Halloween II Movie Review

I had very little memory of this first sequel. Some of it looked familiar as I watched it for this series, but mostly I don't think I ever really saw it.

Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.

These days film sequels are almost obligatory when it comes to any big budget action, comedy, or horror film. Studios are always looking to create a franchise cash cow that they can continue milking for minimal investment and effort. But there was a time when sequels were mostly limited to horror films. It was a pretty obvious fit. Films produced in the horror genre were traditionally low budget films written quickly and on the cheap, using casts of mostly unknown actors (though many of these such as Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Bacon, Johnny Depp, and Jennifer Aniston have gone on to become stars), shot and produced in an almost guerilla style in a matter of a few weeks. The popular ones made significant returns on investment, so sequels were usually inevitable. What’s more, they were (and continue to be) almost universally excoriated by critics because they tend to be cheap retreads of what came before. It’s insulting to people like me who spend a great deal of time watching movies.

Student Bodies Movie Review

This was a seminal and important film for my childhood where the horror genre is concerned. I always remembered most of the movie distinctly. Watching it again I pretty much knew exactly what was coming at every moment even though it had probably been twenty years or more since I'd seen it last. This was a movie that my older sister and brother used to watch on TV and laugh through. I found a lot of it quite funny and I'd like to think that wasn't just because I was laughing along with them. Oddly enough, I probably learned about the conventions of the genre mostly from this film and as a result found scary movies more ridiculous after.

Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.

"You Mrs. Malvert."

Before there was the horror spoof Scary Movie and long before the self-referential and convention-skewering Scream, there was Student Bodies, a little known cult favorite that should have been made on a shoestring budget by amateurs and then wasted away in a dustbin. It would have but for a stroke of luck in the form of a Writer’s Guild strike which meant Paramount was willing to bankroll non-union projects. So a ridiculous satire written and directed by Mickey Rose (a collaborator on some early Woody Allen films) with a cast of nobodies, most of whom were making their first movie and never went on to any kind of film career after, got a sizable budget to work with. It didn’t do very well at the box office, but later built a small following on cable, where I used to encounter it as a child.

Friday the 13th Part II Movie Review

This may have been the one that scare me most probably because Jason with that brown sack over his head with eye holes cut out is far creepier than the absurd hockey mask. Of course in the later films he's built like a tank and takes on the aura of something akin to the Terminator, making it a little hard to take seriously. But a crazy guy living in a shantytown shack in the woods with a shrine to his dead mother? And he wears a bag on his head? And he kills people? Man, that f---ed me up.

Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.

As bad as Friday the 13th is, it’s nothing compared to Friday the 13^th Part II. Here’s a film that makes the absolute minimum effort to present something new and different. It basically recreates the same premise but sets it in a camp on the other side of Crystal Lake: a group of young people preparing for a youth camp get killed on-by-one by a stalking psycho lurking in the surrounding woods. The big difference is that Jason is now the killer. We only learn that for certain at the end when Ginny (Amy Steel) stumbles upon his lair complete with a creepy shrine featuring his mother’s severed head.

My Bloody Valentine Movie Review

My sixth grade teacher insanely allowed us to watch this movie in class. I remember we watched it in an adjoining room separate from the rest of the class. No one was forced to watch it. We were in that room by choice. If memory serves, my classmate Tom Ciavarella brought the film in. Tom, if you're out there, can you confirm this? I don't remember the movie having much effect on me or being all that scary. Watching it again I understood why.

Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.

This is the 'hot' scene in the movie: a shirtless woman getting it on with a guy in a coal miner's outfit.

The 1981 slasher film My Bloody Valentine is so forgettable that only six days after watching it, I’m having trouble recalling a lot of the details – and I saw it once at age 11 when my sixth grade teacher inexplicably allowed us to watch it in class. It is so forgettable that it didn’t even manage to spawn a sequel due to its poor box office. However, it did manage to get a recent remake as part of the spate of horror film reboots that started about five or six years ago. The only truly remarkable thing about the film is that a small Canadian production with an entirely unknown cast and crew of amateurs was produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures.

Hell Night Movie Review

One of my strongest early horror film memories came from this movie. The image of a kid with glasses getting his head twisted all the way around always stuck with me. Watching it for this series I found that the ending was familiar to me from a more recent memory so it's probable I once caught the ending on late night cable as a teen or pre-teen.

Click here for a list of all other films reviewed and considered for this October 2012 series of horror reviews.

Scantily clad teens in a Gothic house surrounded by candles? This must be a 1980s horror flick

Of all the horror movies from the 80s that get a bad rap Hell Night is one of the least deserving of such a reputation. If that’s not a ringing endorsement, it is an admission that it’s a passable scary movie. It’s made in the style of a 1950s Creature Feature (right down to the opening titles) crossed with the slasher genre popular at the time of its 1981 release. A lot of what it attempts is works pretty well. The premise and setup are reminiscent of countless horror flicks: a group of teens enter some dark secluded place and get picked off one-by-one. In this case the location is an old gothic mansion on expansive grounds. It comes with a horror story of its own – a strong and suspenseful premise laid out in a chilling and effective scene, well-delivered by the actor Kevin Brophy.