Category: Horror

#826 The Keep (1983)

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Based on the F. Paul Wilson’s 1981 novel of the same name, The Keep mixes up some delicious ingredients to a somewhat uneven dish.

The real star here is the atmospheric mood The Keep achieves: The movie is always just a bit off in a charmingly fashion and that right kind of eerie feeling is constantly present when inside the citadel. The haunting soundtrack by Tangerine Dream no doubt plays a bit part in this.

The Keep is also a visually solid film with some genuinely well framed scenes.

Given all this it’s shame that The Keep isn’t a great movie and the end result fall short of the appetising premise and there’s just something unfinished and unfulfilled about it all, even during the movie’s best moments.

80s-o-meter: 58%

Total: 72%

#819 Nightmares (1983)

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As usual I try not to read any info about the movie I’m going to watch to avoid any spoilers. In the case with Nightmares it might’ve been a good idea for I would’ve figured out I was watching an anthology instead of a horror movie with an exceptionally hard to follow plot. When it finally dawned to me, well — you can only imagine the amount of facepalms.

This anthology consists of four short stories, based on urban legends. The first one starts off strong with a great buildup towards the end payoff. Second one is my favorite, starring Emilio Estevez as the penny arcade wizard caught in a web of a mysterious co-op machine. From hereon it’s a slight downhill with the third episode involving a priest, a killer on a 4×4 and some magical holy water that’ll save the day. The last part of Nightmares features our favorite 80s self-absorbed company man Richard Masur as the head of the family getting a special kind of rat infestation. Too bad this is the part that drags far behind the others, relying much too heavily on subpar special effects lifted straight out of 50s monster scifi movies.

Probably one of the least known of all the 80s anthologies, Nightmares is very uneven like most movies of the genre, but still definitely one of the more interesting ones, largely thanks to its strong cast.

80s-o-meter: 79%

Total: 68%

#801 Lady in White (1988)

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An indie spooky story, Lady in White is the kind of underdog movie you’d hope to be really good, but woefully its flaws ultimately outweight the positives.

The movie is much too slow paced and neither the effects or the ghost seem convincing, yet still the movie chooses to showcase both for even minutes at the time. Both the flashback narrative and the 60s social commentary of the racism just don’t seem to fit in with the rest of the movie, and leaving those along some other bits to the cutting room floor would’ve made the viewing a much tighter experience.

Lukas Haas is a natural in the lead role and I really digged the attempt to build a solid ghost story instead of just your typical slasher or a jump scare horror movie.

Although the movie wasn’t the buried treasure I was hoping for, I do recognise the aspects that have made it a favorite to so many so I still recommend people to check it out if the synopsis raises any kind of curiosity.

80s-o-meter: 50%

Total: 60%

#800 Aliens (1986)

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This is how it’s done.

James Cameron’s superb sequel to Ridley Scott’s impeccable 1979 Alien, Aliens picks up the story some sixty years later after the events took place in the first movie. Carrying the obvious weight of being a follow-up to a huge critical and box office triumph, Cameron successfully changed the pacing and all the right elements to bring the movie to the eighties, and makes the sequel his very own; Aliens matches the brilliance of the first movie, but in its own unique way.

There’s a lot to be loved here: Aliens’ roster of characters is well crafted and memorable, but this time around it’s Sigourney Weaver who steals the show with her stellar performance.

The movie is a technical marvel from the era when CGI effects were still unheard of. The universum and creatures are crafted with the best talent available at the time and give or take a few minute details, the vision of the distant future and its first rate execution still hold up well. Much to my surprise that iconic exoskeleton showdown in the end is still flawless, after more than 30 years since the movie was released.

In the time where subpar sequels were the unfortunate plague on the silver screen Cameron not only shows that superb follow-ups are possible, but that they can sometimes even match or surpass the original.

80s-o-meter: 88%

Total: 97%

#794 Elves (1989)

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Elves is a christmas horror movie with a homicidal Elf (yes, there’s actually only one) that looks like if Nosferatu and a werewolf mated.

There’s a strong home cam feeling to the movie, even so that I was on the borderline of dropping it altogether from the review list. The elf is mostly just a lifeless, plastic torso or its loose hands puppeteered outside the screen, and as pathetic as this sounds, it still manages to be the most credible actor of the bunch, thanks to not having any actual lines. Speaking of which, the horrid dialogue is the only part with some, limited entertainment value here.

Dan Haggerty – previously known from numerous different Grizzly Adams filmatisations – performs as the male lead looking like, but not actually acting as the santa. Haggerty seems like a capable actor, but here he seems mostly baffled how he actually ended up in this production.

