A Girl and Her Dog Story: Madhouse (1981)

Madhouse (AKA "There was a Little Girl", "And When She was Bad") (Italy, 1981)
Rating: ***
Starring:  Trish Everly, Michael MacRae, Dennis Robertson

Fresh off the Video Nasty list this not-so-loving tale of two sisters, revenge of the twisted kind, and animal-to-human violence with a level of goriness welcomed by true fans of the grue.

Mary is woman with a flesh-eating sickness that began to eat away her face. She's also an institutionalized psycho who spent a good childhood torturing her twin sister, Julia, traumatizing her into fearing her presence.

True enough, Julia may have grown into a fine and caring teacher in a school for deaf children but deep inside she still feels uneasy about her insane sister (as anybody would) Her eccentric yet patient uncle insists, however, that she should make another effort bonding with her sister, seeing that she is still family and that both of their birthdays are not too far. Julia gave in to the suggestion and visited Mary to see how' she's doing; what Julia get in return to her compassionate gesture however is a threat from Mary with promises of further torment to her loving but generally frightened sister.

No sooner that night, Mary escaped, assisted by an unknown accomplice and now armed with a vicious Rottweiler trained to maul anybody in her orders. She now skulks around murdering anybody close to her sister until the fateful day arrives, where she had prepared the worst for dear Julia.

Shot with eccentricity and style similar to a giallo title (which should be no surprise since the entire film is an Italian production, confused as American thanks to an all -American casting) Madhouse had potential to be a grim and uneasy slasher movie due to its grit and very downbeat atmosphere, but some of the drawbacks falls on the movie's sluggish pacing and cheese-vs-serious-undertones that made this a weird film that can be a chore to watch.

The true joy of Madhouse is that it is gory, done in a delightfully creative twist that only a few slasher titles dared to try; while the killer prefers a classic knife stabbing for some of their victims, the bloodier and chunkier kills are all done through a mauling dog, which is quite nasty and considerably longer for intensity's sake. The camera often focus on the mutilated throats of these poor chaps and the make-up for them are some of the better ones this subgenre could offer. Perhaps this is the best reason to point out why this film was enlisted as one of UK's Video Nasties.

As said before, the movie works quite well in terms of moodiness thanks to a well tuned and haunting score that goes fittingly with the gothic location. The casts are strong despite a few strangeness on some of their characters, keeping on that note some odd set-pieces found along the way, like the reveal itself which I find tilting my head to in sudden confusion and intrigue. I'm sure that I may missed a few clues that foreshadowed this turn of events but it just came in so sudden that the leading climax is as frightening as it is servile, ending on a note that there might be no hope for anybody in Julia's family.

It's not a movie for everybody, but Madhouse is an exquisite example of a slasher movie that tries to break some boundaries; not enough by standards that it'll reinvent the face of horror but more of making itself quite memorable for the true fans. Elegant, creepy and sullen, this is definitely a must-see for slasherholics.

Bodycount:
1 male mauled on the throat by a rottweiler
1 male knifed on the chest
1 boy mauled by a rottweiler offcamera
1 cat found hanged
1 female mauled on the neck by a rottweiler
1 female stabbed with a kitchen knife
1 female knifed on the gut
1 rottweiler powerdrilled through the head
1 male had his back hacked open with a hatchet
Total: 9

The Lake, The Witch and The Cross: Superstition (1982)

Superstition (AKA The Witch) (Canada, 1982)
Rating: ****1/2
Starring: James Houghton, Albert Salmi and Lynn Carlin

One of my fave 80s entries. I wouldn't trade it for any cheapo cheese-fest the world's gonna offer me. For me, this has to be one of the most nearly perfect blending of supernatural hoohas and slasher panache.

Opening with a duo of prankster scaring the wits out of two lovebirds; the jokesters, in turn, find themselves as victims of a vicious force living inside the nearby Sharrack place. One gets decapitated and had his head baked open like a potato, the other crushed by a window pane while a figure repeatedly stabs him in half.

Okay, so apparently said house is owned by the church and is scheduled to be renovated and fixed-up for a minister and his family. A priest and his young friend, David, tries to keep things in tip-top shape, but with these murders going on, a local detective hangs around with his men, suspiciously eyeing on a mute handyman who lives close by and helps with the workload. Of course, we can tell it's not him, unless he possess the ability to make buzzsaws come to life and slice through a preacher's chest, but otherwise the renovations are soon completed (despite the death toll climbing higher) and the minister moves in with his wife, a bratty son and two leggy daughters.

