Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Monsters & Maniacs (1988)

Scream Queen Brink Stevens (Slumber Party Massacre) is our host on this late 80's horror movie Compilation. Unlike most of the other (seemingly countless) vhs horror compilations of this time, Monsters & Maniacs is more of documentary. Its not a very good documentary but Brink Stevens goes through the history of horror cinema while clips from Universal monster movies play. She also goes into some back story and trivia facts on the films which makes this compilation more documentary then just plain eye candy.

Writer, director Ted Newsom has done dozens of these vhs docu/horror compilations and although Monsters & Maniacs is very discombobulated he attempts to follow a timeline. We have tons of Bela Lugosi footage lots of Frankenstein and Boris Karloff nostalgia. Don't forget King Kong and the countless adaptions and remakes. Then we creep into Hammer Studios and we get our share of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Of course Vincent Price has his screen time in here and George A. Romero's Night Of The Living Dead is described as the turning point in graphic horror. The brutality of Herschell Gordon Lewis Blood Feats appears and brings us into the Slasher genre but it intertwines with oldies like Hitchcock's Psycho and Francis Ford Copola's Dementia 13. The one thing that I found weird is that even huge box office hits were thrown into the mix. Movies like The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby get screen time and I can't picture the rights being passed on due to financial issues. Either way Monsters & Maniacs is another time passer for movie buffs and monster maniacs. For a better and more gory time check out Terror On Tape (1983). Monsters & Maniacs is more for completest or anyone who wants to see em all.

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