Phantom of the Paradise is a 1974 American musical film written and directed by Brian De Palma (Carrie, The Fury, Dressed to Kill). The story is a loosely adapted mixture of The Phantom of the Opera, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Faust. Initially, it was a box office failure and was panned by some critics but has since acquired a cult following. Its music was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.

Winslow Leach (William Finley, Eaten Alive, The Funhouse) is a frustrated songwriter, who finally makes his big break when his support act for The Juicy Fruits is seen by mysterious rock ‘n’ roll svengali, Swan (played by genuine 70′s song-writing behemoth, Paul Williams) who pinpoints his music as the ideal debut act for his new mega-club, The Paradise. In a fiendish plot, he employs Arnold Philbin (George Memmoli, Mean Streets) to steal the music for his own gain. Leach visits Swan’s mansion, which also house his record label, Death Records, but is immediately turfed out, though not before witnessing an aspiring singer auditioning, Phoenix (Jessica Harper, Suspiria), whom he quickly falls for.

Swans soon realises that Leach remains a threat to his plans and has him beaten up and framed for drugs offences, leading him to be given a life sentence at the notorious Sing Sing Prison, and having his teeth removed and replaced by a metal plate. Part-way into his ordeal, Leach hears The Juicy Fruits playing one of his songs on the radio and manages to escape by hiding in a delivery container. Returning to Swan’s mansion, he tried to sabotage Swan’s plans but is soon rumbled, becoming trapped in a record press which burns his face and destroys his vocal chords. Leach retreats, donning a bird-like sliver mask and cape that will see him turn into his alter-ego, The Phantom, whose sole aim is to destroy Swan’s empire and seize back his music and Phoenix.

Swan eventually strikes a deal with Leach, supplying him with an electronic voice box so that he can complete his fabled track, “Faust”, with Phoenix as the singer. Swan reneges on the plan and instead selects gargantuan glam rocker, Beef (Gerrit Graham, Child Play 2, Chopping Mall) to open The Paradise singing Leach’s “Old Souls” – only for The Phantom to interrupt proceedings in true Chaney style. With both The Phantom and Swan now realising the true intentions of each other, the pair struggle to the film’s violent conclusion, with Phoenix trapped between them.

Pre-dating The Rocky Horror Picture Show by a year (though not the 1973 stage show), Brian De Palma’s rock/horror hybrid has long been viewed as little more than folly, something the director felt he had to get out of his system without considering how many people shared his vision. Packed with fantastic characters both in front and behind the camera (regular David Lynch production designer Jack Fisk was responsible for much of the film’s garish visual appeal – his girlfriend, Sissy Spacek, pre-Carrie, was his assistant) the film perhaps suffered for being too intricate – the plots twists endlessly and the music is elaborate and sweeping, far removed from the immediate, catchy pop of Rocky Horror.

The appearance of Paul Williams seems far more bizarre now than it would have 40 years ago. In the 1970′s he loomed large of popular music in all its forms, from penning numerous Carpenters tracks (including “Rainy Days and Mondays” and “We’ve Only Just Begun”) to tracks on the smash hit Bugsy Malone, the theme to the seemingly never-ending TV show Love Boat, to the terrific “Rainbow Connection” from The Muppet Movie. Undoubtedly a musical genius, his stature and appearance did not lend themselves to superstardom in front of the camera, though as the sinister and creepy Swan, he finds an unlikely role in which he excels.

Harper is a strange piece of casting but again, this is entirely fitting for a film which is all things strange. Her wide-eyed innocence adds a real feeling of pathos, in a film it’s easy to feel detached from. Finlay is sensational as Leach/The Phantom, and although he worked until his untimely death in 2012, he never achieved the plaudits he deserved. Similarly, Gerrit Graham throws everything into the role of Beef, sadly not lasting very long as a character.

Throwing everything at the picture, De Palma, hurls pop culture references at the audience from the start. Swan’s Death Records label is such a thinly veiled take on Led Zeppelin’s Swan Song label that it should come as no surprise that the original shots actually see the label named Swan Songs, an error which necessitated optically over-pasting Death Records in several scenes to avoid a lengthy court battle.

Elsewhere, Philbin’s character is named after Mary Philbin from the classic 1923 Lon Chaney film Phantom of the Opera. Spacek stayed behind the lens but only due to the fact that Harper beat her (and Linda Ronstadt) to the role of Phoenix. The musical merry-go-round of casting saw Jon Voight being considered for the role of Swan, Williams as Leach, Graham as Swan and Peter Boyle as Beef. Boyle went on to play is somewhat similar role to Beef in Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein. Graham’s singing voice is dubbed by Ray Kennedy, the noted singer, composer and session musician.

The nature of the Phantom’s disfigurement references the Claude Rains version of the Phantom of the Opera rather more than Chaney’s classic, though other filmic nods include Faust, Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as nods to television – Rod Serling, host of writer of much of The Twilight Zone TV series supplies the opening monologue.

Phantom of the Paradise opened in the U.S. on October 31, 1974 and soon flopped.The film’s only successful major market during its theatrical release was Winnipeg, Canada where it opened on Boxing Day, 1974 and played in local cinemas over four months continuously and over one year non-continuously until 1976.The soundtrack album sold 20,000 copies in Winnipeg alone and was certified Gold in Canada. It played occasionally in Winnipeg theatres in the 1990s and at the Winnipeg IMAX theatre in 2000 and always “drew a dedicated audience”. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Original Song Score and Adaptation and a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score – Motion Picture. In more recent years, the film has attracted a loyal fanbase who organise ”Phantompalooza” events – celebrity fans include Sébastien Tellier and Daft Punk.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

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More Brian De Palma on Horrorpedia: Carrie, The Fury, Dressed to Kill

Stung is a 2014 comedy horror film directed by Benni Diez. The cast includes Matt O´Leary, Jessica Cook, Peter Stormare and Lance Henriksen. An XYZ Films production, Stung was developed by producer Benjamin Munz at Rat Pack Filmproduktion based on an idea by Adam Aresty, who won RatPack’s 2012 horror-writing contest.

A fancy garden party goes terribly wrong after a local species of wasps mutate into giant predators. It’s up to Paul and Julia, two catering staffers at the high-society event, to stop the killer creatures – an effort that kickstarts a budding romance between the two.

Images courtesy of Twitch and Daily Dead.

Chastity Bites is a 2013 horror comedy directed by John V. Knowles from a screenplay by Lotti Pharriss Knowles. It features Allison Scagliotti, Francia Raisa, Louise Griffiths, Eduardo Rioseco, Chloë Crampton, Amy Okuda, Sarah Stouffer, Lindsey Morgan, Laura Niemi and Diana Chiritescu.

In the early 1600′s, Countess Elizabeth Bathory slaughtered more than 600 young women, believing if she bathed in the blood of virgins that she would stay young and beautiful forever. Still alive today, she’s found a perfect hunting ground for her ‘botox’ as an abstinence educator in conservative America, and the young ladies of San Griento High are poised to be her next victims. But will her unholy ritual finally be stopped by Leah Ratliff, a feminist blogger and ambitious reporter for the school paper?

