Category: Horror

#80 Not of This Earth (1988)

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Reviewing B-grade movies is not maybe the easiest of tasks. They’re clumsy, amateurish and in many cases outright inane. But some of them do have the underdog mentality which makes you root for them, like you would a jamaican bobsled team.

Not of This Earth starring the controversial porn star Traci Lords is not a good movie by any standard. It has that certain cheapness written all over it: Bad acting, cheap effects, boom mics and crew visible in shots. The script is dumb and dialogue sucks and all in all it haas that feel of a cheap porn movie, but without the actual sex scenes.

Therefore it’s a big surprise the movie manages to entertain. Why, I have no clue – it just does.

That’s just the way underdogs are sometimes.

80s-o-meter: 66%

Total: 61%

#63 Christmas 2014: Scrooged (1988)

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Frank Cross, a hard-boiled eighties TV executive (Bill Murray) wants to smash all the ratings in the christmas time by producing a modernised and bastardised version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to the live TV. Soon he finds out himself being haunted by the ghosts as grim as the show he’s putting on.

I’m not too keen on modernisations of the old classics, so every now and then it’s good to see someone get it right for once. Scrooged is one of these rare cases and its meta take on the story-within-the-story of the Christmas Carol works well brought to the modern age.

Murray plays the role of a self-absorbed asshole so beautifully that it’s almost a shame to see him getting soft at the end. Supporting him is Bobcat Goldthwait in his typical typecast loud, trembling voiced, nervous dude and he fits the role here perfectly.

It’s entertaining, it’s very eighties and it still has that message of christmas in it. There’s nobody, NOBODY on this earth who plays a totally self-absorbed asshole better than in a more hilarious way than Murray. Very much recommended!

80s-o-meter: 97%

Total: 91%

#56 Inseminoid aka Horror Planet (1981)

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As this blog is generally about american movies of the eighties, I usually steer away from british and australian films – they sometimes get some things right mimicking the Hollywood style, but usually lack that certain magic. But as rules are meant to be broken, and being the nice guy that I am, I sometimes give some titles that sound or look interesting enough a benefit of a doubt. Plus, I’m a sucker for almost all the eighties scifi!

Inseminoid is a british scifi horror movie taking place in a mining planet far away in the space. Except that it don’t feel like it. It feels like it’s shot in a mine and a studio right here on earth and never manages to establish that feeling of an exotic planet.

The plot heavily rips off Alien that came our only two years before, taking the action from a space ship to a planet. The crew members find some alien crystals, one of the women gets raped by a creature, turns into a crazed killer and from thereon it goes pretty much like you’d except with no plot twists worth mentioning.

Everything in the movie has that low production value feel to it, computers look like painted cardboard boxes, film crew’s shadow can be accidentally seen in various scenes and the dialogue and acting is horrid. The film hasn’t really hasn’t aged well at all, and looks much more outdated than the older Alien movie. The overall look and feel has that quality to it that if the dialogue was in some slavic language, this one would easily pass as some sort of eastern Europe scifi knock-off.

On top of it all, many scenes are very needlessly prolonged, in an attempt to reach that needed hour and 30 minutes runtime.

It does have some strange charm to it, but it’s finally ruined by the fact that it’s just plain boring to watch. And even though the kitsch factor is high here, I can’t see myself recommending this movie to anyone.

80s-o-meter: 54%

Total: 23%

#50 Ghostbusters (1984)

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What do you know, we’re up to movie number 50 already! To celebrate that let’s take a look at a very special movie from 1984.

Ghostbusters originated as brainchild of Dan Aykroyd of the Saturday Night Fever fame in the early eighties. After several rewrites with the co-starring Harold Ramis the shooting finally started on late 1983 with Bill Murray, Rick Moranis and Sigourney Weaver on board.

Everything in the movie is top notch: It’s funny, scary, exciting and still fresh after 30 years. It’s one of those rare movies where just about everything locks into place: It’s unique, it’s funny, it’s adventurous, scary, iconic, and sounds and looks awesome.

80s-o-meter: 98%

Total: 100%

#48 Nightmare Beach (1989)

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I usually shy away from the eighties films that aren’t at least partly produced in USA, but this is one of those rare occasions where I make an exception. Nightmare Beach, directed by Umberto Lenzi, has its country of origin marked as Italy, but is filmed in Florida with american actors. And as whole it’s totally passable for a Hollywood film of the era.

Plus; it’s just far too good to pass up in this blog.

Eighties-wise the movie presses almost all the right buttons, taking place at a coastal beach town during the spring break and featuring killers, a great soundtrack gruesome kills, motorcycle gangs and bad cops. It’s a shameless entertainment that gives you exactly what you’d expect in a very nice package.

