SLAUGHTER HIGH (1986)

God bless you, the ‘80s slasher. You were very rarely “good,” but man oh man, do you get points for not giving up without a fight. I feel like I say his name an awful lot around these parts, but John Carpenter and his low-budget Halloween paved the way for a long line of slashing imitators that would last for ten plus years (and crop up again in the ‘90s following the Halloween-inspired Scream). But whereas Halloween was good enough to transcend that “slasher” title and be a great film in general, alllllll the imitators that would follow in its wake wouldn’t ever achieve the same bragging rights and would have to be judged entirely within the confines of its own sub-genre, i.e., “______ was good…for a slasher flick.”

And Slaughter High is pretty great for a slasher flick.

Starring Caroline Munro along with a lot of other people you’ve never heard of, Slaughter High is the culmination of some pretty solid horror films to have been unleashed up to that point. Obviously the idea of killing teenagers was popularized by Halloween (even if The Texas Chain Saw Massacre had beat it to the punch by four years), but with an opening sequence ripped straight out of Carrie, during which the outcast of a high school is pranked in a sexual manner, leaving the coach to discipline the offenders with grueling exercises, Slaughter High takes these and other inspirations, melds them together, and unleashes them in one formulaic but satisfying bloodbath.

Slaughter High bills itself as a horror/comedy, but minus the opening and closing scenes, there’s nothing particularly comedic about it; it’s actually pretty horrifying. Any sequences having to do with Marty Rantzen, the school’s beleaguered nerd and the target of all the cool kids’ torments, comes off dangerously Troma-esque, but minus those, Slaughter High is fairly straightforward.

As for the quality, well, we can skip saying the acting is bad (it is), that the concept isn’t original (it’s not), and the actors don’t look like teenagers at all during the opening high school prologue (Caroline Munro was 37 at the time and it shows) and get right to what matters: the death scenes. They are wonderful, and with one of Slaughter High’s three(!) directors being a special effects maestro and overseeing only the death scenes, of course they are. Slaughter High boasts some of the best, inventive, and icky death sequences ever seen in the sub-genre. Lawnmowered groins, electric bed sex – forget that a consumer-grade bathtub would never be found in a high school: so long as you fill it with acid and a naked chick, I’m down with it, baby.

The other wonderful aspect to Slaughter High is the score by Harry Manfredini, most famously known for scoring another slasher flick – Friday the 13th and its many, many sequels. Though his music seems more suited for a somewhat darker slasher experience (as the first five Friday flicks were), fans will find it immensely satisfying and even comforting as you see hapless teens barrel down hallways set to his familiar low-string notes.

The very ending of Slaughter High is confusing as fuck and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it seriously doesn’t matter because during Slaughter High someone shotguns a beer can filled with acid and his intestines melt out of his stomach and it’s just the tops.

JANUARY IS SLASHUARY

The slasher sub-genre is one of my favorite things, and has been since I was a wee one. It was my first foot in the door of the horror genre, and some of the most famous movie maniacs in history – Jason, Michael, Freddy, and more – were there to usher me, smacking my fanny as I passed them because it’s all in good fun. As time went on, I put away this slasher love for a little bit, only breaking it out every so often when the mood struck. (The Friday the 13th and Halloween series got routine play, though. To me, they were in a class all their own.)

As I became a so-called adult, and as the time seems to click louder and louder, I, like everyone else, have been looking fondly back on the 1980s – the allegedly last time it was fully pure to be an American, when things seemed just fine, and everyone was dancing to the first round of synth pop, driving their friends to the beach in a Jeep, and living life with no consequences whatsoever. 

Among these ‘80s memories is the slasher. And man, there’s just nothing like an ‘80s slasher. The sensibilities of that magical decade were like no other, and no decade since has come close to replicating it. The ‘80s meant excess, in every regard: hair got higher, clothes got bigger and brighter, music was faster. Even the drugs were in a hurry. 

As time goes on, it’s become a personal crusade to see every single slasher movie that hails from the ‘80s, from the ones that are clearly slashers to the ones that border the sub-genre while injecting its own distinct sensibilities. Sci-fi, action, mystery, demons, monsters – if teenage bodies are dropping, and if their hair is huge, I’m in. 

So come with me as we celebrate Slashuary – an entire January dedicated to the ‘80s slasher (mostly). Days will alternate between reviews for obscure slashers along with some of my favorite all-time slasher posters, even if they're for movies that kinda suck. Of the titles to appear all month, there will be some good, some not so good, but hey, we’ll be together, and that’s all that matters. 

BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974)

My first encounter with Black Christmas was under the wrong circumstances. After having gone through a slam-viewing of My Bloody Valentine, Don’t Open Till Christmas, and Happy Birthday to Me, I ventured into Black Christmas expecting more of the same — entertaining murder sequences, silly killer and character motivations, and that late ’70s/’80s sense of fun that seemed to be missing from more modern horror.

That didn’t happen.

As Black Christmas played on, I continued to anticipate schlock to hit the screen, but all this goodkept getting in the way. Instead of exaggerated characters and head-fall-off murders, I kept getting subtle, eerie, and even disturbing scenes, one after the other — and, when mixed together, they were forming something…yeah, good. Great even. I expected coal and instead I got a bonafide present.

Merry Christmas!

From the director of A Christmas Story and Porky’s comes an unlikely and effective horror film made by a director whom one would assume had spent his entire career working in the horror genre. But he was a director who worked in only two genres, horror and comedy, and that makes sense when you realize that the two are more alike than they are different — mostly because they both live and die by their sense of timing.

Black Christmas is more of an Agatha Christie mystery filtered through the sensibilities of a slasher than something more traditional (even though the slasher as a concept was still in its infancy at that time).  The murders are there, of course, and they’re certainly grisly, but a lot of emphasis is made on the who of it all. Who is this person who continues to call and sexually harass the girls, saying the most awful things, but while also referring to himself in the third person as Billy? Added to that is an almost supernatural sense to his presence, in that Billy seems to be having entire conversations with more than one person on his end of the phone — so much that they manage to overlap each other Exorcist style.

Above all, Black Christmas is eerie across the board — from the opening titles set to “Silent Night” to the disturbing phone calls to the unsettling murder sequences. A dead girl with a bag tied to her face sitting unseen behind an attic window is still one of the eeriest images ever birthed from the genre, and this in a low budget slasher that recently turned 40 years old.

