The Ghost Walks (1934)

Boring title for a boring movie. This 1930's sleeper is kinda like a really crappy version of The Old Dark House. A group of annoying men are trapped in a rain storm and take refuge in the nearest house. Naturally the house is a giant mansion occupied by more obnoxious characters.

It turns out that the visitors will become a personal project for the mansions occupants. They have written a horror play and without the newcomers knowledge they act out the script. Ghosts pop up and people run about in what comes off like a bad Abbot and Costello impersonation. We end up with a classic example of the-boy-who-cried-wolf when a real murderer pops up and starts killing the house guests. The guests think its all just another prank until the films climax when we see the killers face for the first time. The biggest problem with this public domain oldie is that the audio is so muffled that we can barley hear the dialogue. Throw in some really blurry and washed out black & white images and the whole thing becomes a drag. Perhaps if there were a slightly better print this thing might be more watchable but I highly doubt it.

Nekromantik (1987)

Nekromantik is completely disgusting, shocking, tasteless and out right disturbing. Naturally it is one of my all time favorites.

The first time I saw Nekromantik I was completely and totally disturbed. This film struck a nerve deep inside me that very few horror films have come close to. The strong impact it had on me has stuck with me all of these years and oddly enough it still shocks me to this day. It is kind of funny because within the film there is a conversation about desensitization and how it works. They talk about how teenagers who watch very brutal horror movies become desensitized after time. Well I watch horror movies on a regular basis for over 18 years now and I am still completely repulsed by this film. Nekromantik is a sort of cross between an art film and the nastiest of horror movies. It is extremely low budget and the lack of money totally shows. Still the depressing images, beautiful musical score and totally bizarre storyline makes Nekromantik a masterpiece in its own right.

This sick and twisted tale follows a young necrophiliac who has the perfect job of cleaning up road atrocities. Naturally the sicko takes home human remains to his equally demented girlfriend. Its not long before we watch the happy couple rolling around in bed with rotten corpses and living out all of their fantasies. When our main character looses his job and the couples corpse supply is cut off the woman takes off with the cadaver leaving our main character in a depressed state. The rest of the film is a downward spiral into madness as we watch him kill helpless animals and masturbate with the organs, kill hookers and have his way with the dead bodies and slaughter anyone who stands in his way. Things get worse and worse until our necrophile reaches a final enlightenment. What happens in the end has to be seen to be believed. They just don't get much sicker then this.

As one would probably guess, Nekromantik doesn't exactly have a happy ending. Or at least not in the Hollywood sense of happy endings. During the 75 minute runtime we see car crash victims, Human entrails are pulled from bodies, a cat is put in a garbage bag and smashed into walls repeatedly, we have a half-assed decapitation when a man has his face chopped in half with a shovel, a woman is stabbed in the guts with a switchblade, lots of corpse-fucking, close-ups on urination and in what might be the grossest scene in the movie we see a rabbits throat slit and then skinned in very gory detail. Nekromantik is not for everyone. It is for those who can handle the worst of the worst. The blend of art, beauty and violence makes for a very downbeat experience and I think its safe to say that many would not understand it. However if you like this sort of thing you don't get much better then Nekromantik.

Director Jörg Buttgeriet would go on to do a sequel to this. Nekromantik 2 is equally violent and disturbing with very brutal scenes of murder and necrophilia. It is also way more polished then the first film. Still I think the original packs a harder punch when it comes to the artistic flow and general feel of the film. Still everything in Jörg Buttgeriet's filmography is worth looking at.

Don't Open Till Christmas (1984)

With the success of the infamous American slasher film Silent Night Deadly Night the British would release their very own Christmas slasher just months later.

Instead of a madman running around in Santa outfit slashing up teenage boys and girls like in the American classic, This one showcases a psycho killing anyone who wears a Santa outfit. Ah very unique right? I guess I can relate to this killer to a certain degree considering we both hate Christmas and just about everything it stands like. However unlike this mask wearing nut-bag I don't stalk the streets looking to put a blade into the guts of Santa Clause. I will hand it to whoever thought up some of these murder sequences. Each one is different from the last and it does make for an interesting slasher movie. In the most memorable scene the killer castrates a man in a Santa costume while he takes a piss at the urinal. The blood shoots into the pisser and the fat jolly bastard bleeds to death right there in a dirty public bathroom. Hows that for Christmas cheer?

 Another Santa has his brains blown out the back of his head while another has a spear shoved thru his face. We have meat-cleavers to the achy-breaky skull, eyes are gouged out, another is burned alive in his car, plenty of stabbings and of course some prevy Sanat action.

