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Deathstalker (1984)
Dir: John Watson
The Deathstalker is sent on a mission to gather the three powers. Once he gets
all three of them he will become the power. His journey takes him to a kingdom
where an evil sorcerer is holding a gladiator style fighting tournament.
Contestants include the Deathstalker, a man who hops around like an ape, a huge
man with a giant hammer, a huge pig man, and various other medieval characters.
This movie is filled with tons of bloody battle scenes, highlighted with
numerous decapitations, a man being smashed with a giant hammer and stabbings.
Another character is even drawn and quartered in a spectacularly bloody
sequence. The acting and script are low par all the way, but there are some
cool sets and all the aforementioned battle scenes. Lots of nudity too, with
one scene featuring the recently dead Lana Clarkson. Worth checking out. -Ed-
Don’t Go In the House (1980)
Dir: Joseph
Ellison
Fantastic! A young boy is tortured by his mother.
Whenever he is bad, she burns him in hopes of burning the evil out of him. This
goes on for years, with him living under her strict rules. The boy is now a
man, all grown up and working at a garbage disposal company. Well his mother
dies and he snaps. He turns one of the rooms in his house into a giant
incinerator room. Then he lures people to his home to watch them burn alive.
This is some intense stuff for sure. All the victims are tied down so they
can’t move, and then lit ablaze. The acting is only decent, but the overall
tone of the movie is so dark, that I only occasionally noticed the bad acting.
The nightclub scene is a hoot and not to be missed. And the whole movie is very
similar to Maniac, which stole the ending from this. A+++ -Ed-
Extreme Prejudice
(1987)
Dir: Walter Hill
This was quite a surprise. It is about a sheriff in a
southern town and his ongoing battle against a badass drug dealer from Mexico.
Then a group of renegade ex-army soldiers arrive to rob a bank. Throw in some
double crosses and a few fantastic shoot outs, and you get a way above average
action movie. Things are complicated further when the drug lord kidnaps the
sheriff’s lady friend. Everyone’s path’s cross after a surprise plot twist and
it all ends in a glorious gun battle, which is ripped straight from the end of
The Wild Bunch. The cast is filled with various action movie stars and other
future stars, Nick Nolte, William Forsythe, Michael Ironside, Powers Boothe,
etc. Nick Nolte is quite good as the sheriff who is at constant battle with the
drug lord, Powers Boothe. And the band of soldiers/robbers are a blast to watch
interact with each other. This one has it all, great acting, a good script,
fast pace, and exciting action scenes. Recommended! -Ed-
New York Ripper (1982)
Dir: Lucio Fulci
It appears that some angry citizen of New York has a
problem with women, because they are turning up all over the city, cut to
ribbons. When the killer isn’t killing, he roams around babbling in a voice
very similar to Donald Duck. This movie gets my vote for the dirtiest Lucio
Fulci movie. Why? Well we are treated to scene after scene after scene of
victims being cut apart in graphic detail. Stabbings, throat slashings, razor
slashings, broken bottle stabbings, etc. It’s all here and as graphic as ever.
The plot? Madman on the loose. Police try to stop him. They fail. It’s up to
a victim to put an end to this. There is also a ton of nudity and sex. This is
one angry movie. Any character that can be considered remotely attractive is
met with a horrifically grim death. And it is all ended with one of the most
amazing gun shot wounds ever. This is a dirty, gross and foul movie. I loved
it! -Ed-
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Offerings (1989)
Dir: Christopher Reynolds
A little boy who doesn’t talk spends his days with his only
friend, a nice little girl with blonde hair. All the other kids are mean to
him. They eventually push him down a well. Flash forward ten years and the
quiet boy escapes from a mental home and sets about killing the kids who were
mean to him, and leaving parts of them on the blonde girl’s front steps. The
first half of this is quite boring. It never rises above the basic slasher
movie format. Most of the cast is stalked and slashed in the first hour or so,
and unfortunately not many of the murders are very gory. One guy does get his
head smashed in a vice and his brain splatters on the wall. The second half
picks up a little, with some suspense, as the local police chief attempts to
figure things out. But then the film makers ruin it all with a horribly generic
ending, which is pretty much the ending from Halloween, but with different
characters. One a side note, all the females in this movie talk in that always
funny Valley Girl way of talking. That was fun. The rest of the movie was
not. -Ed-
Out of the Dark (1989)
Dir: Michael Schroeder
A crazy man who wears a clown mask is running around Los
Angeles killing various women who work at a phone sex company. This is a weird
one. There are all the elements of a slasher movie, but it is presented more
like a police thriller, sort of like the movie Cop. That is not necessarily a
bad thing. It kind of works here. The acting is not really too bad. The two
actors who play the lead detectives work well with each other. A lot of focus
is put on them while they search for the killer clown. Suspects include a weird
photographer and a strange accountant. Gore highlights include a cool scene
with a shovel to the head and a headless corpse in a bath tub. The entire movie
is filled with a very sleazy atmosphere. The only major down point was that a
lot of the things that make the plot move along are based way too much on
coincidence. I would watch it again. -Ed-
Psycho Cop (1988)
Dir: Wallace Potts
Every now and then I will see a movie which I cannot make
it through without falling asleep. These movies are usually really bad. Texas
Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation took four attempts. Zombie 3 took five.
This one sets an all new record with seven tries before I finished it. And what
does that mean? Well, I’ll tell you. This is the worst slasher movie I have
ever sat through. This is so unbelievably bad. The acting is disgusting. The
plot twists and the ways the characters figure things out make absolutely no
sense at all. There is barely any gore. In fact, there isn’t much action
either, unless you count the endless stalk and slash sequences that fill this
mess. So yeah, do not watch this. It’s bad news. This was followed by Psycho
Cop 2, which is actually pretty well done. Rent that one. Burn this one.
-Ed-
Visiting Hours (1982)
Dir: Jean-Claude Lord
Lee Grant stars as a feminist type with lots of opinions.
She is about to be featured in an important interview but she is attacked in her
home before that happens. She survives the attack and is taken to a nearby
hospital, where her attacker lays waste to a lot of the hospital staff on his
mission to kill her. This movie has a lot going for it. The performances are
much better than usual in this type of movie, especially Michael Ironside, as
the creepy killer. There are also some cool suspense scenes. Also, the movie
is a bit longer than most slasher movies, but I didn’t notice due to the brisk
pace. There is some violence, of the stabbing and slashing variety, but it is
nothing really grand. This movie relies more on suspense and good acting, than
loads of gore. Recommended! -Ed-
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