Category Archives: Slasher/Gore

Tenebrae (1982)

Posted on October 15, 2025 | Leave a comment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Novelist hounded by stalker.

Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa) is a successful novelist who travels to Rome, Italy to promote his latest work titled ‘Tenebrae’. Once he arrives, he is soon met by detective Germani (Giuliano Gemma) who advises him that a murder has recently been committed that was done in the style of one that occurred in his book. Neal scoffs that anything he’s written could’ve motivated someone to kill, but soon after he receives an anonymous letter from the murderer detailing how he’s going to commit more killings using methods that Neal described in his book. This then sets Neal off on doing his own investigation convinced that the police have a ‘tunnel vision’ and only he can find the true culprit using his own detective skills that he acquired while doing research on his book.

The film was inspired by writer/director Dario Argento’s own experiences that he had while meeting a fan via the telephone who initially introduced himself as being a great admirer of his work. The calls were friendly in nature at the beginning but became increasingly more menacing as time wore on. Argento eventually was threatened by the fan who claimed that his film Suspiria had affected him mentally and he wanted to harm Argento in the same way his movie had ‘harmed’ him causing Dario to leave the U.S. and return to Italy for his own safety, which is where he began writing the screenplay for this movie.

The sets are atypical for an Argento movie as they lack the garish colors and shadowy interiors most noted in his other films and this was intentional as he wanted to give the film a more ‘futuristic’ look and a one-note color scheme that more closely resembled cop TV-shows, which he felt the story reflected. Visual change is refreshing and helps the action seem more reality based versus in his other movies where everything seemed like it was set in someone’s dark fantasy in some parallel universe though I wasn’t as crazy about the camerawork, which was highly praised by others. Some may find the three-minute tracking shot that goes from one apartment window and across the complex to be captivating, but I found it more dizzying and unnecessary.

The story holds enough adequate suspense to remain moderately riveting and the pounding soundtrack by the rock group Goblin holds the tension. American actor Franciosa is nicely cast though Argento apparently had many behind-the-scenes conflicts with him, but the guy, despite his career decline, looks almost ageless and I was impressed with the opening bit where; despite nearing 60, he’s seen biking down a busy highway amongst tons of traffic with seemingly no worry or sweat. John Saxon though, the only other American in the movie, is badly wasted in a part that doesn’t give him much to do other than make a big deal about his hat that he seems quite fond of. Thankfully though, despite other performers having their voice dubbed, the film was shot in English in order to broaden its American appeal and so both of these actors speak with their actual voices while it’s quite evident with the others that they’re not.

The biggest disappointment for me were the special effects that look cheap and done with no imagination. The blood is bright colored and looks like dye mixed with water. The victims show no actual cuts, or abrasions and the blood appears painted on, or gently poured on via a cup and didn’t look authentic. There are also some ill-advised reaction shots where the film will quickly cutaway and show the victim looking scared with their mouth agape that came off as unintentionally funny. The only real frightening moment comes when a young lady gets chased down a dark street by a large dog who ultimately traps her inside the house of the killer, but other than that I was wanting way more than this film seemed able to give. I did though like one murder scene, which is purportedly one of Quentin Tarrantino’s all-time favorites, that features a woman getting her arm cut off and then proceeding to turn around and paint the walls of her apartment with its spurting blood though even this gets compromised because you can plainly tell it’s a mannequin arm when the ax goes through it.

The story gets a bit convoluted too as it adds in a flashback scene, without telling us it’s a flashback, involving a prostitute, played by Eva Robin’s, who really does spell her name with an apostrophe, and some teen boys that she meets on a beach. Only at the very end does it come into focus what this scene, which gets interspread throughout, means to the story, but until then it’s rather confusing why we’re seeing it and even a bit off-putting. It also features the prostitute as having a perfectly chiseled super model’s body, which I didn’t feel was realistic, and even though it’s supposed to be set decades earlier from the present day no effort was made to make it seem like it was shot in a bygone era.

Spoiler Alert!

The twist ending may be a surprise to some as ultimately, we learn that there wasn’t just one killer, but two of them. One being a TV interviewer named Christiano, played by John Steiner, who kills the first several due to his feelings that the victims were ‘immoral’ and then the last few committed by the protagonist himself. However, I started to suspect Franciosa when he’s found conveniently hit over the head by a rock, which supposedly ‘incapacitated’ him though I thought it was simply a ploy to divert attention away from him, so for me the final reveal was very predictable. Logically it doesn’t completely hold up either as his friend Gianni, played by Christian Borromeo, witness Christiano getting killed by Franciosa, though in disguise, and then runs back to the backyard bushes where Franciosa is supposedly hiding, but it didn’t seem like Franciosa would’ve had enough time to leave the murder scene and get back to the bushes before Gianni got there.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: October 27, 1982

Runtime: 1 Hour 41 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Dario Argento

Studio: Titanus

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Plex, Tubi

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Horror, Italian Films, Movies with Nudity, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , , , ,

Giallo in Venice (1979)

Posted on October 6, 2025 | Leave a comment

giallo2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Investigating a couple’s murder.