Taking a dive into the strange happenings, David begins to look up into the place's history, which mainly involves a witch, a plague, and a pastor being crushed to death in a giant wine press. To make things worse, he finds out that a steel cross he pulled out from the pond after it was drained actually kept the evil witch's spirit at bay. It limits her mayhem to that around the house only, but once removed, it will set her loose to kill anywhere and anyone as she please.

Superstition (1982) is a film of two identities; the first half, though bodycount littered, is more of a makeshift barrage of haunted house horror ala Amityville Horror (1979), complete with objects moving on their own and premonitions of bleeding knives stabbing though ceilings, a bit of Satanism ala The Exorcist (1973) and some pre-Final Destination (2000) deaths by household items. Around these parts, the film relies on some gothic elements such as dark corners, creaky floorboards, windows opening and shutting by themselves and a looming atmosphere that often feels the presence of evil. It even heightens the tension during some certain scenes with a wonderfully composed score that's both medieval and Satanic in tune.

After a while, or more specifically after a series of flashbacks foretelling the house's Satanic history, the film shifts to a fast paced supernatural slasher, with a cloaked and clawed witch mauling and staking anybody that gets in her way, with said killings perhaps the biggest highlight of it all. We get gruesome gore delights as exploding heads, hacked up bodies, possessed buzz saws, exploding mirrors and a brutal head staking filled evenly all through out the movie, with practical effects so surprisingly realistic that you got to see it to believe it!

A flawed production, yes, suffering from a cheesy plot tainted with holes and very dodgy acting, but Superstition (1982) is so crazy, fast paced, and most importantly, gory enough to make you look pass these shortcomings and just enjoy the movie itself as a cheddar guilty pleasure of all things camp. In other words, a perfect example of a popcorn movie!

If atmospheric horrors, with lots of blood and mindless violence, is what you're looking for, then look no further and try your hands with this bad boy!

Bodycount:
1 male found decapitated, head baked in microwaved until explodes
1 male caught on a possessed window, cut in half with a knife
1 male pulled into the pond, drowned
1 male gets a possessed buzzsaw slice through his chest
1 male hanged on dumbwaiter pulleys
1 female drowned (flashback)
1 male crushed by a giant wine press (flashback)
1 male killed offscreen
1 boy found murdered
1 female bludgeoned to death
1 male had a mirror explodes on his face, impaled on shards
1 female gets a wooden stake hammered to her forehead
1 female found with throat cut
1 male pulled into a pond, drowned
Total: 14

He was only playing with you! : Unhinged

Unhinged (1982)
rating:**1/2
starring: Laurel Munson, Janet Penner and Sara Ansley

And so, here is another Video Nasty into the fray, a slight mixed bag of Psycho-inspired thrills and slasher flick bloody spills. But how well of a mix? Not quite.

When three girls on a road trip crashes their car during a rainstorm, they soon found themselves saved by the Penroses, a family who just happens to live in a nearby mansion and, apparently, not all quite normal; Edith Penrose is a wheelchair-bound matriarch who despises men to the point of shutting out her own son outside her house or locking him in the attic at night. Said son, Carl Penrose, is slow and simple, while the daughter, Marion Penrose, is verbally abused into following her mother's orders.

Now, stuck with the Penroses until their car gets fixed, the girls sits through the ramblings and the strict rules of the household's matriarch, feeling uneasy as the whole situation goes beyond normal. But when one of them failed to return after going out to get help, the girls began to suspect the family's odd behavior might had something to do with it.

Unhinged was an easy film to watch. Short in running time (around 79 minutes only) and thin in plot, the only setbacks this film suffers from was that it had very tedious dialogue scenes as if building up to a grand reveal, might as well be as the horror aspects of the movie wasn't around until the near end when the killings finally start. Until then, Unhinged acts like a psycho-thriller in the vein of, well, Psycho, evil mum, spooky mansion and all. Another flaw would be that the short running time and the budget itself restrains the movie from any possible improvements; the dialogue can be muddy and some of the lighting made it hard for me to see what's going on.

But I can look pass that; the conclusion of the movie caught me off guard and proves to be good enough for me to at least give it a fair rating, plus the gory kills in this title, though little in number, was intensely savage. Mix these two and you have an ending that's both unsettling and very messy!

