August 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.

The Fly (1986)

The Watchers (2024) 

Hide & Seek (2005)

Super 8 (2011)

Brainscan (1994)

Soulm8te (2026)

Death Machine (1994)

Ghost in the Machine (1993)

Shocker (1989)

The Lawnmover Man (1992)

Hardware (1990)

Nightmares (1983)

Virtuosity (1995)

Willy's Wonderland (2021)

Deadly Friend (1986)

Prom Night (1980)

Cutting Class (1989)

Return to Horror High (1987)

Graduation Day (1981)

Night of the Creeps (1986)

Phantom of the Paradise (1974)

Student Bodies (1981)

My Bloody VHS

I was finally able to get my hands back on a tape of My Bloody Valentine, after foolishly giving it away to a friend some fifteen years ago. I took a trip to Cultland this weekend, as Coop had graciously tracked one down for me after my repeated requests. I also picked up these beauties...

If you live in the GTHA, you should definitely hit them up for a visit.

July 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.

Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)

Dracula 1972 A.D. (1972)

Count Yorga, Vampire (1970)

Vampire (1979)

Dracula (1973)

Lifeforce (1985)

The Night Stalker (1972)

Blacula (1972)

Wolfen (1981)

Full Moon High (1981)

The Company of Wolves (1984)

Monster Squad (1987)

Fright Night Part 2 (1988)

Silver Bullet (1985)

My Mom's A Werewolf (1989)

Terror Train (1980)

Crimewave (1985)

Daybreakers (2009)

Possession (1981)

Predestination (2014)

Maniac (1980)

The Void (2016)

Chopping Mall (1986)

Cuckoo (2024)

House on Haunted Hill (1959)

Storm Crow Trivia, Return of the Drawful.

Back by popular demand, are some shitty Android Paint drawings. Can you figure out these 10 horror movies from these colourful scribbles?

June 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.

Cube (1997)

Psychos In Love (1987)

Frostbiter: Wrath of the Wendigo (1995)

Fear (1996)

Whalefall (2026)

The Blob (1988)

Heretic (2024)

Tokyo Gore Police (2008)

The Gate (1987)

The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

The Last House on the Left (1972)

The Haunted Palace (1963)

Resident Evil (2002)

No One Lives (2012)

Television

The Haunted (1991)

The Twilight Zone (1959-1965)

Crystal Lake (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.

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.

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!