Wes Craven is one of the giants of horror cinema. With The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes, he mastered the art of dread in horror. He seemed less concerned with frightening his viewers than with making them deeply uncomfortable. He lightened up in the 1980s, though, introducing one of horror’s most wisecracking antagonists with Freddy Krueger. That new style of his continued, less effectively, with Shocker, the story of another mass murdering serial killer with personality.
Mitch Pileggi plays Horace Pinker, a ruthless killer terrorizing the fictional California town of Maryville. It seems not a week goes by when there’s a news report of a home invasion where Pinker murders an entire family. One of those is the family of the detective investigating the murders, Lt. Don Parker (veteran That Guy Michael Murphy), and his adult foster son, Jonathan (Peter Berg), a star football player at the local college. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Shocker”