#1837 Halloween 2023: Rocktober Blood (1984)

During this journey of watching through all 80s movies I’ve come across a few Heavy metal themed horror movies. Trick or Treat is still the top contender with its outrageously entertaining storyline, with Black Roses being a good runner-up. Hard Rock Zombies falls behind both, but at least it tries to be interesting in its own weird way.

Rocktober Blood ends up the last in this best-of list. The movie is pretty much just your basic slasher, accompanied by a few musical numbers.

It’s only the last few minutes of the movie taking form of a concert that is of any real interest here. And frankly, that could have been done directly as a music video to save everyone’s time.

80s-o-meter: 80%

Total:37%

#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%

#1827 Halloween 2023: Iced (1989)

By 1989 you would have thunk that there was enough slashers for the filmmakers to take notes of, stand on the shoulders of the greats and deliver something new.

For the team behind Iced this certainly has not been the approach.

An amaterish slasher taking place in a small cabin in some ski resort, the movie fails to deliver on all fronts: originality, suspense, horror and gory deaths, and it’s really hard to think of anyone outside the close family and friend circle of the movie crew to enjoy this train to Dullsville.

80s-o-meter: 70%

Total: 8%

#1826 Halloween 2023: Buried Alive (1989)

Buried Alive is such incoherent mess that I’m really quite not sure where to even start. There’s some juvenile delinquent schooling centre with just girls in it, run by lunatic personnel and with a new teacher being dropped in the middle of all of this.

The movie draws random horror movie elements from left, right and center and nothing of it really seems to fit together. There’s disappearance of the girls, a murky basement, visions of tormented people and people being trapped behind brick walls. And if all of the previous sounded cool, I assure it was not.

The movie is shot in South-Africa with some veteran actors like Robert Vaughn, Donald Pleasence and John Carradine hired just for their name and I can’t help but to think that three gentlemen would have come up with a much better horror movie brainstorming just 15 minutes together.

80s-o-meter: 80%

Total: 31%

#1824 Halloween 2023: The Dorm That Dripped Blood aka Death Dorm aka Pranks (1982)

This Halloween begins once again with a slasher – a sub genre I’ve learned not to expect much from.

The Dorm That Dripped Blood gives you pretty much what you’d expect from a slasher of the era, teenagers played by too old actors getting eliminated one by one by a deranged killer in a distant location.

Where the movie stands out though is that it doesn’t seem to carbon copy any other slasher out there but manages to carve its own space inside the genre; the killer is not an invincible super human and the ending does not follow the often seen last minute jump scare approach. Despite the low budged the effects feel well done, landing The Dorm That Dripped Blood ends up on the higher end spectrum of the slashers.

80s-o-meter: 80%

Total: 60%

#1707 Halloween 2022: Slaughter High aka April Fool’s Day aka The Last Laugh (1986)

Although the poster claims that Slaughter High is from the makers of Friday the 13th, they don’t share the same writers nor the director, so I’m not quite sold on that claim. Anyway, Slaughter High is a copy pastey slasher revenge movie where mistreated and disfigured nerd who was picked in high school gets back to his old school mates visiting the abandoned school in a class reunion, wearing an off-the-shelf old joker mask. Or is it him?

Well, yes it is. And there’s nothing very imaginative going on in the movie. The killer has gained superhuman powers and speed and will get anywhere in the school before others and can smell where they are without seeing them, while the ex students have become more stupid than ever, running around the school and getting separated from each others to be more easy targets.

Slaughter High isn’t a bad slasher and has proper production quality to it, but other than that it’s totally and utterly uninspired product.

80s-o-meter: 89%

Total: 37%

#1696 Halloween 2022: Girls Nite Out aka The Scaremaker (1982)

With Death Screams I mentioned one of the characters being one of the most annoying comic relief ever. In Girls Nite Out it seems almost all of the character are like this: goofing off, cracking jokes and faking to have oh so good time, all the time.

..aand it’s oh so annoying most of the time.

Girls Nite Out is one of those easy to forget slashers that does much by the book in an average or less than average way: unforgettable killer, imaginative deaths, iconic theme song or some other distinctive quality are all missing here.

80s-o-meter: 80%

Total: 35%

#1693 Halloween 2022: Blood Sisters aka Slash (1987)

A potential candidate for the worst horror movie of this Halloween, Blood Sisters takes place in an old bordello where a group of youngsters are spending a night in.

The concept, and overall execution is the tamest and lamest in ages, basically just following bunch of different people wandering around the house, getting inexplicably swept into the events of the erotic events of the house and then getting killed.

