Top 30 Horror Movies Based on Fan Reviews

To read the original article go HERE!

We are always sharing our top films as writers on the site but I wanted to share with you all the Top 30 films based on your reviews. The list below is generated based on reviews and a special sauce algorithm that we have built. So in a nut shell, reader reviews, and special sauce = Top 30 Fan Favorite Horror Films.

Right off the bat its nice to see a low budget Canadian film namely End of the Line on the list as its a fantastic movie. It also boggles me how many of you liked Day Watch which also made the list and is a movie I couldn't bare to even finish.

Checkout the list of Top Films below. The top list is ordered by % of Approval based on reviews contributed by you the readers. Some films I do not agree with but for the most part I think that its safe to say if you are a horror fan and have not seen a film on this list you owe it to yourself to go see it. If you have seen any of these films feel free to submit your own review as it will impact its overall approval rating for the good or bad. To see the reviews for the specific film simply click on the title.

 

#1. Jaws

Based on Peter Benchley's best-selling novel, Steven Spielberg's 1975 shark saga set the standard for the New Hollywood popcorn blockbuster while frightening millions of moviegoers out of the water.

 

 

#2. Pans Labyrinth

Award-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro delivers a unique, richly imagined epic with PAN’S LABYRINTH, a gothic fairy tale set against the postwar repression of Franco’s Spain.

 

 

#3. Alien

On what should have been a trip back to Earth, the Nostromo, a mining freighter, is automatically re-routed to a desolate planet after receiving an SOS coming from it. After the crew is awakened, they investigate the source of the SOS, and discover a derelict alien ship on the planet.

 

#4. A Tale of Two Sisters

Once upon a time, two little girls were sent to live with their wicked stepmother in the country. Su-Mi and Su-Yeon have had to go away for a little while because they've been sick, but now they're back in the family home, deep in the countryside and at the mercy of their seriously nutty stepmom, Eun-Joo.

 

#5. The Wicker Man (1973)

When a young girl mysteriously disappears, Police Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward of "The Equalizer") travels to a remote Scottish island to investigate. But this pastoral community, led by the strange Lord Summerisle (a brilliant performance by the legendary Christopher Lee), is not what it seems as the devout Christian detective soon uncovers a secret society of wanton lust and pagan blasphemy.

 

#6. Dawn of the Dead

George Romero's 1978 follow-up to his classic Night of the Living Dead is quite terrifying and gory (those zombies do like the taste of living flesh). But in its own way, it is just as comically satiric as the first film in its take on contemporary values.

 

#7. Battle Royale

One of the most shocking and controversial films in recent Japanese cinema. A high school class has been chosen to be in a "Battle Royale," a fatal game, because of their disrespect, sloth and violence. Thinking they are about to enjoy a field trip, a class of 9th graders calmly boards a bus that brings them face-to-face with the worst instincts of mankind.

 

#8. Seven

A film about two homicide detectives' desperate hunt for a serial killer who justifies his crimes as absolution for the world's ignorance of the Seven Deadly Sins. The movie takes us from the tortured remains of one victim to the next as the sociopathic "John Doe" sermonizes to Detectives Sommerset and Mills -- one sin at a time.

 

#9. An American Werewolf in L...

In John Landis' (THE BLUES BROTHERS, ANIMAL HOUSE) dripping black comedy, two American students (David Naughton and Griffin Dunne) on a European vacation wander into a creepy local pub in Northern England and are quickly thrown out.  Stranded and alone in the dark countryside, the pair get lost in their search for warm lodging. Little do they know that they are about to be changed forever by an ancient terror as they walk along the moors on a moonlit night.

 

#10. The Sixth Sense

In this tense tale of psychological terror, Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is a child psychologist whose new patient has a problem far outside his usual area of expertise. Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) is six-years-old and claims to see the spirits of dead people all around him. It seems that Cole has psychic powers and can channel the ghosts of those who were troubled.

 

#11. Poltergeist

A young family are visited by ghosts in their home. At first the ghosts appear friendly, moving objects around the house to the amusement of everyone, then they turn nasty and start to terrorize the family before they "kidnap" the youngest daughter.

