#1865 The Beast Within (1982)

A movie I wish I had watched as a part of this years Halloween feature, The Beast Within is an apt little horror thriller taking a place in a small town along the Mississippi river.

To be completely honest I had somewhat hard time following all of the plot and nuances the movie was trying to convey, but this did not take away much of the enjoyment I had watching the secrets of the small town unravel. The production quality and direction of Philippe Mora (minus the flaws in story telling) is solid and the sense of danger and gloomy events were enough to keep in glued in my seat through the movie.

Also the cast led by Ronny Cox do their part with flying colors, contributing to an enjoyable overall watching experience.

80s-o-meter: 84%

Total: 21%

#1859 Night Visitor (1989)

Again a thriller about two demented brothers on a killing spree, Night Visitor throws a few interesting twists to the story that I had still easy to adapt to after finish my schools over 25 years ago.

You see, here the main antagonist is the conservative history teacher. What a thrill! After becoming the eye witness of an a satanist ritual killing a high school kid has a hard time getting anyone to taking his word over the professor.

He then seeks help from a retired detective, which for a long time seems a misstep from the movie (also a weird choice of movies for Elliott Gould), from which point on the movie drags itself through the finish line without much surprises.

80s-o-meter: 91%

Total: 72%

#1852 Halloween 2023: Death by Dialogue (1988)

Death by Dialogue tries a little something new by following events where five youngsters are being tormented by an evil manuscript reciting the kills happening before they take place.

There are some interesting and imaginatively created baddies here and the action is overall entertaining, but the movie gets a little too tricky and hard to follow considering the kind of fluff it tries to be.

This is one of those videos that entertains enough to sit it through, but does not really leave any memory prints behind.

80s-o-meter: 87%

Total: 60%

#1848 Halloween 2023: Evil Spawn (1987)

A pretty useless story of an actress past in the twilight of her career taking injections by some mad professor, turning her into this combination of a blood thirsty killer / insect.

Done in the day – and also introduced by in the DVD – Fred Olen Ray, the movie is full of bad acting and dialogues ripped straight out of 1950s B-horror movies. It would’ve been a much more interesting story to see her struggle in the actress career and either overcoming it or taking some other unfortunate actions, rather than going by this nonsensical storyline.

Either that, or going full ahead with the apprent humour aspect. Neither of which is seen here.

80s-o-meter: 75%

Total: 20%

#1847 Halloween 2023: Witchcraft II: The Temptress (1989)

Just when I thought the Witchcraft was an useless horror movie, enters its sequel Witchcraft II: The Temptress.

A kind of continuum of the witch story seen in the first movie, the second part builds its story upon an evil vamp seducing the now grown up baby from the prequel, with the hope of him becoming the supreme warlock. Gone is the little budget there was in the first installation, and everything here from writing to effects is subpar. Having much too old actors play teenagers is the ongoing joke with the 80s movies, but this movie really takes things to another level.

Probably the only good thing I can say about Witchcraft II: The Temptress is that it is the last one one in made during the 80s in the Witchcraft series of movies that has spawned a whopping 15 sequels to date, and that I don’t have to sit through the remaining 14.

80s-o-meter: 85%

Total: 24%

#1847 Halloween 2023: Witchcraft (1988)

Before seeing the movie I did like its title and wondered if i was going to be dragged into one of those 80s wild rides of Fangoria cover page sfx and make up work.

Well, Witchcraft was nothing like it to say the least. We have human like witches who are looking forward to get possession of a new baby who is to become the great Warlock. We have some eery scenes of wandering around the weird old mansion discovering hidden secrets and dream like sequences of an – again – human looking witch dripping a spit of fake blood out of her mouth.

..and that’s as scary as the movie ever gets.

80s-o-meter: 75%

Total: 37%

#1845 Halloween 2023: Dawn of the Mummy (1981)

One of the first movies I remember seeing was The Mummy from 1959, which left a lasting impact on little me. Now, I haven’t consumed much of the mummy movies from thereon, but everything I’ve seen has dropped short of that experience.

Enter the early 80s Dawn of the Mummy, which is by far the poorest take on the subject I’ve seen. The movie frames the mommy as something of a slasher kind of killer, wasting photo models who ”happened to be nearby”. Occasionally the Mummy also turns in a cannibal, rips his victims up and consumes .. uh, some parts of them.

Dawn of the Mummy falls into that unfortunate slot where the movie is just plain bad, but not the kind of bad that would have any guilty pleasure entertainment value to it.

80s-o-meter: 2%

Total: 4%

#1844 Halloween 2023: Hunter’s Blood (1986)

It’s hard not to find a pattern after seeing so many horror movies, and in case of Hunter’s Blood it’s yet again clean cut city folks travelling to rural America – this time to do some hunting – and then getting attacked by maniacal rednecks.

But Hunter’s Blood plays its cards quite wisely here, and goes against the plot clichés often seen in this subgenre: the police isn’t evil, or trying to protect or help the hoodlum gang, the antagonists seem more close to real backwoods delinquents rather than the hillbilly caricatures, plus the movie does not rush into killings just for the case of showcasing blood, but instead takes its sweet time building up the characters and excitement. And it’s one of the most palm sweating, thrilling rides I’ve seen.

The fans of Billy Bob Thornton and Billy Drago will be delighted to know that both gentlemen can be see here in one of their early roles.