‘Chasity Bites is not just a hilarious, surprisingly effective horror comedy that effectively twists modern culturally trends into an 80s style horror film. Chasity Bites is one of the best horror comedies in recent memory for those with the right pallet, deserving of a place beside The Cabin In The Woods and Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil.’ W.D. Conine, Geek New Wave

‘ …delightfully cheesy horror comedy “Chastity Bites,” which takes a John Hughes high school world and puts a blackened spin on it. … Keep an eye out (metaphorically) for this warm-blooded farce at festivals near you—or maybe the Syfy channel, where it would be a nice fit.’ Elias Savada, Film Threat

‘High school hasn’t been this entertaining since Buffy started killing vampires. Take one part Clueless, and throw in the dedicated female lead that populate stories like Buffy, and you have a taste of Chastity Bites. There’s winks and nods to many of the films that 80s kids grew up on, and you can feel the influence there, but this film manages to be its own beast, and it’s an hilarious one.’ The Film Reel

‘There’s a lot to recommend this little indie horror-comedy, most especially much of the dialogue from screenwriter Lotti Knowles (the wife of the director), which has some biting lines of cattiness that remind me of the aforementioned Mean Girls as well as earlier works like Heathers and some of the better John Hughes movies. Allison Scagliotti makes for a very, appealing heroine, brining to the movie much of what she brings to her character on Warehouse 13: smarts, spunkiness, Geek Girl Chic (and director Knowles is smart enough to let her carry the film).’ Scott Shoyer, Anything Horror

‘has a lot to say about sex, social status and Republicans, but it observes these things almost as superficially as the reality shows it seems to condemn. I guess that’s called parody. And the horror element, which initially teases us with a “Fright Night” kind of quality, eventually fizzles. It’s okay, though. Director John V. Knowles keeps things fast-paced and fun while the blood-thirsty countess takes her sweet time getting down to business. I think if there’s one message to take away from this anti-cautionary tale, it’s not to take things too seriously.’ Michael Parsons, PA/PA Reviews

‘Not only does this bitingly witty independent film poke fun at the vampire horror genre, it playfully turns teen comedies upside down.’ Ken Tasho, Edge Philadelphia

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Cellar Dweller is a 1988 horror film, about a comic book artist who unleashes a demon after drawing it. It was directed by John Carl Buechler, written by Chucky creator Don Mancini (as Kit Du Bois), and stars Debrah Farentino, Brian Robbins (C.H.U.D. II: Bud the C.H.U.D.), Yvonne De Carlo (The Munsters), Pamela Bellwood, Vince Edwards and Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator, Would You Rather).

On October 29, 2013, Scream Factory released the film on DVD for the first time, along with Contamination 7, Catacombs and The Dungeonmaster as part of the second volume of their Scream Factory All-Night Horror Marathon series.

Thirty years have passed since the grisly murder/suicide of Colin Childress, creator of the comic book, Cellar Dweller. But, as often happens to those ignorant of it, comic book artist Whitney Taylor is doomed to repeat history in a most grotesque way. Little does she know that her twisted renderings will soon reincarnate the bloody hysteria of Cellar Dweller.

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‘The film is a little light on gore, though what we do have is wonderful — Cellar Dweller casually gnaws on torn-off limbs and hurls severed heads around like so many volleyballs.  What did take me by surprise was the quantity of high-quality female nudity on display in this film, including a prolonged shower sequence cut short by a grisly Cellar Dweller attack.’ Radiation-Scarred Reviews

‘This is no stunner of a movie it has to be said but like a lot of the Empire movies that came out in the 80′s it has it’s own style that rubs off on me very easily. I did enjoy watching this, though it’s nowhere as good as some of the other titles that came out of the Empire stable.’ Horror Chronicles

‘The movie has little-to-no plot, but it somehow managed to keep me entertained. I suppose it could have had to do with the interesting-looking creature and decent amount of gore. It’s no surprise that a low-budget movie like this pulled off such make-up effects behind the creature since director John Carl Buechler went on to do various other effects for genre movies. Although the movie has an incredibly simple plot and it barely makes it past an hour-15-minute-running-time, it does successfully dish out an interesting little cheesy 80′s horror tale.’ Upcoming Horror Movies

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Vampire Hookers (aka Vampire Graveyard, Sensuous Vampires and Night of the Bloodsuckers) is a 1978 Filipino comedy horror film directed by the prolific Cirio H. Santiago (Demon of Paradise) from a screenplay by Howard Cohen. It features John Carradine, Bruce Fairbarn, Trey Wilson, Karen Stride, Lenka Novak, Katie Dolan, Lex Winter and Vic Diaz. Post production supervisor Emmett Alston laster directed New Year’s Evil and Demonwarp.

After their commanding officer goes missing, two American sailors discover a group of female vampires who pose as prostitutes to lure men into their secret lair…

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“Not in the least bit scary though packed with horror movie clichés, Vampire Hookers isn’t a particularly good movie but it is at least stupid enough to make for a fun time killer.” Rock! Shock! Pop!

“A hammy Carradine still manages to act circles around his co-stars, though, even if that comes off as something of a backhanded compliment when one suffers through the film itself.” AV Maniacs

“With its non-existent plot, bad sight gags and relentless toilet  humour, Vampire Hookers can hardly sustain 78 minutes and is only watchable for those who appreciate enduring really bad movies, especially really bad movies with John Carradine, and we know how many of those exist.” DVD Drive-In

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Rock Band vs Vampires is a 2014 British horror comedy film written and directed by Malcolm Galloway (lead singer/songwriter of rock band Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate). This Clockwork Heart Productions includes Dani Thompson, Gyles Brandreth, Guy Barnes, Loren Peta, Faye Sewell, Jake Rundle, Vauxhall Jermaine, Blue Jigsaw, Sophia Disgrace, Frankie Mae, Ami Lloyd, Chris Smith, Dick Carruthers, Amy Jaxon, and Malcolm Galloway.

Jeremiah Winterford is an old-fashioned vampire who finds himself awkwardly out of place in a modern world. Forced to move from Winterford Manor following a torching by his vampiric rival Jako Van Zyl, Winterford and his surviving acolytes find themselves making a new home in Camden (London’s musical capital). Where better for a vampire to hide in plain sight?

Sorcerer’s Tower, an unsuccessful prog-rock band are booked to play at the re-opening night of a Camden venue, now under new (vampiric) ownership. Armed with their instruments, can the band save their small number of fans from an eternity of vampirism?

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House on Bare Mountain is a 1962 American comedy horror ‘nudie cutie’ film directed by Lee Frost (Love Camp 7, The Thing with Two Heads), Peter Perry Jr., Wes Bishop. Horror/exploitation producer Harry H. Novak was behind the scenes.

“Granny Good”  runs a finishing school for young women but it’s really a front for a moonshine operation. At a party. Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula and a werewolf (who has been working in the basement on non-union rates) show up…

“Some very attractive pneumatic 60s ladies suffer the indignity of baring all for The House on Bare Mountain only to be accompanied by some condescending and unpalatable voice-over tripe that’s supposed to be funny. It’s a shame as, if it had been handled right, the initial plot offers some opportunities for gleeful sexual titillation and mockery of society conventions.” Adrian J Smith, Horropedia

“Essentially this a run-of-the-mill nudie cutie with a pretty nice assortment of students who barely bother with clothes at all.” Creature from the Blog Lagoon

Thanks to Dwyrager Dungeon for some of the images above

ThanksKilling is an American independent comedy horror film shot in 2007 and released in 2009, about a cursed turkey killing off college students during the Thanksgiving break. The film was shot over a summer by Kevin Stewart and Jordan Downey on an original budget of just $3,500. It later was given a small investment to help complete the marketing and distribution of the film.