I know this film is barraged with bad reviews, but I can't help liking it at least a bit. Sure gave me something good to chew after all that tedious waiting, and I'm thankful for that. If you're the curious type, go ahead and try this out. Just don't expect it too much, it'll help.

Bodycount:
1 female slashed to death with scythe
1 female axed on the forehead
1 male shot on the head
1 female hacked to death with machete
total: 4

"The Most Atrocious Crime in American History": The Toolbox Murders (1978)

The Toolbox Murders (1978)
Rating: **1/2
Starring:  Cameron Mitchell, Pamelyn Ferdin and Wesley Eure

Okay, I never knew the 70s version of this movie was this bad but I have to admit, it does have its moments.

The Toolbox Murders had itself deemed infamous thanks to its depiction of graphic murders towards sexually fueled ladies residing in an apartment complex early on the film's run, just a few frames away after the weird looking opening credits. (with added first bodycount)

The killer, as the title suggests, carries around a toolbox full of various hardware appliances from a nailgun to a powerdrill, easily makes tidbits out of the scantily clad cats and does it one at a time for the next half hour or less. So early on, we get five grisly misogynist-toned murders and, in between them, us watching them girls take a shower and/or bubble bath.

Who knew seeing Mariane Walter gets nailgunned while
prancing naked can be a changing experience?

The second half of the film has us going through a police-drama of sorts, wherein a sixth girl victim gets kidnapped and psychologically tortured by the killer while two of the girl's male friends do their own amateur investigation seeing that the cops aren't doing better.

Personally, the whole rating you see above comes a majority from the opening and the rest is from it's finale. The opening slaughter, which might as well be the whole movie itself, has the stalk and kill antics done with much exploitative nature and mean-spirit despite lacking much of the needed impact and tension. He ho-hums his way to the next apartment without thinking much whether his previous attacks would have alerted the neighbors, as if he is used to doing these crimes. And then at the end, he even tried to comfort his captured lass by sharing his reasons for why he's doing all this and judging from her reaction, that didn't do too well on his part.

The finale is a messy one in terms of direction but at least it goes to say, it didn't lose its maniacal energy just as the movie did in the middle where it has us tediously watching bumbling detectives trying to coin out our killer, leading to another twist in the story with an outlandish cheesy sub-plot that had me wondering if anybody would even care.

The Broken Object. By Vance Kingsley

Much to the psycho-drama antics of The Toolbox Murders, it didn't fail to deliver one of the most unusual structure for a slasher film and much like on every attempt to do something different, it has its pros and cons. You can regard it as misogynistic trash, but you also can't deny its guilty pleasure deserving of a Video Nasty moniker.

 Bodycount:
1 female seen killed in car crash
1 female powerdrilled on the head
1 female repeatedly brained with hammer claw
1 female stabbed to death with screwdriver
1 female shot on the head with nailgun
1 male doused with gasoline, set ablaze
1 male knifed on the gut
1 male stabbed with scissors offscreen
Total: 8

Last Axe on the Left: Axe (1977)

Axe (AKA "California Axe Massacre", "Lisa, Lisa") (1977)
Rating: *
Starring: Leslie Lee, Jack Canon and Ray Green

Wrangled along the infamous Video Nasties list, California Axe Massacre (1977), or simply Axe in some box titles, brings forth exploitation the likes of Craven's infamous Last House on the Left (1972) to Southern fried proportions. In a way.

The story starts with three killers jumping on an associate in his own apartment after the man done them wrong, beating him dead and clobbering his gay lover to the point the fella crashes through a window, into a fatal fall. Now on the run, the trio head South where they torture a store clerk by throwing fruits above her head and shooting the produce with a gun. As far as I'm interested to see old school 70s exploitation torture, this is hardly rocking my attention and is already boring me to death. Eitherways, the hoodlums leave before any more damage can be done and seek refuge in a house owned by an expressionless girl and her paralyzed grandaddy. Of course, seeing this can be considered as a Last House on the Left clone, the girl ain't all that helpless and she has a mean hatchet to whack back with.

