Where Horror Lives
There are lots of bad movies. Some movies are so bad they become legendary. Take Plan 9 from Outer Space or The Room as illustrations. But how many bad movies inspire a documentary about their troubled production? On paper, the 1996 adaptation of HG Wells’ The Island of Dr Moreau looked like prestige horror. There […]
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Tobe Hooper directed several memorable horror movies over the course of his career. Though he’s best known for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Hooper’s eclectic filmography included Poltergeist, Salem’s Lot, and ‘hillbilly’ horror Eaten Alive. To say that his 1985 movie, Lifeforce, might be his most bizarre would be an understatement. Based on a novel called […]
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The 1950’s, the Atomic Era, was the ‘Golden Age’ of mutated horrors. This was the decade that gave us Godzilla, The Deadly Mantis, Them, and The Blob. It was a time of drive-in theatres and B-movies. Flashforward to the 1990’s, the era of Blockbuster and straight-to-video movies. Many of these movies tried to emulate the […]
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If the 1970’s is horror’s ‘prestige era’, then the 1980’s is best classified as the genre’s ‘guilty pleasure’. By and large, the 1980’s was the slasher movie era. Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Child’s Play, Hellraiser – each of these franchises began in the 80’s. Just below these A-listers were a series […]
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Five years after Creepshow’s moderate success, George A. Romero and Stephen King reunited to bring us Creepshow 2. For this go-around of the horror anthology, Michael Gornick replaced Romero behind the camera. Fortunately, Romero still penned the screenplay, and King’s work served as the source material. But the end result still looked like a bit […]
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By the mid-1980’s, the slasher film craze was running out of steam. Though some series – A Nightmare on Elm Street and Child’s Play – were just beginning, the subgenre suffered from an excess of indistinguishable releases. Take a stroll through later ‘80’s releases and what you’ll find are more self-aware horror movies. Perhaps sensing […]
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Yes, it’s the one without Jason. And no, not the first one. Paramount promised that Part IV was the ‘Final Chapter’. But when ‘The Final Chapter’ made just north of $30 million, you knew he’d be back. Except he wasn’t. It probably says something about the Friday the 13th franchise that Part V, A New […]
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Carrie is a horror classic and a standout from the 1970’s, one of the genre’s best decades. No one was asking for a sequel, especially over 20 years later. With no Stephen King, no Brian De Palma, The Rage: Carrie 2 flopped. Critics hated it, audiences ignored it. But after 20 years since its release, […]
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By the late 1980’s, the golden era of the slasher movie was coming to an end. Slashers like Intruder and Cheerleader Camp leaned more towards camp than pure horror. Of course, diminishing prospects wasn’t deterring producers. Certainly not when the next horror franchise was just around the corner. Though Slumber Party Massacre was only a […]
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For a brief and shining moment, Uwe Boll was the undisputed ‘king of bad movies’. Like Ed Wood, only more angry and less earnest, Boll made aggressively bad movies. Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne, Postal – he was notorious for the sheer incompetency of his filmmaking. Following the success of Resident Evil, Boll wasted little […]
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