 

#12. Scream

Scream is at once a slasher film and a tongue-in-cheek position paper on the "dead teenagers" movies of the late 1970s/early 1980s that plays as half-parody, half-tribute. Sydney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is having a rough time lately: she's still getting over the brutal rape and murder of her mother a year ago, and now one of her friends (Drew Barrymore) has been killed by a lunatic who harassed her with terrifying phone calls, then stabbed her to death while wearing a Halloween costume.

 

#13. Freaks

The film stars Harry Earles as Hans, a suave midget who belongs to the sideshow of a seedy circus and who makes the mistake of falling in love with the beautiful Cleopatra, one of the "normal" circus performers.

 

 

#14. Aliens

Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the sole survivor from the original ALIEN, is awakened after 57 years of drifting through space, her stories disbelieved by Company executives who tell her that the alien’s planet is now inhabited and colonized.

 

#15. Black Sheep (2007)

There are 40 million sheep in New Zealand... and they're pissed off!. Terrified of sheep and dosed up on therapy, Henry Oldfield returns to his family's farm to sell out to his older brother Angus, unaware that something baaaad is going on: Angus' reckless genetic engineering program.

 

#16. The Thing

John Carpenter's The Thing is both a remake of Howard Hawks' 1951 film of the same name and a re-adaptation of the John W. Campbell Jr. story "Who Goes There?" on which it was based. Carpenter's film is more faithful to Campbell's story than Hawks' version and also substantially more reliant on special effects, provided in abundance by a team of over 40 technicians, including veteran creature-effects artists Rob Bottin and Stan Winston.

 

#17. Shaun of the Dead

Shaun is in a rut. He’s 29 and coasting through life, never threatening to fulfill his potential. He lives with Ed (Good name! Er, Ed the Ed) his best friend from junior school and Pete, his lesser friend from college. Pete and Ed don’t get on, perhaps because Ed is a somewhat lazy B-class drug dealer who doesn’t clear up after himself and Pete is a slightly irritating stuck up business man, devoid of any vestige of the amiability that got him and Shaun together in the first place.

 

#18. Zodiac

Jake Gyllenhaal portrays Robert Graysmith, the journalist and author of the two books, "Zodiac" and "Zodiac Unmasked," upon which the film is based. Robert Downey Jr. plays fellow reporter Paul Avery, and Mark Ruffalo the San Francisco homicide inspector in charge of the case.  The books tell the tale of the real life serial killer who was appropriately named "The Zodiac Killer". He ravaged San Francisco for 25 years and than he just disappeared. Graysmith and Avery used to work at the San Francisco Chronicle, where "The Zodiac Killer" would send letters taunting the police and the media.

 

#19. Black Christmas (1974)

Mysterious phone calls ensue as the caller repeats, “It’s Me, Billy” which are soon followed by a series of grisly murders.  One by one, members of the house are tormented and killed.  Faced with her own personal problems, Jess Bradford (Olivia Hussey) takes on the daunting task of trying to save the others from the killer, and together with LT. Fuller (John Saxon), they must uncover the evil on the most unholy of nights.

 

#20. Identity

A whodunit revolving around a group of 10 strangers who find themselves running from a desert storm. They hole up in a roadside motel that proves as hospitable as the Bates Motel. The patrons are killed, one by one, and the survivors must try to figure out who the killer is before they, too, check out... permanently!

 

#21. Day Watch (Dnevnoy dozor)

A dazzling mix of state-of-the-art visual effects, amazing action sequences, and nail-biting horror set in contemporary Moscow, "Day Watch" ("Dnevnoy dozor") revolves around the conflict and balance maintained between the forces of light and darkness -- the result of a medieval truce between the opposing sides. This ancient war between the forces of Light and Darkness is reaching a tragic outcome. Each side has gained a powerful Great Other, who are headed for a clash, and Anton Gorodetsky is once again caught up in the midst of things.

 

#22. End of the Line

In this unsettling and creepy thriller, Karen (Ilona Elkin), a young nurse who works in a psychiatric ward, boards the last subway train of the night only to have it stop suddenly in the middle of the tunnel.   As those around her are brutally murdered, Karen and a handful of survivors must face supernatural forces, homicidal religious cult members, as well as their own fears and suspicions of Armageddon, in order to survive.