Under just a running time of an hour and five minutes, I was expecting a total gorefest and horrible antics seeing this is often marketed as a slasher and, again, is listed among other infamous titles under United Kingdom's Video Nasties, but what I got instead is a cheap run of exploitative nonsense that hardly makes up for its supposed infamy. Acting is drearily mind-numbing, any gore is stifled to slight splatter and the direction really stretches itself thin by spending too much time trying to make the three hooligans as unlikable as possible, I guess as a way to hype up a massacre they so well-deserved. The resulting product, unfortunately, is too dull to be exciting, Too amateurish to be enjoyable. Hardly worth the wait when all we're getting from all of this is a few measly kills. It does reek of grindhouse shlock for the manic plotting and uneasy sleaze so there's that, I guess?

Honestly, I agree getting this film banned. Just for an entirely different reason. A movie this boring shouldn't grace the screens of good, hard-working horror fanatics. If you still want to check this one out, though, well, be my guest...

Bodycount:
1 male beaten to death
1 male crashes through window and falls to his death
1 male back of neck sliced with razor
1 male hacked to death with axe
1 male shot on the head
Total: 5

Dare to enter: The Dorm that Dripped Blood (1982)

The Dorm that Dripped Blood (AKA Death Dorm, Pranks) (1982)
Rating: **
Starring: Laurie Lapinski, Stephen Sachs and David Snow

They have no clue...

Our opening: a gang of random teens jeep-riding to someplace, which honestly adds up to nothing as the movie would later turn our attentions to a broken down dorm and some guy getting attacked by a killer who proceeds to slice his hand in half.

We can easily assume he gets killed since nobody would bothers to point out this deed as soon as we are introduced to four college kids, volunteers in cleaning up the aforementioned dorm as it's scheduled to be demolished some time in the near future. While I'm still having a hard time trying to digest how a building this big gets counted as a dorm, the gang goes around with their business, getting themselves freaked out by the creepy looking caretaker.

"Not now, hun, Daddy has a splitting headache"

At some point, these thespians start to get picked off one by one without the rest noticing until it's all too late. One of these scenes happens to be my favorite for reasons that it's so darn nasty, cheesy and downright mean: when it involves the parents of one of the volunteers driving by to pick her up, only daddy gets the pointy side of a nailed baseball bat over and over the moment he's halfway into the building. Not satisfied, the killer then shows up behind dear mum and garrotes her with a thin wire, just minutes before their teenage daughter sees the horrid fate of her parents, fainting at the sight right behind the car. Perhaps the most convenient set-up I've ever seen in a slasher flick since the looney easily backs the car up, crushing her head like a rolling pin.

As day break, those who survived long enough still have no squat of an idea what just happened to their friends so they simply keep on to working. Until dinner that night, wherein they get disrupted by malfunctioning lights and somebody seen skulking around, finally realizing there's a killer on the loose and they're on the pecking order!

Makes me wanna see Driller Killer again!

The Dorm that Dripped Blood (1982) should have been a higher rated slasher flick for my taste; cheese and kills are my two top redeeming factors and the film has both, but my beef with this movie is that it hardly has any engaging characters and it takes a painfully paced hour or so before the good stuff kicks in. A lot of senseless speculation on the creepy guy (Then again, why not? Have you seen his hair?), uber muddled with cheesy acting, very thin plot, no sign of a script, and the tick-from-the-list cliches, it's hard to give this film a passable grade if all of this is a little tiresome to sit through but can be generous and give Dorm some commendation go for  the gore alone.

In fact, the good gore in this film is its saving point. Luckily for those who have this mindset, Dorm is blessed with enough budget to do the nastiest fake blood gags and brutal kills to keep a bloodhound happy. Add an equally depressing ending involving cooked meat, a hilarious death by industrial steam cooker (No connection to Sleepaway Camp (1983)), and a killer's motive that a little overdone, you'll have yourself this cheese classic that has fans clamoring about it and me watching in an occasional basis as an answer for my need of bloodlust.

See? Messy gore for the gore fans!

Bodycount:
1 male killed, hand chopped in half with a machete
1 male had his head beaten with nailed baseball bat
1 female garroted to death
1 female had her head crushed with a car
1 male gets a powerdrill to the head
1 male dismembered offscreen with machete
1 female boiled to death in steam cooker
1 male bludgeoned to death with wooden board
1 male shot on the head
1 female burned inside a chimney
Total: 10

Feeling a little crazy~ again: Nightmares in a Damaged Brain (1981)

Nightmares in a Damaged Brain (AKA "Nightmare"/"Blood Splash")(1981)
rating:***
starring: Baird Stafford, Sharon Smith and C.J. Cooke

There was a time where slasher flicks became so notorious, people tried to ban them through picking signs and angry mobs of mothers. In the UK, a list of titles was made to incorporate how awful these films can be, labeling them as "Video Nasties". For some horror fans, this can be a dreadful and overdone way to nag at the public for having fun, but for some this might as well be a serpent beckoning you to bite at a forbidden fruit.