Inspector Angelo (Jeff Blynn) heads the investigation of the death of a couple (Gianni Dei, Leonora Fani) who were murdered brutally in broad daylight along the riverside and in full view of the public though only an old man living in a nearby apartment is able to offer any tangible eyewitness testimony. The odd thing is that the killer for some reason saves the woman victim from drowning only to then stab her later once he brings her to shore. To learn more about the couple Angelo speaks with a local prostitute named Marzia (Mariangela Giordana) who confides that Fabio, the male victim, had deep seated sexual perversions that came-out during his marriage to Flavia the female victim. His drive to pursue these dark fantasies, which we see through flashback, and forcing his wife to play into them, she believes in some indirect way is what lead to their deaths.

This film is considered to be the final word in giallo shock cinema that permeated the Italian movie scene all through the 70’s and into the early 80’s. Not only does it contain some remarkably savage deaths, which get captured in explicit detail, but an extraordinary amount of sex, which has made some liken it to a porn film. It was directed by Mario Landi, who got his start in the 60’s making dramas and even spiritual films before moving into the tawdry drive-in fare of the 70’s that featured stories dealing with prostitutes and drugs. It wasn’t until the end of 70’s when he finally ventured his way to horror, but because of his late arrival and because there were so many other bigger names already in the genre he decided in order to draw some attention and have his movie stand-out in a cluttered field by taking things to the most extreme violent and sexual level he could, which in that respect you could say he succeeds valiantly.

Of course this has lead it to be quite controversial even to this day and very hard to find a complete director’s cut. The version currently streaming on Tubi is heavily edited and runs only 1 Hour 15 Minutes, but the full version, which is 1 Hour 39 Minutes, can be obtained through Full Moon Features, which released the DVD with all gore and sex fully intact in 2022 and this review is based on the viewing of that one.

Many commentors on Amazon and IMDb argue whether this is even a horror film as so much is loaded with sex, and a blaring melodic music score that seemed better suited for a blissful romantic flick, that it gets hard to tell. Some will accuse this of being a cheap soft core porn flick, and they have a point while others will insist that because it has a plot to it and mystery that puts it outside of being an adult film as those focus only on the sex and nothing else. Personally I think both sides could be right and this could easily be labeled the first porn horror film.

While the sex is excessive I did find these moments intriguing simply because of Favio, who I suppose could be considered an early example of what we would now call a porn addict who looks at old pictures of perverse sex acts and then forces his wife to play them out, sometimes with him as a participant, or having her do it with strangers. Things become progressively more extreme as that’s the only way he can continue to get-off making these scenes far darker and creepier than the violent ones featuring the killer. In fact this becomes one of those very rare horror films where the killer is quite forgettable and doesn’t stand-out at all while it’s the victims who are memorable.

The film though is most noted for its graphic violence with the highpoint, or low point depending on your point-of-view, being when the killer slices into a naked women’s leg as she’s tied to a kitchen table, which is prolonged and leaves little to the imagination.  While this is certainly gory what I found more disturbing was when the killer burns a man alive and then, once the flames have been stamped out, you see nothing but the victim’s eyes moving back and forth inside his otherwise blackened, charred head.

The story is not as well thought out as the effects. The opening murder happens in the daytime in a public area with the victim’s screaming out loudly as they’re stabbed making it hard to believe it wouldn’t have drawn more attention than just one lonely old man. The police inspector looks like he spent more time on his perfectly blow-dried hair than the case and his constant egg eating and having one always in his hand gets overplayed. The ultimate killer reveal isn’t surprising nor captivating making this one of the weaker giallos case-wise but makes-up for it with the violence if that’s what you’re into.

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: December 31, 1979

Runtime: 1 Hour 39 Minutes

Not Rated 

Director: Mario Landi

Studio: Variety Distribution

Available: DVD

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Foreign Films, Horror, Italian Films, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , , ,

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

Posted on December 26, 2024 | Leave a comment

silent

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: A killer Santa Claus.

When he’s only 5-years-old Billy Chapman (Jonathan Best) has a very traumatic experience. It starts when he and his family are visiting their grandfather (Will Hare) inside a senior living facility. While his parents and younger brother are temporarily out of the room his grandfather, who usually never says a word, suddenly speaks by warning him about Santa Claus and how he punishes those who’ve been naughty. On the car ride home, his family is attacked by a gunmen dressed as Santa (Charles Dierkop) who has just robbed a liquor store. Both his parents are killed by the man, but Billy manages to escape by running out of the vehicle and hiding behind some bushes. Things now flash forward to the year 1984 where Billy (now played by Robert Brian Wilson) is 18 and still suffering from the dark memories of the event as well as the abusive upbringing inside the orphanage he was sent to that was ruled by a tyrannical Mother Superior (Lilyan Chauvin). Working as a stock boy at a nearby toy store, he gets asked to fill-in as Santa when the man who usually plays him calls-in sick. Playing the part though brings back up all the repressed emotions of what happened years earlier causing him to have a mental breakdown and turning him into a killer. 

