Where Horror Lives
Every long-running movie franchise or television series has one. It’s that sequel or season that disappointed its fanbase. Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans hated on the fourth season. When Friday the 13th tried to move on without Jason Voorhees, Paramount immediately course-corrected with their next sequel. After two successful Halloween movies, John Carpenter decided it […]
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When I created the ‘Worst Movie Ever’ column, Thir13en Ghosts was exactly the kind of horror movie I had in mind. Critics ripped it apart on its release. And while it made decent money at the box office, it fell just short of recouping its production budget. But Thir13en Ghosts has developed a fanbase over […]
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Freddy Krueger and the Elm Street franchise are horror royalty. Wes Craven’s ‘boogeyman’ sits with Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers as part of the contemporary ‘holy trinity’ of horror. Across four decades, the Elm Street movies have grossed approximately $370 million. But like most horror franchises, each successive sequel generally saw a drop in quality. […]
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Nobody’s perfect. Even the best have an off-day once in a while. Critics and horror fans alike regard John Carpenter as one of the genre’s greatest filmmakers. Certainly, the praise is well placed. Carpenter’s filmography includes bona fide classics – Halloween, The Thing, and Escape From New York. And his smaller movies – Assault on […]
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Joe Dante’s The Howling is a classic horror movie. Aside from An American Werewolf in London, it’s one of the best werewolf movies of all time. Interestingly, however, The Howling has produced one of the more bizarre horror franchises. To date, studios have churned out seven sequels over four decades. Most of these sequels were […]
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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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