Where Horror Lives
Nightmare Beach is an under-the-radar horror movie. Despite it’s lack of brand familiarity, this Umberto Lenzi-flick accomplishes an impressive feat. That is, it combines not one, but two, sub-genres whose popularity had receded by the late 80’s – the slasher and the Spring Break teen sex romp. For older horror fans, Nightmare Beach was that […]
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When you think of bad sequels, a few titles spring to mind. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. The Exorcist II: The Heretic. Batman and Robin. Troll 2 is so infamously bad, it got its own documentary. But Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2 gives all of these titles a run for their money. A […]
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Welcome to the most obscure of the obscure. I consider myself to be something on 80’s horror movie aficionado. Previously, I thought I had seen just about every slasher movie to emerge from that decade. And then I found Offerings on Amazon Prime. Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of it. This 1989 slasher came […]
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If Stephen King writes it, Hollywood will inevitably adapt it. Even some of King’s thinner works (no pun intended) have received the big-screen treatment. With so much output, it’s not really all that surprising that you get the occasional dud. Among these duds, Graveyard Shift remains one of the more forgotten King adaptations. The 1990 […]
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In the 1980’s, horror movies were defined by the slasher sub-genre. Similarly, the action-thriller genre was all about vengeance. Revenge thrillers were all the rage in the decade of excess and neon. Death Wish sequels, Ms 45, Savage Streets, The Exterminator, Vigilante, Fighting Back. Most of these movies were grimy, violent, low-budget affairs. And then […]
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Horror movies adapted from video games don’t have a checkered history. By and large, critics have universally loathed these movies. ‘Director’ Uwe Boll scraped the bottom of the barrel with adaptations of Alone in the Dark and House of the Dead. On the other end of the spectrum, Paul WS Anderson’s Resident Evil probably remains […]
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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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