80s-o-meter: 81%

Total: 75%

#1843 Halloween 2023: Lunch Meat (1987)

When I see some amateur gore like Lunch Meat, I can’t but to compare its offerings to the brilliant Bad Taste. Especially so when in Lunch Meat’s case the movie is about hillbilly family hunting people to harvest and sell their meat for restaurants.

Where Bad Taste goes for imaginative, weird and entertaining extremities, Lunch Meat – likely sharing a similar shoelace budget – repeats the often seen, unimaginative and predictable pattern we already know.

I can’t think of much to like here. At its very peak moments Lunch Meat is ok-ish. But, those moments are few and far between.

80s-o-meter: 52%

Total: 12%

#1842 Halloween 2023: Cameron’s Closet (1988)

Cameron’s Closet as a title seems like ringing a bell, as if I’d been exposed to it somewhere in the past. But more likely it just resembles some other sumilar sounding title I’ve gotten it mixed up with.

The movie works fairly well as long as the monster is kept in the closet of the young Cameron who possesses telekinetic and telepathic skills, and some of the scares are genuinely effective.

But as the movie wanders too far into the dream world, it soon starts to become a pill far too big to swallow. Keeping things low key and building upon the premise of an entity in the close would have likely yielded better results, and the movie quite unfortunately looses its footing in the third act.

80s-o-meter: 85%

Total: 50%

#1840 Halloween 2023: The Attic (1980)

The Attic is probably the first movie this Halloween that takes an effort to be an actual movie. You know, one with story, building up characters and all that.

And it was a nice surprise! Carrie Snodgress who was earlier unknown to me creates a wonderful character of an old maid librarian living with her tyrannical father, and it’s easy to grow attached to her, her fears, self-doubt and small scale dreams to have the courage to take a possession of her life.

Ray Milland as the father and Ruth Cox as the unlikely young friend and confident both make for interesting, multi-faceted characters. Director George Edwards holds up the horror elements to the last minutes of the film – but they feel even more impactful at that point.

80s-o-meter: 70%

Total: 84%

#1839 Halloween 2023: The Chilling (1989)

The Chilling is one of those B-movies that fell in between of being of a good enough quality for the masses, while also failing to gain a cult status for themselves as many horror movies do.

While the story of people in cryogenic sleep waking up to terrorise a facualty was never a contender for Oscars, I did enjoy the overall theme and atmosphere here. And while movie is cheaply put together, there’s nothing totally bad in here. The reanimated corpses are vicious and look menacing.

The handsome, chiselled Dan Haggerty makes for a great charismatic hero who single handedly manages to bring up the movie a notch or two.

80s-o-meter: 87%

Total: 72%

#1838 Halloween 2023: Dreamaniac (1986)

The award of least effort in a horror movie seems to go to Dreamaniac this year.

Haphazardly put together slasher with no real storyline and taking a place in a younger’s party with a summoned succubus doing all the killings is pretty much as uninteresting as movies come. The former porn director David DeCoteau even failed to get any of the females undressed for the gratuitous nudity the movie was clearly going after.

And yes, that VHS cover needs also addressing, touting to frame this straight to video release as something too gory for the silver screen, when we all know it was just plain too bad to ever see a theatrical release.

80s-o-meter: 87%

Total: 72%

#1836 Halloween 2023: Ozone: The Attack of the Redneck Mutants (1986)

I’ve seen the premise before: country hicks getting infected by virus turning them into undead creatures. Bloodsuckers from Outer Space and Redneck Zombies were both surprisingly entertaining zombie movies, but Ozone: The Attack of the Redneck Mutants unfortunately falls far behind of both.

The movie makes a maximum effort of being just plain disgusting. There’s endless scenes of people turning into zombies, gushing black ooze and puking yellow excrement. On top of this the movie has been dubbed completely, with voice actors really working for their money adding all kinds of moaning, gushing and cacophony, making the movie really hard to watch through.

The zombies look, well, passable, but that’s just about the only good thing I can say about the movie.

80s-o-meter: 72%

Total: 2%

#1835 Halloween 2023: Family Reunion (1989)

I believe there is an ok horror movie somewhere to be found in Family Reunion; I like most of the individual pieces presented here like the setting of the ghost town, mysterious cult and an old forgotten secret.

But Family Reunion can never quite put these elements into order that makes sense for the viewer and the storytelling lacks the depth needed to make us empathise with the characters and comprehend their choices. I found myself constantly excited of events on the screen, but then ending up trying to connect the dots between events and people in a hope that it would all make sense somehow.

Despite all of this the movie did have a good atmosphere to it, and was never too much of a chore to watch. Rather, it was the constant feeling of the movie not fully living up to its potential that felt the disappointment for me.

80s-o-meter: 85%

Total: 59%

#1834 Halloween 2023: Psycho Cop (1989)

Piggybacking on the success of Maniac Cop, Psycho Cop strips out pretty much everything that made its paragon great, keeps what doesn’t and introduces elements that nobody asked for.

For example turning the concept to a basic teen slasher taking place in a remote location, at the time where slashers were already a yesterday’s story.

While Maniac Cop played it smart with its antagonist police officer and kept him as something of an enigma, Psycho Cop is nowhere near as smart. Here he is just a stupidly grinning police killing people in the daylight, armed with an irritating laughter laughter that could peel paint off the walls.

80s-o-meter: 85%

Total: 21%