The ending of the movie is just as appalling as anything seen before it, very much as expected. Blood Sisters is bad even in the scale of slashers – and that’s saying something.

80s-o-meter: 45%

Total: 7%

#1684 Halloween 2022: Death Screams aka Night Screams (1982)

Oh dear, Death Screams wanders around every which way for ages with one pointless part after another before getting to the actual slashing.

It also loses to its counterparts of the era in multiple ways, being unable to produce imaginative kills nor an iconic antagonist. Where it succeeds though is casting perhaps the oldest men ever to attempt to pass as teenagers, plus one of the most annoying comic relief characters ever cracking jokes and goofing off in every scene.

Death Scream feels like multiple movies put into one, and there’s something likeable in the way it presents its characters and those trivial activities they engage in. But as a horror movie Death Screams just does not carry.

80s-o-meter: 68%

Total: 21%

#1681 Halloween 2022: Evil Laugh (1986)

What followed the early 80s stream of slashers was a stream of slasher comedies. I would argue that most slashers are quite humorous and over the board in their nature to begin with, and I’m sure the teams behind them were having a good laugh while making them, so in this light there’s very little point of parodising them other than justifying arriving to the slasher party several years too late.

If I had not check IMDB, I would have never known Evil Laugh was a comedy. Sure, it’s more goofy in some aspects and the characters make references to other slasher movies, but the movie is never laugh out loud funny.

Youngers get slashed, there’s some naked skin, one imaginative killing and possibly one of the most stupid looking antagonists, and that’s pretty much that. No matter how bad slashers are, at least they earn my respect for trying. Comedies like this too afraid to even be proper slashers don’t even have that going for them.

80s-o-meter: 83%

Total: 19%

#1677 Halloween 2022: Scared Alive aka Island of Blood aka Whodunit (1982)

If it is a pure slasher you want to watch this Halloween, the lesser known Island of Blood is not a bad option.

It is a pure slasher so you get pretty much what you expect: a group of youngsters getting killed one by one in an imaginative manner.

The most distinctive aspect of the movie is they way the killer plays a quite catchy song with lyrics ”Burn me, stab me, chop me, nail me, boil me, saw me” before commencing the killing. On top of that the end, especially that last few seconds are refreshingly different from what you’d expect.

80s-o-meter: 80%

Total: 59%

#1603 Halloween 2021: Rush Week (1989)

After the early 80s flood of slashers the sub-genre suffered a quiet death which quite honestly was not a bad thing. The slashers did see a small scale comeback towards the end of the 80s, and although none of those slashers got anywhere near as much fame as the previous generation did, at least this time around the movies were generally more interesting, and not just blatant copies of the genre icons.

Rush Week is one of those movies that definitely gains a lot of being a late 80s release. The movie looks good, is entertaining for the most parts, the lead and the events are likeable, and all that sweet 80s culture from yuppies to home computers can be found here.

On the downside the movie is quite forgettable and typical to the late 80s slashers Rush Week also suffers from featuring a weak antagonist.

80s-o-meter: 93%

Total: 70%

#1602 Halloween 2021: Pieces aka Chainsaw Bastard aka Chainsaw Devil aka The Night Has 1000 Screams (1982)

Pieces, a Spanish horror movie shot in Spain with American actors gained cult fame with its cruel depictions of deaths by chainsaw, and inexplicable encounter with a martial artist, totally detached from any events in the movie.

The movie does a fairly good work presenting itself as an American movie, and even if the movie isn’t anything extraordinary, it’s still one of the better and more original slashers of the era, and definitely earns its place alongside the most iconic examples of its genre.

80s-o-meter: 56%

Total: 60%

#1597 Halloween 2021: The Initiation (1984)

At this point I’m not looking forward to slashers to offer anything new, but just hoping to see at least a small spin to the tired subgenre.

The Initiation offers at least two and while neither are something I would call original or particularly good, but enough for me to give them some credit for not just making ”that movie” one more time. It does still feel like a pastiche with tons of elements borrowed from left, right and center.

The nocturnal mall as the location works better than forest and Daphne Zuniga in the lead role brings the movie up a notch or two.

80s-o-meter: 84%

Total: 57%

#1595 Halloween 2021: Edge of Sanity (1989)

Eroticism, lust and decadence are the main themes here, and the movie is more of a cheap late night peep show rather than a horror movie. I know it was Perkins himself that has agreed to make the movie, but still seeing him in a humiliation like this almost turns my stomach.

The worst Halloween movie and quite possibly one of the worst horror movies I’ve seen to date comes from a very unexpected place. Anthony Perkins of the Psycho fame stars in this erotic Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde movie, but unlike the quite capable 80s Psycho sequels, Edge of Sanity is an irritatingly bad movie.