This film ended up becoming quite controversial and it all started when producer Scott J. Schiend accepted story submissions from the public to help him decide what movie project he’d like to finance next. One of those submissions was short story written by a recent college grad named Paul Caimi entitled ‘He Sees You When You’re Sleeping’, which involved a killer Santa. Schnied became intrigued by the concept and hired Michael Hickey to write a full-length screenplay around the premise. Once completed the script was shopped around until Tri-Star Pictures decided to pick-it-up and finance it as well as act as its distributor. 

Since there were already two other films that had been released that dealt with a killer Claus including the 1972 horror anthology Tales from the Crypt, and the 1980 slasher You Better Watch Out! no one behind-the-scenes was expecting this one to create much controversy since neither of those had. However, mainly because of an aggressive marketing campaign, it soon caused the ire of many parents who felt based off of the TV-ads that this film would tarnish the image of Santa Claus and make children fear him and thus a movement to have the movie removed from theaters was created. Even Siskel and Ebert got in on it by focusing an entire episode of their show to it and reading out the names of the cast and crew in order to ‘shame’ them for having worked on the production. The movie was soon pulled after having been in theaters for only a week, but the controversy ended up having a Streisand effect as it garnered it more attention than it would’ve otherwise, and it made a hefty profit at the box office and ultimately became a cult hit that spawned 4 sequels as well as a reboot.  

It seems to me that most people that protested the movie didn’t actually watch it because if they had they’d realize that it’s made very clear that the guy doing the killings isn’t really Santa nor does he even look much like him. The kid who plays him doesn’t even bother putting the beard on and his own face is constantly exposed while he does the butchering, so at no point does the viewer ever see him as being anyone other than a troubled teen with severe mental issues. I actually wished the part had been played by Dierkop who portrays the initial Santa during the hold-up and puts far better energy into the role and genuinely looks more like the classic Claus both in his age and physical build. 

The movie puts a lot of effort into showing how Billy became the way he does, but for me that was a problem as it gets too plodding and seems to take forever for the carnage to get going, which for a slasher fan is what you really want to see. Would’ve been better had it started out right away with this guy Santa killing people, maybe even one of the kids who sits on his lap at the store, and with no reason why he was doing it, and then through intermittent flashbacks allow his back story to be revealed versus having the background painfully elaborated from the start, which takes away any mystery, or surprise. There’s also the issue of young Billy having prominent brown eyes, but when he reaches adolescence his eye color suddenly turns to blue. 

Spoiler Alert!

My biggest complaint though is with the Mother Superior. Chauvin plays the part quite well making the nun scarier than the killer and somebody you really love to hate, but she’s never killed off, which is a huge disappointment. Many people who grew up going to a strict Catholic School might’ve enjoyed seeing a disciplinarian nun get hacked and it might’ve been cathartic and thus having it not occur doesn’t give the film a sufficient payoff. 

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: November 9, 1984

Runtime: 1 Hour 25 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Charles E. Sellier Jr.

Studio: Tri-Star Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Christmas Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Cult, Horror, Movies with Nudity, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , , , ,

Intruder (1989)

Posted on October 22, 2024 | Leave a comment

intruder2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Killer in grocery store.

Jennifer (Elizabeth Cox) and Linda (Renee Estevez) are two cashiers working the night shift at a grocery store. Just before closing Jennifer gets confronted by Craig (David Byrnes) a man she dated briefly who pressures her to get back together. When she refuses he becomes irate prompting Linda to alert the store owners (Dan Hicks, Eugene Robert Glazer). The police are eventually called in, but by then Craig has disappeared yet as the night progresses the night crew begins being stalked by some mysterious person that they can’t see. Eventually they start to turn-up dead having been killed in gruesome and novel ways. Is Craig the one behind it, or is it possibly someone else?

The concept is an interesting one as all the action takes place entirely on the grocery store premises with the majority done inside though there’s a few scenes that happen just outside of it. Scott Speigel, who co-wrote Evil Dead II with Sam Raimi, who appears as one of the store employees, got the idea for the film after working as part of the night crew at a Michigan grocery store and in fact ‘Night Crew’ was the movie’s original title, as well as the short film that was shot before they found funding to make a feature length version, but the distributors felt a more generic horror title would help it sell better. It was shot inside a former grocery store that was now empty in Bell, California where they hired a company to deliver two tons of damaged goods in order to use that to line the shelves.

The film is well directed with a lot of unique camera angles including a shot seen through a wine bottle another one where the point-of-view from inside a telephone looking-up and another showing someone from the outside turning a lock on a door and then having the camera shot rotate in tandem to it. The killings, once they finally get going, are adequately grisly and should suffice for gore fans.

While I enjoyed the store setting and felt they did an admirable job in making it appear like a real grocery market I was put-off with the lighting. All grocery stores that I’ve ever been to always are brightly lit in order to give-off this inviting feel and make people want to come inside. This store however was very dark and shadowy looking like no grocery place I’d ever been to and as a result it hurt the believability. Some may argue that this was the night shift and hence no need for all the lights to be on since only the overnight crew was in it, but it was very shadowy from the beginning even before it had closed and customers were still in it. I also didn’t care for the cameo appearances by Aly Moore and Tom Lester, two men who had been cast members in the old ‘Green Acres’ TV-show. Not sure what the relevance was for having them appear here, but they don’t really add much to the story and their bumbling ways don’t help add any tension and if anything detract from it.