A sequel, mockingly titled ThanksKilling 3 was made in 2012.

‘ … everyone and everything is stupid, so it excuses the typical independent movie failings that crop up, particularly the wooden acting and stilted dialogue. The puppet effect especially reveals the budgetary limitations, but that’s sort of the charm, I suppose. Turkey himself still manages to be a star; sort of a feathered Chucky, he’s stuffed with bad puns and one-liners (“that’s what I call fowl play!”) and a real mean streak that results in some legitimately effective gore work; there’s a cool Alien riff in there in addition to the Leatherface-esque face-peeling, among other fun gags that validate ThanksKilling as a fine, over-the-top splatter film.’ Oh, the Horror!

‘The characters are genre stereotypes, their acting is just as bad, the effects get an A for Effort but are nothing new. The film fits neatly into the genre of new wave B-movie horror comedies that are so self-aware and obviously aim for the so-bad-its-good appeal. It’s a trend that has been going pretty strong this century. ThanksKilling, however, I found to be one of the more enjoyable ones.’ Cosmic Catacombs

‘This Thanksgiving the Geek would like to give thanks to the filmmakers for having the balls to put together a script about such a ridiculous antagonist, gathering the actors and funding, and then actually making this film. There is no reason for this movie to exist, but I’m glad it does. This is what low-budget filmmaking is all about.’ B-Movie Geek

‘ThanksKilling is completely ridiculous, but in a way that does not ruin the enjoyment level. Dumb, but actually funny in an absurd kind of way. Maybe a guilty pleasure sort of way.’ Best Horror Movies

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The Gorilla is a 1939 Twentieth Century-Fox  American comedy horror film directed by the prolific Allan Dwan from a screenplay by Rian James and Sid Silvers. It stars the Ritz Brothers, Anita Louise, Lionel Atwill, Bela Lugosi, Patsy Kelly, Joseph Calleia and Wally Vernon. It was based on a play of the same name by Ralph Spence - which had already been made into films in 1927 and in 1930 – and is now in the public domain.

When a wealthy man (Lionel Atwill) is threatened by a killer known as The Gorilla, he hires the Ritz Brothers to investigate. A real escaped gorilla shows up at the mansion just as the investigators arrive. Patsy Kelly portrays a newly hired maid who wants to quit because the butler, played by Bela Lugosi, scares her.

“It’s all supposed to be either really funny or shockingly thrilling, depending on how you look at it. We couldn’t see it either way.” The New York Times (May, 1939)

“It’s a damn good thing The Gorilla is just barely more than an hour long. Even ten minutes of the Ritz Brothers is a long, grueling slog, and at full feature length, this movie would be simply unendurable. Indeed, I suspect that even you sick bastards who find the Three Stooges amusing will have a hard time with this one, in that the Ritz Brothers are further hampered by their close mutual resemblance and the much lower level of distinction between their onscreen personas as compared to the Stooges … The other faint lights in the darkness are Lionel Atwill and (surprisingly) Bela Lugosi, both of whom put in tasteful, proportionately understated performances that the rest of The Gorilla comes nowhere close to deserving.” 1000 Misspent Hours… and Counting

“Even though “The Gorilla” is categorized as a comedy/horror,  the horror elements are few and scattered.  The storyline itself is a jumble, and pretty much a thin excuse for one piece of disconnected silliness after another. I will say though, that I did enjoy the musical scoring- which is actually something I seldom pay any attention too. In the final analysis, this isn’t one of those films that I’d watch more than once… even as a Bela Lugosi fan.” HorrorMovies.ca

“There are plenty of strange goings on as the Ritz Brothers bumble around trying to solve the mystery. Hairy gorilla arms reach out from behind hidden panels in the walls, people disappear without trace, contorted faces peer in through windows and bodies fall out of cupboards. I personally found the Ritz Brothers’ fast firing humour to be very lame, but this may have had something to do with it being the last film in their contract with the studio.” Giles Clark, Psychotic Cinema

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Christmas is generally seen as a jolly old time for the whole family – if you are to believe the TV commercials, everyone gets together for huge communal feasts while excited urchins unwrap whatever godawful new toy has been hyped as the must-have gift of the year. It is not, generally speaking, seen as a time of horror.

And yet horror has a long tradition of being part of the festive season. Admittedly, the horror in question was traditionally the ghost story, ideally suited for cold winter nights, where people gather around the fire to hear some spine chilling tale of ghostly terror – a scenario recreated in the BBC’s 2000 series Ghost Stories for Christmas, with Christopher Lee reading M.R. James tales to a room full of public school boys. That series was part of a tradition that included a similar one in 1986 with Robert Powell (Harlequin) and the children’s series Spine Chillers from 1980, as well as the unofficially titled annual series Ghost Stories for Christmas than ran for much of the 1970s and is occasionally revived to this day.

A Christmas Carol

The idea of the traditional Xmas ghost story can be traced back to Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol, where miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by three ghosts in an effort to make him change his ways. It’s more a sentimental morality tale than a horror story, though in the original book and one or two adaptations, the ghosts are capable of causing the odd shudder. Sadly, the story has been ill-served by cinematic adaptations – the best version is probably the 1951 adaptation, though by then there had already been several earlier attempts, going back to 1910. A few attempts have been made at straight retellings since then, but all to often the story is bastardised (a musical version in 1970, various cartoons) or modernised – the best known versions are probably Scrooged and The Muppet Christmas Carol, both of which are inexplicably popular. A 1999 TV movie tried to give the story a sense of creepiness once again, but the problem now is that the story is so familiar that it seems cliched even when played straight. The idea of a curmudgeon being made to see the true meaning of Christmas is now an easy go-to for anyone grinding out anonymous TV movies that end up on Christmas-only TV channels or gathering dust on DVD.

A Christmas CAROL (1999)

Outside of A Christmas Carol, horror cinema tended to avoid festive-themed stories for a long time. While fantasies like The Bishop’s Wife, It’s a Wonderful Life and Bell, Book and Candle played with the supernatural, these were light, feel-good dramas and comedies on the whole, designed to warm the heart rather than stop it dead. TV shows like The Twilight Zone would sometimes have a Christmas themed tale, but again these tended to be the more sentimental stories.

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The only film to really hint at Christmas creepiness was 1945 British portmanteau film Dead of Night, though even here, the Christmas themed tale, featuring a ghostly encounter at a children’s party, is more sentimental than terrifying. Meanwhile, the Mexican children’s film Santa Claus vs The Devil (1959) might see Santa in battle with Satan, but it’s all played for wholesome laughs rather than scares.

Santa Claus vs The Devil

It wasn’t until the 1970s that the darker side of Christmas began to be explored, and it was another British portmanteau film that began it all. The Amicus film Tales from the Crypt (1972) opened with a tale in which murderous Joan Collins finds herself terrorised by an escaped psycho on Christmas Eve, unable to call the police because of her recently deceased hubby lying on the carpet. The looney is dressed as Santa, and her young daughter has been eagerly awaiting his arrival, leading to a suitably mean-spirited twist. The story was subsequently retold in a 1989 episode of the Tales from the Crypt TV series.