 

#23. Night of the Living Dead

It's hard to imagine how shocking this film was when it first broke on the film scene in 1968. There's never been anything quite like it, though it's inspired numerous pale imitations. Part of the terror lies in the fact that this one's shot in such a raw, unadorned fashion it feels like a home movie, and all the more authentic for that. Another is that it draws us into its world gradually, content to establish a merely spooky atmosphere before leading us through a horrifically logical progression that we could hardly have anticipated.

 

#24. Pet Sematary

For most families, moving is a new beginning. But for the Creeds, it could be the beginning of the end. Because they've just moved in next door to a place that children built with broken dreams, the Pet Sematary. It's a tiny patch of land that hides a mysterious Indian burial ground with the powers of resurrection.   Master of the Macabre, Stephen King, will take you and the Creeds to hell and back (But the Creeds don't have return tickets). Your tour guide is kindly old Jud Crandall (Fred Gwynne), the neighborhood nice guy who knows the secrets of life, but has seen enough to firmly believe that "sometimes dead is better."

 

#25. Halloween (1978)

It was "The Night HE Came Home," warned the posters for John Carpenter's career-making horror smash. In Haddonfield, Illinois, on Halloween night 1963, 6-year-old Michael Myers inexplicably slaughters his teenage sister. His psychiatrist Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) can't penetrate Michael's psyche after years of institutionalization, but he knows that, when Myers escapes before Halloween in 1978, there is going to be hell to pay in Haddonfield.

 

#26. The Descent (2005)

In a remote mountain range, six female friends meet for their yearly adventure, a caving trip into the arteries of the earth. Leader of the trip is Juno, tough, compelling and dangerous. Along for the ride are Swedish sisters Rebecca and Sam, wild base jumper Holly, and English teacher Beth, who has reluctantly come to look after Sarah. Sarah is still recovering from a total mental breakdown after the deaths of her husband and child one year previously, and needs this trip to reclaim the life she once had.

 

#27. Cannibal Holocaust

While Umberto Lenzi began the Italian-made cycle of brutal Amazonian cannibal horrors with Il Paese del Sesso Selvaggio and effectively ended it with the nauseating Cannibal Ferox, it was Ruggero Deodato who directed the subgenre's most enduring film.   This popular bloodbath features a fetus ripped from a woman's body, people fed to piranhas and impaled on spikes, a genuine tortoise-flaying, and numerous other indignities, both real and simulated. The plot concerns the efforts of a group of American explorers to discover the fate of a missing documentary film crew.

 

#28. Zombi 2

New York – It all began when a mysterious boat was found aimlessly adrift in the east river, leaving New York with one big mystery on its hands – and in the hands of a competent news reporter by the name of Peter West. It was soon discovered that the boat belonged to a scientist said to have gone missing in the Caribbean some time ago. Teaming up with Mr. West was the only known relative of the missing scientist, his daughter. Together, the pair delved deeper into the mystery, leaving behind the United States on a journey to a very remote region of the Antilles Islands. There, they would hopefully find the answers they both sought – but at a horrific price. Madness, pain, and fear lay in wait for them in a desolate place where the dead walk once again and prey on all that still live.

 

#29. Grindhouse

Grind House – noun – A downtown movie theater - in disrepair since its glory days as a movie palace of the '30s and '40s - known for "grinding out" non-stop double-bill programs of B-movies.   From groundbreaking directors Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez comes the ultimate film experience: a double-bill of thrillers that will recall both filmmakers’ favorite exploitation films.  Grind House will be presented as one full-length feature comprised of two individual films helmed separately by each director.  Tarantino’s film, Death Proof, is a rip-roaring slasher flick where the killer pursues his victims with a car rather than a knife, while Rodriguez’s film explores an alien world eerily familiar to ours in Planet Terror.  Welcome to the grind house - it’ll tear you in two.

 

#30. The Exorcist

Novelist William Peter Blatty based his best-seller on the last known Catholic-sanctioned exorcism in the United States. Blatty transformed the little boy in the 1949 incident into a little girl named Regan, played by 14-year-old Linda Blair. Suddenly prone to fits and bizarre behavior, Regan proves quite a handful for her actress-mother Chris MacNeil (played by Ellen Burstyn, although Blatty reportedly based the character on his next-door neighbor Shirley MacLaine).

 

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Selling Horror to the Fans Part 3: Trading on Celebrity and the Stunt Cast

Listen to them, the children of the night. What sweet music they make…when stealing HorrorMovieFan.com blind.

