In addition to the usual reviews and comments you would find on a horror movie blog, this is also a document of the wonderfully vast horror movie section of the video store I worked at in my youth.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Trailer Tuesdays: Night School

So, with the summer winding down, I thought I'd play a trailer for Night School, an eighties slasher I watched on the weekend.



Well, it finally happened. I am now old enough and seen so many movies that I have actually started to forget ones I have already seen. I was a full hour into this movie - the scene in the Boston Aquarium to be exact - until I realized that I'd seen it before. It must have been during my video store days. I remember recognizing the aquarium back then because I'd been on a school trip there only a few years before. I recalled absolutely nothing else about the movie though. Of course, the motorcycle helmeted killer was familiar, but I figured that was because there were several of those in the eighties with The Nail Gun Massacre and The Exterminator, etc.

Man, getting old sucks...

Monday, August 29, 2016

Don’t @%#*$& Talk!

A movie in the mainstream horror stable that I’ve been excited about for some time is Fede Alvarez’s Don’t Breathe. I've started shutting off trailers as soon as I decide I'm going to see the film, so I knew pretty much nothing about this one, except its setup. It looked solid, though after Lights Out I made sure to keep my expectations tempered.


An easy score turns into a life-or-death struggle for three petty thieves (Jane Levy, Dylan Minette, & Daniel Zovatto) when they break into the house of a blind army veteran.

Don’t Breathe was a strong piece of work that kept a remarkable pace once it got going. Alvarez decidedly has a knack working in confined spaces, as the camerawork here was on point, especially during the “one-r” sequence when the thieves were investigating the house after they broke in. I thought the movie flowed well from set piece to set piece and I was with it pretty much from the get-go. Using Detroit as a backdrop certainly added to the atmosphere, as well. More filmmakers should film there because at this point, it looks like a horror film by itself.

It may be no surprise that the highlight of this movie was the menacing presence of Stephen Lang as the blind vet. He may be old, but that house was his domain. He always seemed like he was in control, and all these thieves were doing was making him more angry. When the movie took a turn in the second act, he became even more diabolical. Man, it really is so much easier to sell your antagonist when you don’t have to rely on CGI.


I found the production as a whole a step up from the Evil Dead remake. I remember my first uh-oh moment during that movie when they flashed back to something that had happened mere minutes before, as if we weren’t smart enough to remember it. Don’t Breathe was much more confident storytelling and the emphasis on visual narrative was extremely effective. And by visually, I mean that the audio was often scaled back. Not every sudden scare had bombastic accompaniment. It knew when to be quiet to prolong the tension.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the two fucking idiots sitting next to me in the theatre. I so wanted Mr. Blind Guy to reach through the screen and strangle those bitches. Seriously, can you not just sit still for ninety minutes without feeling the need to open your fucking mouth??? But I digress.


Don’t Breathe was definitely one of the best titles that Ghost House has released to date. It’s taut, tense and went to places I wasn’t expecting. Studios take note. More of this, and less of Rings and/or Ouija.

Sunday, August 28, 2016

Awww Maaaan!

No DKTM this week. Rather some words about some bad news I heard this week. Another video store, perhaps THE video store in Toronto, is closing its doors. The legendary Suspect Video which has been operating in Mirvish Village for twenty-five years will be shutting at the end of the year.


While it is true that the brand will still continue in online form, that little shop on Markham has been a chapel of underground film worship for decades. This saddens me deeply. The flagship location of Queen Video and Film Buff are now gone, as well, so that only leaves a handle left, like Eyesore Cinema (newly relocated to Bloor St W) and Bay St Video to carry the torch.

In the final months leading up to the closure, Suspect is having a clearance sale.


So, if you happen to be in the GTA, go on in and say hi to Luis. Tell them The Horror Section sent you.

Friday, August 26, 2016

Welcome To Lake Nowhere.


So, I’m not looking at a vintage VHS title today, but Christopher Phelps & Maxim Von Scoy’s cabin-in-the-woods slasher, Lake Nowhere very well could have been.


It was a long journey to get this movie made, as the crowdfunding teaser pitch first surfaced online in 2013. After a very tumultuous production with some additional footage being shot much later, the final product finally hit Vimeo last week. Lake Nowhere was made by a collective called Ravacon that, much like Canada’s Astron 6, revels in that home video B-movie aesthetic. Although, Ravacon’s output is decidedly not as overtly comical as their Northern counterparts.

