Saturday Nightmares

Hey, kids! Do you love your horror sumthin’ fierce? Are you lookin’ for a place to mingle amongst your fellow fiends and bask in the warm, green glow of famous zombies and assorted masters of horror? Well then, Saturday Nightmares is the place for you! This June 3rd-5th, the Sheraton Meadowlands Hotel in East Rutherford, NJ, goes to HELL...and plays host to horror’s elite.

Up-and-coming convention Saturday Nightmares, which runs this June 3-5, 2011, in East Rutherford, NJ, has quite an impressive lineup. From a live screening of The Birds with star Tippi Hedren to a Martin screening with John Amplas to Barbara Steele introducing The Pit and the Pendulum, it has a little something for everyone.

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.

After the debacle of Puppet Master – Axis of Evil (review here), I was asked to list off some of my favorite Full Moon films. I listed Meridian despite having seen it last in 1992, recalling it as both an atmospheric and original romantic horror film. I was thirteen then. Most probably it was the sex and nudity that won me over.

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.

One of the defining characteristics of 70s horror is the thick and pervasive atmosphere that distinguishes them amongst their peers. Films like Let’s Scare Jessica to Death and Phantasm invoke such strong, yet unique, impressions that it’s impossible to find others exactly like them.

Panned by critics and moviegoers alike upon its direct-to-video release back in 2000, Bruiser never really found its audience and, ten years later, seems to have been entirely forgotten. And while I realize that I’m in the minority here, I’ve always considered this one to be a bit of an overlooked little gem. George A.

More often than not, the modern slasher film often feels as if its filmmakers have zero understanding of what makes the subgenre tick - best intentions be damned. Somewhere along the way, many of these poor misguided souls figure it’s best to provide a mixture of laughs and gore, with the most crucial element – suspense – falling by the wayside.

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.

It’s hard to imagine a world where Body Double is a Ken Widerhorn (Return of the Living Dead part II) film. Originally, Brian De Palma had intended to write and produce, but opted to get behind the camera when another of his projects fell through.

The Legacy has all the makings of a typical 70s pedigree horror film: marquee stars (Katharine Ross and Sam Elliott), a competent director (Return of the Jedi’s Richard Marquand), and lavish production values. At first glance, it’s the kind of movie that looks like it might easily play on a double bill with The Omen, The Other or even The Sentinel.

1980’s Prom Night was among the first slasher films to come bursting forth from the post-Halloween floodgates and, while it doesn’t seem like you can find a positive review of it anymore, it was a big success then and remains one of the most enjoyable entries in the slasher subgenre.

When did TV movies become bastions for battered housewives and other domestic tribulations? There was a time (in the 70s, mainly) when cable network original films were as worthwhile for horror fans as whatever genre offering was playing at their local theater. It was network television that introduced us to the Zuni Fetish Doll and Larry Drake in scarecrow attire. Now all that remains is cheating husbands on the Lifetime Network.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll come right out and tell you that I’ve always been rather fond of the Howling franchise. From werewolf orgies to carnival freaks, there’s always been something for me to enjoy concerning the unlikely number of Roman numerals that followed Joe Dante’s classic.