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This film would lead the way towards decades of Christmas horror. Of course, lots of films had an incidental Christmas connection, taking place in the festive season (or ‘winter’, as it used to be known). Movies like Night Train Murders, Rabid and even the misleadingly named Silent Night Bloody Night have a Christmas connection, but it’s incidental to the story. Those are not the movies we are discussing here. No, to REALLY count as a Christmas film, then the festive celebrations need to be at the heart of events.

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Two distinct types of Christmas horror developed. There was the Mad Santa films, like Tales from the Crypt on the one hand, and the ‘bad things happening at Christmas’ movie on the other. The pioneer of the latter was Bob Clark’s 1974 film Black Christmas, which not only pioneered the Christmas horror movie but also was an early template for the seasonal slasher film. Some critics have argued, with good cause, that this is the movie that laid the foundations for Halloween a few years later – a psycho film (with a possibly supernatural slant) set during a holiday, where young women are terrorised by an unseen force. But while John Carpenter’s film would be a smash hit and effectively reinvent the genre, Black Christmas went more or less unnoticed, its reputation only building years later. In 2006, the movie was remade by Glen Morgan in a gorier but less effective loose retelling of the original story.

Black Christmas

Preceding Black Christmas was TV movie Home for the Holidays, in which four girls are picked off over Christmas by a yellow rain-coated killer who may or may not be their wicked stepmother. A decent if unremarkable psycho killer story, the film was directed by TV movie veteran John Llewellyn Moxey.

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Also made for TV, this time in Britain, The Exorcism was the opening episode of TV series Dead of Night (no connection to the film of that name) broadcast in 1972. One of the few surviving episodes of the series, The Exorcism is a powerful mix of horror and social commentary, as a group of champagne socialists celebrating Christmas in the country cottage that one couple have bought as a holiday home find themselves haunted by the ghosts of the peasants who had starved to death there during a famine. While theatrical in style and poorly shot, the show is nevertheless creepily effective.

1980 saw Christmas Evil (aka You Better Watch Out), a low budget oddity by Lewis Jackson that has since gained cult status. In this film, a put-upon toy factory employee decided to become a vengeful Santa, putting on the red suit and setting out to sort the naughty from the nice. It’s a strange film, mixing pathos, horror and black comedy, yet oddly it works, making it one of the more interesting Christmas horrors out there.

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Also made in 1980, but rather less successful, was To All a Goodnight, the only film directed by Last House on the Left star David Hess and written by The Incredible Melting Man himself, Alex Rebar. This generic slasher, with a house full of horny sorority girls and their boyfriends being picked off by a psycho in a Santa outfit, is too slow and poorly made to be effective.

The most notorious Christmas horror film hit cinemas in 1984. Silent Night Deadly Night was, in most ways, a fairly generic slasher, with a Santa-suited maniac on the loose taking revenge against the people who have been deemed ‘naughty’. The film itself was nothing special It’s essentially the same premise as Christmas Evil without the intelligence), and might have gone unnoticed if it wasn’t for a provocative advertising campaign that emphasised the Santa-suited psycho and caused such outrage that the film was rapidly pulled from theatres.

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Nevertheless, it had made a small fortune in the couple of weeks it played, and continued to be popular when reissued with a less contentious campaign. The film is almost certainly directly responsible for most ‘psycho Santa’ films since – all hoping to cash in on the publicity that comes with public outrage – and spawned four sequels.

Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 is notorious for the amount of footage from the first film that is reused to pad out the story, and was banned in the UK (where the first film was unreleased until 2009). Part 3 was directed, surprisingly, by Monte Hellman (Two Lane Blacktop, Cockfighter) and adds a psychic element to the story. Part 4, directed by Brian Yuzna, drops the killer Santa story entirely and has no connection to the other films beyond the title, telling a story of witchcraft and cockroaches, while Part 5 – The Toymaker – is also unconnected to the other movies.

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Also made in 1984, but attracting less attention, Don’t Open Till Christmas was that rarest of things, a 1980s British horror film – and one of the sleaziest ever made to boot. Starring and directed by Edmund Purdom from a screenplay by exploitation veterans Derek Ford and Alan Birkinshaw, the film sees a psycho killer, traumatised by a childhood experience at Christmas, who begins offing Santas – or more accurately, anyone he sees dressed as Santa, which in this case includes a porn model, a man at a peepshow and people having sex. With excessive gore, nudity and an overwhelming atmosphere of grubbiness, the film was become a cult favourite for fans of bad taste cinema.

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The third Christmas horror of 1984 was the most wholesome and the most successful. Joe Dante’s Gremlins is all too often overlooked when people talk about festive horror, but from the opening credits, with Darlene Love’s Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) belting out over the soundtrack, to the carol singing Gremlins and Phoebe Cates’ story of why she hates Christmas, the festive season is at the very heart of the film. Gremlins remains the most fun Christmas movie ever made, a heady mix of EC-comics ghoulishness, sentiment, slapsick and action with some of the best monsters ever put on film.

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Gremlins would spawn many knock offs – Ghoulies, Munchies, Critters and more – but only Elves, made in 1989, had a similar Christmas theme. This oddball effort, which proposes that Hitler’s REAL plan for the Master Race was human/elf hybrids. When the elves are revived in a pagan ritual at Christmas, only an alcoholic ex-cop played by Dan Haggerty can stop them. It’s not as much fun as that makes it sound.

Family horror returned in 1993 stop-motion film A Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick and produced / co-written by Tim Burton. This chirpy musical see Pumpkin King Jack Skellington, leader of Halloween Town, stumbling upon Christmas Town and deciding to take it over. It’s a charming and visually lush movie that has unsurprisingly become a festive family favourite over the last twenty years.

Santa Claws

Rather less fun is 1996′s Santa Claws, a typically rotten effort by John Russo, with Debbie Rochon as a Scream Queen being stalked by a murderous fan in a Santa outfit. This low rent affair was pretty forgettable. It is one of several low/no budget video quickies that aimed to cash in on the Christmas horror market with tales of killer Santas – others include Satan Claus (1996), Christmas Season Massacre (2001) and Psycho Santa (2003).

1997 saw the release of Jack Frost (not to be confused with the family film from a year later of the same name). Here, a condemned serial killer is involved in a crash with a truck carrying genetic material, which – of course – causes him to mutate into a killer snowman. Inspired by the Child’s Play movie, Jack Frost is pretty poor, but the outlandish concept and mix of comedy and horror made it popular enough to spawn a sequel in 2000, Jack Frost 2 – Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman.

That might seem as ludicrous as Christmas horror goes, but 1998 saw Feeders 2: Slay Bells, in which the alien invaders of the title are fought off by Santa and his elves. Shot on video with no money, it’s a film you might struggle to get through.

Rather better was the 2000 League of Gentlemen Christmas Special, which mixes the regular characters of the series into a series of stories that are even darker than usual. Mixing vampires, family curses and voodoo into a trilogy of stories that are linked, Amicus style, it’s as creepy as it is funny, and it’s perhaps unsurprising that Mark Gatiss would graduate to writing the more recent BBC Christmas ghost stories.