For years an urban legend about Black Christmas has circulated the net involving its much more famous slasher sister, Halloween. The legend suggests that Bob Clark and John Carpenter knew each other personally, and had even begun collaborating on a possible project together that Carpenter would write and Clark would direct — a Black Christmas sequel, which saw Billy escaping from a mental institution and wreaking havoc in a small suburban town. Allegedly this collaboration fell apart, yada yada yada, and then Carpenter made Halloween. Mind you, this legend wasn’t chatter on IMDB message boards, but was being perpetuated by Clark himself. Carpenter has gone on record for years refuting this story, stating that conversations with Clark in any kind of professional or collaborating manner never happened, even later describing Black Christmas as “how not to make a horror movie.”

While Halloween being Black Christmas 2 is a dubious claim to begin with, especially when you take into consideration that Carpenter was actually provided for the basic story details for Halloween by its eventual producer Irwin Yablans, the similarities between the two films can’t be dismissed. The unseen killer stalking a group of teenagers on a major holiday is enough to get us started, but even the films share a similar opening sequence — from the point of view of the killer, the audience, seeing through his eyes, creeps around a house looking through windows before entering, unseen, to commit a grisly murder. (The optimistic way to come away from all this second-guessing is that we’ve got not just one but two holiday-themed horror classics to enjoy over and over, so let’s maybe move on.)

Black Christmas isn’t obvious programming for the holiday season — not just because young people being picked off one by one seems like an odd choice for celebrating Santa’s coming — but because of the deeply disturbing undertones about the killer’s history which suggests familial physical and possibly sexual abuse, which has left him with a damaged psyche and severe issues with the opposite sex. But, subject matter aside, Black Christmas is a very well made and eerie little horror number with an undeniably wintry aesthetic. (Thanks, Canada!) During the Christmas season, some households put on Clark’s own 24 hours of A Christmas Story or throw in their DVDs of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (or Die Hard!), but for the more…adventurous of us, Black Christmas feels right at home. Take note, however, that along with its jolly-less tone, Black Christmas isn’t a very pretty looking production. Low budget and not particularly colorful, the film is dark and dour, taking place mostly at night in dim interiors. If you're the type to wander around the house depressed on Christmas, like me, Black Christmas will suit your festivities just fine.

Cinephiles and genre buffs who enjoy counter-programming come the holiday probably have a whole list of Christmas-themed horror that gets frequent yearly play. For me, Black Christmas is one that gets a heavy rotation in my house during those yuletide months. (Because yes, in America, Christmas lasts from end of October to mid-January.) And it’s not just because Black Christmas is holiday-themed, but because it’s a tremendous and sometimes overlooked horror classic that never loses its ability to unnerve. How a static shot of a house set to a traditional recording of a choir singing “Silent Night” can be effortlessly eerie is — much like the unseen killer — a complete mystery, but Bob Clark managed to fill Black Christmas with little moments like this, giving it an undeniable ability to set its audience at unease. 

RED CHRISTMAS (2016)

Red Christmas, right off the bat, is intent on establishing that it’s not going to be like other holiday-themed slashers that have come before. It’s not the fun, spook show experience that Halloween perfected, and it’s certainly not the no-brained, silly affair like Silent Night, Deadly Night. More closely aligned with Black Christmas in terms of mood and bleakness, but absolutely still inspired by the ‘80s slasher movement based on the graphic and icky murder sequences, Red Christmas cannot be easily categorized. Any horror film that opens within an abortion clinic in the midst of an attack from Christian fundamentalists in which a fetus thought aborted is tossed in a bucket and kicked in a corner, only to reach up a tiny bloody hand to signify that it still lives, isn’t looking to entertain its audience with LOLs.

Despite setting what is essentially slasher film on a holiday and giving it a typically ironic title, Red Christmas is actually based on a pretty original premise, and stocked with characters you wouldn’t necessarily see in a film like this: one of the siblings is pregnant, another is adopted, another is very buttoned-up and married to a priest, and one has down syndrome. And what a fine dysfunctional family they make. But holding it together is America’s favorite genre mother, Dee Wallace, most famous for Momming it in E.T., Cujo, Critters, The Hills Have Eyes, and… Rob Zombie’s Halloween (boo-hiss). Enjoying the rare leading role, Wallace embraces the lunatic concept of Red Christmas to maximum effect, earning the audience’s sympathy not just because of her awful, squabbling family, but because of the past that comes back to haunt her.

Red Christmas can be fun at times, but deeply upsetting at others, and so many taboos are broken that it’s easy to wonder how anyone with a conscious could enjoy the film at all. And while Red Christmas is hard to watch, it oddly satisfies in that way only an ‘80s slasher could, while also going for the jugular a bit more feverishly.

Writer/director Craig Anderson’s Suspiria-inspired lighting scheme dazzles and adds to the uniqueness of Red Christmas, bathing several environments in red and green, giving it both your typical holiday look but also making everything feel off and unsettling.

Red Christmas has flaws, to be sure, but its daringness to break taboos and to be utterly bleak by its end make up for them. It has brains (for once), heart (though it wants to break yours), and it certainly has spirit. It’s one of the most unique horror films of the year, but one that’s also a tough watch. Be sure that you’re ready.

Know before going in that Red Christmas might show a familiar face and a well-worn concept, but it’s not your typical slasher flick. Much more intent on upsetting rather than amusing, Red Christmas is definitely what a horror film should be: unique, uncomfortable, and at times difficult to watch. 

SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT (1984) & SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT 2 (1987)

Silent Night, Deadly Night is an unremarkable, yet fun and unapologetically gimmicky slasher movie whose late-1980s presence at theaters was very brief; lame parents with lame ideals protested the movie’s depiction of a killer Santa offing “naughty” people and had the movie successfully banned from all theaters. For a long time, Silent Night, Deadly Night was a mirage until it was released on VHS years later and became a cult favorite. The flick isn’t groundbreaking in any way, and compared to today’s standards, where we’re able to see testicles ripped off a man and fed to wild dogs in theatrical films preceded by commercials for Fanta, the idea of a man in a Santa costume offing people doesn’t just pale in comparison—it’s become its own punchline. During the time it was released, and for several years after, Silent Night, Deadly Night was more well known for the controversy it caused in featuring a killer Santa Claus than by its substance as a reasonably well made slasher movie. Over the years, it’s been whispered about in the same breath as other post-Halloween holiday-exploiting slashers like My Bloody Valentine and April Fools Day –– which are fun and well made in their own right — but it’s not really deserving of their company. For genre fans who aren’t necessarily slasher fans, I can picture them turning down their noses at such an odd declaration and shutting it down with “but all slashers are the same.”