I have never seen a good copy of this movie. Not even in the VHS days. It can usually be found on dollar-disc multi-packs but the prints are usually very dark and washed out, not mention they are probably cut. The fact that the film quality is so bad and I still enjoy this movie says something to me. Perhaps it is worth it to upgrade to the Mondo Macabro DVD for optimum Santa killing pleasure.

This one comes complete with some Brit-Tit and an incredibly sleazy scene that takes place in a sex-booth. Where a stripper watches the killer rip into yet another Santa Clause as the blood splats across the plate glass. Typical of Slasher films from this era, they try to hold back on the killers identity till the very end but it is of course a sort of generic and predictable type ending.

Still Don't Open Till Christmas is good slasher-fun with enough sleaze and gore to keep fans of the genre happy. I would like to see this on a double bill with Silent Night Deadly Night. Thats the Christmas spirit.

Night Warning (1982)

This movie has grown a unique cult following in my home town of shit-hole Long Island. Every year this film plays and the audience grows. It last played on a double bill with Pet Sematary which makes for a pretty strange double feature but then again Night Warning is a pretty strange movie. This is the third time I have seen this movie with a audience so I guess you can say I am a member of this Long Island cult following.

Susan Tyrrell (Forbidden Zone) plays Aunt Cheryl. This aging weirdo has quite a few problems. Her strange obsession with her teenage nephew is turning dangerous and its not long before she is drugging the teenage jock, smashing his girlfriends achy-breaky skull in with a meat tenderizer, plunging kitchen knives into the homosexual television repair man, slashing her elderly neighbors guts open with a machete and chopping police officers hands off. In other words Aunt Cheryl is bat-shit crazy and the question is how long has she been a psycho. By the end of the film all of the answers are laid out for us but it is the absurdity of the movie its self that brings people back to this movie over and over again.

 Night Warning also went under the title of Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker which is almost as odd as the film itself. While it is certainly high in entertainment there seems to be a few social messages thrown into the mix. I even heard this film played a gay & lesbian festival due to its heavy homophobic subtext that runs throughout the films entirety.

Bo Svenson from the Walking Tall movies plays detective Carlson, a gay hating fascist who is blinded by his hate. Instead of trying to solve the murders that have been taking place he spends most of his time fag-bashing and bullying the local gay men. Seeing this movie with an audience in 2015 is pretty amusing considering how up tight people are with any kind of bigotry. The anti-gay slurs fly and the bodies keep dropping.

Aside from the homosexual subtext Night Warning is full of surprises. While it starts off like a weird cross between a thriller and a drama it eventually shifts gears into what seems more like a slasher movie. Its sleazy, gritty and violent. Its safe to say that the biggest fan base of this movie is probably anyone who really digs 70's exploitation movies. Anyone who likes shocking titles with taboo subjects will probably enjoy this movie. Homosexuality, incest and of course murder. Its all here right in your face. Check it out for a good time with a knife wielding Susan Tyrrell.

Friday The 13th (1980)

Friday The 13th is a timeless classic and Jason, the hockey mask wearing psycho has become as iconic as Santa Clause and Michael Jackson. Well it all started with this 1980 ground breaking slasher and it would spawn a whole franchise of sequels and remakes.

The plot is as simple as can be. A bunch of teenagers head to the woods to repair a old campground called Camp Crystal Lake while a unknown psychopath stalks in the shadows and kills them off one by one.

The killers face is not shown until the final reel of the film and I'm sure it was a shock to theater goers in 1980 and sorry to disappoint the young kiddies here {spoiler alert} but there is no hockey mask wearing Jason in this movie. In case you were born on mars or something and have never seen the original, it is a woman who is doing all these brutal killings and the woman is Jason's mother.

Betsy Palmer who just recently passed away did a great job as the deranged mother. We also have a very young Kevin Bacon who has a arrow shoved thru his neck in a pretty gruesome scene. Some of the other memorable moments involve a axe to the achy-breaky skull, a graphic throat slashing and a decapitation. Legendary makeup artist Tom Savini does the effects here and they all look great as usual. Oddly enough modern viewers are more likely to be disturbed by the scene where a real snake is chopped to bits with a big machete. Aside from the blood and mayhem Friday The 13th offers up some great characters. One in particular has a cult following of his own. He is of course crazy Ralph. Ralph kind of runs around scaring the teenagers and warning them that they are going to die. "You're all doomed!".

