Tag: Home Invasion Flick

Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Absurd, aka Rosso sangue

As often happens in film, a project begins with one intention in mind, and ends up being something else. Such is the case with Absurd, one of eight films released by prolific filmmaker Joe D’Amato in 1981. Like with Anthropophagus in 1980, this is the only one of the year that wasn’t smut.

D’Amato had envisioned a film that would be a sequel to Anthropophagus, but frequent collaborator George Eastman, whom D’Amato tapped to star, decided to rewrite the whole thing into a Halloween ripoff, only with less plot. Why D’Amato, who also produced, decided to let Eastman change everything around, is anyone’s guess. D’Amato was the kind of filmmaker who wanted to get his movies into the can as quickly as possible, so just letting Eastman redo the screenplay might have been the path of least resistance. The problem is, while Eastman had an extensive list of credits as a screenwriter at that point, none of it is any good. Continue reading “Lo spettacolo dell'orrore italiano: Absurd, aka Rosso sangue”

October Horrorshow: Mandy

Mandy, the 2018 magnum opus from director Panos Cosmatos, written with Aaron Stewart-Ahn, is a film that will be polarizing to an audience. Its execution is very stylized, and that, combined with its oppressive mood, will be a huge turnoff for many, while many others will find themselves carried away by it all. It’s not completely a love it or hate it kind of film, but the world is rarely so black and white. What most viewers should be able to agree on is that Cosmatos’s film is ambitious, especially in the way it is photographed. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Mandy”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Chain Gang Women

We have been hornswoggled. We have been bamboozled. Hoodwinked. Swindled. Tricked, and defrauded. A movie with a title such as Chain Gang Women has obligations to be met. There needs to be women. On a chain gang. And there should be, at minimum, two nude shower scenes. A film with a title like this owes its audience genuine exploitative sleaze. This flick is that, to be sure, but to an inadequate extent. Nor does that change the fact that viewers are the victims of shameless misdirection in the pursuit of drive-in dollars. I shall explain. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Chain Gang Women”

October Horrorshow: The Slumber Party Massacre

One part sleaze and one part slasher flick (which probably makes it all sleaze, now that I think about it), The Slumber Party Massacre works hard to tick every box when it comes to 1980s horror. Teenagers, an enraged killer, blood, etc. Instead of filling empty spots with plot, director Amy Holden Jones went with gratuitous nudity. The teenaged boy still lurking in me was thrilled. The mature, objective reviewer in me was also thrilled. When in Rome…

Released in 1982, The Slumber Party Massacre tells everything a viewer needs to know about the plot in its title. There is a slumber party, and a killer looking to massacre everyone at it. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Slumber Party Massacre”

Shitty Movie Sundays: Death Wish II

Forget for a moment that Death Wish II is one of the defining films for The Cannon Group and its producing pair of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Forget that it was this film, along with Enter the Ninja, that would come to define a style of shamelessness that has brought endless amounts of joy to both the shitty movie fan and the wider action flick audience. Forget that a film like this scratches a primal itch that high culture would like to pretend doesn’t exist. Instead, revel in the fact that Jimmy Page did the music for this flick. That’s right. Jimmy Page. From Led Zeppelin. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Death Wish II”

October Horrorshow: Them (2006)

I sometimes wonder if Eastern Europe is as mysterious a place for people in Western Europe as it is for people here in the United States. For us, it’s an obscure place — a somewhat monolithic land still struggling after throwing off the yoke of communist oppression. It’s a place of strange languages and cultures. For those with some familiarity with history, it’s a land of continual strife. For those of us interested in tales of the supernatural, Eastern Europe looms as the birthplace of vampire tales and werewolf stories. Whether we are conscious of it or not, Eastern Europe, as seen through western or American eyes, is a threatening locale. It’s the perfect place to set a horror flick. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Them (2006)”

October Horrorshow: Hush

A film doesn’t have to have a boatload of jump scares or shocking moments to be frightening. I’ve found that jump scares in particular, when overused, to be detrimental to the quality of a horror film. But Hush, the 2016 film co-written and directed by Mike Flanagan, and starring fellow co-writer Kate Siegel, does not rely on quick instances of surprise to juice up its fright with adrenaline. Rather, Flanagan and Siegel place their protagonist in a situation that is naturally horrifying, and use the tension that creates to settle a viewer into deep, feature-length unease. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Hush”

October Horrorshow: Intruders

Holy crap! This flick is so obscure that as of this writing (March 2016 — I like to get a head start on the Horrorshow) it has no Wikipedia page. It also has a common title. A quick search in the tubes turned up no less than three films titled Intruders produced from 2014-2016, not including this one. Some more digging has revealed that this Intruders was originally titled Shut In, and under that title there is a Wikipedia page. So all is well with the universe. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Intruders”

October Horrorshow: The Toolbox Murders

There’s nothing quite like a 1970s exploitation horror flick. That’s not a compliment. Often such films can be entertaining if there’s a sick spot a viewer needs to scratch, but just as often it can leave a viewer feeling a little filthy by the time the credits roll. Such is the case with today’s film. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Toolbox Murders”

October Horrorshow: You’re Next

Right now, here in New York City, the sky is overcast and the air is a crisp 60 degrees (that’s 16 degrees for you Loyal Seven from points far and wide). It’s a typical fall day, and that sucks. On days like this, I worry the sun won’t make another appearance until it’s too cold out for clouds to form. But, I shouldn’t worry, because it’s October, and that means it’s time for the Sixth Annual October Horrorshow here on Missile Test, where I watch and review horror films for an entire month. The good, the bad, the putrid...it doesn’t matter, so long as there’s blood. Today’s film has buckets of the stuff. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: You’re Next”