Class of 1999 (1990)

August 28, 2018

Directed by: Mark L. Lester

Written by: Mark L. Lester, C. Courtney Joyner

Starring: Bradley Gregg, Traci Lind, Malcolm McDowell

Budget: $5,200,000

Quote: "The mind is a terrible thing to waste - don't make me waste yours."

Trivia: According to Director Mark L. Lester, the two films that influenced the visual style of the film were both The Road Warrior and The Asphault Jungle. The Road Warrior influences are completely noticeable in the look of the cars and the school itself on the outside.



Alright, this movie is much more of a scifi flick than a horror movie, but it does have certain horror elements, TubiTV had it listed as a horror film, and it was a pretty fun film. Watching this, I vaguely remembered this from my childhood. I must've been ten and saw it a couple years after it came out. I didn't remember much other than robot teachers killing kids, some weird drug that kids crack under their nose and one of the teachers mentions playing war games. The movie is actually pretty good and it has punk kids as the heroes (what was it about the eighties movies making criminals be either punks or rastas?). The film also has Clockwork Orange's Alex, Mr. Malcolm McDowell, Stacy Keach as a military nut with bleached hair, white eye contacts and a terrible mustache, and Ms. Foxy Brown herself, the beautiful Pam Grier. I guess that's what we'll all look like in 1999. Also, if you look real closely, you can see a very young Rose McGowan in her first movie role. Like, Clockwork Orange, this film focuses on a bleak future with the young run roughshod and have crippled society. This also seemed to be a common fear of the Reagan Era (and shortly thereafter).

Hereditary (2018)

August 27, 2018

Directed by: Ari Aster

Written by: Ari Aster

Starring: Toni Collette, Miley Shapiro, Gabriel Byrne

Budget: $10,000,000

Quote: "Well, now your sister is dead! And I know you miss her and I know it was an accident and I know you're in pain and I wish could take that away for you. I WISH I could shield you from the knowledge that you did what you did, but you're sister is dead! She's gone forever!"

Trivia: In an interview, Alex Wolff explains that he wanted to actually break his own nose for the scene where his character slams his head into a desk. When it was time for the scene to be shot, Wolff slams his head into the desk only to discover that the top was foam and the bottom was hard. He dislocated his jaw (which is a previous injury the actor has had) for the scene.

I started this horror journey back in the beginning of July and when asking my friends what horror/scary movies I should watch the two that came up over and over were A Quiet Place and Hereditary. A Quiet Place was good but I think Hereditary is great. It is actually a legitimately scary movie! It's a slow burn so if you are planning on seeing it, give it patience, it more than pays off in the end.

Slumber Party Massacre 2 (1987)

August 26, 2018

Directed by: Deborah Brock

Written by: Deborah Brock

Starring: Crystal Bernard, Jennifer Rhodes, Kimberly McArthur

Budget: $500,000

Quote: "I am you, and you are me, until we go all the way."

Trivia: Many characters in the movie have names in homage to other horror movies. Not only Officers Krueger and Voorhies, but Courtney's last name is Bates. The neighbors from the original have been renamed the Cravens instead of the Deverauxs in homage to&nbspWes Craven. One of the main characters is named Sally Burns because Marilyn Burns played Sally Hardesty in the original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974).


I am now in my mid-thirties and grew up in the 1990s. What that means is that I spent much of my adolescence walking the horror aisle of the local Blockbuster. Without the internet and no access to Fangoria magazine I had to rely on the covers and pictures on the back of the VHS cases when deciding on which movies to rent. I am pretty sure I watched all three of the Slumber Party Massacres. I didn't remember the first or the third, but I have a very vivid memory of watching the second one. This is because it is such a bizarre movie. Having to outdo the original which was already literally a parody of itself, the second one has one of the weirdest villains in horror movie history. Several minutes of the film are dedicated to impromptu music videos. Slumber Party Massacre II is a movie that takes nothing seriously, especially itself. The movie takes campiness to extremes and the genre is better for it.

Blood Feast (1963)

August 25, 2018

Directed by: Hershell Gordon Lewis

Written by: Allison Louise Downe (Hershell Gordon Lewis)

Starring: William Kerwin, Mal Arnold, Connie Mason

Budget: $24,500

Quote: "Have you ever had... an Egyptian Feast?... A feast like this has not been performed in 5000 years."

Trivia: Producer David F. Friedman came up with some very effective publicity stunts for "Blood Feast" which included giving theater goers vomit bags reading "You may need this when you see 'Blood Feast'" and obtaining an injunction against the film in Sarasota, Florida, which of course only generated more interest in the film.