Recently I caught this in a theater as a double feature with Wes Cravens A Nightmare On Elm Street. Both films looked great on the big screen and there is of course no better film for Friday The 13th play with on a double bill. Both Nightmare and Friday would of course go on to be huge franchises and of course the odd connection is that both directors have previously worked together on the infamous Last House On The Left. Both Nightmare and Friday were not intended to have sequels but unlike the Freddy movies Friday The 13th would spawn good trashy entertainment in the years to follow with plenty of gory death scenes for 80's teenagers to get their rocks off too. A great musical score and lighting which goes from dark to blinding light help set the mood for this groundbreaking horror flick. It offers plenty of jump scares and is a staple in this brand of a horror.

A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)

How does one good movie spawn so many shitty sequels? While I always did like this movie, I can't help but feel the shame of the rest of the franchise. The first Nightmare was original in story, creepy as hell and still managed to be good 80's gory fun. The whole slew of follow-ups and remakes are just plain comedies disguised as horror films and I can't stand any of them!

I just caught A Nightmare On Elm Street at a local theater on a double bill with the original Friday The 13th. It looked better then ever in its true 35mm format and now I am not so sure why I have passed this one up so many times on previous theatrical screenings.

I won't go into detail about the plot because everyone and their censorship loving mother has seen this movie but it is a strange take on the slasher genre. Freddy Kruger has become a household name as well known as Frankenstein or Dracula but it all started here in 1984 when the child murdering burn-victim first stepped onto the big screen. The idea of a psychopath who kills kids in their dreams has never been done with any kind of elaboration before this movie and anyone to come after it was blatantly ripping it off. The thing that makes this movie work so well is the odd blend between realistic psycho-murders and supernatural elements. In this sense A Nightmare On Elm Street seems perfectly balanced.

 Oddly enough, what I like best about this movie is not the blood and gore. Its not even the character of Freddy. The truth is I find the character to be a bit on the silly side. I actually prefer the creepiness of the dream sequences. The scenes of body-bags being dragged across a empty hallway by an invisible source. Or the scene where the corpse spits up the giant centipede. Was Wes Craven watching some Hong Kong horror movies at the time he filmed this? I know the Chinese love their centipede-horror. Anyway it is these dark elements that make this movie work for me. Sure the scenes of teenage girls in their undies being slashed open and thrown about a room is always a nice touch but there is more going on in here.

I have never been the worlds biggest fan of Wes Craven. In fact I think this was probably the mans last good movie. Of course the success of Nightmare played a part in his obligations to please boring, mainstream movie goers and the glory days of exploitation trash like Last House On The Left were over. However fans of The Hills Have Eyes certainly would notice the similarities in Nightmare. The booby-trap revenge against Freddy brings back good old memories of a family who fights back against cannibalistic psychos. What was with Craven's obsession with booby-traps anyway?

Since everyone in the world has seen this movie... Instead of recommending it I will just say keep an eye out for a screening of this thing. It always pops up in big city theaters. Go and see it on the big screen, the way the gods intended it.

 

Evil Dead Trap (1988)

The first time I saw this movie I was up for well over a day. My over tired and over partied brain wasn't quite ready for what I was about to see. Already being a jaded horror fanatic I didn't think there was too much I haven't seen. Well I guess it was a perfect blend of tiredness and delusion because this movie scared the hell out of me. While I'm not to sure Evil Dead Trap would have the same affect on a well rested and normally functioning person, I wouldn't change my first experience for anything.

Looking at this movie now as a sober and responsible adult with a normal sleeping schedule the film still managed to be creepy and gross but maybe less scary.

Evil Dead Trap is about a late night television host who reaches out to her insomniac viewers and tells them to send in their personal home videos which she will air. Amongst the piles of boring shit she receives a VHS tape that showcases a young woman having her eye punctured by a psychopath with a kitchen knife. Blood and fluid pour from the screaming woman's eye before she is killed in graphic detail. The mailed in snuff film also comes complete with the location of the murder so the curious TV host gathers some friends and heads out to the abandoned building where the killing supposedly took place.

Once inside the creepy old building the characters are killed one by one in stalk and slash fashion. The entire movie is soaked in crimson and each death scene is totally different from the last. The masked killers identity doesn't become known to the very end but there seems to be something super natural about this place. Many of these murders seem impossible for one man to do on his own and it all serves to keep the viewer scratching their head in confusion.

The title of this movie is bound to annoy Sam Raimi fanatics but at least the name isn't completely random. This one plays like a cross between Evil Dead and Suspiria. We get the Evil Dead cinematography crossed with the influence of Dario Argento's stylish lighting. Even the musical score seems like something that would come form an Argento flick. When its all said and done it probably has more in common with Argento then Raimi considering it is almost a Japanese version of a Giallo.