I thought Lake Nowhere was pretty entertaining. In typical retro fashion, the piece starts out with some highly amusing faux trailers. The Italian gillao The River Runs Red was as spot on a representation of that subgenre as Edgar Wright’s Don’t from back in 2007 and the extended trailer for Harvest Man played out like a cross between Treevenge and an old GI Joe cartoon I remember watching as a kid. These trailers book-ended a beer commercial for Wolf White that made me momentarily question if I wasn’t watching a Canadian production.

But, onto our feature presentation. Lake Nowhere was a super authentic portrayal of the home video era horror. If Phelps & Scoy were trying to emulate the dark and washed out look of The Evil Dead, they succeeded. Helped out by extensive VHS degradation that thankfully died down before it got too distracting, this movie was almost indistinguishable from its eighties counterparts.

They look so happy, don't they?

The story was fairly standard and contained your average genre setups, but I did appreciate that it wasn’t clearly evident who the final girl (of the three lovely actresses Laura Hajek, Wray Villanova and Melody Kology) was going to be. The main antagonist was pretty menacing in that he towered over the rest of the cast in much the way Kane Hodder did in the later Friday the 13th films. As for the gore gags, they were fairly well done, almost charming in that lo-fi kind of way.

Lake Nowhere came to a close in fifty minutes, which meant that not only did it not overstay its welcome, but that the filmmakers shied away from committing the crime made by so many indie horrors of padding out their product to feature length. Though this curt length naturally made traditional distribution avenues problematic, it has fortunately found a home on Vimeo.

Not anymore...

If you’re a fan of vintage slashers and Don Dohler’s age-old adage “blood, boobs and beast”, then head on over to Vimeo to rent Lake Nowhere for a mere three dollars.

Case of Wolf White not included.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Trailer Tuesdays: Brain Damage

The TIFF schedule came out today, and while I recover from negotiating their insufferable website, I thought I'd post a trailer for a classic that screened at Midnight Madness's inaugural year waaaaay back in 1988.



I actually only saw this for the first time just recently. Well, if five years can be considered recently. Jesus, time flies! Anyway, here's hoping I see something this year that is as zany and resilient as Frank Henenlotter's oeuvre. Talk soon, kids! 

Sunday, August 21, 2016

DKTM 312


Hey kids. Hope you enjoying your weekend, as there are only a few left this summer. Here's a few video nuggets before I shoot off to the city today.

Uninvited Guests.

Toronto artist (and sometime filmmaker) Matthew Therrien recently went down the YouTube horror short rabbit hole and was inspired to create his own one evening for zero dollars. Here below, is Houseguests.



I think it's pretty effective, and starts with the great nugget (as most good shorts do) of what would you do if you went to take a piss in the night and there was someone in your bed when you came back? Plus, Therrien got to plug some of his own artwork in the short, too.

Land of the Rising Scare.

I found this neat video from last month that I wanted to share. See below how The Film Theorists broke down what makes Japanese horror so scary and compelling. They bring up some really accurate points about the differences between Western and Eastern horror. Enjoy.



Road To Nowhere.

The retro slasher Lake Nowhere from Christopher Phelps & Maxim Van Scoy dropped this week on VOD. Click here to rent it from Vimeo for a couple of bones. Here's the trailer below.

Friday, August 19, 2016

Stranger Sounds.

Volume 1 of the soundtrack to the Netflix series Stranger Things came out last week, and it's pretty glorious. I have since wedged it into my writing playlist between Perturbator and Videogram, and they are getting along swimmingly.

Make your own Stranger header at http://makeitstranger.com/













I think what grabbed me the most was how symbiotic the score is with the show. I hear tracks like Kids, Biking To School & Dispatch and it immediately recalls the events of the show. Ultimately, how I feel about this soundtrack is pretty much almost exactly how I felt about the show itself. Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein, like The Duffer Brothers, have wonderfully captured the essence of the seventies and eighties. Although, on occasion maybe too well.

I've listened to Vol. 1 about a dozen times through now, and you do start to recognize the patterns and blatant similarities. Tracks like Cops Are Good At Finding, Friendship, Castle Byers are almost interchangeable with the stuff Tangerine Dream were orchestrating in their heyday.

Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) is quietly judging you.

Same goes for the latter half of the track Upside Down if you put it side-by-side with John Carpenter & Alan Howarth's work on Halloween III.