Edge of Sanity is one of those rare movies that one does not only without any merits or redeeming qualities, but that you start to hate so much you hope they never actually existed.

80s-o-meter: 1%

Total: -1%

#1589 Halloween 2021: Memorial Valley Massacre aka Memorial Day aka Valley of Death aka Son of Sleepaway Camp (1989)

Just as I wrote Silent Madness having the most pissed poor antagonist ever seen on the silver screen, along comes Memorial Valley Massacre, violently screaming Silent Madness to hold its beer.

What Memorial Valley Massacre tries to sell us is a concept of some sort of a prehistoric man living in the wilderness, who then starts to – you guessed it – wasting all the campers. Both the look and feel of the movie as well as the dodgy make up of the antagonist (think: someone remembered a costume party in the last minute, and had to make do with things found from home) made me wonder if this was some sort of weird joke I was witnessing, but it seems this wasn’t the case.

Memorial Valley Massacre is one of those movies that fail on all aspects, totally failing to scare or entertain. To try to make up for the bad sales the movie was later rebranded as Son of Sleepaway camp to try to ride on the success of Sleepaway Camp series, another severe faux pas for the movie.

80s-o-meter: 83%

Total: 11%

#1588 Halloween 2021: Silent Madness aka Beautiful Screamers aka The Nightkillers aka The Omega Factor (1984)

Silent Madness is another early 80s 3-D movie that I immediately anticipated to stink to high heavens – but that contrary to all the expectations turned out a-ok.

The fact that I enjoyed Silent Madness seems even more implausible given the fact that it has probably the weakest antagonist I’ve ever seen in a slasher. Honestly, it looks like they applied some eye make up up to the production company janitor and just send him in front of cameras.

Luckily he is not actually even the main source for the suspension in the movie; it’s the corrupt asylum, its rotten doctors and their henchman orderlies that provide Silent Madness most of its thrills.

80s-o-meter: 83%

Total: 72%

#1584 Halloween 2021: Sweet Sixteen aka Sweet 16 (1983)

Here’s another slasher I’ve mixed up with many similarly named slashers – Bloody Birthday, Happy Birthday to Me 15 and to name a few.

Sweet 16 draws its inspiration (quite loosely) from native Americans, mixes in some weak mythology and puts them up against racist rednecks and watches them clash. Everyone bad gets what’s coming to them and then it’s up to the viewer to start the guesswork who was the actual killer, and watch through to the totally expected last minute jump scare attempt.

The movie is not exceptional in any sense, and was going for a passable rating. But here’s the thing: I really hate the exploitative sexual angle in the marketing of this movie that has nothing to do with the theme (or the actual content) of the movie – and loathe it even more for it targeting 16-year olds.

Cheap trash, this one.

80s-o-meter: 80%

Total: 18%

#1576 Halloween 2021: Aerobicide aka Killer Workout (1987)

Somebody is wasting people inside a small gym. And instead of closing it down, the gym is kept running while mutilated bodies fall out of every locker room and broom closet. Because, why not?

Aerobicide is light weight entertainment with light weight slasher elements in it. The movie never manages to be quite scary and the writer/director David A. Prior does not seem to have any elementary clue of how to build up suspense; the movie just moves from one killing to the next, and they viewer could not care less who’s next one to go. The same shallowness worked well in Prior’s Deadly Prey, but here everything just feels far too fluffy.

I did like the theme although Aerobicide does not do much with it. I mean, what could be more 80s than aerobics, sweat bands and leg warmers? Plus it seems to act as a quite potent padding material, filling up many precious minutes out of the movie’s measly running time of just 79 minutes.

80s-o-meter: 94%

Total: 38%

#1575 Halloween 2021: Girls School Screamers (1985)

If something, Troma is never boring. It can be bad, and it can be totally tasteless – but never boring.

Cue in Girls School Screamers that right off the bat feels quite a different kind of Troma movie, like if they were really making a big push for the main stream cinema. The production quality is on a quite different level, and Girls School Screamers doesn’t look amateurish at all, but the movie is totally uneventful, and downright dull, which is truly a shame after that movie’s superb starting with a boy wandering into the old abandoned house. In fact, the starting scene feels like .. almost like from a different movie.

There’s a reason for that. Girls School Screamers actually started out as a haunter house movie called The Portrait shot in the 1985. Troma then picked up the project, added a few gory scenes in the movie and changed its title.

And it’s these hilariously gory small inserts that end up the only thing really working in this snoozefest.

80s-o-meter: 91%

Total: 58%