The story moves a bit too slowly to the extent I started to worry if the killings were ever going to get going, or if it all was just one of those gimmicky horror flicks that ultimately isn’t very scary, or gory at all. The tension ebbs quite a bit and it would’ve worked better had the killer had some sort of identity, even if it was just wearing a goofy mask, versus having it be someone we never see. The idea that this killer would be able to single-handedly lift someone into the air simply by grabbing the victim’s hair and then proceed to shove them completely through store shelves, or hang them effortlessly on meat hooks, is absurd and makes the culprit seem more like a supernatural entity instead of the human that he is.

Spoiler Alert!

The ultimate reveal where the killer is exposed as being Bill the store’s co-owner was a bit of a surprise, but his motivations didn’t make sense. I could understand that he was upset about the store going out-of-business and would want to kill his partner for allowing it, but why kill all of the employees? If the idea is to ‘save’ the store this isn’t exactly a good way of going about doing it. His explanation that he simply got ‘carried away’ doesn’t suffice. If he really is just ‘crazy’ then elements of his insane personality should’ve come to the surface long before just that night.

Having Jennifer and her former boyfriend Craig, the only two survivors, get arrested for the crimes does have an ironic twist to it, but then leaving everything as a sort-of cliffhanger isn’t satisfying. The original ending was to have the camera go inside Jennifer’s screaming mouth, as she’s protesting her arrest, and down her throat until it got to her heart, which would then be shown as stop beating, but because it would be too complicated to shoot the idea got scrapped, but it would’ve been a cool final shot for sure.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: January 27, 1988

Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes (Unrated Version)

Director: Scott Spiegel

Studio: Empire Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Tubi, Full Moon

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Horror, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , , , , ,

What Have You Done to Solange? (1972)

Posted on October 7, 2024 | Leave a comment

solange

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Bearded priest murders schoolgirls.

Enrico (Fabio Testi) is a high school teacher who’s having an affair with Elizabeth (Cristina Galbo) who’s one of his students. While making-out with her on a boat at a park Elizabeth spots a shadowy figure murdering a young girl in a nearby wooded area. The girl turns-out to be one of her classmates, but Enrico convinces her not to tell anyone for fear that it could jeopardize his job. Once the murder gets discovered and reported on the news Enrico goes back to the scene to check for clues only to be photographed by the police who are there doing the investigation. Inspector Barth (Joachim Fuchsberger) spots Enrico in the photo and brings him in for questioning. Enrico denies any knowledge of the killing, but comes under suspicion especially after Elizabeth is later found murdered in her bath tub. Enrico then reconciles with his frigid wife Herta (Karin Baal) in order to have her help him do their own investigation, so they can unmask who the real killer is before the police are able to close in on him.

The film is a unique partnership between a West German production company and an Italian one that was filmed on-location in London. While there are many German actors in the cast the film as a whole is modeled after an Italian giallo and has many of the mystery, gore, and sleaze elements that you’d expect from those. The direction, by Massimo Dallamano, who was a cinematographer of Spaghetti westerns during the 60’s, approaches the material with a visual elegance. The photography is crisp and detailed with some evocative camera work and angles as well as a few graphic shots including the murderers modus operandi, which is shoving a large knife up his victim’s vaginas, which not only gets revealed on the corpses, but also in x-ray version, but also a drowning death in a bath tub that gets played-out moderately well. In most slasher flicks the victim goes down easily when they’re attacked by surprise by their killer, but here this one struggles quite a bit making the killing more drawn-out and thus more realistic.

The plot though, particularly the second act, gets stretched too thin. We have an intriguing set-up and a zesty conclusion, but in-between it meanders. The biggest reason for this is that the protagonist and his quandary becomes neutered and thus all the potential drama from his situation evaporates. Having the inspector tell him upfront that he doesn’t think he did it hurts the tension and would’ve been intriguing if they thought he did, or he even became their prime suspect. Having Enrico make amends with his wife, at the beginning they’re at extreme odds and even close to fully hating each other, further moderates things as the wife could’ve been an interesting possible suspect too, killing the school girls and trying to make the hubby look like he did it in order to get back at him for cheating on her, but then having the two team-up just fizzles away a potentially dark undercurrent to their relationship. Showing Enrico working with the inspector ultimately makes him seem more like a side character in his own movie and by the end like he’s not really the star at all as the inspector completely takes over.

The one performer that does stand-out is Camille Keaton. She’s better known for her starring role in the cult hit I Spit On Your Grave, but here in one of her first performances in the front of the camera she’s quite impressive and she does so without uttering a single line of dialogue. She comes-in real late too to the extent I was starting to think she’d have some minor part and be spotted for only a few seconds, but her character comes-on strong despite not saying anything and is an integral component to the whole mystery. What I liked most about her was her trance-like demeanor and glazed over look in her eyes that’s both effective, creepy, and disturbing at the same time.