However, this emulation is not restricted to days gone by, as I could hear shades of the more recent work of Disasterpiece on It Follows in tracks like One Blink For Yes.

Now, I know this all may sound like an accusation, but it really isn't. After all, at the end of the day, who really gives a shit? The whole point of the show was capture a period in time, and I don't think anyone can dispute that everyone involved did a bang-up job. Besides, the music does kick ass, and obviously has re-playability if I've now listened to it ump-teen times.

Huh. My second post featuring the alphabet this week...

Volume 2 releases today, and I've been listening to that over the last few days, as well. It features more of the original score from Dixon and Stein, including some reprises of sections from Vol. 1. Even though there are some “hey I know this” moments, namely on tracks Rolling Out The Pool and They Found Us - I don't even have to say what they reference as it will be immediately apparent - but overall it's just a fantastic tapestry of genre music.

Click here to buy Volume 1 via Lakeshore Records.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Death Two Point Five

As you may have noticed from the banner on the right, The ABC's of Death 2.5 released last week. For those who don't know, 2.5 is a collection of the best 26 letter “M” contest entries from Part 2. The entry that I co-wrote with my buddy Schwartz (M is for Manure) thankfully made it on there, but today I wanted to post about my personal faves from 2.5. Here they are in no particular order;

M is for Make Believe by Summer Johnson
I remember supporting this one quite heavily during the competition. I think the dark humour really lands, and Johnson really commits to it. Three minutes is pretty short-form, yet it often made me wonder about the events beyond the frame. Why was he dressed like that? Where were these kid's parents? What was that “green stuff”? A great piece of work.


M is for Marriage by Todd E. Freeman
Doubling as a proof of concept for a larger project, the idea of Freeman's short is an intriguing one. What if one could physically manifest someone's emotional trauma? I really like the look and tone of this piece. The feature version, entitled Love Sick, had a positive showing at last year's Frontieres in Montreal, so I hope to hear about the next phase sometime soon.


M is for Matador by Gigi Saul Guerrero
Guerrero has been tearing up the short film circuit for a while now, and I had previously thought the first thing I'd seen of hers 2014's El Gigante. Not so. Upon watching 2.5, I realized it was here. I should have recognized it, as all her recurring traits, like punishing violence, unrelenting choas and production design that oozes through the screen were all present here, as well. It was just announced that her feature film project, El Cucuy will be shopped at this year's Fantastic Fest Film Market and I'd say she is more than ready to make the leap from the short to long form.


M is for Magnetic Tape by Tim Rutherford & Cody Kennedy
This one shouldn't surprise you. There have now been a few shorts now that have been set inside this Edmonton video store - they even have there own web series called Straight To Video. I love the energy these guys bring to their projects and think it every bit as relevant as higher profile stuff like Turbo Kid – which coincidentally also started out as a contest entry for the first ABC's. I could also say that of the highly amusing Mad-Max-on-Big-Wheels entry, M is for Marauder by Steve Daniels.


M is for Meat by Wolfgang Matzl
I was pretty taken by this short by Austrian filmmaker Matzl during the competition, as well. Though I figured it wouldn't win as his style was similar to that of Robert Morgan, who was already a part of ABC's 2 (actually the same can be said for Chris YounesM is for Maeusiophobia that also featured a sequence similar to Part 2's crowning jewel Z is for Zygote), but I really dug the look and style. It's a simple and easy premise, but it works so well in a short form like this.


Overall, 2.5 is a pretty solid culmination of the best the contest had to offer. I certainly saves you the trouble of having to sort through the chaff of over five hundred entries that were originally entered.

ABC's of Death 2.5 is now available to rent or purchase on Vimeo. Check it out here.

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Trailer Tuesdays: Your Vice Is a Locked Room..

Hey all. After posting about Francesca last weekend, I've got giallo on the brain. Here is a vintage Italian horror flick with a title so long, I couldn't fit it in the header!



Edwige & Edgar, what a beauty combination!

Sunday, August 14, 2016

DKTM 311


Hey all. This edition of Don't Kill the Messenger is going to be decidedly retro. Here's what I've got for you this week.

Slashermania!

A while back, I spoke of an indie comics project from the UK called Slashermania. The brainchild of Russell Hillman, he seeks to combine the best elements of Friday the 13th and The Running Man into one big, well, Slashermania.


The Kickstarter campaign has just begun, so check out the pitch trailer below.



If this seems like your bag, check out the campaign page by going here.

Viva Giallo!