Not remotely true.

To be fair, Silent Night, Deadly Night offers the viewer a fairly standard slasher experience, and on paper, it offers a typically hokey premise: a young boy named Billy witnesses the death of his parents at the hands of someone dressed like Santa Claus and he loses his mind, eventually donning the garb himself as an adult and wrecking the halls with an ax. But there’s an inherent sleaze in Silent Night, Deadly Night that threatens to diminish its overall fun tone (and it is fun, don’t get me wrong), which gives it kind of an icky feeling. John Carpenter once “sincerely apologized” for inadvertently creating the trope that sexual active teens in horror films are the first to go, and Silent Night, Deadly Night seems to be the most directly inspired by that concept. The Santa assault against Billy’s mother, which revealed her glory to his young eyes, remained ingrained in him just as much as the imagery of Santa itself. That he spies sexual trysts several times throughout Silent Night, Deadly Night and mutters “punish!” or “naughty!” to himself seems to be a direct response to that Carpenter trope.

But hey, this is Silent Night, Deadly Night — we’re only here for effective murder scenes and a reasonably engaging plot, and we definitely get both. There are additional and unexpected touches that also offer something a bit out of the norm in this subgenre — consider the pre-Santa massacre opening scene where the family visits Billy’s deranged grandfather in a convalescent home where he somehow has the foresight to warn young Billy that Santa Claus is evil and Christmas Eve is the “scariest damned night of the year.” This makes absolutely no sense and is way too convenient; it only exists to arbitrarily manufacture foreshadowing, but something about it still manages to establish a bit of an edge.

Silent Night, Deadly Night would somehow go on to birth a franchise, which maintains one linear story line until its forth entry, after which the series enjoys a series of very different one-off adventures. (The fifth entry stars Mickey Rooney!)  As a member of the holiday-slasher ’80s craze, it’s mid- to upper-level B team, which is fine. It’s entertaining enough to justify existing, and when you’ve got a headless body sledding down a hill followed by its bouncing, rolling head, well, I guess I can’t be too hard on it.

A few years down the road, folks decided that Silent Night, Deadly Night—the movie that no one saw—needed a sequel, anyway. And with an entire first film from which to haphazardly pluck footage, a lazy and monotonous wrap-around story was written so audiences could see the original movie that disappeared from theaters, but in a new way.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 (longer examination here) is absurd in every way, from its Frankensteinian presentation to an exercise in how to make a tone-deaf horror film whose new footage is completely unlike the older footage it’s desperately depending on to help tell its story, all while not looking to it for any kind of guidance on how the new portions should feel. It's as if the cult horror film spoof Silence of the Hams was actually a sequel to Silence of the Lambs and borrowed footage from the famed horror thriller to piggyback off and make an entirely new movie. Silent Night, Deadly Night is silly, sure, but it was trying to be visceral. Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 knows right off the bat that it’s dumb and doesn’t try to hide it. Every single moment of Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 could be capped and turned into a gif or a meme (or both). This sequel's killer is Ricky (Eric Freeman), Billy's brother, who is apparently cut from the same Santa cloth and dons his own holly jolly murder outfit to commit murders...at the end of the movie, anyway. Up until then, he's just...some guy. Killing people. It's weird and inconsistent, but Freeman's performance is astounding terrible. His eyebrows do all the acting, and every single line-reading from his mouth sounds like he’s saying his dialogue out of spite instead of menace. It’s truly a thing to behold.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 is a silly good time, and has a nice little body count for slasher flick aficionados. It’s not taking things nearly as seriously as its predecessor, but it’s also not out-and-out going for humor, either; it exists in a weird no-man’s-land where the film it’s following is its own kind of silly, but which isn’t nearly as silly as its sequel that is wholly incomplete without that old footage. It’s an odd way to construct a sequel, but it is unique — I have to give it that.

THE ‘HELLRAISER’ TRILOGY (1987-1992)

Hellraiser, at its start, seemed like the least likely horror film to spawn a franchise for many reasons — the first of those being the extremely odd and daring subject matter. Though Hellraiser was released in the ‘80s – the very decade that saw the first installments in what would become major horror franchises – Hellraiser wasn’t simply about a maniac with an unforgettable appearance mowing down the innocent. Halloween, though made in 1978, officially became a franchise in 1981 when its sequel was released; many would argue that, though it was not the first official slasher film ever made, it was the first that would kick-start the genre and inspire a storm of imitators, which directly led to the creation of the Friday the 13th franchise. But whether you’re talking about a legitimately classy film like Halloween, or a slice of popcorn escapism like Friday the 13th, neither film would be fairly labeled as complex. Their concepts could be broken down into one sentence.

Hellraiser's couldn’t.

Hellraiser was sicker, slimier, angrier, and more depraved. On its surface it was about a mysterious puzzle box that had the power to open the gates of hell and allow demons (to some, angels to others) to emerge. But below that it was about sexual depravity, about the limits one kind of individual wanted to reach. It was about finding that straddling line between pain and pleasure. And honestly, it introduced certain taboos into the mainstream (well, the semi-mainstream) that had never been discussed in such a public way...unless you had read director Clive Barker’s writing at that point. The mastermind behind “The Hellbound Heart,” which was later fleshed out into the screenplay for Hellraiser, had been having that discussion for years.

Following the groundbreaking original film, eight sequels (!) would eventually follow, more and more shifting Pinhead – originally just one of many demons (called Cenobites) who was never intended to be the focal point – into the limelight. And, as was usually the case, his character would appear in each subsequently diminishing entry, soon becoming DTV franchise fodder like Puppetmaster and the Corn kids. Like many other horror franchises, how they play out in their latter entries seldom resemble how they looked in their earliest days. In the first Hellraiser, Pinhead appears fleetingly – not the main antagonist, but a monster whom one must face when seeking the ultimate pleasure. By the final entry (at least the final one with Bradley), Pinhead had become a ghost haunting a website (or something) and swinging machetes into teens’ necks, cutting their heads off with a snarl. (Seriously.) He became the very thing Barker hadn’t intended, as Pinhead’s introduction into pop culture grouped his Hellraiser in with all the other horror properties…where it didn’t belong.

