Retro Slashers

You are browsing the archives of 1980.

After a jilted lover (Tom Rolfing) kills his ex-bride-to-be, he decides justice has not been served and decides that all women preparing for their upcoming nuptials need to meet the sharp end of his knife. The killer has arrived in a new town looking for Amy (Caitlin O’Heaney) and her wedding party to make perfect, [...]

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 [...]

David Hess was no stranger to the world of celluloid horror when he stepped behind the camera for his directorial debut (and swan song as of this printing). As an actor he made us cringe as Krug, the scariest of the hoodlums featured in Last House on the Left and his rapist take on Of [...]

“Schizoid” feels like a violent slasher made for the Lifetime network. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. That automatically separates it from the pack and creates the illusion you are watching something new, when in fact it is just a melodramatic horror picture that transports you back to that bygone era of Grindhouse fun, [...]

It could be argued that before Friday the 13th there was no slasher genre. The concept had been explored in everything from Black Christmas to Halloween, but the explosion of the low budget slice ‘n’ dice flicks that flooded the drive-ins in the early eighties were more a product of the success of Friday

With the huge success of Halloween and Prom Night, Jamie Lee Curtis had slowly become one of the biggest stars of the genre, with her appearances in a variety of popular horror flicks earning her the moniker ‘scream queen.’ Her most underrated of films during this period was Terror Train

If Friday the 13th borrowed extensively from Halloween then The Exterminator stole excessively from Death Wish, Michael Winner’s 1974 vigilante thriller that made a star out of Charles Bronson

Within months of Friday the 13th‘s conquering of the box office filmmakers were exploiting every possible holiday and anniversary in the hope of capitalising on its success. By the end of the year audiences had also been subjected to Prom Night, New Year’s Evil, Mother’s Day and Christmas Evil

Some people take their love of movies a little too far. Take Scream, for instance. 1980′s Fade to Black was the natural conclusion for fanboy obsession, with the movie’s protagonist becoming literally engulfed in the fantasy worlds which he so adored

*This review originally appeared on Pretty Scary, but the site has been down for an overhaul, so I just thought I’d reprint it here! Have a great New Year’s EVIL! Although it’s slipped through many a crack, New Year’s Evil should be notorious for several reasons: The star, Roz Kelly, better known as Pinky Tuscadero [...]