You know how when Halloween approaches you wring your hands in cool anticipation of all the great horror movies that will either be playing in theaters, on TV or will hopefully find a home on DVD? Well, this year you’ve really got something to wring your hands to the bone about! The folks at DVD Drive-In have announced some awesome slashers coming our way to help celebrate All Hallows’ Eve.
On October 14th, BCI will be releasing a double-feature of Mausoleum and Blood Song!!! Both are rather obscure slashers that happen to be very entertaining. If you can’t get your fill of the Marjoe Gornter gorefest featuring a beautiful Bobbie Bressee with beastish breasts, then you might find some satisfaction in the eerie Blood Song which presents Frankie Avalon as a serial killer (!) and Donna Wilkes (Angel, Jaws 2) as the women with a psychic connection to him. Both films get the Amanda By Night seal of approval!
Also on October 14th, look for a director’s cut of Sweet Sixteen. This much maligned potboiler (when I say maligned, I mean by people who can’t enjoy a good slasher, of course!) has truly stood the test of time. Catch Dana Kimmel (Friday the 13th 3D) in her most spirited performance and a sexy Bo Hopkins as the guy who is supposed to solve the crime. Code Red has put together a lot of nice extras to go along with the movie.
There are also several other non-slasher horror titles coming out from BCI in October as well. Drop by DVD Drive-In for the list and start saving your pennies!
Artist Jeff Zornow got in touch to share some artwork and info about the upcoming Halloween comics from Devil’s Due. If you never picked up the recently released Halloween: Nightdance mini (or trade paperback collection), shame on you - it was the Halloween sequel most faithful to John Carpenter’s original but that you’ll never see on screen as it’s not high-concept enough (no webcams or wrestlers!). Anyway, maybe you ain’t a comics person, but try and expand your boundaries a little for these Halloweens because they’re filling in alot of stories we’d never get to see otherwise. Think of them simply as fiction with illustrations.
HALLOWEEN: 30 YEARS OF TERROR - One-Shot, August 27th
A one-shot comic anthology, celebrating the 30th anniversary of John Carpenter’s original Halloween, dealing with characters from the original movie, with stories written by Stefan Hutchinson (the producer and director of the Halloween documentary Halloween: 25 years of Terror) with various artists.
HALLOWEEN: THE FIRST DEATH OF LAURIE STRODE - 3-Issue Mini-Series, September
This is essentially Halloween 3. It takes place just after the events from Halloween/Halloween 2 and deals with the town of Haddonfield trying to cope with the night The Shape came home and riddled their town with death and murder. Though Laurie Strode is still convinced that Michael Myers is still alive, and causing more deaths and mayhem, no one believes her. Is Michael really still alive? Or is Laurie simply sinking into depths of insanity? Only one other person knows for sure, Dr. Sam Loomis! Although he is one person the town of Haddonfield does not want to see ever again! Written by Stef Hutchinson and pencilled and inked Jeff.
For more info visit halloweencomics.com
I’m coming out of a sick spell, so expect all the yesterday’s news to be posted that I can muster! Numerous have reported, but it was Horror Yearbook that brought it to my attention: Dark Night Of The Scarecrow (1981) is headed for DVD. Long before Larry Drake heckled his way through unauthorized surgery on teenagers (Dr Giggles is pretty much the last Retro Slasher in my book, coming in at 1992) he played a lovable slow man named “Bubba”. When he’s wrongfully killed by a bunch of hicks, he may or may not have returned from the dead to wreak revenge. Only the final scene reveals all. A dependable and haunting TV movie made all the more enjoyable by its excellent use of a grain silo.
For a late entry into the slasher genre, Night Visitor doesn’t do a bad job of twisting a little convention to create an entertaining, if mostly bloodless movie.
Derek Rydall plays Billy, a spunky boy-who-cried-wolf type who likes to tell tall tales to just about anybody who will listen. This has made him the nemesis of one of his teachers, Mr. Zachary Willard (Allen Garfield). It seems like Mr. Zachary’s life long dream is get Billy expelled from high school. Meanwhile, Billy’s truth telling skills are put to the test when a beautiful call girl named Lisa Grace (Shannon Tweed in a nice performance) moves in next door. Slightly flirtatious but fairly harmless, she becomes the object of Billy’s obsession. Not that anyone believes a real-life hooker has moved in. One night Billy invites his two best buds over to spy on her, but hours pass and nothing happens, so they leave. Billy falls asleep only to be awakened by Lisa’s cries for help. He runs to her aid but is stopped short when he sees her being murdered by Mr. Zachary! He reports it to the police (one of whom is played by Richard Roundtree), but even upon first meeting, they find him to be sort of incredulous. Now Billy finds himself in a fairly precarious situation, since Mr. Zachary knows Billy can finger him as the killer. This would certainly be bad for Mr. Zachary and his satanic cult! Well, it’s a cult if you count two members as such! Mr. Zachary is aided by his Idiot Man Child brother, Stanley (Michael J. Pollard), in an attempt to rid the world of ‘evil’ woman (aka prostitutes) with ritualistic killings. Desperate, Billy turns towards his deceased father’s partner (they were cops), the burnt out Ronald Devereaux (Elliot Gould in a sleepwalking turn) for help.