Made with a very low budget, Hellraiser was the horror film no one was expecting. By the time its release year of 1987 rolled around, the Friday the 13th franchise was already on its seventh entry; Halloween and A Nightmare On Elm Street, their fifth. And already their concepts were starting to wear thin. Clive Barker, after having had no success with a handful of short experimental films based on his own short stories, wrote and directed the ’87 horror cheapie about a shaky marriage with a history of familial infidelity and a desire for a new beginning, both shaken by the reappearance of a familiar face. (Well, kind of.) Not at all your typical ’80s horror (despite the hero being a plucky teen girl, played by Ashley Laurence), Hellraiser was about the limits of desire, the consequences of self-destructive behavior, and the lengths one will go for what they perceive to be love. The faces remain the same in Hellraiser, but the real faces behind them often change. Larry Cotton (Dirty Harry’s Andrew Robinson) and his wife Julia (Clare Higgins) have moved back to Larry’s old family home (never given a specific location, but one which was originally meant to be London). It’s the same house that bore witness to the former immediate scene of Larry’s brother, Frank (Sean Chapman) having opened the puzzle box and being ripped apart by the Cenobites for his troubles. It’s there, following a bit of unexplained bloody voodoo, that Frank is resurrected as a slimy skinless humanoid, whom Julia discovers living in the attic. Being that Frank and Julia had engaged in a bit of coitus prior to her wedding to Larry, she still desires him (either emotionally or sexually), so when Frank orders her to bring him blood by any means necessary in an effort to continue reforming his body, Julia agrees. But it’s when Larry’s daughter, Kirsty (Laurence) comes to visit that Julie and Frank’s scheme gets a little complicated.

It goes without saying that the first Hellraiser is the best in the series, though many fans would point to its immediate sequel, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, as the superior entry (more on that in a bit). Celebrated for its inventive practical effects in the same way as John Carpenter’s The Thing, Hellraiser plays out like a doomed romance, with Julia becoming a murderess to reform Frank in hopes that they would again be together. In spite of all the grime and grit and spilled blood, it’s actually a sad story – a Greek tragedy that unfolds with equal levels Shakespearean drama and EC Comics irony. And yes, despite the original intention for Julia to actually be seen as the main villain and the takeaway face of Hellraiser, it would be Doug Bradley as Pinhead who would inadvertently walk away with the final association with the Hellraiser brand. His impressive appearance, along with fellow Cenobites Chatterer, Butterball, and “Female Cenobite” (she got the short stick in the names department), though limited to roughly ten minutes, would be powerful and effective enough to not only spawn a franchise but inherit the mantle of the main villain going forward.

Call it the return of New World Pictures as financier, or the short amount of time between films, or the returning of much of the creative force (sans Clive Barker, who only provided a rough outline of the story), Hellbound: Hellraiser II feels like not just a natural sequel, but the second half of the overall Hellraiser story. Following Uncle Frank and Julia’s comeuppance, Kirsty, understandably, now finds herself a patient at the Channard Institute for the mentally ill as police try to piece together what exactly happened in that house. Very unfortunately for Kirsty, Dr. Channard himself (Kenneth Cranham), harbors the same blood-thirsty need for the next level of passion-meets-pain, and has been researching the puzzle box for years (and who seriously looks like Old Tom Hardy). In one of the most uncomfortable scenes to ever appear in a horror film, which sees a mentally ill patient slicing himself with a straight razor to kill the bugs he believes are crawling all over him, his torrential blood flow leaks onto the stolen mattress on which Julia had perished in the previous film, resurrecting her, and she becomes Channard’s guide directly into the pits of hell. Meanwhile, Kirsty does stuff involving a mute girl at the hospital who just so happens to really enjoy puzzles; for their troubles, they also end up in hell.

Aesthetically, Hellbound: Hellraiser II really does play out like a natural second half, but in doing so also becomes somewhat lost in its own story. Unsure of what it wants to be, it sacrifices some of its sexual daringness in favor of focusing much of its journey on its descent into hell, where Kirsty believes her father to be, and who’s in need of rescue following a dream in which he appeared to her in skinless form, scrawling bloodily on the wall, “I AM IN HELL HELP ME.” Julia (a returning Clare Higgins) is certainly sexier and more diabolical, but compared to the conflicted iteration of herself in the first film, she comes off less interesting. Once she’s reborn and her skinless ass groped by Dr. Channard, she’s given absolutely nothing to do except walk around and grin big.

By this time it had become apparent that Doug Bradley’s Pinhead was the star, and though his screen time in the makeup isn’t necessarily increased, his character is fleshed out, being ret-conned as a former British soldier during the first World War who opens the puzzle box and subsequently becomes the pointy-faced demon we all know and love. Hellbound: Hellraiser II boasts some interesting and impressive visuals from first-time director Tony Randel, taking over for Barker, but also a few asinine “twists” – such as “Satan” being a gigantic puzzle box which shoots lasers, or — my favorite  — Frank revealing himself as the one who appeared to Kirsty and wrote her the bloody note, all in an effort to lure her into hell so they could bang.

This was Frank’s big idea.

Way to go Frank.

And it’s with Hellraiser’s third film that Pinhead is made the front-and-center villain, receiving a boost in screen time and a copy of Freddy Krueger’s Official Guide to Awful Ironic Puns. Screenwriter Peter Atkins, who returns from duties on Hellbound: Hellraiser II, again scripts this entry – one that he admits isn’t very far removed from the original intention, but who is also happy to admit that the new rights holders of the Hellraiser franchise wanted different things from what came before. Basically, they wanted their own horror villain to turn into a sadistic sidesplitting bad guy to lure in a different kind of audience (the kind who thought Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare was just a total hoot). They got their wish.

