Tag: Bloody Flick

October Horrorshow: Backwoods (1988), aka Geek!

Backwoods 1988 VHS boxWhat happens when a filmmaker doesn’t provide a regular stream of fodder in their cheap slasher flick? Not a lot of good, that’s what.

Backwoods, sprung from the mind of Dean Crow, who directed and has a story credit, is about as low rent as a slasher can get. The budget looks to have been somewhere in the four figures, and the majority of the film takes place either in the woods or in a rundown house. The movie has a total of six cast members. That’s it. Six. Including the slasher. That meant there were not a lot of bodies for the bad guy to pile up. Not only that, there was not a single on screen death attributable to the slasher. How does one make a slasher flick, and the slasher has the lowest body count of all the characters? That’s quite a storytelling challenge Crow set for himself.

From the waning days of slasher flicks’ golden era, 1988, Backwoods follows couple Karen and Jamie (Christine Noonan and Brad Armacost) as they hike into the low mountains of northern Kentucky for a bit of camping. The area they chose used to be home to a fundamentalist Christian sect that wanted to sever all ties with civilization. They died off, as so many of those sects did, leaving behind nothing but local legends about the spooky woods they inhabited. A local ranger (Gary Lott), tries to steer them elsewhere, but Karen is determined to head into that dark stretch of wilderness. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Backwoods (1988), aka Geek!”

October Horrorshow: YellowBrickRoad

Ideas are easy. Writing is hard. That’s why there are so many films with fantastic premises that don’t stick the landing. A case in point is YellowBrickRoad, from writing and directing duo Jesse Holland and Andy Mitton. This film has a strong premise. In 1940, all the residents of the small town of Friar, New Hampshire, decided to walk off into the forest one day, never to be seen alive, again. They left behind everything.

Now, in the present, a small group of researchers has decided to follow in the townsfolk’s footsteps, hiking up the same disused trail, in hopes of discovering just what it was that led them to their doom. They’re looking for a scientific explanation, perhaps based in group psychosis, but are also open to the idea that something supernatural was the cause. Perhaps something, some thing, resides in the pure, untouched wilderness, and lured these townsfolk away from hearth and home. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: YellowBrickRoad”

October Horrorshow: Death Row Diner

Shot on video horror flicks can generally be sorted into two camps. One, those made in Hollywood, but outside the studio system; and two, regional cinema. The main difference between the two is that the regional movies, made by filmmakers such as Tim Ritter, J.R. Bookwalter, and the Polonia brothers, are true outsider art, unconcerned with the way things are supposed to be done while making a movie, while those sprouted from the Los Angeles area have things like unionized crew, professional editing, etc. What both of these broad categorizations have in common is that the movies are objectively bad, no matter where they come from. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Death Row Diner”

October Horrorshow: Jeepers Creepers, featuring the Dumbest Decision By a Character in Horror History

I wouldn’t say that horror cinema was in the doldrums around the turn of the century. There was a strong direct-to-video market, independent movie makers were still churning out flicks shot on VHS, and there had been a revival of the teen slasher flick in theaters. But, there was a hangover from the golden age that was the 1980s. It felt like everything that could be achieved in the genre had now been done. There was nowhere left to go with gore, monsters, killers, ghosts, scares, etc. Horror had been stripmined and there were only a few original ideas on the horizon (not true, fortunately). Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Jeepers Creepers, featuring the Dumbest Decision By a Character in Horror History”

October Horrorshow: Cannibal Campout

Here it is! The first shot-on-video horror flick of this year’s Horrorshow. And it’s a good one…relatively speaking.

From way back in 1988 comes Cannibal Campout, from directors Tom Fisher and Jon McBride, working from a screenplay by McBride. No misdirection in the title with this flick. There is a campout, and there are cannibals.

The woods of New Jersey are the setting, as they are in many a horror flick. Four college students, Jon (McBride, who also produced and edited), Carrie (Carrie Lindell), Chris (Christopher A. Granger, who also handled sound, music, and was a camera assistant), and Amy (Amy Chludzinski) head off into the wilderness of New Jersey for a weekend away from the rigors of college life. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Cannibal Campout”

October Horrorshow: Bigfoot Vs. Zombies

Mark Polonia has been in the cheap movie game since the mid-1980s. Ultra low budget horror and sci-fi is an indelible part of his identity as a filmmaker. For almost forty years (previously with his twin brother, John — rest in peace), he has cranked out movie after movie, some garnering praise above and beyond expectations, while some are gutter trash. But, they are fun gutter trash. As of this writing, he has directed twenty-seven movies in this decade alone, and a whopping seven of them have IMDb ratings below 2.0. That’s not easy to do.

Mark Polonia reminds me of a fellow student at the School of Visual Arts, way back in my haughty fine arts days. He was a slightly below average artist, for what one gets at a place like SVA, but I felt that most of his issues could be solved by slowing down a bit. He was in such a rush to push out all these visual ideas he had bouncing around in his head that he never took the time to step back and refine what he was putting down on canvas. Just taking an extra day or two to stare at and think on a piece would have done wonders for its quality, I thought. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Bigfoot Vs. Zombies”

October Horrorshow: The Gingerdead Man

It’s hard to fault the pitch behind The Gingerdead Man. Gary Busey plays Millard Findlemeyer, a mass murderer who, after testimony from a survivor of his attack, Sarah Leigh (Robin Sydney), is executed. His mother, a witch, claims his ashes afterwards, and mixes them into some gingerbread spice, which she then delivers in secret to the bakery owned and operated by Sarah. Some blood is inadvertently added to the mix, and when a dough is made and baked into the shape of a gingerbread man, Findlemeyer’s soul comes back to life, possesses the cookie, and goes on a murderous rampage of revenge. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Gingerdead Man”

October Horrorshow: Shadowzone

Charles Band and Full Moon have been major contributors to the world of b-cinema for decades. Reliable, sometimes repugnant, sometimes transcendent — a viewer will know before the opening credits are over that there will be at least one outrageous moment in a Full Moon flick, even if there is a fair amount of crap to wade through. Shadowzone, from 1990, is about as prototypical as a Full Moon movie gets. It doesn’t come close to blowing a viewer away like the uncensored version of Castle Freak, but it has none of the mind numbing crassness of an Evil Bong flick. It’s a simple, cheap horror flick, and it rips off Alien. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Shadowzone”

October Horrorshow: Lockdown Tower, aka La tour

Horror films are more than just about fear. They run the gamut of distressing emotions. Besides fear there is its more frantic cousin, panic. There is also disgust, grief, loneliness, and, of course, dread. Going beyond fear into these other realms of negative emotional experience can do a lot to rob the fun from a horror flick, but they also introduce realism and honesty into stories that, otherwise, have little more depth than a carnival funhouse. Today’s film dips far into a reservoir of hopelessness, so much so that the experience will linger in a viewer’s mind after the credits roll. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: Lockdown Tower, aka La tour”

October Horrorshow: The Beast Within

In 1964, newlyweds from Jackson, Mississippi, Eli and Caroline MacCleary (Ronny Cox and Bibi Besch), are traveling through lonely Nioba County on a dark night during their honeymoon. A flat tire leaves their car beached on the side of the road, and Eli has to walk to a gas station to get a tow. Caroline stays behind, with no more than a locked car door and a dog to protect her. Out of the woods lumbers a humanoid monster that kills the dog and attacks Caroline. While she lays unconscious in the mud and dead leaves, the monster rapes her, and wanders off again before Eli and the tow truck driver return. They discover her, bruised and battered, carry her to the truck, and drive off in search of aid. Continue reading “October Horrorshow: The Beast Within”