Have you seen Robert Englund, Tony Todd, or Kane Hodder in a movie lately?  Perhaps a better question would be, have you seen a direct to DVD movie recently without them?

We are now a few years into the Media Age, and in this era, we have produced celebrities at an unprecedented rate.  For the first time ever, we have people who are actually famous for simply being famous.  The horror world has not been spared this ridiculous excess of celebrity. 

Go to your local horror convention, and you will find some familiar faces (and not so familiar) peddling their signed photos for 20 bucks a pop to genre fans.  That’s right, $20 for signing their name on their photograph.  You might think they might have to be iconic actors to garner that sort of wage.  In fact, simply being seen in a faous film is enough, as people are charging money for their autographs, just because they were a featured extra in a film, or had the pleasure of wearing a Tom Savini make-up appliance for a 3 second shot.

I am not going to condemn the people for selling the autographs or the people who buy them.  The point is to illustrate the perceived value of recognition in the media age.  If someone is recognizable, they have perceived value, both at conventions, and in films.

This gets me to the meat of the article, the “Stunt Cast”.  Stunt casting is putting a person in a movie for the sole purpose of garnering attention for the project.  It is a way for movie producers to trade in on some of that aforementioned celebrity value.  There are various ways to execute a stunt cast, but the two most common are the cameo/bit part and the “what the fuck are they doing in the movie”-role.

The cameo/bit part is pretty obvious.  We see that all the time now in direct-to-DVD horror.  Bill Mosely walks through a movie or Tony Tood hams in up as a reverend for a couple minutes on screen.  The intent here is to give a low-budget film credibility with horror fans.  You know, if it gets that celebrity’s seal of approval, it must be good.  It also helps get the word out to genre fans, as someone like Robert Englund appearing in a horror fil, will get all the horror websites clamoring for coverage.  Many of these guys also hit the convention circuit, so again, the film gets more free publicity.

The other form of stunt casting, the “what the fuck are they doing in the movie”-role (WTF-role), is designed to appeal to the mainstream.  The producers are trying to whip up curiousity about a film that might otherwise not get covered by certain media outlets.  Two recent examples of WTF-roles are Fergie in “Planet Terror” and Paris Hilton in both House of Wax and Repo!: The Genetic Opera.  Casting those two assured the film producers that the film would get mainstream media coverage by Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly.

Paris Hilton is an especially appealing stunt cast because she is so frequently in the tabloids.  Producers hope that every time her vacant stare is seen on the internet or in a magazine, their film is mentioned along with it.

How one views stunt casting is really all about perspective. On one hand, it can really take the viewer out of a film when some random celebrity pops up in the middle of a movie.  The need for that celebrity to have a meaningful line or moment, can also feel very contrived.  On the other hand, in most of the films where stunt casting is done, it is done as part of the financing process. Because the executive producers know the names have value, they are more likely to greenlight a film that has star names attached to it.  Or, it could be the difference between that release getting a $3 million budget and a $10 million budget.

Like any trend, it eventually gets old.  Hopefully the stunt casting trend has hit its apex, and we will see more casting based on who is right for the part, rather than who has the biggest name.  If this is just the beginning, prepare for many more horror films that have opening credit sequences that look more like an episode of ‘The Love Boat’ rather than an old-school horror movie.

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Jon & Al Kaplan

Not safe for work…or home…screw it, just don’t watch this.

Brothers Jon and Al Kaplan moved to Los Angeles in 1996 to study concert composition at USC. After surviving three brutal years under the film music-hating faculty, they finally made it to the film scoring program and graduated with degrees in concert composition. Whoopee!

Jon and Al are film and TV composers, but they also love musicals -- especially Ashman and Menken's work, Leslie Bricusse's Scrooge, and Trey Parker and Marc Shaiman's South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. It was out of this love that Silence! The Musical was born. What began as a handful of songs Jon and Al produced to amuse themselves eventually became a website with a cult following. Silence! was covered in magazines including Entertainment Weekly and Maxim, and aired on radio shows like XM's Opie and Anthony and Howard Stern's 100.

Two years ago, Jon and Al wrote several new songs and expanded Silence! into an actual musical. The show was staged at the 2005 NYC Fringe festival, where it won the "Overall Excellence Award" for Outstanding Musical. After seeing the show, Marc Shaiman (Hairspray, North) said “Bravo!”