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth focuses on a reporter named Joey Summerskill who stumbles ass-backwards into a Pinhead-like situation after witnessing a poor guy stabbed with rusty chains being wheeled into an operating room one night at the hospital, putting her directly on the bloody path of Pinhead, recently freed from a statue (?) by a New York playboy who fancies himself worthy of sitting at the right hand of the king of Hell. (He’s basically the new Julia, only intensely punchable.) If there’s a reason that logline sounds stupid, it’s because it is. Very much so. Except for watching Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth turn a once-frightening demon into a pun-dropping pain in the ass who – no bullshit – turns people into Cenobites that have cameras in their heads or can fire CDs like saw blades – this second sequel doesn’t offer much depth, daringness, or really anything at all besides yet another example of diminishing returns. Pinhead’s sad transition into Freddy Krueger-lite was inevitably completed, aided by a more than willing Anthony Hickox (the Waxworks series) stepping into the director’s chair for Tony Randel, who wisely opted not to return.

Dimension Films would maintain their hold on the franchise, turning out one entry after another, but after the spectacular failure of Hellraiser IV: Bloodline (credited to phantom director Alan Smithee, which in movie talk means RUN), ironically, non-Hellraiser related horror scripts would be picked up by the production house, rewritten to include Pinhead and Hellraiser elements, and would then actually offer far more solid one-offs than the series’ earlier official sequels. (I’ll defend Scott Derrickson’s Hellraiser: Inferno from now until the end of time – the first sequel to go direct to video, but the best since the original.) The Hellraiser franchise continues to chug along, with a new entry—Hellraiser: Judgment—released in 2018. It’s the tenth film of the franchise and the second subsequent sequel on which Doug Bradley has passed, so that probably tells you everything you need to know. For almost ten years, Dimension Films have been trying to bring a proper remake of Hellraiser to life, and all kinds of interesting people – from Inside's Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury to Drive Angry's Todd Farmer and Patrick Lussier – have taken a crack. Currently the task rests in the hands of super hack writer David S. Goyer, but word has been quiet, so who really knows what's going on? One thing is certain: you can't keep a good bad guy down, and Pinhead will return – one way or the other.

BLOOD RAGE (1987): A GORE-NUCOPIA OF THANKSGIVING MAYHEM!

Don’t listen to that blowhard Eli Roth. Despite his self-aggrandizing fake trailer for Thanksgiving sandwiched in between the two mini features that comprised Grindhouse, which he purported to be the first to exploit the previously unexploited turkey day, Blood Rage (aka Nightmare at Shadow Woods) had beaten him to the punch by roughly twenty-five years. And what a twenty-five years it’s been. Long considered an obscure title, available only in compromised hack jobs found on VHS and DVD releases, the true, intended, and uncut version was finally unleashed last year by Arrow Video in all its “that’s not cranberry sauce!” glory. And it is a sight to behold.

Blood Rage offers everything the hardcore slasher fan could possibly want: a gimmicky but forgivable premise, a charismatic but quirky killer, tremendous violence, a nice helping of T&A, an array of flying limbs, and not a single unwelcome minute of stagnation. Blood Rage moves at a clip, only hanging around long enough to commit bodily mayhem against its cast before zipping to its “seriously, what is this?” ending, cutting to black, and rolling credits.

In the subgenre of the slasher film, it’s easy to love many titles strictly via irony. PIECES, for example, is an absolute favorite, as well as The Mutilator, but I could never in good conscious call either of them actual good films. But Blood Rage is different. So different. On the Blood Rage scale, I give it five out of five cut-off hands holding a beer can. Because, you see, one film is not less good simply because it’s striving toward a different goal. JAWS is not less of a good film because The Godfather exists. Mad Max does not pale in the majestic shadow of Mad Max: Fury Road. Blood Rage is as good at killing teenagers as Quint is at captivating a crew with his wartime stories, or Sonny Corleone is at personifying agonizing death, or the Doof Warrior is at rocking out on a flaming fucking guitar. In fact, Blood Rage is better at what it wants to do because it exists in an entirely uncategorizeable box – an entity unto itself, and only itself. 

And I love being able to say that.

Its plot, such as it is (or ain’t), is so sinfully simple and rife with logic errors that it transcends ineptness and becomes charming. A family receives word that their so-called psychotic family member has escaped an asylum and could be heading their way, but…no one cancels Thanksgiving dinner. 

No one cares. 

No one looks alarmed. 

Not a single person says, “Gosh, maybe we should drive our functioning cars to safety.” 

In the land of Blood Rage, it’s don’t worry, be happy. There are no cars that don’t start, there are no phone lines that are cut. People just…willfully choose to stay in the place where the murderer seems to be heading, without concern. And it’s glorious, because someone’s HEAD gets hacked in half and you can see his entire BRAIN. That’s Blood Rage, people.

That’s what you’re getting, and like a slice of pumpkin pie after a big turkey dinner, it’s delightful. 

What Blood Rage gets right, effortlessly, is its willingness to be fun. The premise alone lets the audience off the hook in the sense that they’re not left wondering for the entire film just who it is behind the mask that’s cutting of everyone’s knees and faces, inevitably leading to an underwhelming conclusion bound to satisfy only a fraction of the audience. At no point is Blood Rage‘s audience left to theorize about the mysterious identity of the killer responsible for all the carnage.

It’s Terry. The one in the striped shirt. He’s…right there. 

The acting’s about the caliber you might expect from a low-budget slasher film made in the early ’80s but not released until the late ’80s. It’s doable, passable, and certainly entertaining enough. Plus Ted Raimi appears as “Condom Salesman.” He has one line: “Condoms?” (I think. Memory’s hazy on this one; I think Blood Rage broke my brain.)

Maintaining the slasher film tradition of featuring one lead actor who makes you say, “Wow, he/she’s in this?”, Blood Rage features the unexpected appearance of Louise Lasser, who began her career in many of Woody Allen’s earlier films, and who most notably appeared in Requiem for a Dream as Ada, friend to Sara Goldfarb, who eventually breaks my heart as she sobs uncontrollably on a city bench. Her role hovers somewhere between normal and Mrs. Bates, suggesting that she’s mostly grounded, but also a bit too…attached to her sons. But she plays it well, and her crazy role is just one of many crazy things that make Blood Rage so crazy good. The scene in which she sits Indian style on the kitchen floor in front of her open refrigerator and begins eating Thanksgiving leftovers with a depressed look on her face because her crazy son has escaped a lunatic asylum and may be on his way to kill her and everyone else – so what else can she do? – is the stuff of cinemafantastique. 