Spoiler Alert!

The film’s wrap-up could’ve been better done as it elaborates about the motives of the killer and the elements of the case too much saying things that the viewer should’ve been able to pick-up on during the course of the movie. For instance it describes the sex parties that these teen girls attended, but snippets of these orgies should’ve been shown and not just discussed. The film had no qualms with the violence, so why not have a little explicit sex as well. Also, Keaton’s character going in to have an abortion like it’s going to be some ‘fun activity’ didn’t seem believable. The attempt was to show that she was naive about how rough the procedure would be and thus became ‘traumatized’ by it afterwards, but she still should’ve shown some trepidation upfront as just about anybody else would.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: March 9, 1972

Runtime: 1 Hour 47 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Massimo Dallamano

Studio: Italian International Films

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, CONtv

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Foreign Films, Italian Films, Movies with Nudity, Mystery, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , , , ,

Sisters (1972)

Posted on October 24, 2023 | Leave a comment

sisters

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: Model has evil twin.

Danielle (Margot Kidder) is a young French-Canadian women from Quebec who aspires to be a fashion model and actress. She takes part in a TV-show styled after ‘Candid Camera’ where unsuspecting people find themselves caught up in a prank, which is where she meets Phillip (Lisle Wilson). The two go out on a date, but while at the restaurant she gets harassed by Emil (William Finley) her ex-husband. Then when they get back to her apartment Phillip overhears her arguing with another woman, which Danielle says is her twin sister Dominque. Since it is both of their birthdays Phillip decides to go out to get them a cake, but when he returns he gets viciously stabbed by the psychotic Dominque, but just before he dies he’s able to scribble the word ‘help’ onto the window with his own blood that Grace (Jennifer Salt), a journalist that resides across the street, sees. She immediately calls the police, but when they arrive into Danielle’s apartment there’s no sign of a body, or a struggle and Grace gets written-off as being a kook whose been imagining things, but she refuses to relent and begins her own investigation where she uncovers some dark details about Danielle and her sister who were once conjoined.

This was writer/director Brian De Palma’s first attempt at horror after completing many successful comedies that had gained a cult following. The story was inspired by real-life conjoined twins Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyapova who’s sad upbringing where they were taken away from their mother and had abusive medical experiments done on them at a secret hospital in the Soviet Union, and which was chronicled, much like in the movie, in a story in Life Magazine in 1966, which after reading it De Palma couldn’t get out of his head. Visually it’s excellent with great use of editing and superior score by the legendary Bernard Herrmann, who was semi-retired at the time, but enjoyed the script so much that he agreed to be the composer.

Many of De Palma’s famous directorial touches are apparent including his use of the split-screen. While it’s been used, and some may say overused, in many films from that era, it gets worked to perfection as we get to see Danielle and her ex busily cleaning-up the crime scene while Grace gets held up by the detectives and they’re not able to go into the apartment right away. My only complaint here is that with the blood splatter all over I’m just not sure they would’ve been able to wipe it all away in such a short time frame, basically about 8 to 10 minutes, which should’ve more likely taken them several hours. Not showing the clean-up and having Grace and detectives arrive to find the place spotless with no body would’ve actually added more intrigue and thus in this case the use of the split-screen, while done adequately, I don’t think was needed.

Spoiler Alert!

The script leaves open a fair amount of loopholes, for instance we see Danielle walk into a bedroom and the shadow of her head on the wall along with another one, which is supposed to represent Dominque’s, but we learn later that Dominque died years early during the surgery to separate them, so we’ve should’ve only seen one head shadow and not two. Also, Danielle is told point-blank by Grace that she’s been spying on them from across the street, so you’d think later that she and Emil would make damn sure to close the blinds on their windows when they try to remove the sofa, which has the dead body inside, but instead they continue to leave the shades wide open and allow Grace, now back in her own apartment, to continue to peer in while the couple show no awareness to the possibility and don’t even bother to look out the window to see if they can catch Grace looking in. Another head-scratcher is why there was no blood splatter on Danielle’s clothing, since she ultimately is the one that killed Phillip, when Emil walks into the apartment.

The most confusing thing though is the ending in which Grace becomes hypnotized while inside a mental hospital and begins to see herself, through a long dream sequence, as being Dominque and attached to Danielle. When I first saw this, back in the 90’s, I thought it meant that Grace was the long lost twin and that they had been separated years earlier. While Grace doesn’t look exactly like Danielle most twins don’t, and she was still around the same age, hair color, and body type, so it seemed like a legitimate explanation and I wouldn’t blame anyone else who came to this same conclusion. Apparently though that’s not the case as Grace comes back out of it only convinced, through the hypnotism, that she didn’t see the murder of Phillip, but I felt they should’ve taken it one step further by convincing her that she was Dominque, whether it was true, or not, and then brain washed to take credit for all the murders while Danielle could then get off scot-free and this would’ve then been the ultimate twist.