80s-o-meter: 93%

Total: 83%

#42 Creepshow 2 (1987)

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The sequel to the 1982 original kicks off with ‘Old Chief Wood’nhead’, a tale of and old wooden statue waking up to have a revenge. Concept and scares wise it’s the weakest short story of the bunch, but it’s sure good to see George Kennedy getting back to higher quality productions after his weak start to the 80s.

Following up is ‘The Raft’, which is a treat. It’s exactly the kind of horror story that would’ve failed as a whole movie, but works perfectly as a short story in an anthology like this.

The last one, ‘The Hitchhiker’ is what the nightmares are made of, and I have to applaud the way the whole gore puppetry thing has been taken to comedic levels towards the end. Good stuff!

Overall, Creepshow 2 bests its predecessor and as an horror anthology, it’s the very best that 80s has to offer.

80s-o-meter: 78%

Total: 86%

#41 Creepshow (1982)

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Creepshow an anthology of short horror stories written by Stephen King, tied together by a comic book theme and consisting of five individual stories.

It all starts very weakly with “Father’s Day”, a total mess that Ed Harris in his minor role cannot save. Luckily the pace soon picks up with ‘The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill’ featuring Stephen King himself as a redneck farmer who comes in touch with a meteor with a catastrophic outcome.

Third story, ‘Something To Tide You Over’ featuring Leslie Nielsen is the strongest one of the bunch and manages to be dark, agonising and panic inducing, while the fourth segment ‘The Crate’ comes very close to tie and is easily the funniest short story here.

It all ends with ‘They’re Creeping Up On You’ – a kind of decent short, but the one that fails to offer any surprises.

Compared to the later Cat’s Eye, this one is much more solid and convincing package out of the two with tons of black humour and a wide selection of phobias to cater to most tastes. Recommended!

80s-o-meter: 65%

Total: 82%

#40 Dolls (1987)

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Dolls is a horror title I had no former knowledge about. Like you guessed, it’s about these little Dolls coming alive and starting to kill folks. So, not really my favourite type of movie on the paper.

Where Dolls wins you over is the overall mood, its setting and the characters ripped right out of “What was the 80s like?” -book. It’s not a too scary movie per se, but it does get pretty gory, considering its overall faery tale like mood. The stop motion parts involving the Dolls feel really outdated, but luckily there aren’t too many of them.

In the end it feels like a prolonged episode of Twilight Zone, but that’s not a bad thing at all. The team has captured that perfect eerie feeling and it makes a decent and fun watch for those dark late autumn nights. It’s a gory, entertaining bed time story for adults that somehow manages to be better than the synopsis would suggest.

80s-o-meter: 72%

Total: 65%

#17 Cat’s Eye (1985)

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While he’s still a bestseller, Stephen King’s popularity really peeked in the eighties resulting in many movie adaptations of his books and short stories.

Enter Cat’s Eye, a collection of three individual horror comedy novels linked together very loosely by a cat that wanders around the city between the stories. If you are familiar with Spielberg’s Amazing Stories, there certainly is the same vibe here.

First one of the stories stars James Woods who signs up to a clinic to quit smoking, to find soon their methods to keep to clean are pretty drastic. Second story features Robert Hays who is unvoluntarily put as a centerpiece of a sadistic wager. These two stories, especially the the one with Hays work well.

Then there’s the third one with Drew Barrymore that would be kind of cool if you are an eight year old. Although featured in the poster and ending the anthology and tying the cat theme together, this is the odd one out with a pocket size goblin breaking havoc inside a little girl’s room. I was expecting a grand finale but it really falls flat in the end.

Still, the two first ones are very entertaining.

80s-o-meter: 80%

Total: 65%

#5 Full Moon High (1981)

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Like the t-shirt in the poster suggests, Full Moon High is a werewolf movie based on the campy 50s I Was a Teenage Werewolf teen flick, and a some kind of parody at that.

Not having seen the original movie, the parody part escapes me, but otherwise Full Moon High is kind of a crazy comedy done in the vein of Airplane. There are a few small chuckles to be had, but the writing is nowhere sharp enough to warrant all the nonsense we’re seeing on the screen.

The comedic concept of Full Moon High was picked up again four years later with pretty much the same, uninspired concept in perhaps even more mediocre, but more commercially succesful Teen Wolf. People’s fascination with werewolves has always totally escaped me, and Full Moon High nothing but strengthens my opinion at the subject.

80s-o-meter: 55%

Total: 58%