SOV Week: Blood Cult (1985)

By Richard Mogg for Retro Slashers Ahh… the glory days of Shot-On-Video (S.O.V.) horror. With six times the bad acting and ten times the charm, these camcorder classics were the ultimate fad during the up and coming years of the VHS. Think a couple hundred bucks isn’t enough to make a movie? Jon McBride proved [...]

SOV Week: Phantom Brother (1988)

By Richard Mogg for Retro Slashers Oreo cookie delights! Three times I’ve come across this forgotten SOV (Shot On Video) sleeper and three times the tape’s video-box has been covered in mold. The dusty, fuzzy kind. The kind of funk that leaves your hands smelling like garden soil after you slide the cassette into that [...]

Slasher Genre Aftershocks

Thanks to a fine series of articles right here on Retro Slashers, the notion of “proto-slashers” – the films that paved the way for the slasher movie boom – has become a familiar one. And, thanks to Dave Stewart’s reviews, hopefully, you’ll have come across a few early-period gems you might otherwise have missed. Now [...]

Slashers and Urban Legends: Cropsey

The Legend: The woods in Upstate New York belong to Cropsey, a madman with a passion for butchering young campers. Why Cropsey kills is unclear. Some say he was a cruel handyman disfigured by campers who fought back during one of Cropsey’s alcohol fueled rages. Others say Cropsey was a judge who lived with his [...]

Killing Joke: Pranks in Slasher Movies

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 [...]

When Push Comes to Shove: Slaughter High & Bullying

For anyone who has ever been pushed around (and haven’t we all at one point), Slaughter High is a revenge seeker’s wet dream. Marty (Simon Scuddamore) is probably the nerdiest nerd this side of Kenny Hampson (Terror Train). But he’s kind of lovable in that totally annoying way most dorks are. In the first scenes [...]

A Fool’s Guide to April Fool’s Day

Exactly twenty-five April 1sts have passed since the release of Fred Walton’s classic “fun” slasher, April Fool’s Day, and the chances of a 25th Anniversary Special Edition DVD are looking increasingly slim. In lieu of a commentary track, then, here’s a time-coded trivia guide to one of the quirkiest horror movies of the 80s… Major [...]

April Fool’s Week

Holy guacamoley, we really outdid ourselves this year with the April fool’s day prank, which consisted of two co-ordinated efforts for a winning result. Our complete and total rule is best exemplified in the comments on Blood Test, where longtime reader Tuzo wrote “I used to [love] the April Fool’s day jokes on this site, [...]

“Best Slasher Flick of All Time” Finally Released (APRIL FOOL’S)

Slasher fanatics everywhere, rejoice – new boutique DVD company Hoa-X is releasing Deacon Natterling’s unseen 1980 Canadian slasher Blood Test on April 1. It’s final exam time at Hillcrest College, and someone is killing the students one-by-one using the most bizarre methods imaginable. It seems the victims were all part of a treehouse club when [...]

Interview: Bill Kinison Discusses The Honeymoon Killer (APRIL FOOL’S)

Charlie Sheen, Alison (Nellie Oleson on Little House on the Prairie) Arngrim, and radio personality Rush Limbaugh star in Sam Kinison’s The Honeymoon Killer now in post-production. The late Sam Kinison’s take on the slasher genre, which was previously covered here, deals with an unhappily married man who targets brides on their wedding day.  During a recent [...]