The only problem I have with this movie at all is some of the supernatural elements. It ends up going into a bizarre world where nothing makes much sense. When it is all eventually explained it is to silly and strange to be taken seriously at all.

Still Evil Dead Trap is gory and sick enough to please the average gore-hound. Some of the more memorable scenes include eyeball stabbing, a body swinging from a meat-hook, a woman has multiple poles shoved thru her bloody body, heads are split open by sharp booby traps, a woman is raped and then strangled with a wire and a man is set on fire and crumbles to ash.
This one works for fans of slasher movies, Italian Giallo's, monster movies and supernatural ghost flicks.

Phenomena (1985)

Phenomena is one of the most entertaining Dario Argento movies. It has everything a Argento fan could ask for, Gory murders, nice cinematography, a pretty good plot, a cool soundtrack, Donald Pleasence, a deformed killer child and of course a straight razor wielding chimp on a murderous rampage.

If that's not cool I don't know what is. A young Jennifer Connelly plays the insect loving lead in this unusual Giallo. Not only does she love insects but they love her too. The girl and the insects have a sort of telepathic connection and when she gets mixed up in the middle of a serial killers mystery the bugs come to her rescue and help her solve the crime. Unfortunately this comes at a high price for the young girl. She becomes the killers next target and again calls to her creepy crawly friends for help. What she actually endures is quite disturbing and has to be seen to be believed.

Its hard to decide who the best character is in this one because there are so many good ones but for me it has to be the pissed off killer chimp. Donald Pleasence plays a wheelchair bound cripple who spends most of his time with insects and his pet monkey. When he falls victim to the gloved serial killer the chimp goes bat-shit crazy and seeks revenge with a straight razor. Apparently this primate wasn't only mean on screen because during filming it bit Jennifer Connelly's finger off. It had to be sewn back on. Apparently the chimp was really nasty to her thru the entire filming. Perhaps the chimp was also telepathic and didn't like the fact that Connelly would be doing The Labyrinth with David Bowie in the following year.

 Aside from the vicious chimp, Phenomena sports some violence with scissors, a spear is shoved thru a girls head, faces are shoved thru glass windows, throats are slit and in a very nasty scene a handcuffed cop must smash and mangle his own hand to get out of the cuffs in a brilliant and gory pre Saw scene. There is also plenty of maggot-fu in this one. In one of the films most disturbing scenes a girl falls into a maggot filled pit of rotten corpses. This scene makes me want to puke every time. Phenomena was also released in a heavily cut version known as Creepers. It can be found in many public domain boxsets or in the dollar bin at the local video store. However the cut version is so brutally butchered it isn't worth fifty cents. Seek this one out in its true, gory, uncut form. You wont regret it. Its a must see for anyone who digs gory Italian Giallo's.

Blood Feast 2 : All You Can Eat (2002)

Way back in 1963 the great Herschell Gordon Lewis painted us a blood soaked picture with what he believed to be the first gore film ever made. That movie was of course Blood Feast. H.G. Lewis being a pioneer in exploitation cinema has touched upon just about every tasteless taboo that one could hope to see on the screen. However it was Blood Feast and his gore films that he is mostly remembered for today.

In the 80's a bunch of fan-boys put out a pretty fun sequel to Blood Feast which is widely known as Blood Diner rather then its alternate title Blood Feast 2. Jump forward to 2002 and H.G. Lewis himself makes his come back for the first time in 30 years with his official follow up to the cult classic Blood Feast. It went under the title of Blood Feast 2 : All You Can Eat. Its sad to say considering Lewis is amongst my all time favorite directors but Blood Diner is probably the better of the two sequels but none the less Herschell still delivers the blood and guts in the follow up to what he created all those years ago.

 For those familiar with the original and the cannibalistic villain Fuad Ramses who met his fate at the end of the film, All You Can Eat brings us the great great grandson of the Egyptian cannibal and he goes by no other name then Fuad Ramses III. Fuad III looks kinda like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction with his long slicked back hair and button down shirts but instead of being a bad-ass gun-slinging mofo he is back to his grandfathers old tricks and hacking up young girls for a bloody feast which will be held in the name of Ishtar the goddess. Blood Feast 2 offers up plenty of bloodletting with graphic on screen murders. Make sure to pick up the uncut copy so you don't miss any of this gory mayhem. In the films most nasty moment we see Fuad dig a corkscrew deep into a woman's ear. The blood and carnage pours from the screaming woman's head in gory delight. We also get multiple throat slashings, a tongue is ripped out, eyes are plucked from the sockets, women are disemboweled, brains are pulled from achy-breaky skulls, hands are shoved into meat grinders, fingers are cut off and we are also treated to tons of vomit-fu from the character of detective Meyers who pukes at every crime scene.

