Ahh, the giddy days of home video. In the early days of this new and very exciting medium, there were loads of videos that featured the gaudiest and lurid cover artwork. One film that had such artwork that I will always remember was The Exterminator. The box depicted a muscled man wearing what looked like …
Continue reading Meathook Cinema Hall of Fame- The Exterminator (1980)
John Carpenter's Halloween had been a huge hit at the box office through the word of mouth of people who had seen it and were knocked out by the experience. In fact, the film was so successful that it became the most profitable independent film of all time, a title it held until it was …
Continue reading Halloween 2 (1981)- A Sequel That Is Better Than It Has Any Right To Be
I remember I actually had the poster for Halloween 4 which I seem to remember came free with either Fangoria or Gorezone which I used to buy religiously back in the day. This was way before the film would actually be released here in the UK. The poster looked so cool and I was intrigued …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween- Day 30- Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
This slasher movie starts in the most obvious seting for a film of this ilk- a campfire! We hear of Madman Marz who was a vile man by all accounts. Abusive to his family until he decides to kill them with an axe. He then casually goes to his local tavern to have a drink …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween- Day 28- Madman (1981)
Lauren Tewes stars as Jane, a Miami newsreader who suspects her neighbour of being a murderer who's crimes she reports on with shocking regularity. She lives with her blind deaf-mute sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh's first starring role). This was another example of a film I had been meaning to watch for the longest time (since …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween- Day 27- Eyes of a Stranger (1981)
Amy leaves her art class late at night and goes to her car. However, she then finds a man dressed all in black resplendent with a black balaclava and shades waiting for her in her backseat. She gets away but isn't taken seriously by the police when she goes to report the incident. Apparently, the …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween- Day 24- No Place To Hide (1981)
A pretty faithful account of The Hillside Stranglers starring Dennis Farina as Angelo Buono and Billy Zane as Kenneth Bianchi. Richard Crenna is cop Bob Grogan who is hunting them. This made for TV movie is based on the book Two of a Kind: The Hillside Stranglers By Darcy O'Brien. I love TV movies based …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween- Day 23- The Case of the Hillside Stranglers (1989)
The opening scene of this opus shows us what could almost be a kind of commercial of a windsurfer doing his thing on the water. However, suddenly he is attacked and killed by a shark. Following this, successful horror novelist Peter Benton teams up with wizened shark hunter Ron Hamer to try and find and …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween- Day 21- The Last Shark (1981)
A prelude shows a prank in which a socially awkward and sexually inexperienced student is lured into having his first sexual encounter. What he doesn't know is that the woman waiting for him in bed is actually a corpse stolen by medical students. On discovering this, Kenny becomes unhinged and is rightly traumatised. Three years …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween- Day 20- Terror Train (1980)
This film begins with the vile abuse of a small boy and his sister after they spied on their mother getting it on with her boyfriend. After Willy is tied up and gagged on a bed, his sister Lacey grabs a huge butcher knife, cuts the ropes that are holding her brother to the bed …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween- Day 19- The Boogey Man (1980)
Meathook Cinema 