Granted Grace’s character is shown as having a mother (Mary Davenport), but the script could’ve been rewritten to have her taken out and Grace could’ve instead been portrayed as being an orphan, or adopted, which could’ve left open the possibility. In either case the dream segment, which is creepy and stylish done, would’ve had more of a payoff then it does had it taken this route.

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: November 18, 1972

Runtime: 1 Hour 33 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Brian De Palma

Studio: American International Pictures

Available: DVD, Blu-ray (Criterion Collection), Amazon Video

Leave a comment

Posted in 70's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Horror, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Movies with a Hospital setting, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , , , , ,

Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (1989)

Posted on October 23, 2023 | Leave a comment

sleepaway3

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Angela commits more murders.

When Maria (Kashina Kessler), who has the words ‘milk’ and ‘shake’ tattooed to her breasts, goes off to camp, she is impeded by a truck driven by Angela (Pamela Springsteen) that runs her over and allows Angela to take on her identity. Angela then returns to the same campsite where she committed her atrocities from the last film, but which is now run by husband and wife Herman (Michael J. Pollard) and Lilly (Sandra Dorsey), who have turned it into a place to help reform teens with a criminal record and renamed Camp New Horizons. It doesn’t take long though for Angela to revert to her old ways and soon both campers and counselors begin disappearing with a frightening regularity.

While Part II was filming producer Jerry Silva was so impressed with what he was seeing that he immediately authorized another sequel with a script for this one being written while that one was still being shot and then only one weekend for pre-production. This also pushed the filming date back into October where not only were the leaves already changing, but in one segment you can see the breaths of the actors when they speak, which certainly does not give the viewer a summery feel.

The second installment had an okay balance between the black comedy and horror, but this one goes overboard into silly season. The initial killing is especially problematic as it has the victim chased down by a big truck in broad daylight. Yes, she eventually gets run over when she runs into a back alley, but the semi starts barreling down on her when she’s walking on an busy road with other cars, so other people would’ve witnessed what was happening and reported it making the odds of Angela getting away with it quite slim. Also, where does a woman, who was 13 when she got locked up into a mental hospital and been there most of the time until her recent release, find the time and money to learn how to drive a big rig and how was she able to steal one?

While Springsteen’s performance was slightly tolerable in the second installment I felt it got plain annoying here. She isn’t scary and even though this is meant as a dark comedy the villain should still have some frightening presence and she has none making for no suspense at all. She also has her hair dyed blonde, in order to resemble Maria, which has her looking even less like Felissa Rose who played the character in the first one and further way from the original concept making this seem like its own little movie with name-only connections to the other two.

The murders though are an improvement and the only thing that saves it. Part II put no creativity or imagination into the killings, but here we get a couple of memorable ones including Angela roasting marshmallows on a fire that’s burning two of her victims. Killing one of the campers via tying them up to a flagpole and then allowing them to drop many feet to the hard cement below was my favorite though the death by lawnmower, which apparently made some of the women members on the MPAA board, who were hired to give the movie its rating, physically sick, deserves honorable mention. Even here though there’s problems like when Angela stands over the body of a man and swings an ax on him, but then returns to the campsite wearing the same clothes she had, which would’ve been highly doubtful as they would’ve most assuredly been covered with blood splatter.

The only element I found interesting was the appearance of Michael J. Pollard who was at one time starring in Hollywood classics like Bonnie and Clyde and was even given a couple of leading man roles in  studio produced films, but here relegated to low budget direct-to-video fare. He isn’t even in it all that much as his character is one of the first to be killed though he does at least get to make-out with a hot young chick (Stacie Lambert), which may have made it worth it.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: August 4, 1989

Runtime: 1 Hour 20 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael A. Simpson

Studio: Double Helix Films

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Freevee, Pluto TV, Tubi, Amazon Video

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Cult, Horror, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with Nudity, Sequels, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , , ,

Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988)

Posted on October 21, 2023 | Leave a comment

sleepaway2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Angela returns to camp.

Angela (Pamela Springsteen), the teen killer in the first film, has now been ‘reformed’ after going through years of shock therapy and sexual reassignment surgery. She gets a job as a counselor at a camp named Rolling Hills, which is 60 miles away from Camp Arawak, the site where she had previously killed all those people. The campers and other counselors have no idea about her past and have a hard time getting along with her and she’s quite strict with no tolerance for anyone who breaks the rules. If someone does draw her ire she quickly dispenses with them by reverting to her old habits and after they’re offed she goes and tells the camp leader, Uncle John (Walter Gotell), that she ‘sent them home’, but when she starts doing this to too many kids everyone’s suspicions begin to rise.

While on the technical end the production is decent the storyline is ridiculous even when taken into context of a black comedy, which is what the filmmakers were hoping for, it doesn’t work. The idea that Angela would be let out of a mental hospital in such a short period of time, just 5 years, after killing so many people is absolutely absurd and would create a national, media uproar. Since the murders were all deliberate and plotted out she most likely would be considered sane and stood trial and sent to a regular prison anyways. Why would any campsite hire her? Don’t these people do background checks? A way to have resolved this would’ve been to shown her at the beginning escaping from the mental hospital, and possibly killing a few orderlies along the way, which would’ve helped the story make more sense and also been an excuse to show blood and guts, which is what audiences for these types of films pretty just want anyways.

