexploitation pictures that became regular attractions around Times Square, little did Michael and Roberta Findlay know that their legacy would be that of a supposed snuff film. Despite the revelation at the end of the movie that fooled audiences [...]

In the otherwise excellent book The Winston Effect: The Art and History of Stan Winston Studio, aside from a brief mention of the Friday the 13th sequels Stan Winston’s early work in the slasher genre was strangely omitted. This dismissal was not only reserved for the slice ‘n’ dice cycle, however, as both the overlooked [...]

“Tenebrae is a sexist novel. Why do you despise women so much?” Perhaps the most self-reflective moment from Dario Argento’s entire career. Having constantly been accused of misogyny due to the excessive violence his films have often levelled at their female victims, Tenebrae was a chance for the Italian filmmaker to finally comment on the [...]

You could be forgiven for spending the first hour of Eric Weston’s horror drama Evilspeak wondering why on Earth it would have been included amongst the ‘video nasties’ during the mid-1980s. After all, it was relatively blood-free, inoffensive and the two brief moments of nudity were far less graphic than scenes that were included uncut [...]

Michael Myers had an axe, Leatherface had a chainsaw and Jason Voorhees had whatever was lying around – yet one of the most grizzly murder weapons used in the vintage days of exploitation was the flamethrower, the weapon of choice for Donny Kohler, the disturbed antagonist from Don’t Go in the House. Released amid the [...]

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 had proven to be the third financial failure in a row for both director Tobe Hooper and Cannon Films, who had entered into a rather dubious three-picture deal following his exit from The Return of the Living Dead. With the rights available once again, New Line Cinema optioned to produce [...]

The production for Michael A. Simpson’s back-to-back Sleepaway Camp sequels, Unhappy Campers and Teenage Wasteland, would take place over a six-week period at Lakewood Studios in Atlanta and Camp Younts near Waco in Georgia, although the last day of filming would see the crew relocate to downtown Atlanta for the opening sequence of Sleepaway Camp [...]