In closing, the Kaplans' father always told them that the mouth is the most disgusting orifice on the human body. He was a dentist before he died, but he ran his practice into the ground because he hated the human mouth so vehemently. Instead, he followed his heart and went back to teaching music to children. This brings up the most important point: If you work hard, persevere, and follow your dreams, you will eventually die and turn into a skeleton like Dr. Kaplan.

 

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Selling Horror to the Fans Part 2: Astroturfing

It was a dark and stormy night when I plagiarized this from HorrorMovieFan.com.

In politics and marketing, there is a term known as “Astroturfing”.  It is the process of artificially creating a grassroots campaign.  The idea is that the business makes it appear that a groundswell among the people is spontaneously happening.  They want the public to believe that their peers are really making an effort to support the cause, in order to get them to join the cause.  The hope is that enough people join the effort, and it becomes a real thing.

A horror example of an attempted “Astroturfing” would be Bloody-Disgusting’s campaign to save the ‘Midnight Meat Train’.  The Midnight Meat Train is a film based on a short story by Clive Barker.  The film itself had little mass appeal, and had no business being a wide theatrical release.  When the announcement was made that the film was going to be test-marketed in discount theaters, Bloody-Disgusting launched the most self-righteous campaign that the internet horror universe has ever seen, putting themselves out there as a savior of the film.  Petitions were made, and e-mail campaigns were started.  They went so far as to inform the studio of their campaign, in an obvious attempt to curry favor with them.  When the film flopped, it became clear there was no real groundswell, just generated hype.

A more successful Astroturfing campaign has been done by ‘Repo: The Genetic Opera’.  Director Darren Lynn Bousman declared his film a cult classic before anyone saw it, going so far as comparing it to ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’.  He set up a website, and built a community around a film no one had seen.  He coined this community ‘The Repo Army’.  Fans are encouraged to ‘be part of the team’ and do ’stunts’ to help promote the film.  A cult-like culture was created, and not liking the film would lead to certain exile from the ‘Army’.

One has to ask, where was Mr. Bousman and his desire to form an online horror community before he had a product to sell?  When he was directing Saw 2 and 3, that spirit of community was largely absent.  Then again, Saw 2 and 3 were just jobs.  ‘Repo’ is Bousman’s pet project, so all the stops were pulled.

The idea of Astroturfing goes back to the earliest days of marketing, so it is not exactly new.  The internet has created a whole new environment for this type of marketing due to its interactivity, however.  Never before have we seen entire marketing campaigns built around unreleased films.  Is this the sign of things to come, or just another idea that will come and go?  We will find out soon enough.

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Selling Horror to the Fans Part 1: Shilling

If you take the red pill everything returns to the way it was but if you take the blue pill you realize I stole wholesale from HorrorMovieFans.com:

One of the most highly anticipated movies for horror fans was the Friday the 13th remake/reimagining/whatever bullshit word they make up for it.  Even before the movie was announced, speculation was rampant.  Since the film began production, fans were bombarded with jaded set reports, studio-approved images, and bootleg trailers.  The hype machine was in effect, full throttle.

During filming, selected horror journalists (presumably selected because they have no problem shilling for studios that throw them a bone), got a chance to report from the set of the film.  The superlatives were heavy, but the details were light.  Vague statements meant to excite the fans became fashionable.

Selected images from the film were released through these same shills.  While fan response was mixed, the chosen journalists continued to plow forward with their agenda of pleasing Warner Brothers.  The more they praise, the more they get in terms of goodies from rich Uncle Bugs Bunny, it appears.  This website ran photos that got Bugs Bunny’s legal team up in arms a few months ago.  Weeks later, the same images were formally released through “friendly” websites and media.

