The Horror Section: 2026

Wednesday, May 27, 2026

May Horror Trivia Watchlist

To all those who came here from the event or the FB or Instagram page, welcome! I am Jay, one half of the horror trivia quizmasters and this is my humble blog. Here's a selected list of titles mentioned at the last event. Click on the titles to be redirected to their Imdb listing. Horror Trivia Night happens at Storm Crow Manor in Toronto. If you're in the area, come on down! Register here.

Race with the Devil (1975)

Milk & Serial (2024)

Arachnophobia (1990)

Critters 2 (1988)

Silver Bullet (1985)

House (1985)

The Sender (1982)

Lady in White (1988)

Bad Dreams (1988)

The Deadly Spawn (1984)

Witchfinder General (1968)

The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971)

The Wicker Man (1973)

The Wicker Tree (2011)

Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made (2018)

Children of the Corn (1984)

The Witch (2015)

Demons (1985)

Demons 2 (1986)

Giallo (2009)

Zombie 5: Killing Birds (1988)

Stagefright (1987)

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)

The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971)

Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)

Phenomena (1985)

Bay of Blood (1971)

Suspiria (2018)

Shock (1977)

Storm Crow Trivia, Guess The Movie Round.

Friday, May 22, 2026

ACAB '90

The next tape off the pile was the 1990 crime thriller Street Asylum.

No nonsense cop Arliss Ryder (Wings Hauser) joins a new police strike force tasked with cleaning up the streets - by any means necessary.

I think I had heard of this film, but I think I subconsciously linked it with Class of 1999 because their coverboxes are eerily similar, and as it turns out so are their plots with both featuring public servants altered to combat perceived criminals. It's also kind of like Dead Heat, but with implanted aggression instead of zombification.

However, no matter whatever way you look at this, there is no getting around that this movie is ACAB before ACAB. It's a tad disillusioning when you watch these movies from thirty or fourty years ago and you're hearing lines like, “Strike force or Gestapo?” and it's still relevant today. Just once, I'd like to watch one of these movies and think, “Remember when this was a thing?” instead of the usual “things never change”. Imagine walking into that the briefing room for S.Q.U.A.D (Scum Quelling Urban Assault Division) and seeing this...

But I digress. Aside from that, Street Asylum, which is kind of an obtuse name now that I think about it, was a pretty chaotic affair. It's full of a lot of flash editing, crazy characters - some welcome, like Brion James as a street preacher and some not so, like Hauser's one-time partner Joker (Sy Richardson) who literally almost chewed his way through my television screen - dominatrices, Jesus antenna, Terminator guns, and sax, sax and more sax.

Wings Hauser & Alex Cord in Street Asylum.

The cast is pretty stacked with offbeat actors as in addition to the aforementioned Jones & Hauser, you also have Alex Cord. Man, was there anyone who could deliver cheesy lines as smoothly as Alex Cord? And I do have to say there were a few cool stunts in this, like old school where you wonder if they shot them while the safety co-ordinator was on lunch break. At the end of the day though, if you want to watch a crime-ridden Wings Hauser joint, you are better off with Gary Sherman's Vice Squad. I get what director Gregory Dark - who had quite the interesting career that started in porn, moved to erotic thrillers and then spanned the next few decades directing music videos for pretty much every artist on the planet - was going for, but he's no Gary Sherman. Duh-doom.

Friday, May 15, 2026

Watched A Movie, Lived To Tell.

The next movie off the pile was a recent acquisition and, enticingly, one I knew nothing about in William J. Murray's 1986 sci-fi noir Primal Scream.

Private detective Corby McHale (Kenneth McGregor) gets wrapped up in a conspiracy involving a space mining corporation and a newly discovered (and dangerously unstable) element called Hellfire.

This movie is an odd duck, man. I'm having difficulty knowing where to start, though I guess the beginning is as good a place as any. That's easier said than done, as it just drops you right in the middle of an action scene causing some severe whiplash. To be fair, I guess A New Hope did the same thing, but at least they gave you some screen-high expositional crawls beforehand.