Although the movie doesn’t live up to its premise, I still have to give it some credit for its outrageous synopsis – including some genetically engineered elves and nazis – and for being probably the only christmas horror movie original enough not to involve a lunatic killer dressed as a santa.

80s-o-meter: 72%

Total: 27%

#770 Deadly Friend (1986)

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An example of how lack of focus can ruin a movie even if it’s build on a solid foundation, Wes Craven’s Deadly Friend shows a lot of promise from the beginning.

We’re introduced to a brainiac who’s just moved in the suburbs with his home build robot, and soon goes on to befriend with another teen boy on the block and to fall in love with the girl next door. Given the overall tone so far my expectation was an action adventure with some sort of thriller twist. What follows instead is sort of a horror scifi with numerous hit and miss design choices that don’t always seem to mix well.

The nightmare sequences that are presented throughout the movie particularly feel very glued on and the whole path the leads to the reanimation is implausible and far fetched. The abusive father bit does give a motive for the eventual revenge, but otherwise it also seems like yet another unnecessary plot twist. Given all this, I’m surprised to say the movie isn’t a complete stinker; it makes for an easy watch and is one of those time capsule movies that’ll definitely take you back to the era.

Still, I would’ve been happier with a more solid, straight forward story instead of the hodgepodge presented here.

80s-o-meter: 87%

Total: 71%

#768 Strange Invaders (1983)

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A scifi action adventure with just a sprinkle of horror, Strange Invaders presses all the right buttons for me genre wise.

But, the disappointment soon set in after the movie started; everything seemed somehow a bit off and not quite exactly what I’d bargained for. It was only later in the movie when I realised the obvious nod to the 50’s sci-fi movies and after putting on those black & white goggles the experience became much more entertaining – even so that I would consider watching the movie again sometimes in the future without color.

Effect wise the movie wasn’t lined up to win any awards. But, although there is certain clumsiness to the aliens hatching out of their human form, the overall effect is impactful, thanks to some sort of gooey, veiny layer implemented under the latex mask.

One could argue that Paul Le Mat is somewhat of a miscast, and the movie could’ve gained from a bit more electrifying lead. But then again, through those 1950s sci-fi glasses his act blends into the movie quite adequately.

80s-o-meter: 48%

Total: 67%

#766 Halloween 2017: Night of the Creeps (1986)

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One of those movies that I’ve avoided watching for a long while, out of fear that it couldn’t meet my expectations, I’m happy to say that all my fears were unfounded: Night of the Creeps is a gem of a movie!

Night of the Creeps first found its way to the finnish video rental stores as a heavily cut version and ignited a lot of speculation with the youth of the time of an uncut version circling around somewhere, and this cult status followed it throughout the 90s.

Night of the Creeps is an almost perfect combination of comedy and horror – and even some elements of scifi thrown in the mix as well – and as a living dead movie it’s up there with the greats like Return of the Living Dead and Dead Heat.

80s-o-meter: 94%

Total: 98%

#765 Halloween 2017: 976-Evil (1988)

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Considering that Robert Englund had very much become a household name for horror as Freddy in the A Nightmare on Elm Street series, his directorial debut 976-Evil surprisingly lacks some essential ingedients to make a quality horror movie.

First of all, the movie is pretty low on scares. Secondly, as soon as the movie lead gets possessed by the evil, we kind of lose our protagonist there, leaving the audience with no-one to root for for the second half of the movie, effectively making the movie sort of a revenge porn instead of horror.

Stephen Geoffreys pretty much reprises his role from Fright Night, playing a nerdy character who finds himself empowered by the forces of the evil. While the performance here falls short of the other one, it’s still Geoffreys’ and his ability to create these somewhat of their trolley, but still much likeable characters that make this movie worth your time.

Even with its obvious shortcomings, 976-Evil is professionally executed movie that may unspectacular – but never dull.

80s-o-meter: 86%

Total: 70%

#764 Halloween 2017: Killer Party (1986)

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Killer Party seems to be two different movies rolled together as one. The first half of the movie is a lighthearted fraternity comedy with a few small spooks here and there. After that we have an almost The Exorcist like portion of the movie where all the killings happen. Both halves are fairly well made, the biggest difference being that the comedic part is utterly trivial, and the horror part manages to show a lot of potential.

And herein lies my gripe with the movie. Instead of mixing and matching they really should’ve cut the comedy part short and rely more on the horror part, which seems stronger of the two. Although the overall viewing experience is surprisingly professionally made and fluid, the problem with parts that don’t meet follows the movie through. At the start of the movie we are presented with not one, but two different prologues that have nothing to do with the rest of the movie and there are numerous of sub-plots that don’t really contribute to anything.

The fans of Paul Bartel might be interested to know he makes a brief visit as the Professor Zito in one of the unrelated plot loose ends.