Blood Rage is the movie that unaware slasher fans never knew they needed. Everything about it is pure and lovable – even the detestable violence and gore that our mothers would absolutely despise contains an intangible charm that’s become ingrained with this oft forgotten era of horror. For a film about a psychotic teen cutting down his friends and family with a machete in violent ways, it’s the most harmless slice of escapism yet that hails from the golden era of hack’em-up cinema. Its intentions are as innocent as the on-screen killer is murderous, but they both want the same thing: to cover everything in blood, and to make every minute of it as enjoyable as possible. And both succeed, so hard. 

If you consider yourself a fan of old-school slashers, have never seen this, and are still on the fence, then give me a break – YOU NEED THIS. Cut from the same mold as My Bloody Valentine, The Prowler, Intruder, and the entire Friday the 13th franchise, Blood Rage demands to be part of your yearly Thanksgivings or else you’re just a big turkey ha ha. 

Blood Rage is hereby awarded:

Happy Thanksgiving!

[Reprinted from the Daily Grindhouse.]

TURKEY EVE

It's coming...

BRAINSCAN (1994)

You can tell just from watching Brainscan that its makers were desperate to create their own money-printing Freddy Krueger slasher villain. Considering that Brainscan ultimately comes off sillier than Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, the nadir of that series and ultimately the end result of a softening/sillying of its lead boogeyman that eventually killed the franchise, it’s no surprise audiences weren’t eager to see Brainscan’s lead techno-monster come back for additional installments.

Besides, it’s difficult to generate any real fear when your villain, called Trickster, resembles the lead singer of ‘80s Eurodisco band Silent Circle:

The ‘90s were a ripe time for film exploring mega-overblown concerns about computers. Just ask Brainscan lead boy Edward Furlong, who put himself on the map as the very first John Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. But for every major title like that, there are dozens of B-movies that were begging audiences, “Be afraid of your personal computer!” The Ghost in the Machine explored similar tactics, as did an outlandish sequence in the otherwise sex thriller Disclosure, during which Michael Douglas, while VR-ing into a private network, is pursued by a Michael Myers-like 2D avatar of Demi Moore. Then there was Hackers, The Lawnmower Man, Johnny Mnemonic, Virtuosity, and more than one episode of The X-Files. And let’s not forget The Net, which, to its credit, started out as unbelievable tripe but eventually became sadly prophetic in our new age of rampant identity theft.

Brainscan stands head and shoulders above these titles as being the absolute stupidest, but I’ll be — the filmmakers seem to be taking this concept seriously. I don’t know what’s stranger: that a humanoid manifestation of a murderous video game begins stalking an underage boy while simultaneously eating all his bananas, or that Frank Langella is in this at all.

If Brainscan has anything going for it, besides how hilariously dated it already is, it’s the grisly violence, which can come off at-odds when juxtaposed against a silly concept (and sillier villain). I almost wish it had been a box office hit because I’m dying to know what a Brainscan 6: Virtual Mortality would look like.

If you yearn for ‘90s horror cinema, you’re weird, but you’re also in luck, because Brainscan is the most ‘90s horror title there is: the computers are just blocky enough, the soundtrack just Butthole Surfers enough, and the visual effects just terrible enough to make you stand up and scream, “the ‘90s are back! Someone get me my cordless phone!”

THE BARN (2016)

Halloween is the top day of the year for me. And when a filmmaker sets out to not just set his or her story on Halloween, but make Halloween a driving part of the story, looking back to its many myths and origins for its conflict, well, you’ve got my attention. And I want nothing more than for these filmmakers to succeed, so I may add it to my yearly pile of must-watch October viewing.

Strictly judged on this criterion, writer/director Justin Seaman succeeds.

The Barn, the newest in a long line of throwback slasher films, has its heart in the right place, which allows it to transcend the problems that most low-budget filmmaking inevitably displays. Featuring bit roles for ‘80s horror icons Linnea Quigley (Return of the Living Dead) and Ari Lehman (Young Jason from the original Friday the 13th as a hilariously strange television horror-host), The Barn takes place on Halloween night, 1989, and feels every bit like it. After its excellent opening, which lays down the legend of Hallowed Jack, Candycorn Scarecrow, and the Boogeyman (aka the Miner), we cut to “the present” and meet our usual group of kids who will get into kid hijinks and come face-to-face with an array of evil Halloween spirits.

If The Barn gets anything right, it’s the loyal devotion to Halloween. The first five minutes alone exude more October ambiance than all of Trick ‘r Treat, and the somewhat party store design of its movie maniacs easily call forth Conal Cochran’s trio of now-iconic masks from Halloween 3: Season of the Witch. When the screen is filled with costumed kids, cornfields, pumpkin fields, and those mid-western small town surroundings ripped straight from images conjured by the abstract term “Americana,” Halloween permeates through every square inch of the screen.

The Barn also makes good on its promise to present itself as a long-lost ‘80s horror slasher, from its VHS-warped opening logo, to the artificial grain and cigarette burns, to the Carpenter-ish synth score by composer Rocky Gray – but most satisfying, the wonderfully rendered practical effects. Heads are crushed, throats are cut – more people bite the big one in The Barn than in the first three Myers Halloween films combined. And every single death is done physically, in-camera. There’s no amateurish Final Cut Pro CGI to offend the eye. The last thing you should be doing when seeing a head get ripped off is smiling big-time, but damn it, the gruesome exploits of The Barn make you smile big-time.

Where The Barn falters is where many other low-budget films made by inexperienced filmmakers tend to falter. None of the performances are particularly note-worthy, with the few appearances of adult actors (including Linnea Quigley) coming off less convincing than that of their younger counterparts. (None of the cast seem to be teen-aged in reality, but they at least look the part, which is another plus.) This, along with the occasional overwrought line of dialogue, a lack of confidence behind the camera (some quick action shots don’t provide a clear picture of what’s going on), and some sequences of loose editing are what keep The Barn from being truly great.

Still, during weak performances or eye-rolling dialogue, what continues to keep The Barn powering through and overcoming these obstacles is its intent on being a fun and clever film and loyal to the holiday its honoring. It wants to be more than just another low-budget horror film, which by now feels like a rite of passage for any burgeoning filmmaker. Everyone involved with The Barn really, really worked hard, and that – above all else – comes across in every frame. And that’s what makes it consistently watchable.

The Barn may not stand toe-to-toe with its Halloween-inspired brethren, but it’s a worthy addition to the sub-genre and a more-than-welcome guest at the yearly Halloween party. With more money and resources, I am eager to see what writer/director Justin Seaman concocts next. I say check it out, and if you like what you see, throw some money toward the film crew as they embark on--you guessed it--The Barn 2.

