A couple of flannel-clad Pennsylvanian buddies decide to throw a Christmas party for themselves on a snowy winter's night with pizza, beer, and even CDs. However, this party of two soon becomes a party of three when a masked killer—a nocturnal butcher, if you will—strangles, scalps, and dismembers the unfortunate revelers.
Nocturnal Butcher is what I consider the last true shot-on-video movie before SOV saw a revival in popularity. It was made by the only two people who appear in…
Mixing psychological, folk, and slasher horror, Nekros is by far my favorite of Michael J. Murphy's Greek films, which are often dreadfully boring. A series of murders occur on a small island while its residents and visitors are quarantined during a plague scare, and they could be tied to the mystic nightmares of the island's tourism rep.
It's a rare occasion when Murphy doesn't waylay his movie with incessant melodrama. While Nekros is in no hurry to tell its story,…
We're a week past Fat Tuesday, but I wanted to finish Brad Carter's novelization before revisiting the original film, of which I had hardly any memory. Along with injecting a whole lot more police procedural and background stuff into the story, the author did the antagonist here pretty dirty. William Metzo's exquisite, high camp performance of Mardi Gras Massacre's ritual killer is the kind of character B-movies are made for, and the book sadly couldn't carry over his dastardly charisma…
Carolyn Brandt worship. Artful wide shots of temperamental desert rats. Family fun at the rodeo. A spectre that haunts a dilapidated shanty on a barren ranch, sword in hand.
Blood Shack feels like a very personal film. Ray Dennis Steckler photographs his ex-wife playing herself amidst a lifeless, dusty landscape in a way that is both admiring and wistful. The walls of the house are covered in posters of the pair's older movies like The Thrill Killers and Incredibly Strange…