While Pamela Springsteen, who’s the younger sister of Bruce Springsteen, may be a quality actress in her other films she does not play the role here in a convincing way. What made Angela so memorable in the first was her penetrating stare, which we don’t see any of. Angela’s inner angst came from her gender issue and not that she was some old-fashioned prude, like in this one, that kills people who don’t live up to her high moral standard. It’s like a completely different person who’s connection to the other one is in name only. Apparently Felissa Rose, who played the role in the original, auditioned for the part, but because she couldn’t convey the one-liners in a humorous way that they wanted they decided to go with Pamela. Personally I feel they shouldn’t have even bothered to make it if Felissa couldn’t have recreated the role, which I felt she had earned the right to.

The killings are not as creative either and in fact look downright pathetic. I’ll give some credit to the death in the outhouse where a victim is shoved into the hole were people relieve themselves and then she struggles several times to come up, with more and more waste appearing on her as she does, but otherwise it’s tacky fare especially the end where they come into an abandoned home featuring all the dead victims that looks too obvious as being mannequins with red paint.  I also didn’t care for the nightmare segment, apparently done to help pad the runtime, that rehashes the killing scenes we’ve already seen and is highly redundant.

Fans of the film say it’s the humor that sells it. Yes, some of it is kind of funny like when the male counselor (Brian Patrick Clarke) smells underneath his arm pits after Angela walks away thinking that the reason she was so cold to him wasn’t because she’s a psycho, but more because of his possibly bad body odor. My favorite though is when Ally (Valerie Hartman) has sex with a man and then only after it’s over does she bother to ask him if he has ‘AIDS’. Yet outside of this it’s a letdown. As sequels go it’s not the worst of its kind, but I would’ve preferred more of a straight horror approach that tried to stay faithful to the first one, both in tone and with the cast.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: February 28, 1988

Runtime: 1 Hour 20 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Michael A. Simpson

Studio: Double Helix Films

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Video, Pluto, Tubi, YouTube

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Horror, Movies that take place in the South, Movies with Nudity, Sequels, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , , ,

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Posted on October 19, 2023 | Leave a comment

sleepaway

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Somebody’s killing the campers.

In 1975 two children are out on a lake with their father when the boat they’re in capsizes. As they are swimming in the water another boat that is being recklessly driven rams into them killing both the father and one of the children. Fast forward to 1982 one of the surviving children, Angela (Felissa Rose), is now living with her eccentric Aunt Martha (Desiree Gold) and Martha’s son Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten). Because Angela is very shy Martha has decided to send her off with Ricky to summer camp so that she can learn to socialize better. Once there Angela’s quiet nature causes her to be bullied by the other kids, which soon leads to all sorts of violent deaths amongst both the campers and counselors. The camp owner, Mel (Mike Kellin), wants to keep the deaths out of the press and insists they’re all just been accidents, but while he does this he becomes convinced that it’s Ricky who’s behind it and resolves to teach the kid a very brutal and violent lesson.

Initially this was a low budget film made near the end of the golden age of slasher flicks that was not intended to do all that well as most studios had considered this type of horror film to have gone out of style. The critics at the time savaged it, but since then it has gained a strong cult following and considered even ground breaking for its gay subtext and gender identity roles. Writer/director Robert Hiltzik shot it at a camp in upstate New York that he used to attend when he was growing up. The camp atmosphere is very authentic and I was impressed with how many kids they were able to bring on to make it seem like a genuine camp day with tons of kids running around everywhere and all of them age appropriate to the role versus having older kids over the age of 18 trying to look younger than they are, which is what you get in most other teen flicks. The only caveat is that it was filmed in September/October of ’82 and seeing some of the trees in the background changing colors does not help give off much of a summer time feel.

The film is noted amongst slasher aficionados for its grisly deaths. When I first saw this movie back in the 90’s I hadn’t seen as many slasher movie so I wasn’t aware of how the killings here are much different  than what you usually see. In most other films of this nature the victim dies usually by a quick slash of a knife, or strangulation, which isn’t either creative or memorable, but here you get all sorts of novel deaths. Two of the best is when an overweight man (Owen Hughes) has his entire body doused with scalding water and the throbbing blisters on his skin look realistic. He also doesn’t die, which is unusual because usually the victim passes away without that much of a struggle. The death by bee hive in which the victim has his face covered by hundreds of stinging bees is equally vivid and well played-out.

The acting is impressive too as not only do you get to see Christopher Collet in his film debut, and witness his bare behind in a brief bit, but also Felissa Rose, whose quiet stare is quite penetrating and becomes the film’s most lasting impression. She apparently got the part because during the audition they were asked not to convey any lines, but to simply stare off in space while pretending to eat some candy. Prolific character actor Mike Kellin, this was his last film and he was already dying of lung cancer when he did this, is fun particularly his incredibly unfashionable choice of clothes that bring out the worst styles of the 70’s and are reminiscent of a what a middle aged suburban dad of that era might wear when attending a neighborhood backyard BBQ.

