80s slasher

Coolidge Corner Theater is screening one of the best slasher flicks of all time this weekend, completely uncut and on 35mm to boot! Needless to say, this is a rare occurrence for fans of Tony Maylam's The Burning, and Boston horror fans shouldn't even think about passing it up! Best of all, we're giving you a chance to win some tickets for this weekend's midnight shows!

Bargain basement horror doesn’t get much stranger than this unusual little effort from 1985. Ostensibly unfolding as another entry in the long-running 80’s slasher canon, that label only applies to a piece of these truly wacked out proceedings as there’s so much oddity on display throughout Horror House on Highway 5 that it truly needs to be experienced more than once in order to catch everything.

The Prey isn’t a movie to be recommended lightly. You’ve really got to have spent some time mining the depths of the slasher subgenre in order to gleam any appreciation from this little oddity. It’s not particularly well made - padded to the nines with more wildlife footage than most nature documentaries and bogged down by the most lugubrious pace imaginable – and it fails at creating any substantial tension or suspense.

It’s no secret that the early 80s saw many fledgling filmmakers scrambling to become the next John Carpenter by capitalizing on the infamous slasher boom, and Madman’s genesis was certainly no different. And while it was one of four ‘campfire slashers’ made in 1981 (Friday the 13th, part 2, The Burning and The Final Terror being the others), it is perhaps the most distinct.

If you’ve ever seen a slasher movie, you’ve seen The House on Sorority Row, a movie that stalks its way through the motions with such tenacity that you can gauge its success by keeping a cliché checklist at the ready.

Introduction: Is there a better time to watch horror movies than on Saturday night? Be it alone or with friends, with beer or without, there’s just something about letting the stresses of the week slip away in the presence of a deranged killer, a zombie apocalypse, alien invaders, hungry vampires, werewolf orgies (if you haven’t seen Howling II, shame on you!) or any such combination.

Sorority Row is shaping up nicely. From its attractive cast to its hard R rating, the slasher fanatic in me is grinning from ear to ear. I'm really pulling for this remake to get everything right since the original film, while very enjoyable, could be improved upon. Today we've got a groovy (and truncated) clip to help whet your appetite.