80s-o-meter: 90%

Total: 82%

#763 Halloween 2017: Return of the Living Dead II (1988)

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The sequel – this time written and directed by Ken Wiederhorn – follows the look and feel of the original movie closely, and does not wander too far away from the winning formula. In this case the decision applaudable, making Return of the Living Dead II worth watching, even if it is the weaker movie of the two.

James Karen and Thom Mathews, the hilarious screaming and moaning duo from the first movie return as completely new characters here as if the events in the first movie never took place, but the movie thankfully acknowledges this by joking openly about it.

Some of the familiar reanimated cadavers – like the modernised version of the Tarman – are back, but the sequel falls behind the original in the overall quality of the effects, never surpassing its three year older big brother. The sequel trades in some of its quality to quantity by marching huge armies of living dead on the screen, ending up with a much less memorable array of baddies.

The series would go on to spawn three more sequels, one in 1993 and two in 2005, all of which are mostly unrelated to these eighties originals.

80s-o-meter: 90%

Total: 82%

#762 Halloween 2017: The Return of the Living Dead (1985)

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The Return of the Living Dead is a riot.

Starting off with an ‘official’ statement that all of the the events seen in the movie are true, it soon follows with a totally outrageous story of a misplaced army canister leaking out experimental gas capable of waking up the dead. Starting off as an unfortunate effect in a small warehouse soon gets out of hand as the substance spreads out, effectively waking up a cemetery full of cadavers, all hungry for brains.

I love the way the movie goes all in with everything it does, the effects are not only done exceptionally well, but they’re also visually pleasing and memorable. The meat locked cadaver, Tarman, army of the living dead and the ‘do you wanna party’ skeleton all beat the often poor, potato sack over the head antagonists many films try pass as a horror effect. Much of this outrageous genius must be credited to the director Dan O’Bannon – better known as the writer of Alien and Total Recall – whose pet project the movie was.

The Return of the Living Dead is a rare masterpiece that manages to hit the perfect spot between horror and comedy. If you still haven’t seen it, consider this your cue to do it!

80s-o-meter: 95%

Total: 98%

#761 Halloween 2017: Neon Maniacs aka Evil Dead Warriors (1986)

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Let’s get this out of the way: Neon Maniacs’s plot is a total nonsense.

A gang of ghoulies start spawning from under the Golden Gate bridge and start killing people – mostly young – around San Francisco. These creatures are straight out of carnival kind of goofy looking, and as is it turns out they can be killed using nothing but just plain old water. No Oscar winning material here.

Fortunately this nonsense is executed with a top notch B-movie style in the best tradition of the 80s: There’s gory and gooey effects the Neon Maniacs melting, parties and cheesy musical performances, all of which make otherwise mediocre Neon Maniacs a fun and rememberable slasher horror movie that offers a refreshing twist on this sometimes very tired genre.

80s-o-meter: 90%

Total:80%

#760 Halloween 2017: Zombie High (1987)

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Zombie High joins the rank of horror comedies that are dark in their humor and rarely wander off to being too silly and trivial. The movie is also very aware that the concept of a boarding school run by a staff who’s reached immortality through harvesting life-sustaining chemicals from the students’ brains is kind of a far fetch, but manages to tell the story in a fashion that lures the viewer to play along with the gag, if not to completely buy it.

The movie is pretty low on frights, and could’ve milked lots of additional shock value out of its ‘everyone is involved’ theme that is very briefly visited during the police station scene. The light-hearted social commentary about lively young people being turned to zombies that wear suits, carry briefcases and go on with the lives as a very successful drones is delightful one, especially with the small gag in the few last seconds to the film.

Although the script doesn’t provide her much to work with, Virginia Madsen, who’s playing the protagonist here, stands head and shoulders above your average, totally forgettable B-movie actresses, and really brings the movie up a notch or two.

Zombie High is a nifty little horror comedy that will keep you easily entertained – but probably not spooked – during its 90 minutes runtime.

80s-o-meter: 82%

Total: 70%

#759 Halloween 2017: Transformations aka Alien Transformations (1988)

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By pure coincidence, Transformations is the second movie in a row featuring a succubus in its story. While in Deadly Blessing we heard warnings about such demonic spirit, here we actually see one taking a female form to infect a lonely space traveller with a deadly disease, who then goes on to cause an epidemy on a distant mining colony located somewhere in the outer edges of the galaxy.

As a result of mediocre cinematography and set design Transformations can never establish the outer space planetary location and shake off its strong shot-in-a-studio look and feel, which brings the experience down quite a bit. That – coupled with the camera zoom-ins and subpar acting – make the overall experience clumsy, but not quite enough to warrant involuntary, campy humour.