Nightmares in a Damaged Brain (or simply Nightmare in some releases) was a part of this cavalcade, a gory showcase of one man's decent back into dementia after being proven "fit" to re-enter society.

The story follows George Tatum, a schizophrenic man turned insane due to a recurring nightmare involving an axe murder and a child. The doctors who treated him thought that the experimental drug given to him, a cure to manic depression, was working well thus releasing him into the streets to live a seemingly normal life. Turns out the effects doesn't last long and soon, George is suffering from the same nightmares again and began to murder anyone that gets in his way.

All the while, we're also treated to a family with some "child problems"; a certain son appears to have a liking on playing pranks that's overly extreme and feels no remorse whenever he goes too far. Said family soon becomes a target of Tatum, which eventually reveals what ties these two paths together in one twisted climax.

Now, it's not necessarily a bad film, nor is it unwatchable, it's just that Nightmare's very grim and depressing that I find it hard to enjoy it.

While most slasher titles would try to bring something to lighten up the mood, may it be a darkly comic situation or a warm banter between casts, Nightmares is completely devoid of anything inviting and it gets worse to the point that it's almost unbearable for some or just dull to others. Psychological elements, however, did their job well on bringing other forms of dread outside Nightmares' excessive gore (thanks to FX veteran Tom Savini); accompany it with some nice stalkings, a creepy direction that puts more depth in its story than most of its kin, and a family drama with an evil kid, the result would be a still watchable horror flick that gets into you somehow.

There's some controversies involving medication and the treating of the mentally unstable here, with Tatum being an ambiguous representation of either a rushed treatment or the ethics of treating a man forcibly with chemicals. Tatum's decent to psychosis was hinted only with the use of an experimental drug but it wasn't made clear whether the drug was meant to cure him and fails, or that the drug was the cause of it. A possible reason to be banned, but speculations and very depressing tone aside, Nightmares is still a decent gore flick for slasher fans to enjoy. At some point.

Bodycount:
1 female had her neck cut with knife
1 female found stabbed to death
1 boy killed offscreen
1 male garroted with wire cheese cutter
1 female gets a hammer claw to the back
1 female decapitated with axe (flashback)
1 male axed on the head (flashback)
1 male gunned down
total: 8

Gut-Munching Goodness: Anthropophagus (1980)

Anthropophagus (AKA "Man-Eater", The Grim Reaper", "The Beast") (Italy, 1980)
Rating: **1/2
Starring: Tisa Farrow, Saverio Vallone and Serena Grandi

I first encountered this film when I was a wee lad; I'm just as big of a horror fan as I am right now back then, and I was just image hunting in the internet when I stumbled upon a "picture show" site featuring screencaps from gory horror movies. You could say this flick, listed there under its alternate title The Grim Reaper, was one of its showcases and the image of a deranged cannibal munching on his own guts burned itself into the folds of my brain ever since. It isn't until years alter when I finally understood what a slasher film is that I started looking to face the demon that scarred me once more and, when I finally got that chance, picture my morbid delight and curiosity.

Anthropophagus (1980) starts with a couple enjoying their time at a Greek island's beach; as the boy lie on the rocks to bask under the sun, his girl takes a fun dip around the water when she notices a seemingly abandoned lifeboat. She swims towards it in hopes of finding something or someone, unbeknownst to her that something was underneath the water stalking her this whole time, pulling her down to for a blood-gushing murder. The unseen assailant then surfaces, walking slowly to the sunbathing boy and buries a cleaver down into his head.

Cuts to some time later, a group of tourists sets sail to the same Greek island, only to find it eerily desolated as they venture deeper into town. Misfortune comes to them when their boat is set loose, mummified bodies are found and a traumatized blind girl attacks one of them out of sheer fright. The matter, unfortunately, is about to get worse when the doomed tourists learn that the island has been picked down to the last few remaining inhabitants by a deranged cannibal and man-beast has set his eyes, teeth and gullet on killing and eating the new arrivals... 