   All You Can Eat relies pretty heavily on comedy with typical bad Jim Carrey impersonations and over the top acting. However I can't help but love some of the characters in here. We have a fat detective named Loomis who eats excessively at every crime scene while his partner vomits, we get a bunch of hot chicks who strip nude for the camera and model their favorite underwear during a lingerie party and even John Waters shows up as a pervy child loving priest. If you look closely you can also spot Herschell's partner David F. Friedman.

By no means does this thing stand up to the original film in weirdness of shockingness but its still worth owning for H.G. Lewis fanatics. It has its moments and doesn't shy off on the blood but I still can't help but with Lewis took it a bit more serious instead of making what seems like one big joke and homage to a timeless trash film known as Blood Feast

Home Sweet Home (1981)

I first saw Home Sweet Home back in the VHS days when all young teenagers would rent slasher movies and brag about who saw the goriest movie in the school cafeteria. Even in my early teens I knew that this was by no means a great example of a horror film but I absolutely loved it. Looking at it now as a much more jaded adult, I still really enjoy this mess of a movie.

Home Sweet Home is a typical stalk and slash flick about an escaped lunatic who enjoys shooting hard drugs into his tongue. The intravenous injections send this hulking madman into fits of rage and psychotic laughter. His obnoxious laugh is heard through the entire film, while we watch him smash and slash his helpless victims.

While most of these early 80's Halloween ripoffs conceal the killers identity, Home Sweet Home never even attempts to cloak the killer. He is right there in your face from the very beginning and I personally love this spastic psycho.

Most of the characters in this one are pretty lame and most viewers are probably waiting impatiently to see them die one by one in unique ways but there is one totally bizarre character who I can't help but love. There is a sort of punk rock mime running around with a guitar and amplifier strapped to his back. Anyone familiar with the British punk band The Adicts will surely get a kick out of this face painted nut-job. He is an obnoxious prankster who annoys just about everyone in the movie with his rock & roll. He runs in on couples having sex and pulls hard boiled eggs out of his mouth during diner parties. Unfortunately he gets fried to a crisp when the killer catches up with him.

 We also have a sexy Latina babe who gets down to her bra for us and gets cut up with a big Rambo knife. Another dude is crushed under a car hood in what might be the most absurd death scene in the movie. We do get a bit of tit and of course a final girl who gets to see the demise of our junkie-psycho.

If you are looking for a serious slasher flick you might want to skip this one all together. There are plenty of slashers that came out this year. In fact 1981 was the slasher boom. However if you are in the mood for something ridiculous that never takes itself too seriously then Home Sweet Home is well worth a look. Its crazy, silly and still manages to deliver the goods!

Hitch Hike To Hell (1977)

This one comes from the director of the awesome 1950's monster movie The Monster Of Piedras Blancas. Jumping forward to the sick and twisted 70's there is no doubt the depravity would have to be amped up to ten.

Hitch Hike To Hell is one of those pre-slasher sickies from the 70's about a sex-maniac terrorizing young women. You know the type. This one follows a mammas boy named Howard who comes off like a cross between Norman Bates and Jim Carrey. A normal day for Howard consists of going to work where he drives around this big red, goofy van and drops dry cleaned laundry to customers. More often then not Howard picks up female hitch hikers, rips their clothes off and strangles them with wire hangers. You see its not that Howard hates hitch hikers. He just hates run aways because his sister ran away from home and upset his mother.

After a hard day at work and strangling young run away girls Howard goes back home to Mamma and drinks root beer. I'm not making this stuff up. Howard is a total geek. Root beer comes up quite often in this movie but in one of the films most memorable pieces of dialogue, Howard asks his Mamma if he can "go down to Swanson's for a root beer". Naturally his worried mother doesn't allow it because boys shouldn't be out after dark. Little does mommy know that Howard is a bat-shit loony who gets his jollies off by killing young girls. The Professor from Gilligan's Island shows up here as the police chief and it is his job to catch Howard and put an end to all the senseless killing.

This one ends up getting a bit repetitive after a while. Go to work, strangle a girl, go back home and drink root beer. Still it manages to be entertaining enough to make it through the duration but the replay value is not so high on this one. It does throw in a random scene where a confused Howard meets his first flamboyant homosexual and an unexpected scene with a very young murder victim. Hitch Hike To Hell is a average time passer for those who really like 70's movies about sicko's. Just don't expect to much.