"Have you ever  an Egyptian feast?" And so begins Hershell Gordon Lewis' move from sexploitation director to the king of gore. Blood Feast came out in 1963. Let's just take a minute to let that sink in. The Beatles were playing Ed Sullivan. John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Lawrence of Arabia will win best picture at the 1963 at the Academy Awards that still have two different awards for Black and White and Color films. In the midst of this, came Blood Feast. The first gore film (double check on this, I could be wrong). I can just imagine how insane this film must have seen to viewers in 1963. The acting is atrocious, the film itself is not made particularly well, but what it does have going to itself is gore. Hershell Gordon Lewis will go on to make a good dozen other gore films throughout his career, but this was the first one and the one that won him the throne as the King of Gore.

Piranha (1978)

August 24, 2018

Directed by: Joe Dante

Written by: Richard Robinson, John Sayles

Starring: Bradford Dillman, Heather Menzies-Ulrich

Budget: $600,000

Quote: People eat fish, Grogan. Fish don't eat people.

Trivia: Universal Studios attempted to sue New World for spoofing Jaws (1975). However, Steven Spielberg saw the movie in advance and loved it. After that, Universal dropped the lawsuit.





The horror genre has always fed off of its own successes. Whenever one of its own hits, you can expect dozens of imitations to hit the theaters or go straight to video. Most of these ripoffs are really, really terrible. But every now and then there comes a couple of great ones. Friday the 13th was the filmmakers attempt at doing Halloween. Italian director Lucio Fulci blatantly ripped off George Romero's zombie films with his own Zombi (Zombie 2). And then there's Piranha. Created for the sole purpose of capitalizing on Jaws' success, Piranha is actually a really fun movie with a lot going for it in its own right. Produced by the lord of exploitation, Roger Corman, Piranha also marks the directorial debut of Joe Dante who will go on to to fame with Gremlins, the Howling, and the "It's a Good Life" segment from the 1983 Twilight Zone: The Movie. Piranha captures the fun of the late seventies and ins't afraid to push the boundaries of taste a bit.

The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

August 23, 2018

Directed by: Amy Holden Jones

Written by: Rita Mae Brown

Starring: Michelle Michaels, Robin Stille, Michael Villela

Budget: $250,000

Quote: "You're pretty. All of you are very pretty. I love you. It takes a lot of love for a person to... do this. You know you want it. You'll like it. Yes..."

Trivia: Rita Mae Brown wrote a screenplay for a parody of teen/slasher flicks and titled it "Sleepless Nights". However, when she submitted it to the producers, they filmed it as if it weren't a parody and retitled it "Slumber Party Massacre". As a result, the movie displays a lot more humor, both intended and unintended, than others of this genre.

Drill, baby drill! From Roger Corman (who else?) comes one of the most aggressively misogynistic films of the 1980s. In this movie, women are literally being torn apart by a long phallic tool wielded by a crazed man. The film is chocked full of gratuitous nudity and tracking shots that are meant to purposefully exploit the female body (they move to key areas during shower scenes and group clothes changing scenes). Meanwhile, the girls in the film wear next to nothing are too focused on boys to realize they are about to be murdered. This leaves all of us with the important question, what sicko wrote and directed this filth? Written and directed by women. In fact the entire Slumber Party Massacre franchise is directed by women (See how I set up that amazing twist at the end? See? Alright, I'm no M. Night Shyamalan, but at least I didn't make you sit through 90 minutes of people running away from wind like he did in The Happening... seriously M. Night, what happened?).

Hellraiser (1988)

August 22, 2018

Directed by: Clive Barker

Written by: Clive Barker

Starring: Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence

Budget: $1,000,000

Quote: "I thought I'd gone to the limits. I hadn't. The Cenobites gave me an experience beyond limits. Pain and pleasure, indivisible."

Trivia: The Chatterer and Butterball Cenobites had dialogue in the original script. However, when their make-up made coherent speech impossible, their lines were given to the Female Cenobite and especially Pinhead, which helped to cement his reputation as the film's trademark character.


I remember first seeing Hellraiser at my friend Josh's house who lived across the street when I was way too young. The monster Frank was terrifying to me. But it was the scene at the end when he is laughs to himself "Jesus wept" before his head is torn apart by chains that has been forever burnt into my mind.

There is really nothing that I can write about Hellraiser that has not already been written a thousand times before so I'm going to skip what happens in the film and make this one short and hopefully sweet. I have seen this movie a dozen times before but wanted to watch it for two reasons. First, Joe Bob Briggs hosted this movie on his now famous The Last Drive In and I love his commentary and insights. Second, my wife has never seen any of the Hellraisers before and I felt it was part of my marital duty to make sure she doesn't go through life without seeing this gem. The movie is bad ass!