Whew! Now that’s a bag of plots just waiting to be wasted. Luckily, Night Visitor chooses to be a lighthearted romp instead of an all out horror movie. Except for Gould, the actors are well up to the challenge of balancing ludicrous situations with just the right touch of horror and humor as to not leave the viewer bored. Pollard and Garfield are especially good as the Of Mice and Men cult members and on their own, make this film worth seeing. The star, Derek Rydall has become sort of an obsession for me. He was a familiar face to video store renters around the time of this film and put in excellent performances in this and Popcorn before he seemed to disappear. It’s too bad too because he had that boy-next-door appeal that most actors are either too pretty or too scary to embody these days. And porn star Teri Weigel is good in her small role as the skuzzy hooker/victim. But poor Elliot Gould! It’s blatantly obvious he did not want to be in this movie. It’s still kind of cool to see him slumming it, as it were, and there are far worse choices than an asleep-at-the-wheel Gould. Even when he doesn’t want to do, he still manages… something. I’ll just leave it at that…
I won’t lie; it’s not the best script in the world and is directed in a sort of lifeless manner, which may partly explain Gould’s phoned in performance. Yet it remains a charming thriller that I seem to enjoy more with each viewing.
Will we ever see an uncut edition of My Bloody Valentine? I doubt it. My hope is the remake does well enough to generate interest in the original. If that happens, then we might finally get to see this classic slasher in all its crimson glory. These few shots give are just a little taste of the gore missing from the current version of MBV.
Is it jut me, or does evil killer Marty Rantzen from Slaughter High look like famous game show host Bill Cullen:
I’m just sayin’…
I enjoyed ABN’s recent image gallery of Maniac. But the pics were a bit dry. Here are some images that highlight the red stuff.
“Look what you did to me!”
OK, that quote comes late into the film, but it’s a doozy. Phantom of the Mall should have been one of those movies that aren’t as entertaining as they ends up being. But this tale of love and revenge is pretty fun, not to mention it captures that little part of the late 80s when the newly hyphenated words stone-washed meant something good!
Basically a modern exploitation re-imagining of Phantom of the Opera (duh!), this time the protagonist is a teenage girl with no creative talent; instead she has a knack for holding down two jobs at the newly built mall. The mall, by the way, now stands where Eric’s home once was. Seems some unscrupulous types wanted the property so they could put up said mall and torched Eric’s house, leaving him for dead. Unbeknownst to everyone in town, Eric has been hiding out in the mall’s ventilation system, scarred and very angry. Where he lived before the mall was constructed is beyond me, but should I really be asking such thought provoking questions when watching something titled Phantom of the Mall? Uh, I think not…
A pretty silly idea executed with only mediocre results, this movie still manages to maintain an enjoyable vibe thanks to the fine cast, many of whom went on to work in far more fabulous projects. Just look at the roster of famous (and infamous) actors including Ken Foree, Morgan Fairchild, Rob Estes, Gregory Scott Cummins and Pauley Shore. Fans of late 80s horror will also recognize Derek Rydall as Eric himself. Derek was the hot hunk of such low budget fare as Popcorn and the underrated Night Visitor before fading into obscurity. He’s not given much to do here except simulate sex with Playboy Playmate Kari Whitman and scream the above referenced quote. And unfortunately, he plays a scarred mutant here so the ladies don’t get much of a chance to ogle his lovely face. Mores the pity for that…
Perhaps a little unfairly maligned, Phantom is one of those movies you’ll either love or hate… or think is OK…. or not… who knows? The cast is up to the task, it’s fun and even “The Weasel” couldn’t ruin it for me!
Well, I finally saw Don’t Go in the House and… drum roll please… I LIKED IT! A LOT!
Anyway, I noticed that Retro Slashers’ own Thomas Ellison did not care for it, so I thought I’d post a link to both reviews and leave it open to you all for discussion.
You can read my review at Pretty Scary
You can read Thomas’ review in Retro’s Review Section
Discuss.