HALLOWEEN (2018): ONE YEAR LATER

I wrote this archival piece nearly two years ago, and nearly one year before Halloween (2018) was released upon the world (exactly one year ago today, in fact). More than just a musing on what I thought David Gordon Green might add to the franchise, it was a reflection on growing up alongside the Halloween franchise, how it forged my love for the genre, and how absurdly, ridiculously excited I was, at fourteen years old, for Halloween: H20 (1998) -- the first Halloween sequel to seize on a 20-year anniversary, and to bring Jamie Lee Curtis back to the franchise. At this point, production on the next entry in the franchise, Halloween Kills, which returns all the major participants from Halloween (2018) for another go-round with the Shape, is well underway. While we all anticipate this next sequel, let's go back in time a little for a melancholy dose of watching both Michael Myers as well as the calendar...

As a kid, I was a devout Michael Myers fan. Granted, I was a horror junkie in general, but there was something about that white-masked boogeyman that fueled my imagination and struck fear into my bones like lightning. I can still remember my elementary-school self waiting impatiently in the living room, on Halloween, for my older brother and his friend to complete their dead hockey player costumes by gluing half-pucks to their faces. It took so long, and I was so antsy to get out there and trick-or-treat, that I flipped on the television hoping to find distraction in the cadre of Halloween-appropriate titles sure to be on. While surfing, a burst of screams and frantic chaos in the dark caught my attention. Feeling good about my choice, I’d put down the remote and began to watch.

That was how I first discovered John Carpenter’s Halloween.

Okay, fine, it was only the last ten minutes or so, but as a young horror-loving fiend, what better time to tune in? The film was at its frenzied peak, and the suddenness and ambiguity of the terror helped to heighten the experience. Who was this man in the mask? Who was this old man in the trench coat trying to stop him? Why here, why now? What is this?

I saw it all — Laurie Strode fleeing and shrieking across the street from masked maniac Michael Myers; her frantic pounding against the locked front door; the couch attack, the closet attack, and the final confrontation where Michael was unmasked and Dr. Sam Loomis shot him directly in the jumpsuit.

For a moment, everything was quiet. The shot had knocked Michael offscreen into a back room. Surely he was dead, right?

Loomis ran into that same back room after him. Michael waited in the darkness — still, and very much alive.

At that moment, seeing his unnatural stillness framed by darkness, I was petrified. Beyond petrified. I couldn’t move — something so simple as a scary mask in silhouette, with a bit of inhuman breathing, and I couldn’t fucking move.

Five more gunshots rang out. Michael flew backwards off the balcony and landed with a crash on the  cold hard October ground. Finally, he appeared dead.

But after a quick cut away, his body was gone.

And thus began a forty-year legacy.

After that fateful television viewing of Halloween, I was hooked. One by one I sought every remaining sequel, skipping Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, as I’d go on to learn that it didn’t feature the babysitter murderer known as The Shape. (I’d eventually mature and warm to this entry, which I now watch every Halloween.) This love for the series continued for years. I bought every Halloween available on VHS, including multiple copies of the original. I bought every magazine or book or figure or poster or anything that bared the face of Michael Myers. Had there been a Halloween secret society, I’d’ve been a charter member.

1995 rolled around and I was in the fifth grade. One Friday in September, a childhood chum named Barry and I were swapping weekend plans on the bus ride home.

“My sister’s taking me to see Halloween 6 tonight,” Barry said casually.

My face went full :O and I begged him to take me along.

He did, and soon after, he became a boyhood best friend.

Flash forward a few years. It’s 1998, and I’m in eighth grade. My love for horror continues, and sometimes I’m successful in forcing my friends to go along with it. Scream 2 had proved such a massive box office success that Dimension Films re-released the sequel for encore showings. And so of course I went. It was then, in the popcorn-smelling dimness of the auditorium, that one particular trailer stuck out among all others:

From the audience’s point of view, we glided down long hallways as heavy winds made curtains billow and dry autumn leaves dance across the floor. An ominous voice growled, “he has pursued her relentlessly…”

Meanwhile, the tick-tock piano music in the background sounded so familiar…

“He has hunted her…everywhere…”

I knew I’d heard that music somewhere…

“Twenty years later, the face of good and the face of evil will meet…one last time.”

The music was a track called “Laurie’s Theme” from the Halloween soundtrack, and the trailer, which suddenly flashed to Jamie Lee Curtis looking through a window directly into the darkened eyeholes of Michael Myers, would end with the Halloween theme and the title Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later shrieking across the screen.

What I felt at that moment was indescribable — an insane amount of shock and surprise and excitement that I still haven’t felt for a movie to this day. It was euphoria. It was like meeting a superhero, or winning the lottery. A franchise that had seemed all but dead after the abysmal Curse of Michael Myers was suddenly back with a vengeance, and not only that, it was also hailing the return of Laurie Fucking Strode, the ultimate final girl.

In the dark, I could feel my friends look over at me and make their own :O faces. They didn’t care nearly as much for horror and the Halloween franchise as I did, but I could feel their excitement for me. And they were right. At that moment, I didn’t care about anything else. Once I regained my composure, I excitedly ran out of the auditorium and to the nearest payphone. (Yes, a payphone — it was 1998, ok? The only people with cell phones at that time were Mulder and Scully.) There was one person who needed to know – Barry, my horror movie/Halloween partner in crime – and he needed to know NOW. I was overjoyed, over the moon, and not thinking clearly. I felt like a celebrity, as if I had been the first person in the world to experience such groundbreaking news, and it was my privilege and duty to alert the masses.

Seeing that trailer was magical. To be taken completely by surprise still lives on in my mind as one of the happiest moments I’ve ever experienced. And here I am, nearly 20 years later, and the idea behind what I am saying – undying devotion for what is essentially Halloween 7 – sounds completely ludicrous. But that’s the kind of magic I suspect dies off as your childhood does.

By the time I got back to the auditorium, Jada Pinkett was already dead. I was so excited by this revelation that the exploits of Ghostface and the stabbing of Sarah Michelle Gellar barely registered in my mind. Suddenly, Scream 2 didn’t mean shit in the face of Halloween: H20.