Despite its gruesome reputation as one of the viler Video Nasties of its time, Anthropophagus (1980) is a film that suffers from a lot of flawed factors that may divide its audiences; for one, the pacing is tediously draggy due to a lot of scenes here being nothing more than fillers padding for time. Majority of them involves people walking around dark places, random suicides for shlock factor and stretched-out chases that goes on a tad too long, so much so that any tension and suspense built feels overcooked, if not completely lost.

What the film did right, though, are a few genuinely good scares, as well as a gratifyingly execution of disgusting gore; some good nail-biters include a blind girl left in a room in the dark, unknown to her the killer's already inside and just waiting for the right moment to strike, and a nasty piece of work of unrelenting shock value wherein our maniac drives his hand into a pregnant woman's womb and pulls out her unborn child, while the helpless father watches dying from his own wounds. A rather tough scene to watch, even if the baby does look oddly misshapen. (Apparently, it was skinned rabbit meat.)

George Eastman plays our goon, a demented cannibal man who, after being stranded in the sea with his family for so long, goes crazy and murders them out of hunger. It's a workable background, though that doesn't explain how he managed to overpower and nearly murder an entire village, leaving only two survivors. (I mean, even if it's a small town, didn't anyone fight back?) Still, Eastman got the body language of a starved psychopath down to a tee, making his character a real threatening presence. He would eventually play another similar psycho in this movie's supposed "sequel", Absurd (1981), a gory Halloween (1978) clone, also by this film's director, Joe D'Amato.

As rewarding as it is for gore hounds, Anthropophagus (1980) is nowhere a masterpiece, but stands proud for being one of the more recognized Italian shockers, overlooking its very simple plot and a lot of useless scenes that is. Then again, if you're into gore, "bad" movie clichés, or just hardcore slasher fans like me, this one deserves at least a quick look. Now, was it worth my time hunting it down after all these years? Yes, yes it was. And now that I faced my demon, I shall take a gander to its sequel...

Bodycount:

1 female killed off camera, blood seen

1 male gets a cleaver to the head

1 male beheaded, head seen in a bucket

1 male had his throat ripped open

1 female hanged herself

1 female knifed on the belly (flashback)

1 boy presumably killed and eaten (flashback)

1 male knifed on the chest

1 pregnant female had insides mangled as her unborn fetus gets torn out from her womb

1 (unborn) baby aborted and eaten

1 female found with throat slit

1 blind female nearly scalped, throat bitten open

1 male gutted with pickaxe

Total: 13

A Reflection of Evil: The Boogeyman (1980)

The Boogeyman (1980) (AKA "Spectre")
Rating:**
Starring: Suzanna Love, John Carradine and Ron James

I remember hating this upon first viewing. Hating it for the uninteresting atmosphere. Hating it for the choking amount of cheese. Hating it for being so uneven. But as time flies, my taste differs and I learned that even some terrible films can get better over repeated viewing. Will I say the same for Ulli Lommel's The Boogeyman (1980)? Let's see.

The film opens with two siblings spying on their mother and her lover making out, something the two grownups doesn't appreciate. They decided to discipline one of kids, Willy, by tying him up to his bed and smack him up a bit. His sister, Lacey, gets the less severe punishment of being sent to her room, but not before getting a glimpse of her brother being abused. Helping him out later that night, Lacy cuts Willy free with a knife, the very same knife Willy soon uses to get revenge on his abuser by stabbing him to death once he's asleep.

Moving forward a some years later, we now see Willy (Nicholas Love) and Lacey (Suzanna Love), living a mostly normal life. I say "mostly" as Willy became mute and Lacey, now a wife and a mother, is currently being persuaded by her husband to speak to her psychiatrist Dr. Warren  (John Carradine) about the nightmares she's having about "the night". Things escalate when Lacey finds a letter from their dying mother which Willy have been keeping from her; wanting closure, she decided to visit her childhood home with her partner in hopes of meeting her possibly still-living mother, but instead finds it occupied by a new family and that their old mirror is possibly haunted by the ghost of the dead boyfriend. Freaked out by the ghostly sight, Lacey resorted to smashing the mirror, unknowingly releasing a powerful evil that curses each individual shards. An evil so powerful that it can murder anyone who grabs a shard... Or goes near it... Or gets possessed by it... Or something.

