Tag: Slasher Flick

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 “Backwoods (1988), aka Geek!”

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 “Death Row Diner”

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 “Cannibal Campout”

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 “The Gingerdead Man”

Body Count (1986), aka Camping del terrore

This is the third film from director Ruggero Deodato to be featured in the Italian Horrorshow, after the unforgettable pair of Cannibal Holocaust and Jungle Holocaust. Both of those films were impressive in their storytelling and shocking visuals. Deodato must have had enough of cannibals after that, and instead turned his talents to an American-style slasher/cabin in the woods flick.

Written by many people, including Italian cinema stalwarts Sheila Goldberg and Dardano Sacchetti, Body Count (Italian: Terror camping) tells the story of two groups of youths that are brought together by chance, to be chased around a derelict campground by a masked killer. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with horror flicks will have seen this plot, or something damned close, once or twice. This being the fifteenth year of the Horrorshow, on top of a lifetime of watching horror flicks, I figured there would be nothing all that special about this flick. Continue reading “Body Count (1986), aka Camping del terrore”

StageFright (1987), aka Deliria

Ferrari (Piero Vida) is producing, and Peter (David Brandon) is directing the most low-rent and desperate dance theater production ever to hit off-off-off-off-off-Broadway. It’s the story of an owl-headed serial killer who preys in the slums, raping hookers and Cinderalla alike, while Marilyn Monroe serenades the scene with a saxophone from above.

Such is the setting for George Eastman and Sheila Goldberg’s (writers) and Michele Soavi’s (directing his first feature) film StageFright. The film is a classic slasher, featuring a limited cast in an isolated environment, who are chopped to bits at regular intervals, before the whole thing is wrapped up in a bow at the end. There’s not much to set this film apart from the many, many slashers that populate the horror genre. The good news for viewers is that StageFright is a good film, with a swift pace, plentiful gore, believable characters, and a setting that works. Little foibles of Italian cinema show up here and there, mostly involving the motivations of the bad guy and the unlikely coincidence that introduces said bad guy to the plot, but, whatever. This is a fun flick. Continue reading “StageFright (1987), aka Deliria”

The Wax Mask, aka M.D.C. – Maschera di cera

According to the internet, so it must be true, after Dario Argento saw that Italian film auteur Lucio Fulci was in ill-health in the mid 1990s, he decided to throw him a project. Argento and Fulci didn’t get along that well, however, so pre-production stretched on longer than it should have. Then Fulci died, and the project was passed to first-time director Sergio Stivaletti, who had been an established special effects tech for over a decade. The result was The Wax Mask, which was different enough from 1953’s House of Wax to keep Argento and the other producers from being sued.

The film opens on a grisly murder scene in Paris in the year 1900. A man and his wife have been cut to ribbons, with their young daughter a survivor and witness to the brutal crime. Fast forward to Rome a dozen years later and the girl has grown into a woman. Sonia Lafont (Romina Mondello) has arrived in Rome to seek a career as a costume designer. She gets a job at a soon to be opened wax museum run by the mysterious Boris Volkoff (Robert Hossein), who becomes enamored with Sonia at first sight. Continue reading “The Wax Mask, aka M.D.C. – Maschera di cera”

A Bay of Blood, aka Ecologia del delitto, aka Twitch of the Death Nerve, or, The Real Estate Market is Cutthroat

Mario Bava was one of the greats of horror cinema. Not just Italian horror, but horror in general. Horror junkies the world over celebrate his more famous films as essential to the genre. Like with all artists, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. By the 1970s critics had begun to fall out of love with Bava, and that shows with the negative reaction to A Bay of Blood upon its release in 1971.

Contemporary critics and fans were hard on A Bay of Blood, as Bava had moved on from atmospheric gothic horror and into exploitation. Funny enough, though, this film proved to be as much an influence on later horror films as any other movie he had made. Viewers with more than a passing knowledge of American slasher flicks will see some of that subgenre’s genesis in A Bay of Blood. As such, it’s a film that garnered a much better reputation before the decade was out. Continue reading “A Bay of Blood, aka Ecologia del delitto, aka Twitch of the Death Nerve, or, The Real Estate Market is Cutthroat”

Night Killer, aka Non aprite quella porta 3

Night Killer movie posterSometimes, one can tell the objective quality of an Italian horror flick by looking at its title upon release in the old country. Night Killer, from 1990, is a case in point. It was released in Italy with the title Non aprite quella porta 3, which translates as Do Not Open That Door 3, implying that this is the third in a series. The first film to use Do Not Open That Door in Italian theaters was The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Night Killer is not related to Tobe Hooper’s classic in any way, but producer Franco Gaudenzi hitched his wagon to Hooper’s regardless. If there is one thing I’ve learned from watching all these Italian horror flicks for the Horrorshow, it’s that trademark law must be different in Rome.

Written by Claudio Fragasso with an uncredited assist by Rossella Drudi, Night Killer is one of the more scatterbrained, nonsensical, and poorly acted horror flicks many viewers will come across. The quality of the acting I can lay at the feet of Fragasso, who also directed. When every performance, from leads to those with single lines of dialogue, is either over-the-top or feels like a first take, that’s the director’s fault. The storytelling foibles of this flick I can blame on Gaudenzi, who took Fragasso’s psychological horror flick and had Bruno Mattei add a bunch of gory kills in reshoots. These kill scenes are scattered throughout the film like disruptive guerilla attacks on the film’s pacing, doing little more than making things confusing for the viewer. As gore shots, they aren’t that convincing, either. Continue reading “Night Killer, aka Non aprite quella porta 3”

Mountaintop Motel Massacre

It’s clear by now to regular readers that Missile Test is a big fan of regional cinema. It’s hard to overstate the stranglehold that large media companies have over the artistic content of the country. Sometimes the consolidation of media becomes so egregious that even the federal government gets involved to stop it. Not nearly enough to make an actual difference, but that’s a story for another day, perhaps after Disney makes a bid for DC or Image. Anyway…

Mountaintop Motel Massacre is regional cinema from Louisiana. Directed by Jim McCullough Sr., from a screenplay by Jim McCullough Jr., Mountaintop Motel Massacre filmed in the fall of 1982, or the spring of 1983, depending on the source. It then showed in some theaters in the south under the title Mountaintop Motel, before being picked up for distribution by Roger Corman and New World Pictures. They insisted on reshoots, including a new ending, ‘Massacre’ was attached to the end of the title, and the rest is history. Continue reading “Mountaintop Motel Massacre”