To this day, Silent Night, Deadly Night remains one of the most controversial horror films produced. Of course, the controversy that swirled around the 1984 exploitation slasher was misguided at best. Nonetheless, the ‘Santa Claus Killer’ movie reached a similar level of infamy as the ‘Video Nasty List’ in the United Kingdom. And like many […]
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Vampires were all the rage in the 1980’s. The Lost Boys, Near Dark, Once Bitten, The Hunger, Lifeforce, Vamp, Vampire’s Kiss. Like the zombie takeover of popular culture in the last 10 to 15 years, the neon decade was saturated with bloodsuckers. Nestled somewhere between The Lost Boys and the more obscure Near Dark, Tom […]
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Amidst the wave of remakes in the 2000’s, Hollywood occasionally ventured outside horror. Spike Lee re-visited controversial Korean revenge-thriller Old Boy in 2013. And Martin Scorsese himself re-worked Hong Kong pot-boiler Infernal Affairs into his 2006 crime thriller, The Departed. Yet one of the more ambitious remakes in recent memory was Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs. […]
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Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie, also has the distinction of being the first cinematic adaptation of his work. In a decade defined by increasingly transgressive and, often, prestigious horror releases, Carrie stood out as one of the best. Critics loved it and audiences flocked to theaters to see it. Following its release, Carrie even garnered […]
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If there was a movie begging for a remake … I Spit On Your Grave was not that movie. Most film pundits consider director Meir Zarchi’s 1978 ‘rape-revenge’ film to be among the most controversial movies made. Following its release, critics trashed it while some countries outright banned it. In the 1980’s, for instance, England […]
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Audiences love a good creature feature. Whether it’s just regular sharks, aliens, or over-sized insects, we can’t get enough of big monsters destroying famous landmarks. Sixty years ago, teens crowded drive-in theaters to see one of Hollywood’s best creature-features – The Blob. It’s the perfect midnight movie and a testament to a way of film-making […]
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Babysitting is probably one of toughest gigs in the horror genre. Halloween, The House of the Devil, The Amityville Horror, Better Watch Out – babysitters have it tough in horror movies. Mixing the ‘babysitter-in-peril’ narrative with the ‘killer is in the house’ trope, When a Stranger Calls was a minor 1970’s box office success. Critics […]
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The ‘haunted house‘ is a staple of the horror genre. Vast hallways. Cobwebs. Creepy paintings. Eccentric caretakers. A bloody history of tragedy. These familiar tropes have coalesced into some eerily fantastic horror movies from The Innocents to The Amityville Horror to Poltergeist. Undoubtedly, one of the best haunted house movies is Robert Wise’s The Haunting. […]
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