I feel I need to mention that no one should've been surprised that this newly discovered element caused people to spontaneously combust. I mean, it IS called Hellfire for fuck's sake. If memory serves, they found it on Saturn, but despite what the coverbox would suggest, that is the only time this movie takes place in space.

Movie magic!

Once we got introduced to Corby, I was immediately like, "Hey, isn't that the principal from The Brain?" It was. Which made me immediately think this might be Canadian, because there were a lot of accents and locations that could've been Ontario, not to mention a bonkers plot that screamed 80s tax shelter. Upon further investigation I found that it was shot in Atlantic City. It makes sense, guys like Bill Fruet and Ed Hunt made chaotic movies, but at least it was controlled chaos. This movie is like Pandora's box, a whirlwind of villain eyebrows, bed skewering, lip band-aids and characters with names like Nicky Fingers.

Kenneth McGregor as Corby McHale in Primal Scream

I was never able to nail down what genre Primal Scream was supposed to be. I guess it's a crime noir mostly, or at least that's the distinct impression I got from all the sax in Mark Knox's score. However, once and a while, a spacecraft (or rather a 1/16 scale model of a spacecraft) or killer drone (prophetic!) would show up to remind me this was supposed(?) to be a science fiction movie, ala Blade Runner. At the very least, I got to see a few people get burnt to a crisp in spectacularly, practical fashion.

There's not a lot of info out there about Primal Scream, because Googling mostly brings up the Scottish rock band. There is a doc made by the filmmakers, which I would love to see, but until then all my burning questions will remain unanswered.

Now, did I fall asleep the first time I watched this movie? Yes. Did I almost fall asleep again when I tried to finish it the next day? Yes. But I still deeply admire the ambition of the filmmakers who were way out of their league, but soldiered on anyway!

Friday, May 8, 2026

Deja View.

First off, I just want to apologize for the lack of posts. I had some things going on the last couple of months, but I hope to get back to regular VHS loving posts - especially since I re-upped my supply at the last Shock Stock - and get these old digs back in regular working order. Anyhoops, the next tape on the pile was Gary Winick's 1989 film Curfew.

Two psychotic brothers (Wendell Wellman & John Putch) escape from death row and track down those who put them there.

Ever start a movie you think you've never heard of and within the first frame, you're like 'I've seen this before.' Well, that was me with Curfew. I mean, accidentally rewatching movies is not unusual, hell I've even unknowingly double reviewed them before. However, Curfew was different because it was so fresh in my mind, like I knew the outcome of every scene as they happened. I scowered my VHS to see if perhaps I had another release under a different name (it did release in some parts of Canada under the title Carnage) but nope. It wasn't on Tubi (where I often random watch horrors) and just appeared on Prime, so negatory on those fronts. The next day I was driving to work and it finally dawned on me. It was the Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray that I bought during their last Black Friday sale and subsequently gave away as a prize at trivia. Mystery solved.

Kyle Richards as Stephanie in Curfew.

But onto the movie. It's okay. It's kind of like Blood Rage, but one-tenth of the fun. It's missing the gore, even though Curfew did attempt to up the body count by throwing in some fodder during the third act in the jock (Peter Nelson), the tramp (Nori Morgan - whose other, far more prestigious, credit was vampire food in The Lost Boys) and tagalong wish Willie Aames (Niels Miller). It was fun to see Kyle Richards in a lead role, during that stage of her life between child actor and meme. And I can say that I have never seen a house cat used as a defensive weapon before.

As a whole though, Curfew is pretty thin. Wellman & Putch play off each other serviceably, skirting chaos, but never go full scenery chew, which is a shame because it could've made this effort much more memorable in the way Louise Lasser's performance in Blood Rage is the stuff of legend. At the end of the day, too much of this movie is pedestrian, lying somewhere between TV movie and low budget schlock. I can safely say that there will be no third viewing of this movie.