Spoiler Alert!

On the negative end I didn’t find Angela, who we learn at the very end is really a boy, to be able to realistically pull-off the murders that she does. I don’t believe she (he) would’ve had the strength to pull out the chair from underneath a heavy-set man, nor dunk the head of a bigger boy under the water, or be able to force a knife through a metal wall of a shower stall. The argument that she’s really a boy doesn’t work as her (his) body type is quite small no matter the sex and the arms are scrawny. The film does well in coming up with novel deaths, but they should’ve worked harder at thinking up killings that a small fame teen could accomplish and still be in the realm of reality, which I don’t feel these are.

With that said it’s still a cool ending. I enjoyed the weird facial expression that Angela gives off once she’s caught and the camera freezes on it while morphing into a green backdrop. The final song that gets played is creepy too, so all in all the film succeeds though it will require some suspension of belief in order to be fully enjoyable.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: November 18, 1983

Runtime: 1 Hour 24 Minutes

Rated R

Director: Robert Hiltzik

Studio: United Film Distributors

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Freeve, Pluto, Tubi, Amazon Video, 

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Cult, Horror, Movies with Nudity, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , , , , ,

Blood Lake (1987)

Posted on October 10, 2023 | Leave a comment

blood1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Killer stalks 6 teens.

Filmed on-location in Cedar Lake, Oklahoma by a bunch of young amateurs convinced they could make a horror movie just as good as the studios. Mike Berry, who stars as Mike, wrote the screenplay and then shopped around his script, but could find no takers until he bumped into Tim Boggs at a local retail store who agreed to take on the task of directing and even quit both of his jobs to do it. The shooting took place over a course of 10 days with the storyline revolving around 6 teens who go to the house of Becky (Angela Darter) whose parents are away, which will allow them to party for the whole weekend only to have it interrupted by a deranged killer (Tiny Frazier) upset because the house they’re in used to be owned by him.

When I hear about films like this I harken back to Harold P. Warren, who wrote, directed, produced, and starred in Manos: The Hands of Fate, which has become quite infamous as one of the worst movies ever made, but also started as a bet where Warren, being a local salesmen, bet famous screenwriter Stirling Stilliphant, who was in the El Paso, Texas area scouting for locations for an upcoming film, that he could direct a horror movie that could be just as good as anything Hollywood could churn out. Of course the results where abysmal, but you can’t help but feel that the cast and crew here were equally in over their heads.

On the positive side it starts out a heck of a lot better than the Warren film, which had extended shots focusing on the passing Texas countryside for no apparent reason and got visually boring quite fast. The excuse for this was that Warren had expected to shoot the opening credits over this, but for whatever reason it got botched leaving a lot extraneous and pointless footage. Here though they get it right with a nicely edited bit showing the kids driving in a car while the credits and music play over it. In fact the editing is quite good and helps equalize the cheap video look that was done via a VCR camera. The dialogue is also well done as director Boggs was smart enough to allow the teens to paraphrase their own lines to make it sound natural and thus the characters come-off as more believable than in most other bigger budgeted horror flicks, so we’ll score one for the Okies on that.

Unfortunately everything else is pretty bad. The big problem is that not enough happens. For a film with Blood in its title you end up seeing very little of it. There’s a quick killing at the beginning, which doesn’t show much gore, and then another 48 minutes before you see another one. There’s a teaser death where you see a body floating in a lake, but it turns out to being just a prank. I realize other 80’s slasher flicks would sometimes employ this, but when you’re a cheap production you can’t play with the audiences expectations like that and you got to get to the gore and violence pretty quick to hold their interest. Spending almost 20-minutes watching the kids go water skiing turns the whole thing into a snooze feast and it’s very unlikely anyone is going to want to stick with it after that.

Spoiler Alert!

The killings, once they finally get going, aren’t impressive and all done by a guy who doesn’t look frightening at all and has no distinguishing features to make him interesting. The knife he uses is quite small and having him use a sword, or ax, or something big and sharp would’ve elicited more terror. The reason for why he goes on a killing spree is that apparently he sold the house to the new owners, but they ended up ‘not paying for it’, but how does someone take possession of the home if no money transaction takes place? You can’t really ‘sell a home’ if no actual sale happens.

The ending is confusing too as the killer’s body disappears and then it gets intimated that he reappears inside the ambulance that’s taking the injured teens to the hospital though we don’t really see this as all that gets shown is the ambulance driving away with laughter in the background. The final sequence becomes almost surreal as the killer magically reappears at the home site only for him to see all the water in the lake drained out. Apparently this was, as the closing credits intimate, an ‘act of God’, but what does it have to do with the story?

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Runtime: 1 Hour 22 Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Tim Boggs

Distributor: United Home Video

Available: DVD, Fandor, Plex, Tubi, Amazon Video, YouTube

Leave a comment

Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Horror, Low Budget, Movies with a rural setting, Slasher/Gore

Tagged , , , , ,