The League of Gentlemen

Two poplar video franchises collided in 2004′s Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys, with the great-nephew of the original Puppet Master battling an evil organisation that wants his formula to help bring killer toys to life on Christmas Eve. Like most of the films in the series, this is cheap but cheerful, throwaway stuff.

2005′s Santa’s Slay sees Santa reinvented as a demon who is forced to be nice and give toys to children.Released from this demand, he reverts to his murderous ways. Given that Santa is played by fearsome looking wrestler Bill Goldberg, you have to wonder how anyone ever trusted him to come down their chimney and NOT kill them.

Santa’s Slay

Also in 2005 came The Christmas Tale, part of the Spanish Films to Keep You Awake series, in which a group of children find a woman dressed as Santa at the bottom of a well. It turns out that she’s a bank robber and the kids decide to starve her into handing over the stolen cash. But things take a darker turn when she escapes and the kids think she is a zombie. It’s a witty, inventive little tale.

A Christmas Tale

2006 saw Two Front Teeth, where Santa is a vampire assisted by zombie elves in a rather ludicrous effort. Equally silly, Treevenge is a 2008 short film by Jason Eisener, who would go on to shoot Hobo with a Shotgun. It’s the story of sentient Christmas trees who have enough of being cut down and displayed in people’s home and set out to take their revenge.

Treevenge

Recently, the Christmas horror has become more international, with two European films in 2010 offering an insight into different festive traditions. Dick Maas’ Sint (aka Saint) is a lively Dutch comedy horror which features a vengeful Sinterklaas (similar to, but not the same as, Santa Claus) coming back on December 5^th in years when that date coincides with a full moon, to carry out mass slaughter. It’s a fun, fast-paced movie that also offers a rare glimpse into festive traditions that are rather different to anything seen outside the local culture (including the notorious Black Peters).

Finnish film Rare Exports, on the other hand, sees the original (and malevolent) Santa unearthed during an excavation, leading to the discovery of a whole race of Santas, who are then captured and sold around the world. Witty and atmospheric, the film was inspired by Jalmari Helander’s original short film Rare Exports, Inc, a spoof commercial for the company selling the wild Santas.

Rare Exports

But these two high quality, entertaining Christmas horrors were very much the exception to the rule by this stage. The genre was more accurately represented by the likes of 2010′s Yule Die, another Santa suited slasher, or 2011′s Slaughter Claus, a plotless, pretty unwatchable amateur effort from Charles E. Cullen featuring Santa and the Bi-Polar Elf on an unexplained and uninteresting killing spree.

Slaughter Claus

Bloody Christmas (2012) sees a former movie star going crazy as he plays Santa on a TV show. 2009 film Deadly Little Christmas is a ham-fisted retread of slashers like Silent Night Deadly Night and 2002′s One Hell of a Christmas is a Danish Satanic horror comedy. Bikini Bloodbath Christmas (2009) is the third in a series of pointless tits ‘n’ gore satires that fail as horror, soft porn or comedy.

And of course the festive horror movie can’t escape the low budget zombie onslaught – 2009 saw Silent Night, Zombie Night, in 2010 there was Santa Claus Versus the Zombie, 2011 brought us A Cadaver Christmas, in 2012 we had Christmas with the Dead and Silent Night of the Living Dead is currently in pre-production. None of these films are likely to fill you with the spirit of the season.

So although we can hardly say that the Christmas horror film is at full strength, it is at least as prolific as ever. With a remake of Silent Night Deadly Night, now just called Silent Night, playing theatres in 2012, it seems that filmmaker’s fascination with the dark side of the season isn’t going away anytime soon.

Silent Night

Article by David Flint

Little Reaper is a 2013 American horror comedy short written, directed and produced by Peter Dukes for Dream Seekers Productions. It stars Athena Baumeister and John Paul Ouvrier, with John Michael Herndon, Katharine Stapleton, Allisyn Ashley Arm, Katy Townsend and Sorsha Morava.

The Grim Reaper has a difficult teenage daughter who professes to be constantly bored and yearns to be a wailing banshee. Having been grounded for not taking her deathly responsibilities seriously, her exasperated father allows her to take over his duties as reaper for one day. She spends her time on her mobile instead and chaos ensues…

‘Crisp black and white cinematography, deft editing and an impressive performance by Athena Baumeister elevate this comedy horror short above others of its ilk. The twist in the tale is nicely handled and who can resist the amusing notion of a petulant future grim reaper who’d rather be a cool banshee? Compared to Peter Dukes’ earnestly serious werewolf short The Beast – which didn’t gel for this particular viewer – Little Reaper suggests that his future may lie in comedy.’

Adrian J Smith, Horrorpedia

‘Athena Baumeister in the lead role is one to watch, with a charming screen presence she carries the film well, John Paul Ouvrier as Reaper plays his part straight as the strict father type which results in hilarity. Guaranteed to bring a smile to your face, there is nothing not to like aboutLittle Reaper. For being adorable, good-humoured and entertaining, I’d go as far as saying this has to be one of my favourite short films of 2013.’ Hayley’s Horror Reviews

‘Horror comedies are the hardest type of film to pull off especially as a short film, but Little Reaper was done magnificently with just the right amount of camp.  This short film is only a little over 10 minutes long, but it may be one of the best shorts I have ever viewed.  Many people try to pack way too much into a short and end up making it run too muddy, but Little Reaper has just enough to make it pretty much perfect, nothing is missing, but nothing feels as though it was forced in.’ Melissa Thomas, Little Blog of Horror

‘It may sway more to the younger female audience who have an appetite for all things handbags and boys as opposed to the hardcore horror fans but its rather humorous take on how the households of the otherworld would look like raises a few chuckles and its 10 minute running time manages to capture some death, flesh eating and a whole bunch of girl talk.’ Blood Guts

IMDb | Dreamseekers official site | Facebook | Twitter

WolfCop is an upcoming Canadian horror film from writer/director Lowell Dean. The film is set to be released in Cineplex theatres nation wide in 2014. It is the first film chosen for production from the CineCoup Film Accelerator. It stars Jesse Moss, Amy Matysio, Jonathan Cherry, Sarah Lind, Aidan Devine, Corrine Conley and Leo Fafard.

Filming began in October 2013 in Regina, Saskatchewan and surrounding area. It is Dean’s second feature having previously shot 13 Eerie in the same location. The film is set to rely on “retro-style” practical effects instead of computer-generated imagery.

The plot revolves around an alcoholic small town cop who transforms into a werewolf after being cursed when he interrupts a ceremony in the woods.

Wikipedia | IMDb | Official site | Facebook

Sorority Party Massacre is a 2013 American comedy slasher horror film directed by Chris W. Freeman, Justin Jones from a screenplay by Freeman (Paranormal Incident). It stars Marissa Skell (Slumber Party Slaughter), Eve Mauro (Penance, Zombies vs. Strippers), Ed O’Ross, Yvette Yates, Thomas Downey (Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan, Volcano Zombies), Casey Fitzgerald (Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs), Rebecca Grant (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), Adrian Kirk (616: Paranormal Incident), Alison Mei Lan, Keith Compton, Richard Moll (Evilspeak, Ghost Shark), Leslie Easterbrook (The Devil’s Rejects) and former adult movie star Ron Jeremy (One-eyed Monster and many more).