For months after that, I waited impatiently for the poster to appear in the theater’s lobby — to confirm that it wasn’t all just a dream, but a reality. And once it arrived, I stared at that poster and marveled at The Shape’s mask, and took in the pure pleasure of knowing it was coming soon…

Consumer-grade internet had just become a thing (we’re talking AOL 3.0), so naturally, for the next several months until Halloween: H20’s release, I would Ask Jeeves and AOL Netfind everything I could about this new sequel. I’d click over and over on distributor Dimension Films’ official website and watch the trailers and look at the photos. Every fold of my brain needed to be saturated with every bit of info I could find. Though I’m now of the age where I depend significantly on an internet lifestyle, I can also remember what life was like before it. Back then, if you wanted to know about the next installments of Phantasm or Halloween, you only had Fangoria Magazine. And all you were allowed to know about their productions was what Fangoria allowed you to know – a quote here, description of a scene there, and topped off with a publicity still that, nine times out of ten, wasn’t indicative of the final film. Back then, I wasn’t in the habit of bookmarking film sites and receiving daily news updates about projects in production. Nowadays, as a grumpy adult with the internet on his phone, I can assure you that finding out about a new Halloween sequel coming soon in the form of an article by an online pipsqueak movie writer isn’t nearly as magical as seeing that same sequel’s trailer in a theater for the first time — the very first sign to you that it existed.

Always the pioneer, I began assembling my own version of Halloween: H20 “special features” on a VHS tape based on material recorded off television; it included a Sci-Fi Channel hour-long making-of special; an MTV thing where the cast and story writer, Kevin Williamson, hosted Dawson’s Creek trivia in between music videos; and multiple appearances of the cast on late-night talk shows. I watched that tape over and over until I could finally see the film for myself.

Opening weekend, I finally did — myself and a whole host of my chums I’d likely strong-armed into going. My eighth-grade self was not disappointed. Seeing Jamie Lee Curtis holding an ax and furiously bellowing her brother’s name gave me chills. By film’s end, I was legitimately shocked and a little heartbroken to see Michael lose his head. I was very happy with it, and my chums seemed to have enjoyed themselves as well. After months of foreplay, the big moment had arrived: the rolling out of Halloween: H20 felt like the successful culmination of a plan I had nothing to fucking to do with, yet I couldn’t have been more pleased with myself. At home I put together a framed Michael Myers memorial, complete with birthdate and death date, because I was a silly nerd/psychopath. Too young to understand the concept of commerce over creativity, I felt assured Halloween: H20 would be Michael Myers’ final hurrah (LOL), and while that made me sad, I felt that it was a perfect finale. (As an “adult,” I look at Halloween: H20 with a more critical eye, as its shortcomings are no longer veiled by childhood romanticism. The mask, which changes frequently, even relying on CGI for one scene, is terrible; the California shooting location lacks that small-town and autumn feel of Haddonfield, Illinois; the stuntman who donned Michael’s mask and jumpsuit was just a hair too pint-sized to be fully intimidating; and except for the lush and orchestral rendition of the Halloween theme, John Ottman’s score, Frankensteined with Marco Beltrami cues from Scream and Mimc, is all wrong. Those misgivings aside, I still think it’s the best Myers-centric sequel since Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.)

What might be the longest intro in the world leads us to the point of all this.

I was born in 1984. By then, the original Halloween was six years old, though I wouldn’t know it existed until the mid-’90s. That’s ten years. When you’re a kid, ten years is forever. Halloween: H20 was the twentieth anniversary of the original film, but to me it was basically Halloween: H4VR. Anything that predated my existence didn’t jive with the timeline of my life. I couldn’t appreciate the full sense of that anniversary because I didn’t exist or wasn’t cognizant for most of it.

Halloween: H20 may as well have been the bicentennial.

Here were are, in 2017, just a couple weeks away from 2018. And with it comes the twentieth anniversary of Halloween: H20, and the fortieth(!) anniversary of the original. A new Halloween film is in production — for the intent of my point, let’s call it Halloween: H40. Like Halloween: H20, this new film will be ignoring all the sequels and getting back to the original’s roots of dread, suspense, and little emphasis on violence. And Jamie Lee Curtis returns as the embattled Laurie Strode.

If you can avoid getting caught in the petty trappings of the internet, Halloween: H40 has a lot going for it. The production is in good hands with Jason Blum, who has kick started the horror genre over the last decade by sacrificing multi-million dollar budgets in exchange for handing off full creative control to the films’ talented writers and directors (a refreshing change of pace from former rights-holding and extremely meddlesome Dimension Films/the Weinstein brothers), with this approach resulting in new classics Insidious, Sinister, and more. (Dude might also be nominated for an Oscar for producing Get Out — you read it here first.) Jamie Lee Curtis is returning, of course, but the casting of Judy Greer as her daughter shows that the production is more interested in talent than vapid Facebook-level recognition value. John Carpenter returns to compose and consult. And it’s being directed by David Gordon Green — an actual filmmaker — who, comedies aside, has a solid body of work, including the very underrated, Night Of The Hunter-ish stalker thriller Undertow.

As of this writing, not a single frame of Halloween: H40 has been shot, but it’s already as terrifying to me as the original was all those Halloween nights ago. Because, to me, Halloween: H20 is only a few years old. I remember everything about the excitement I felt in the months leading up to its release. I remember going to see it, that all my boyhood chums came with me, and what each and every one of them said about it after the credits rolled. I even remember, upon Michael’s first on-screen appearance, my friend Kevin jokingly whispering to me, “It’s him, the guy from the ad!,” quoting from an episode of The Simpsons — something we did constantly.

Within the confines and timeline of my life, Halloween: H20 feels like it just happened to me. There’s no possible way it’s been twenty years. Yes, I’ve lost friends and family; I’ve moved multiple times; I’ve gotten numerous jobs; I’ve been lucky enough to have fallen in love a couple times. Those childhood friends who went with me to share in my excitement of Laurie Strode’s return, all of whom I miss dearly, eventually scattered to different parts of the world, and it’s been years since I’ve spoken to any of them. All of that makes a solid case for a two-decade timeline. But there’s just no way. I can’t fathom it. And I don’t want to.

As a film fan, a horror fan, and a Halloween fan who has weathered some serious mediocrity over the years, I’m more excited than anyone for the coming of Halloween: H40.

But as a mere mortal keeping a wary eye on the clock and the calendar, it just might be one of the most terrifying films I ever see.

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]