A seance goes badly wrong when one of those involved, Mary, has a vision of events that happened in a place called Dunwich years before, when a priest hung himself. Mary freaks out and collapses to the floor. She is later found to have died. The police arrive and think that something underhanded has occurred. …
Continue reading The Video Nasties Reviewed- Anomalies- Day 7- City of the Living Dead (1980)
Duane books into the sleazy flophouse Hotel Broslin with a large basket. It's contents consist of his deformed twin brother who he used to be conjoined with. Both Duane and his twin are hellbent on enacting revenge on the surgeons who separated them against their wishes. Basket Case will always occupy a special place in …
Continue reading The Video Nasties Reviewed- Anomalies- Day 5- Basket Case (1982)
Three friends since high school known as The Rat Pack plan a weekend camping vacation to Deep Barrens in New Jersey. They are suddenly captured by two hillbillies who take the three women home to their demented mother who detains them and plans to torture and kill them one by one. I first learnt of …
Continue reading The Video Nasties Reviewed- Anomalies- Day 4- Mother’s Day (1980)
William Lustig’s depraved classic Maniac was massively controversial when it was first released in 1980. It garnered the ultimate accolades for an exploitation film- it was HATED by Siskel and Ebert (Gene Siskel said he made it to the shotgun murder then had to leave the preview screening as he couldn’t stomach anymore!) and was …
Continue reading The Video Nasties Reviewed- Anomalies- Day 3- Maniac (1980)
This Italian film was made before the trademark of the better-known Alien film was registered. After the success of Ridley Scott's movie, it was duly released as Alien 2. It may have been cheekily named as if it was a sequel to this film, but it wasn't. Cave explorers find more than they bargained for- …
Continue reading The Video Nasties Reviewed- Anomalies- Day 1- Alien Terror (1980)
A small French town finds it now has to fend off Nazi zombies that the residents had killed twenty years earlier and then thrown into a local lake. I wanted to really like Zombie Lake. The poster for it is great with a very skeletal looking zombie wearing an SS helmet looking utterly menacing. But …
Continue reading The Video Nasties Reviewed- Section 3- Day 82- Zombie Lake (1981)
Strange incidents at a New York morgue (body parts are being removed from corpses. Then a nurse is found trying to bite into a heart from one of the deceased) leads a group of scientists to an Indonesian island where they encounter a doctor who performs messed up experiments on both the living and the …
Continue reading The Video Nasties Reviewed- Section 3- Day 81- Zombie Holocaust (1980)
Another film I remember seeing on the shelves of video shops in the 80’s that I somehow didn’t watch was Xtro from 1982. I finally got to see it for the first time earlier. Wow. Just wow. Xtro is out there! A man is abducted by aliens. Three years later an alien impregnates a woman …
Continue reading The Video Nasties Reviewed- Section 3- Day 80- Xtro (1982)
In 1982, American audiences wanted only one alien. He wasn’t the shape-shifting evil alien in John Carpenter’s The Thing; he was the cute alien who wanted to ‘phone home’ in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. A dog who is being shot at by the crew of a helicopter flying overhead is taken in by an American compound …
Continue reading The Video Nasties Reviewed- Section 3- Day 75- The Thing (1982)
A family move into a house that was the site of a witch’s execution centuries before. Paranormal hijinx ensue. Superstition boasts impressive kills (the ones involving the circular saw and severed head in the microwave are doozies!) and a great turn by the witch who *is*actually a witch and not an innocent woman who has …
Continue reading The Video Nasties Reviewed- Section 3- Day 71- Superstition (1982)
Meathook Cinema 