The movie does has a very admirable underdog tone to it that kept me rooting for it for quite a while. Unfortunately there is no actual payoff here, and the end of the movie is just as lukewarm as the movie itself.

80s-o-meter: 65%

Total: 52%

#758 Halloween 2017: Deadly Blessing (1981)

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Wes Craven’s Deadly Blessing is often seen as a transitional work between his 1977 horror classic The Hills Have Eyes and the huge commercial success that followed with A Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s an original, professional but not mainstream experiment suffering from a slight identity crisis.

In Deadly Blessing Craven has all the right pieces set up, but when the show really starts, he’s not quite sure how to put them all together to make a solid story. There’s an interesting concept of a strict religious group with a strong leader (Ernest Borgnine) and his rebellious son (Jeff East) clashing together and the latter tightroping between the tempting freedom and being shunned out of the community. This intriguing tension alone would’ve been enough to craft a tight thriller.

Instead, Deadly Blessing tries to plaster on a horror element in form of spiders, snakes, tales of succubi and such. These never quite seem to stick with what’s seen on the silver screen, leaving the viewer puzzled what exactly to make of all this. Especially the ending seems weak, and a lost possibility considering the vast possibilities here.

80s-o-meter: 65%

Total: 62%

#757 Halloween 2017: Cellar Dweller (1988)

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Playing like an elongated episode of The Twilight Zone or Amazing Stories, Cellar Dweller presents us with a far fetched concept of comic book drawings taking a life of their own and killing residents in an art colony.

Jeffrey Combs known from the cult classics Re-animator and From Beyond makes a brief visit as the original Cellar Dweller comic book artist killed in the very first minutes of the movie.

80s-o-meter: 70%

Total: 58%

#756 Halloween 2017: The Gate (1987)

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A rare canadian movie to make it to the blog, The Gate is a horror adventure about two kids opening up a hole to another dimension in their backyard, causing hordes of demons spawning out and breaking havoc.

The movie is fairly well done underdog, beating many Hollywood movies in their own game. While the stop motion demon gnomes reek of a low budget, the zombie construction worker opening portals by walking through the walls boasts a convincing makeup and has just the right amount of spookiness to him that suits the movie perfectly.

Strictly speaking The Gate is not a horror movie, but more like a ghost story done with a Spielbergian touch. Therefore, how much you will actually enjoy the movie pretty much boils down to how in touch you are with your 12-year old self that still enjoys videogame-like end boss fights.

80s-o-meter: 81%

Total: 71%

#755 Halloween 2017: The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988)

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Wes Craven’s The Serpent and the Rainbow is an intensive, palm sweating ride that doesn’t really hold back. Shot on a location in Haiti, the movie wonderfully captures the essence of steamy voodoo huts, black magic and colorful potions mixed with the whole spectrum of local people, politics, nature and fauna.

The story follows a scientist visiting Haiti in hopes of learning the secrets of a potion able to turn its victims into a paralysed dead alive, seemingly dead but still alive, and he soon realises he’s dealing with forces beyond his grasp. The movie constantly tightropes on the fine line between dream and nightmare, with every scene capable going either way. The scene with the zombie midget bride is one of the eeries scenes I’ve seen this halloween, and one that will surely haunt me for some time.

It’s only in the last few meters of the movie that it looses its core focus and resorts to some needless screen effects that don’t really match up with the quality seen before in the movie. Even so, The Serpent and the Rainbow is regarded by many as Craven’s best – and I’m inclined to agree.

80s-o-meter: 80%

Total: 86%

#746 Halloween 2017: Shocker (1989)

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I’m willing to cut most movies some slack even if the concept seems highly implausible. But Shocker just takes things much too far expecting a leap of faith of such a gigantic proportions that most people will probably fall short of taking it.

Directed and written by Wes Craven, the movie’s antagonist is an omnipotent killer not restricted by the limits of the physical world, not unlike Freddie Kruger from Craven’s earlier movie series A Nightmare on Elm Street. The problem is that Horace Pinker isn’t nowhere near as strong a character and can’t support a feature film. In fact, he’d have a hard time cutting it as a side character in a more decent short movie.

Shocker also pulls off the quite unique combination of being unbelievable up to the point of being utterly stupid, but still being totally unoriginal. The very same concept of a murderer coming back from the dead after an execution in the electric chair has been done before previously in Prison, Destroyer and The Horror Show, all of which are much superior films to this one.

Probably the only positive note is the movie’s rock induced heavy metal soundtrack featuring selected tracks from Megadeth, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop and Bonfire that give the movie some good music video -like oomph to it.

80s-o-meter: 82%

Total: 47%