Last year at Sitges saw the premiere of Luciano Onetti's modern giallo, Francesca. Now, it is set to be released on home video by Unearthed Films on September 27th. Check out the Blu-ray artwork and trailer below.




Survive!

Here is the new poster for Rob Zombie's newest flick 31


As we all know, Zombie is pretty hit and miss, but I'm still interested in checking this one out, even if it does look more like 1000 Corpses than Devil's Rejects. 31 is set to be released on October 21st.

Friday, August 12, 2016

Midnight On The Vanguard.


Every year at TIFF, my most anticipated programme line-ups are Midnight Madness and Vanguard. Offering up the newest in off-the-wall entertainment, the titles in these two groups are invariably what us genre geeks will be talking about - for better or worse - for months afterwards. Here are my top five picks for my most anticipated in both Midnight and Vanguard.

MIDNIGHT MADNESS


Action flicks have always had a stellar history at Midnight (Ong Bak, Chocolate, SPL and both Raid movies to name a few) and this newest effort called Headshot from Indonesian filmmakers Timo Tjahjanto & Kimo Stamboel starring Iko Uwais & Julie Estelle looks to be on point.


A name you can count on is Ben Wheatley and his newest Free Fire will be here this year. Including a cast such as Cillian Murphy, Armie Hammer and Brie Larson, I'm sure this one will deliver, as well.

Does the mix of Greg McLean (Wolf Creek) and James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy) sound awesome to you? It does to me. And that's what were getting in this year's survival horror comedy The Belko Experiment.


Filmmaking icon Paul Schrader returns with Nic Cage in this crime thriller, Dog Eat Dog.


I should also mention that I'm stoked for the new Blair Witch film and the adaptation of the Mike Carey novel, The Girl With The Gifts. But fortunately, the rest of you won't have to wait long for those as they release wide later in September.

VANGUARD


Festival favourite Nacho Vigalondo teams up with Anne Hathaway to give us his take on the giant monster movie, Colossal.

I was impressed with Osgood Perkins' film February last year, so I'm interested to see his follow-up this time around called I Am the Pretty Things That Lives in the House starring Ruth Wilson.

Same goes for Ana Lily Amirpour. The young director of the hit A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night is back with another female-centric tale called The Bad Batch.


I have seen three films from Belgian filmmaker Fabrice du Welz at TIFF, and this year will be the fourth, as his revenge thriller Message from the King will screen here.


Lastly, on the animation front comes Dash Shaw's My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea.

This isn't even counting the other titles outside of these programmes that I have my eye on. Yes, I think it's gonna be an interesting year.  

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Under The Shadow.

Last weekend, I attended the fourth edition of LEFT (Lost Episode Festival Toronto) to catch a screening of Babak Anvari’s Under The Shadow. After its successful showing at Sundance – and my missing it at Fantasia – I was very excited to see what all the fuss was about.


Tehran, 1988. Shideh (Narges Rashidi) must not only protect her daughter Dorsa (Avin Manshadi) from the constant bombing attacks, but also a supernatural force that has set up residence in their tenement complex. 

Under The Shadow was an excellent film. I had expected to enjoy it, but I had no idea it was going to be such an exceptionally well rounded piece of work. Everything about this effort was top notch, right down to the eighties production design. Although, the themes were so timeless, it could’ve just as easily been set in present day.

I’d heard about the comparisons to 2014’s The Babadook and they are valid, as both tales involve a mother and child, supernatural forces and have metaphorical underpinnings. However, Under The Shadow was far less flashy, and I believe that worked in its favour. A lot of The Babadook’s appeal was in its visual style and production design, whereas this relied solely on its characters. I also saw shades of 2002’s Dark Water in here too, but this was way more articulate and affecting.

Narges Rashidi (right) & Avin Manshadi in Under The Shadow

The way Anvari was able to convey so much about the political climate and attitudes in such a short time was really impressive. Using the tenement building in which Shideh lived as a microcosm of Tehran itself, where communities were orphaned of their able-bodied men through conscription, was really interesting to me. As her complex emptied out, she and her daughter became more vulnerable to the unknown force lingering inside.

The more I think about it, the more I appreciate how well it all linked together. Rashidi was terrific in this film, and her character was extremely well written. It wasn’t a surprise to see that she was credited as a writer, as there was a perspective here that no man would have been able to duplicate.