Dread Central, Bloody-Disgusting, Shock Till You Drop, Movie Web, IESB.net, FirstShowing.net, Collider, Horror.com, IGN.com, JoBlo.com all attended a set visit to the Friday the 13th remake paid for by the producers of the film.  How does an all expense paid trip with some schmoozing affect a reporter’s attitude?  Let’s look at what Alex Billington of FirstShowing.net said before visiting the set:  “Michael Bay really loves his classic horror movies. He also loves butchering them into piles of Hollywood crap by remaking them via his company Platinum Dunes. So far they’ve massacred The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror, and The Hitcher, and already confirmed on their slate next is Friday the 13th, The Birds, and A Nightmare on Elm Street….I’ve got to ask - does anyone enjoy what Platinum Dunes is doing?”.  After his set visit, Mr. Billington writes:  “Due to requirements set forth by Warner Brothers, I’ll save the real meat of my set visit for a future date. But let me tell you, this isn’t a horror reboot to simply forget about….this Friday the 13th is going to be one of the most entertaining and horrific experiences you’ll see next year.”.  Quite a turnaround based on an evening of watching some filming from afar.

Brad Miska, of Bloody-Disgusting confirmed rules were given to those reporters granted set access on what they could and could not write about (interview on HorrorMovieFans.com Radio).  If a reporter adhered to the rules, they would stay in the good graces of the producers and get more goodies in the future.  If they didn’t, the goodies would be cut off.  Thus far, each and every one of these sites has obeyed their master, and pushed the projects to their readers.  It makes one wonder, are there unwritten or “understood” rules in this agreement?  For instance, it is understood that you will not be negative?

Do these tactics work?  Well, it did with the Friday the 13th remake released  a few weeks ago.  The film broke records with its enormous opening weekend as eager fans rushed out to see the heavily promoted film.  As the dust settle and the tidal wave of hype subsided, fans from that opening weekend were underwhelmed, and generally gave the film average reviews.  As fast as it stormed into the theaters, it was already on its way back out.

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Watch SciFi Camp Classics Like Dark Star Online for Free

As told to me via the tiny angels that live in my microwave who work for Scifi Scanner at AMC.com.

It's happened to us all. Fighting sleep late one night, we flip around the TV channels desperate for entertainment when we spot it: An old, black-and-white science fiction movie with paper plate UFOs and tin foil space suits. We pause, and think to ourselves, "Perfect." It's hard to say exactly why scifi B-movies hold a place in our hearts. It could be the kitsch factor -- paper plate UFOs certainly have their charm, as do rubber monster suits with visible zippers and rocket ships on strings with sparklers for exhaust. It could also be some nostalgia for a time when science fiction was lighter and less complicated. For whatever reason, these scifi B-movie have far outlasted their own production values -- and we're the richer for it.

Starting today, AMCtv.com is removing "random channel surfing" from the equation by proudly hosting 27 full-screen B-movie classics for free online. Mixed in among the hot-rod drag races and sing-along bikini beach parties are a few scifi gems -- movies like Creation of the Humanoids (1962), where the allegories fly fast and furious in a tale of civil war between the survivors of a nuclear holocaust and the blue-skinned androids they created for slave labor; and Terror Beneath the Sea (1966), in which only Sonny Chiba -- yes, that Sonny Chiba -- can stop rubber-suited underwater monsters from taking over the world and converting humanity into sexless fish-men.

If you're like me, you can't get enough Sonny Chiba, so be sure to check him out in Invasion of the Neptune Men (1961), this time as Space Chief -- a sort-of superhero who flies around in a rocket-propelled car and leads an army of Japanese kids against space invaders. Then join a group of scientists trying to stop a runaway planet that's headed right for Earth in Planet on the Prowl (1966), or watch radioactive mutant monsters attack unwitting teenagers in The Horror of Party Beach (1965). Do you love muttering, beach-ball-shaped aliens with a taste for mischief? Then you won't want to miss John Carpenter's outer space comedy Dark Star (1974), which remarkably started as a student film project while Carpenter was at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts.

The fun doesn't stop there. With other science fiction and fantasy titles like Hercules Unchained (1959), Teenage Caveman (1958), War of the Colossal Beast (1958) and Saga of the Viking Women available at the click of the mouse, your late nights will never be the same again. So whether you're already a fan or are simply curious to see what all the fuss is about, head on over to our B-movie site. You'll never look at A-movies the same way again.

Click here to go to AMCtv.com's B-Movie minisite now.