Watching The Boogeyman (1980) is like an acid trip. From time to time, it dozes off as a narrative of weird proportions, terrible pacing and dodgy editing, sugarcoated with some decent deaths and kills. Some of said weirdness do come out rather entertaining in a B-flick way, but it also destroys any potential creepiness and consistency from the film's ideas, making the entire run more of a stir-fried pasta made up of other horror films like The Amityville Horror (1979), A Bay of Blood (1971), Halloween (1978), and even The Exorcist (1973). You want unnecessary red herrings scenes that didn't make any sense to begin with? You got it! You want random teenagers that aren't essential to the plot and are instead in for the kill count? You got it! You want furniture flying around and attacking people ala Carrie (1976)? You got it! Killer window panes? You got it. You want Linda Blair demonic possession? You got it!

You can honestly tell from this that the movie's just pulling out clichés upon clichés of bad cheese and horror tropes that, frankly, can be a little over-ambitious, but otherwise watchable on a level. It's definitely a mess for a whole lot of people, but it also makes something entirely unique for a slasher movie and if one can move past the laughable dialogue, low budget effects, and hokey plotting, The Boogeyman (1980) can be a gourmet cheese of horror entertainment that uses and twists some neat concepts based on mirrors and old wives tales.

I cannot say that this is a great slasher flick by a stretch as there are other better supernatural hodge-podge slashers out there like Superstition (1982) and Terror (1978), but for what was attempted here in The Boogeyman (1980), it's a trial I am willing to sit through should I ever be in the mood for low-budget bodycounters that involves killer objects. Not for everybody but it is what it is and some people are bound to appreciate it even more than I did.

Bodycount:

1 male knifed to death

1 female had her throat stabbed and cut with a pair of scissors

1 boy had his neck crushed by a window pane

1 female had her head whacked by a medicine cabinet door (no, really...)

1 male gets a floating skewer impaled through his head

1 female pushed mouth first into a skewer, impaled

1 male found pinned by the neck to the wall with a pitchfork

1 female found strangled by a water hose

1 male stabbed to death by flying knives

Total: 9

Better Take Its Word For It: Don't Go in the Woods (Alone!) (1981)

Don't Go in the woods (AKA "Don't go in the woods...Alone!) (1981)
Rating: 1/2
Starring: Jack McClelland, Mary Gail Artz and Angie Brown

Four young campers, Craig, Peter, Ingrid and Joanie, back-pack through the mountains for a relaxing weekend being one with nature...as always. With the forest becoming denser and darker, Peter and Ingrid fear that they are lost. But lurking among the bushes and the woods themselves is no animal, as a large figure begin making their way through anyone, hacking them to death. And when one of their own gets this figure's blade into his flesh, our gang flees into the forest. Now with a deranged maniac on their trail, who will survive in the forest?

...FUCK a Duck! WHO GIVES A FUCK?

I'm sorry, but I'll be very personal with this one. It's awful. Its more awful than any SYFY wannabe horror out there. It's more awful than any SOV horror trash big shot Lionsgate is willing to pass on as entertainment! It's more awful than a baked pickle! And I have a high tolerance for awful baked pickles!

Technically, it's four campers, with lazy scripts uttering out of their porktraps, walking around the forest all day for the first hour, while people around are dying off in rather gory methods with hardly anybody noticing any of that! In fact, one of them dead folks even drops in, literally, near our gang while they play in a stream like some fucktarts on PCP! I mean this body could have been touching them, yet they still continue to play around! To top it all worse, we got the usual lard arse sheriff topping a comedy duo with his deputy, crashing in a tad too late too many times to stop a murder, resulting to many of his beloved, randomly placed city trash tourists going headless or be stabbed to death. The murders, oh god, the murders! They're completely atrocious! I'm fine with spear stabs but, come on, accordions are not scary! So stop playing the fucking instrument every time there's a kill!

Shit goes to epic proportions when a manhunt takes place and we finally get to see the killer. Honestly, it hardly mattered anymore then cuz every ounce of my expectations just went down the toilet then, seeing how underwhelming the stabby fella is.

... ... ... ... ... ...
I'm sorry, I just can't crack a joke at this one...

I can't even believe I just went through all of this. What came over me?! Was it desperation? Was it for experience? God, if I have known it was that horrible, I should've just took somebody's word for it and make a review out of that instead of torturing myself with this Municipal Waste!

I better turn off my laptop now after deleting this movie from my files. After a while, I'll see you when I recover from this mindrape I just experienced.