The film is released on DVD on February 11, 2014, by Anchor Bay Entertainment with the following extras:

• Audio Commentary by Producer/Writer/Director Chris W. Freeman and Producer/Director Justin Jones
• Deleted Scenes
• Outtakes
• Paige Fight Scene
• Barney Lumpkin Campaign Ad

An isolated town full of college girls has a dangerous secret: One girl has gone missing each year for the last twenty years. A big city cop, in danger of losing his badge, agrees to aid the town’s sheriff in investigating these unsolved disappearances. Quickly they realize that they are dealing with a psychotic killer whose academic brilliance has been twisted into a taste for terror, torture, and sorority sister torment. But when this party gets started, who will graduate – and who will be held back?

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Supervixens was something of a comeback film for legendary director Russ Meyer, who had floundered in the wake of his dalliance with mainstream Hollywood at the end of the 1960s. Whilst Beyond the Valley of the Dolls had been a box office success, mainstream critics hated the film and were appalled that 20^th Century Fox was employing a ‘pornographer’ to shoot X-rated films. When his follow-up The Seven Minutes bombed, Fox were quick to give him the boot. Since then, he’d managed a lively exploitation film, Blacksnake! (a satire of slaveploitation that actually preceded the genre) but that film too hadn’t really connected with his fan base – it was short on sex and Anouska Hempel was no buxotic.

Throughout the 1960s, Meyer had led the way in the fast-growing sexploitation industry. His 1960 film The Immoral Mr Teas effectively invented the nudie film, and a few years later he’d pioneered the ‘roughie’ with black and white melodramas like Lorna, Mudhoney and Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!, before producing more overtly sexy softcore movies like Vixen. But in the years he’s been away, the genre had expanded further – Deep Throat had opened up the market for hardcore porn.

This put Meyer in a quandary. He had no interest in hardcore, but he was aware that these films were now his competition. If he couldn’t – or wouldn’t – compete in terms of explicitness, then he would instead go all out for excess. Meyer’s final three films were his most outrageous – cartoonishly over the top, high camp and excessive, they featured more busty babes than ever and more explicit sex (which never crossed to hardcore but certainly featured more graphic close ups than he would’ve dared five years earlier). In the case of Supervixens, the film also ramped up the violence.

Supervixens chronicles the adventures of hapless ‘superstud’ Clint (Charles Pitt), who gets into a bust-up with possessive and bitchy girlfriend Super Angel (Shari Eubank), who kicks him out of their apartment, imagining infidelity. Their fight attracts the police, in the form of Harry Sledge (Meyer regular Charles Napier). Harry and Angel get together, but the cop is unable to get his (prosthetic) cock to rise to the occasion. Mocked by the man eating sex kitten, he flips out and in the film’s most notorious scene, attacks her, smashing down the bathroom door where she is sheltering, and then throws her in the bath, jumps up and down on her and tosses her electric radio into the tub for an electrifying finale.

This is one of the most extreme moments of cinematic violence of the 1970s, made more shocking because it’s unexpected in what has seemed to be a light sex comedy until this point. It was, unsurprisingly, one of the scenes cut by the British censors, who rendered the film incomprehensible. And yet it’s also cartoonishly excessive. Harry Sledge is a movie psycho par excellence and his crimes are shocking, but Meyer takes the sting out by making it more Tom and Jerry than H.G. Lewis. This, of course, just made it worse in the eyes of some people – reducing an act of shocking sexual violence to a joke. Meyer certainly felt stung by the criticism of the violence in this and his follow-up movie, Up – in his final film, Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens, the blood was blue, green or yellow – anything but red, to emphasise the unreality of it. Here though, the gore flies as Harry stomps Angel to death and we see one final shot of her battered face before she dies. It’s subversive stuff to find in a sex comedy.

Clint, of course, is blamed for the murder, and so goes on the run. Things don’t go too smoothly for him, as he finds himself getting into one scrape after another at the hands (or other parts) of assorted buxotic temptresses who are determined to have their way with him. Meyer’s films always featured sexually aggressive women who took what they wanted, and this is no exception.

Clint finally finds happiness with Super Vixen, a diner owner who is a reincarnation of Super Angel, but kind and loving where her past incarnation had been cruel. But this idyllic situation is shattered by the reappearance of Harry, determined to carry on where he left off. Before long, harry has Vixen captive in the hills, a stick of dynamite jammed between her legs, her only hope of salvation the wounded Clint.

Supervixens is Meyer spoofing himself. He emphasises the cartoonish nature of the film (it even has Roadrunner sound effects) and heightens the melodrama with knowingly ridiculous dialogue. The editing is faster, the acting more deranged – Napier is amazing as Harry, one of the great unsung monsters of 1970s cinema. He’s scary and funny, often at the same time. Shari Eubank is great too – switching from astonishingly sexy and maneating to sweet and sympathetic in her two roles. Meyer regulars Haji and Uschi Digard get supporting roles, as does softcore actress turned porn star Colleen Brennan.

Supervixens often gets overlooked compared to Meyer’s bigger cult titles like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! – it’s X-rated, if softcore, content making it more a challenge for some audiences. But it’s definitely one of his best films, and one of the few that can be considered a borderline ‘horror’ movie.

David Flint, Horrorpedia

Return to Nuke ‘Em High: Volume 1 is a 2013 American sci-fi comedy horror film directed by Lloyd Kaufman from a screenplay by Travis Campbell, Casey Clapp, Derek Dressler, Aaron Hamel and Kaufman himself. It stars Rick Collins, Dan Snow, Clay Von Carlowitz, Kelsey Lehman, David Hook, William Dreyer, Lemmy (from rock band Motörhead), Jeff Lasky, Michael C. Schmahl, Jess Mills and Lloyd Kaufman.

The film, a “revisiting” of Troma’s 1986 Class of Nuke ‘Em High, is set for a limited US theatrical release in January 2014 by Anchor Bay Films.  It was slated to be a single film until Quentin Tarantino’s suggestion that Kaufman split the film into two volumes à la Kill Bill.

Welcome to Tromaville High School, where, unfortunately, the glee club has mutated into a vicious gang of Cretins. Chrissy and Lauren, two innocent lesbian lovers, must fight not only the Cretins, mutants and monsters, but also the evil Tromorganic Foodstuffs conglomerate. Can they and Kevin the Wonder Duck save Tromaville High School and the world?

” … one of the most insane American made splatter films that I’ve ever seen to date, one that falls in-line with all those ridiculous Sushi Typhoon titles made by Yoshihiro Nishimura and Noboru Iguchi, if you haven’t seen those then just think of Evil Dead 2, if you liked that you’ll probably enjoy this.” Alex DiGiovanna, Moviebuzzers.com

“By the usual standards of Troma films, this is typical in that it’s barely a movie, and the non-stop vulgarity becomes an ordeal by the hour point. But the picture isn’t plotted with story beats, only shock moments: what to make of the sequence when a lesbian’s irradiated penis devours a man’s heart? The blanks are filled by one-liners regarding school shootings and George Zimmerman, funny not because of their wit but their audacity.” Gabe Toro, The Playlist

“There will undoubtably be audiences proclaiming Kaufman simply is exploiting sex for perversion, violence for sickness, and dialogue for shock, but believe it or not, everything Kaufman does is calculated. Lloyd’s delivery goes to undoubted extremes, but that’s everything Troma has been built on, and Return To Nuke ‘Em High Volume 1 delivers that calculated assault of insanity in droves.” Matt Donato, We Got This Covered

Wikipedia | IMDb | Official website | Facebook

Eerie Comics was a one-shot full-colour, 52 page horror comic book dated January 1947 and published by Avon Periodicals as Eerie #1. Its creative team included Joe Kubert and Fred Kida. The contents comprised six full-length horror feature stories and a two-page humorous tale. It holds the distinction of being the first true, stand-alone horror comic book and is credited with establishing the horror comics genre. The comic book’s glossy cover depicts a red-eyed ghoul clutching a dagger and a rope-bound, voluptuous young woman in a derelict moonlit ruin.

