Where Horror Lives
Controversial opinion – take away its ending and Sleepaway Camp is a forgettable B-grade slasher. But that ending is among the most shocking, creepy, and controversial in horror. No one should be surprised that sequels eventually followed. What is surprising is that it took roughly five years to make that first sequel, Sleepaway Camp II: […]
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Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was more than a box office sensation – it was a cultural phenomenon. Along with Star Wars, Jaws changed how movies were made, released, and watched. And just like Psycho turned people off of their showers, Jaws scared a generation away from the ocean. Still there was no reason to make a […]
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They can’t all be Friday the 13th, Halloween, or A Nightmare on Elm Street. To fill the void between A-list horror franchise releases, you need some B-list franchises – Child’s Play, Final Destination, or Resident Evil. Even Hellraiser had few decent theatrical sequels before churning out discount bin straight-to-video “hell” crap. And then there are […]
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They’re a Hollywood staple. Call them franchises or, the more en vogue term, ‘shared universes’. If you don’t have one, you want one. Already have one – develop more of them. Aside from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Warner Bros has their DC Extended Universe and the MonsterVerse. But the horror genre has always had franchises […]
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Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes studio has produced a handful of successful original horror movies (A Quiet Place, The Purge series). However, horror fans primarily know the studio for its assembly line of 2000’s remakes. Over the course of the decade, Platinum Dunes tackledThe Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th, The Amityville Horror, and even VHS […]
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Slasher movies live or die based on their death scenes. No pun intended. When Wes Craven made A Nightmare on Elm Street, he created one of the genre’s most enduring classics. And he gifted horror with Freddy Krueger, an iconic boogeyman. With its ‘dreamworld’ premise, Craven also opened up a world of possibilities for the […]
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Following the success of The Ring, Hollywood spent several years combing the J-horror catalogue for remakes. Most of these American J-horror remakes were, for lack of a better word, horrible. Takashi Shimizu’s The Grudge, a remake of his own Ju-On, didn’t wow critics, but got audiences into theatres. Now that Hollywood has remade just about […]
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Fanboys wanted this movie from the day Dark Horse Comics published its Alien and Predator crossover in 1989. One year later, Predator 2 teased an image of a Xenomorph skull, sparking further speculation of a movie. But the Predator franchise was dormant through the 1990’s, while the Alien series concentrated on standalone sequels. Then along […]
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Franchises are a staple of the horror genre. From the beginnings of horror cinema, Universal had their ‘Monsters’ and Hammer Films’ pumped out their Frankenstein and Dracula sequels for over a decade. During the ‘Golden Era’ of slashers in the 1980’s, Friday the 13th, Halloween, and A Nightmare on Elm Street sequels ruled. But by […]
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Blame Black Christmas. Or maybe John Carpenter’s Halloween. Regardless, the success of those movies all but guaranteed that horror would adapt just about any holiday on the calendar. Outside of Labour Day, St Patrick’s Day seemed like an unlikely candidate for a horror movie. Years of Saturday morning cartoon Lucky Charms’ commercials didn’t exactly make […]
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