By the way, BACKWOOD HOBOS ARE NOT SCARY!

Deers are...

Bodycount:

1 female killed offscreen

1 male had his arm lopped off, knifed to death

1 male pulled off a cliff and lands on a rock

1 female stabbed

1 male seen bloodied against a van window

1 female crushed inside of toppling van, burned to death

1 female speared to death 

1 male and 1 female knifed to death

1 male gets a projected bear trap crush his face, impaled with a spear

1 male slashed to death with spear

1 male impaled by thrown sharpened log

1 female hacked to death with machete

1 male stabbed and hacked to death

Total: 14

Big, Mean and Hairy: Night of the Demon (1980)

Night of the Demon (1980)
Ratings: ***
Starring: Michael Cutt, Joy Allen and Bob Collins

Back in 1982, United Kingdom released a list called Video Nasties which tallied up titles they deemed atrocious enough to be morally upsetting. Little do they know, they are doing us a favor as the list can be seen as either a round up of cult classics deserving to be seen like The Evil Dead (1981) and Anthropophagus (1980), or a warning label for movies that shouldn't be seen not because they're stomach churning, but how lazy and dumb they are as horror movies.

Among these titles is an odd entry of a slasher movie, one that takes backwoods hack-a-thon back to the beastlier side.

Despite the title, Night of The Demon (1980) has nothing to do with the supernatural and is instead about Bigfoot, the hairy big ape superstar of the cryptid community. In this film, we get a group of anthropology students and their professor going on a trip to the backwoods after watching a video evidence of Bigfoot attacking and killing a family. While investigating the place and searching for more clues to prove Bigfoot's existence, they are treated with grisly accounts of the creature's attacks, witness a cult worshiping the big guy as a god of sorts (!), get tangled with a traumatized lady's past, and attacked by Bigfoot himself...who looks like Hector Jimenez from Nacho Libre (2006) with more hair.

Obviously not the best slasher film out there, nor the best film of any genre to be frank, as the production value did little to hide its cheapness and the acting resembles some kinders rehearsing for a school play. Monotonous, cheeky, weirdly executed and all.

Thankfully, however, what keeps this movie from being banished into the bottomless bottom of shame is the fact that it is so bad, it's borderline hilarious and, as a slasher, it did try to best itself in delivering overkills upon overkills. True enough, the murders here in Night of The Demon (1980) are done away through any means possible to keep themselves interesting such as close-ups, over the top gore, and some obscure ideas. Remember the sleeping bag kill Jason Voorhees did in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1988) ? Well, Bigfoot took a toss at it first.

The monster itself isn't really that bad either, though I was expecting something a little less "obvious". I guess I should be considerate seeing the low budget and all, but making Bigfoot look like a guy with fake teeth, some prosthetic brows, and some hair plastered all over their face doesn't really spell terror. Still, it does succeed on being scary at times; the brutality of the murders and its persistence in ridding all that stands in its way pretty much say that this creature is nothing of a gentle giant, which makes the finale of this film as distressing as it is a bit cheesy.

And while we're not blabbering about Bigfoot, the side story of Crazy Wanda and her religious nut of a father abusing her did keep things menacingly intriguing: it's a sad, albeit campy at times sub-plot that might be this film's other strong point as it has a more focused story than the whole movie itself.  It's kinda clever actually; what we thought is just another red herring would later lead to our group's ultimate demise in the movie's infamous "cabin of violence" finale.

It's not a film for everybody, that much I can tell, but it's worth a look. One fine no-brainer slice of cheese indeed, more fun to watch when you're drinking shots every time a cast says Bigfoot!

Bodycount:
1 male had an arm torn off, bled to death
1 male killed offscreen
1 female killed offscreen
1 girl killed offscren
1 male mauled offscreen, bloodied body seen
1 male swung around in his sleeping bag and tossed to a branch, impaled
1 male had his penis yanked off and bled to death
1 male had his larynx pulled out (dream)
1 male chopped to bits with an axe
2 females repeatedly swung at each other while holding knives, stabbing themselves to death
1 male had his head smashed against a tree
1 baby killed (offscreen)
1 male set ablaze
1 female had her throat crushed
1 male thrown gut first to a saw, disemboweled and whipped by his own entrails
1 male forced neck first into a broken window and nearly decapitated
1 female impaled with a pitchfork
Total: 18