The issue featured six stories that were fairly tame in their depiction of the gore and violence generally found in horror fiction. ”The Eyes of the Tiger” follows a man haunted by the ghost of a stuffed tiger; ”The Man-Eating Lizards” (with a script by Edward Bellin and artwork by Joe Kubert), tells the story of an island infested with flesh-eating lizards; and another, “The Strange Case of Henpecked Harry” (with art by Fred Kida), follows a man spooked by the bloody corpse of his murdered wife. Other feature stories include “Dead Man’s Tale”, “Proof”, and “Mystery of Murder Manor”. A two-page humorous tale starring Goofy Ghost rounds out the issue. Members of the creative team included Fugitani, and George Roussos.

Following the 1947 issue, Eerie disappeared from newsstands shelves. In 1951, Eerie #1, cover-dated May/June 1951, was published by Avon and saw a run of seventeen issues. The first issue reprinted “The Strange Case of Henpecked Harry”  as “The Subway Horror”, and issue 12 printed a Dracula story based on the Bram Stoker novel. Several covers featured large-breasted women in bondage. Artists Joe Orlando and Wallace Wood were associated with the series. The title saw a run of seventeen issues, ceasing publication with its August/September 1954 issue. Eerie then morphed into Strange Worlds with #18, October/November 1954.

Wikipedia

Supervixens was something of a comeback film for legendary director Russ Meyer, who had floundered in the wake of his dalliance with mainstream Hollywood at the end of the 1960s. Whilst Beyond the Valley of the Dolls had been a box office success, mainstream critics hated the film and were appalled that 20^th Century Fox was employing a ‘pornographer’ to shoot X-rated films. When his follow-up The Seven Minutes bombed, Fox were quick to give him the boot. Since then, he’d managed a lively exploitation film, Blacksnake! (a satire of slaveploitation that actually preceded the genre) but that film too hadn’t really connected with his fan base – it was short on sex and Anouska Hempel was no buxotic.

Throughout the 1960s, Meyer had led the way in the fast-growing sexploitation industry. His 1960 film The Immoral Mr Teas effectively invented the nudie film, and a few years later he’d pioneered the ‘roughie’ with black and white melodramas like Lorna, Mudhoney and Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!, before producing more overtly sexy softcore movies like Vixen. But in the years he’s been away, the genre had expanded further – Deep Throat had opened up the market for hardcore porn.

This put Meyer in a quandary. He had no interest in hardcore, but he was aware that these films were now his competition. If he couldn’t – or wouldn’t – compete in terms of explicitness, then he would instead go all out for excess. Meyer’s final three films were his most outrageous – cartoonishly over the top, high camp and excessive, they featured more busty babes than ever and more explicit sex (which never crossed to hardcore but certainly featured more graphic close ups than he would’ve dared five years earlier). In the case of Supervixens, the film also ramped up the violence.

Supervixens chronicles the adventures of hapless ‘superstud’ Clint (Charles Pitt), who gets into a bust-up with possessive and bitchy girlfriend Super Angel (Shari Eubank), who kicks him out of their apartment, imagining infidelity. Their fight attracts the police, in the form of Harry Sledge (Meyer regular Charles Napier). Harry and Angel get together, but the cop is unable to get his (prosthetic) cock to rise to the occasion. Mocked by the man eating sex kitten, he flips out and in the film’s most notorious scene, attacks her, smashing down the bathroom door where she is sheltering, and then throws her in the bath, jumps up and down on her and tosses her electric radio into the tub for an electrifying finale.

This is one of the most extreme moments of cinematic violence of the 1970s, made more shocking because it’s unexpected in what has seemed to be a light sex comedy until this point. It was, unsurprisingly, one of the scenes cut by the British censors, who rendered the film incomprehensible. And yet it’s also cartoonishly excessive. Harry Sledge is a movie psycho par excellence and his crimes are shocking, but Meyer takes the sting out by making it more Tom and Jerry than H.G. Lewis. This, of course, just made it worse in the eyes of some people – reducing an act of shocking sexual violence to a joke. Meyer certainly felt stung by the criticism of the violence in this and his follow-up movie, Up – in his final film, Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens, the blood was blue, green or yellow – anything but red, to emphasise the unreality of it. Here though, the gore flies as Harry stomps Angel to death and we see one final shot of her battered face before she dies. It’s subversive stuff to find in a sex comedy.

Clint, of course, is blamed for the murder, and so goes on the run. Things don’t go too smoothly for him, as he finds himself getting into one scrape after another at the hands (or other parts) of assorted buxotic temptresses who are determined to have their way with him. Meyer’s films always featured sexually aggressive women who took what they wanted, and this is no exception.

Clint finally finds happiness with Super Vixen, a diner owner who is a reincarnation of Super Angel, but kind and loving where her past incarnation had been cruel. But this idyllic situation is shattered by the reappearance of Harry, determined to carry on where he left off. Before long, harry has Vixen captive in the hills, a stick of dynamite jammed between her legs, her only hope of salvation the wounded Clint.

Supervixens is Meyer spoofing himself. He emphasises the cartoonish nature of the film (it even has Roadrunner sound effects) and heightens the melodrama with knowingly ridiculous dialogue. The editing is faster, the acting more deranged – Napier is amazing as Harry, one of the great unsung monsters of 1970s cinema. He’s scary and funny, often at the same time. Shari Eubank is great too – switching from astonishingly sexy and maneating to sweet and sympathetic in her two roles. Meyer regulars Haji and Uschi Digard get supporting roles, as does softcore actress turned porn star Colleen Brennan.

Supervixens often gets overlooked compared to Meyer’s bigger cult titles like Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! – it’s X-rated, if softcore, content making it more a challenge for some audiences. But it’s definitely one of his best films, and one of the few that can be considered a borderline ‘horror’ movie.

David Flint, Horrorpedia

Ragin’ Cajun Redneck Gators (also known as Alligator Alley) is a 2013 American made-for-TV horror film produced by Active Entertainment and directed by Griff Furst (Wolfsbayne, Lake Placid 3, Swamp Shark, Arachnoquake, Ghost Shark) from a screenplay by Keith Allan (11/11/11) and Delondra Williams (Rise of the Zombies, Zombie Night), based on a story by Rafael Jordan (Frost Giant, Dragon Wasps, Poseidon Rex). It stars Jordan Hinson, Victor Webster, Thomas Francis Murphy (Ghost Shark, Leprechaun’s Revenge) and Christopher Berry.

