Retro Slashers

Cheryl (Ayn Ruymen), on the run after stealing her roomate’s cash, hides out at the King Edward Hotel run by her creepy Aunt Martha (Lucille Benson).  Other tenants include a kinky priest (Laurie Main) and George (John Ventantonio), a sinister photographer with a nasty addiction to blow-up dolls.  At night Cheryl hears mysterious noises coming [...]

With Valentine’s Day rapidly approaching I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the career of Keith Knight who portrayed Hollis in My Bloody Valentine.  Born in Ontario, Canada in 1956, Keith Knight spent his early acting career on the stage.  In 1979 Knight landed his first film role as Fink the hot [...]

Here are four slasher films that were announced but never got made for various reasons. Maybe the scripts for these lost slashers are still floating around somewhere but it’s very doubtful any of them will ever get filmed now. 1. Sam Kinison’s The Honeymoon Killer: This comedy slasher involved a madman killing new brides as [...]

Jack M. Sell’s Black Christmas is a spoof of holiday slashers that was never finished. The scenes that were filmed make up a trailer that appears during Sell’s Outtakes, his attempt at a Groove Tube type comedy. This Black Christmas involves a killer Kris Kringle stalking a group of young friends partying in an apartment. [...]

Joe Spinell, the man who drove feminists and movie critics insane with his performance in Maniac, was working on three slasher films (Lone Star Maniac, Maniac 2: Mr. Robbie, and The Undertaker) shortly before his death in 1989. Maniac 2: Mr. Robbie was never completed beyond a few promotional scenes and Lone Star Maniac for [...]

In 1984, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom had to do something to protect children. Slasher films were no longer content with seducing the innocent in darkend theater complexes. Thanks to the home video revolution, slashers were now invading American and British homes. Something had to be done to protect future [...]

Usually a lost slasher finally getting released makes a few headlines but here’s one that has gone mostly unnoticed. The S.O.V. Beauty Queen Butcher, filmed way back in 1991, wasn’t released until 2007 by Camp Motion Pictures as part of their Retro 80s Horror Collection. Phyllis Loden (Rhona Brody) is a rather hefty girl tricked [...]

Horror fiction writers were slow to take up the slasher mantle back in the early 80′s even though celluloid stalkers were carving up hefty profits at the box-office. Anyone scanning paperback racks at the corner market were more likely to find novels about demon possessed houses, Stephen King rip-offs featuring evil little kids with psychic [...]

Talk about finding a diamond among a bunch of worthless rocks. I first saw Seth Grahame-Smith’s excellent book on a new release table sandwiched between mountains of Oprah’s latest Book of the Month and literary dreck that folks buy but never read. The cover, featuring a bloody gash through the title, is definitely an eye-catcher. [...]

That old cut up Ed Gein usually gets all of the credit (or blame) for inspiring the cannibal slasher sub-genre. I’ve uncovered three lesser known tales of cannibalism that may have influenced the genre during the 1970s and 1980s. 1. The Legend of Sawney Bean: For over 20 years Sawney Bean and is inbred clan [...]