As a genre film, this movie packed a punch due to its double-pronged approach. It had several conventional scare moments, including one or two well conceived jump scares, but there was also an underlying sense of dread throughout. Imagine living in a place where you could be blown to bits at any moment. Anvari used this to full effect by making even the most mundane scenes thick with tension. There was an early scene where Shideh was talking on the phone, but the shot was a lot wider than it needed to be to frame in the large window behind her. All I could do was stare at it, sure that an explosion was going to shatter it at any moment. Tremendous stuff.


I was also pleased that there was limited CG used in the film. The scares, for the most part, came from the threat to the main characters, and that’s how it should be. And thankfully, Anvari didn’t go for that one last jump scare, something that’s almost required in North American scare flicks these days. Under The Shadow was highly effective and concentrated on all the right elements that make a great horror film.

Lastly, I just wanted to give a shout-out to Johnny Larocque and LEFT for an impressive line-up this year. They may not be as visible as some of the other genre fests in Toronto, but with the acquisition of high profile titles like Under The Shadow, they soon will be. Excellent job, guys!

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Trailer Tuesdays: Planet of the Vampires

Today, I give you the trailer for Mario Bava's uber-influential 1965 science fiction flick Planet of the Vampires.



I wanted to go for something space-y here, because No Man's Sky comes out today. If posts become somewhat infrequent over the next few weeks, that's the reason.


Time to get off this rock, ladies and germs. So long and thanks for all the VHS!

Monday, August 8, 2016

Familiar Things.

This review was a long time coming. Stranger Things released on Netflix the day I left for Fantasia, so I wasn't able to tear into it until after I returned. Of course, by that time, pretty much almost everyone had binged watched it, created memes and moved on. So, I wondered if it was even worth posting about. But, in the end, it seemed wrong not to.


As you would expect, I really, really enjoyed this series. It was a simmering pot of so many things I hold dear. Imagine the three witches from Macbeth perched in their cave, throwing in every scrap of beloved eighties pop culture they can get their hands on. Let's break it down...

Stranger Things succeeds in large part due to its casting. I was impressed by the instant camaraderie built between the four friends, Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Will (Noah Schnapp), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) In real life groups of chums, there are always smaller pairs that are closer than the rest, and this was the best portrayal I've seen of this since Stephen King's Stand By Me. But, as you no doubt realized early on, Stranger Things was seventy-five per cent Spielberg and King. Rounding out the young cast was Millie Bobby Brown as the mysterious Eleven. She was superb, having to run the gamut of emotions from rage to sadness.

McLaughlin (left), Matarazzo, Wolfhard & Brown in Stranger Things. 

Most importantly, I was so happy to see Winona Ryder in this. I heard some online chatter about how sobby she was, and I'll never understand that. She played it perfectly in my opinion. Do you know how hard it is to play someone that wrecked with grief? Not only that, but make you want to, at times, reach through the screen, wrap them in a blanket and tell them everything is going to be okay. During the bit with the Xmas light messages showed up, I think that was where I went, yeah there's really something to this. Oh, and Matthew Modine doing his best David Cronenberg impression, that was ace!

The music of Stranger Things played a huge part in this series. First off, Netflix has proved once again that they have more money that God to be able to afford all those wicked eighties songs they put in there. Then, to furthermore have it accentuated by a ton of synth-wave goodies from Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein that sounded like the resulting offspring of a three-way between John Carpenter, Alan Howarth and Tangerine Dream. I can assure you that upcoming soundtrack release is going to do very, very well.



When most people were talking about Stranger Things, they weren't only praising the show, but also pointing out all the references of which were legion, as almost every scene, character and set dress harkened back to that age of pop culture. It brought a lot of smiles to my face, and there were only a few times where I thought perhaps they were reaching (just how easy were posters of Evil Dead and The Thing to come by in 1983?). However, I did love that, “take that down, it's inappropriate” bit in regards to Raimi's aforementioned masterpiece.

Even though I did really love this show, I have to admit that I liked the first four episodes better than the last four. It was those first few episodes that, even though they were built on the backs of two iconic Steves, there was a lot of originality, the characters felt real and there was tremendous thematic weight. Then around episode five-ish, I found myself having to suspend my disbelief where I hadn't before. Rather than doing things organically, characters began to more noticeably do them to drive plot. Whereas before I was thinking to myself, geez if my brother & I watched this back in '83, would we have known?, I then began to see more modern conventions, like the CG monster that consequently became less scary the more it was shown. Even the more we saw of the “upside down” (which, by the way, was a fucking awesome name for a parallel dimension), the more it reminded me of Silent Hill. I was always enjoying myself, and it by no means went off the rails like the similarly-themed Super 8, but the last few episodes were difference between super great and just great.

Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers In Stranger Things

So there, I think I've said my piece. I will definitely watch this through again before Season 2 comes around because it really is something special beyond all its nostalgic ingredients. Mainly, it gives me hope, as I am currently working on a script that borrows from a lot of beloved eighties tropes and it's nice to know there is still an accepting audience of it.

Sunday, August 7, 2016

DKTM 310


Hey guys, squeezing this in before hitting the trail this morning. Here's what I got for you.

Fantastic!

Fantastic Fest announced its lineup this week and among them were three particularly anticipated titles.




One of these years, I've got to make it down to Austin. I hear it's a blast and more and more of my Toronto brethren are making it out each year. Maybe one day. Fantastic Fest runs September 22nd-29th.

Let Her Out!

A trailer has arrived for Black Fawn's latest title in their deal with Breakthrough Entertainment, Let Her Out.



I like the look of this one, so hopefully it shows up here sometime during festival season.

The Big Vee Lives.

There is probably no more beloved VHS-era home video label than Vestron Video, as their titles were ubiquitous in the eighties and nineties. Well, Lionsgate has recently resurrected the label and will be re-releasing special editions of cult B-classics like Blood Diner, Chopping Mall and Return of the Living Dead 3.


Long Live Vestron Video!

Friday, August 5, 2016

EVIIIIIIIIIIIIL!


In keeping with the Loose Cannons Podcast, I recently re-watched the 1980 slasher New Year's Evil.


A psychopath (Kip Niven) leaves a trail of bodies on his way to a New Year's Bash celebration hosted by popular VJ Diane Sullivan (Roz Kelly). Will she still be alive at the stroke of midnight?

Now, I say re-watched, but I remembered very little of it, as this was another title that I saw through Elvira's Movie Macabre in the early nineties. As far as eighties slashers go, this is pretty low on the totem pole. The movie featured very little gore, was overly convoluted at times, and seemed to often forget that it is a slasher, like when the killer suddenly decided to start wearing a mask well into the last reel.

Black Christmas styles!

Having said that, New Year's Evil does have some entertaining qualities. The theme song was so catchy that the filmmakers decided to use it in its entirety a total of three times. The depiction of “New Wave Rock” culture was pretty laughable, as seen when the band was playing some weird blues-y riff and the crowd basically looked they were moshing to a ballad. It was also pretty amusing to see them try and fill the venue with thirty or so extras. You can actually hear the echoing emptiness of the room as they shuffle around.

I think the filmmakers were trying to create another slasher icon by naming him Evil, but he's actually kind of shit at his vocation. I admit that the idea of a guy who kills people every hour leading up to New Year's Eve – representing each time zone – was pretty cool, but the closer he got, the more he started mucking things up. I suppose I should say SPOILER here, but do you really give a shit? By the time he reached Diane Sullivan, and it was revealed that he was, in fact, her husband – I wonder if Nightmares in A Damaged Brain scooped this twist from here – the gig was pretty much up.

He proceeded to spew out some misogyny just before the cops showed up and he threw himself (or at least a poorly disguised mannequin) off the roof. The movie then ends with her son Derek (Grant Kramer), who has spent most of the running time doing all sorts of weird stuff with pantyhose, picking up where his father left off. As you would.

We need to talk about Derek.

In complete contrast to the films of today, almost everybody in the movie is played by someone who is older than they should be. I think in that regard I prefer it the way it is today. It also had a scene in a Drive-In and I always like those. If I'm not mistaken, the movie playing may have been footage from an earlier Cannon release (The Lady In Red Kills Seven Times). There's a bit of free trivia for you. New Year's Evil isn't great, but it's serviceable, much like a lot of the horrors that were being churned out by this point in the early eighties.

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Trailer Tuesdays: Beyond Evil

Sorry, I'm falling behind a bit here. To be honest, I kinda burned myself out after script writing all last week. Everything else, including a post about Stranger Things, has just fallen by the wayside. Anyhoo, here's a trailer for 1980's Beyond Evil.



Well shit, this trailer just keeps better and better. John Saxon AND Lynda Day George (the BASTAAARDS! lady from Pieces) AND laser eyes!! 


SOLD!!!