Louisiana: One of the local clans have been dumping bad moonshine laced with a toxic chemical into the bayou. This has created huge ‘red-necked’ mutant alligators with killer spines on their tails. When the members of a rival clan catch and cook gator meat they begin mutating into monsters too. To complicate matters and in a nod to William Shakespeare, there are two young lovers from each clan who are forbidden to date each other…

‘Barring the ending, there’s a lot of fun to be had with Ragin’ Cajun Redneck Gators.  It’s your typical Syfy flick that has enough silly humor and silly characters to keep you laughing and a surprisingly decent amount of gore in it as well.  You know what you’re gonna get with a title like this. Just sit back and have a laugh.’ Scott Shoyer, Anything Horror

‘As we’ve come to expect from Syfy, the special effects are eyesores, the acting ranges from broad-side-of-a-barn caricature to sheer catatonia, and the dialogue is unspeakable. But Redneck Gators commits the cardinal sin for this type of shlock: It’s incredibly boring. So much time is devoted to the star-crossed romance between Avery and Dathan, you’d almost think we’re supposed to care about it.  Meanwhile, the gator attacks are all very predictable and alike…’ Scott Von Doviak, The A.V. Club

‘I was looking forward to Ragin’ Cajun Redneck Gators for its title alone. But to find a Romeo and Juliet story set in the bayou, along with some funny scripting and gory deaths for most of the characters, I couldn’t have been happier.’ Doug in the Dark

‘The gator effects aren’t original – we’ve seen them in many other Syfy movies – but they do the job. I thought the close-up scenes of the gators, which may have been models in some cases, were well done. Though the Cajun caricatures are a little hard to take, the movie has plenty of gator-eating-man and man-eating-gator action.’ Tony Isabella’s Bloggy Thing

IMDb

Trick or Treat is a 1986 horror film directed by Charles Martin Smith (The Beast, 1996) and produced by De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG), starring Marc Price (Killer Tomatoes Eat France), Tony Fields, and Lisa Orgolini, with special cameo appearances by Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne.

High school outcast Eddie Weinbauer is writing a letter to his hero, heavy metal musician Sammi Curr. He puts the letter in an envelope and starts doing his chores. He watches the news at the same time when he hears the worst words to ever reach his mind: Sammi Curr has died in a mysterious hotel fire. He is completely devastated. He goes to his friend “Nuke” (Gene Simmons), a radio DJ who knew Sammi Curr personally. To take Eddie’s mind off the death of his idol, Nuke gives Eddie the only copy of Curr’s last and only unreleased album, “Songs in the Key of Death”, on an acetate disc. Nuke plans to play the album in its entirety on-air at midnight on Halloween as tribute, since according to Nuke, that was always Sammi’s plan for the album’s debut.

Once back home, Eddie falls asleep while listening to the record and has a strange dream about the fire that killed Sammi Curr. When he wakes up he finds that the record is skipping and after listening to it for a few seconds he comes to realize that there is something not right about the words the record is stuck on. Having previous experience with hidden lyrics, Eddie plays the record backwards but receives more than he imagined: Sammi Curr speaking to him from beyond the grave…

‘The film has that great, over-the-top 80s hair metal vibe running throughout that makes it a bit of fun, but there’s just something missing. Despite the presence of Kevin Yagher as the FX man, there really isn’t a lot of blood or gore in the film. There was one halfway decent melted ear effect, though. The deaths are all pretty plain (and its in territory that Shocker would cover better a couple of years down the road). Though it is interesting to note that it predates both Shocker and The Horror Show as far as the whole “killer traveling through electricity” sub-genre is concerned. Despite the hard rock attitude, the film’s content feels pretty tame. It is low on scares and desperately low on gore. You have to wonder what audience the filmmakers were targeting.’ Oh, the Horror!

‘Trick or Treat is a great 80′s metal horror movie. The music ain’t worth a shit, but that’s what makes it so great. Also you got fucking “Skippy” from “Family Ties” completely miscast as the main character and he’s surprisingly good! I recently saw it at at the theater and it had a lot of little moments that the crowd loved. Nearly as good as Black Roses and better than Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare. If you like cheesy 80′s horror then it’s worth checking out.’ Dymon Enlow, Happyotter

‘Sammy Curr is about the most uninteresting horror movie villain there is: he looks like a less-masculine version of Dead or Alive’s Peter Burns and is about as imposing as Peter Criss. I guess you can’t expect much when you hire a former Solid Gold dancer (Tony Fields) to play the role of your antagonist. His music isn’t even that cool. It’s pretty watered-down even for the metal that dominatedHeadbanger’s Ball back in 1986. And if there were ever a hero that was harder to rally behind, it’s Marc Price. He’ll never escape the guise of Skippy, no matter how hard he tries.’ For the Retarded

‘Trick or Treat starts off quite cleverly which would have made its descent into genre conventions almost forgivable or at the very least entertaining. The films decent into complete incompetence nearly squanders all the good will it has earned. It changes tone and style so abruptly and in an unconvincing fashion it almost feels like it was made by a completely different crew and nearly sinks the entire project. It never manages to be scary, suspenseful, gory, or menacing and everything plays out exactly how you think it would.’ I Can’t Get Laid in This Town

Wikipedia | IMDb

We are grateful to Wrong Side of the Art!, Basement of Ghoulish Decadence and Happyotter for some images

Mike Vraney was the founder of Something Weird Video, an American film distributor company based in Seattle, Washington. On January 2, 2014, he died after a lengthy battle with lung cancer. He was fifty-six years old. His sterling efforts to dig out and release masses of horror and exploitation films have undoubtedly been a major boon to the world of cult cinema, especially as his iconic label — which started out as basically a fan operation — had moved into legitimacy long ago via officially sanctioned DVD releases in conjunction with Image Entertainment and had recently been releasing Blu-rays and their own documentaries. Mike’s passion for trash cinema will be sorely missed.

Something Weird Video specialise in exploitation films, particularly the works of Harry Novak, Doris Wishman, David F. Friedman and Herschell Gordon Lewis. The company is named after Lewis’ 1967 film Something Weird, and the logo is taken from that film’s original poster art. Something Weird has distributed well over 2,500 films to date. Even when the movies themselves were pretty awful, Vraney ensured fans got their money’s worth by making up themed triple-bills and loading DVDs with masses of ultra-obscure and head-shaking extras.

Vraney was inspired by his teenage job as a theater projectionist. His love for the obscure films that never made it to video prompted him to transfer hundreds of ancient reels of film to VHS and DVD. On the company website, he explained the label’s genesis:

‘In my mind, the last great genre to be scavenged were the exploitation/sexploitation films of the ’30s through the ’70s. After looking into this further, I realized that there were nearly 2,000 movies out there yet to be discovered. So with this for inspiration, my quest began and wouldn’t you know, just out of the blue I fell into a large collection of 16mm girlie arcade loops (which became the first compilation videos we put together). Around the same time I received an unexpected phone call that suddenly made all this real: my future and hands-down the king of sexploitation Dave Friedman was on the other end of the line. This would be the beginning of a long and fruitful friendship for both of us. Dave’s films became the building blocks for our film collection and he has taught and guided me through the wonderful world of sexploitation, introducing me to his colleagues (Dan Sonney, Harry Novak, H. G. Lewis, Bob Cresse and all the other colourful characters who were involved during his heyday) and they’ve been eager to dive into the business again.’

Adrian J Smith