It Came From IFC IV: The Independenting

Once again we stand on the precipice of a black hole of terror.  One wrong step and instead of landing in the event horizon of originality and freshness, we land in the abyss that is god-awful, contrived and cliché.  For every Halloween, Solaris and Feast, there is a Blood Freaks, Planet of The Babes and Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds.  Since it has been awhile since I last did the ICFIFC we shall review the criteria.  I have to have seen these movies on IFC, Sundance or any of the other non-mainstream cable channels, or have found the film in the art or foreign film section at my library and/or book and movie superstore or be aware of it’s status as a rogue production completely separate from a major film studio.  Major studio distribution is just that and bears no effect on the independent status of a film.  Just because Lionsgate distributed Feast does not counteract that it was made outside the system by a Project Greenlight team.  I begins now!

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Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1972)

Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (also known as Revenge of the Living Dead, Things From the Dead, and Zreaks) is a 1972 horror film directed by Bob Clark. This low-budget zombie movie is the second film of director Bob Clark, famous for later directing the films Black Christmas, A Christmas Story, and Porky's.

The story focuses around a theater troupe, led by Alan (Alan Ormsby) a mean-spirited director, who travels by boat to a small island for buried criminals to have a night of fun and games. Once on the island Alan tells his group who he calls his "Children" numerous stories relating to the islands history and buried inhabitants. At midnight using a grimoire, Alan begins a séance to raise the dead after digging up the body of a man named Orville Dunworth (Seth Sklarey). Though the original intent of the ritual may have been intended solely as a joke, Alan appears disappointed that his efforts received no response except from the mockings of cast member Val (Valerie Mamches). Afterwards the party continues and Alan goes to extremes to degrade the actors, using the corpse of Orville for his own sick jokes. The dead return and force the troupe to take refuge in the old house. They must decide whether it's best to stay put until day, provided the old house holds up against the undead onslaught, try to all flee through the pitch black cemetery and forest to the boat, or have one person brave the obstacle in hopes that they can bring back help in time. Unfortunately for the group the dead do in fact get their revenge and in the movie's closing credits we see the group of corpses boarding Alan's boat with the lights of Miami in the background.

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Primer (2004)

Primer (2004) is an American science fiction film about the accidental invention of time travel. The film was written, directed and produced by Shane Carruth, a former mathematician and engineer, and was completed on a budget of only $7,000.

The film stars Carruth as Aaron and David Sullivan as Abe, two engineers who create a device which will allow an object or person to travel backwards in time. The pair initially use the device to cheat on the stock market, but ultimately they cannot resist the temptation to meddle with every aspect of their lives. Through recklessness they create increasingly complex paradoxes, and ultimately their newfound power begins to destroy their friendship.

Primer is of note for its extremely low budget, experimental plot structure and complex technical dialogue, which Carruth chose not to dumb down for the sake of his audience. One reviewer said that "anybody who claims [to] fully understand what's going on in Primer after seeing it just once is either a savant or a liar." The film collected the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2004 before securing a limited release in cinemas, and has since gained a cult following.

The film takes place in the industrial park and suburban tract-home fringes of an unnamed U.S. city. Four engineers—Aaron (Shane Carruth), Abe (David Sullivan), Robert, and Phillip—work for a large corporation during the day, and run a side business out of Aaron's garage at night, building and selling error-checking devices for computer motherboards. With the proceeds of this work, they fund pet science projects.

After an argument over which project the group should tackle next, Aaron and Abe independently take to designing a compact high-temperature superconductor, a device which will reduce the weight of any object. But an unexpected side-effect of this process has far greater implications: Abe and Aaron confirm that they have accidentally created a time machine after they test the device on their watches. They immediately cut Robert and Phillip out of the group on the pretense that the garage has to be fumigated.

Abe and Aaron design two more machines large enough to hold a person. They are limited compared to traditional depictions of time travel: they can only transport the user backwards in time, and have unexpected side-effects. Once the machine is activated, the user waits for the amount of time he or she wishes to travel backwards. They enter the machine, wait for that period of time again, and exit at the point that the machine was originally activated. For example, if the machine is turned on at noon, and the user waits six hours until 6 p.m., then gets in the machine and waits a further six hours, they will exit at the original point of noon. Staying in the machine will cause the user to continuously cycle back and forth between 6 p.m. and noon, with the ability to exit the machine at either endpoint. Getting out of the machine before reaching an endpoint causes a severe physical reaction—so Abe and Aaron never leave the machine early.

At first, Abe and Aaron use the time machine to succeed in the stock market, but they cannot resist the temptation to alter their personal lives and how they are perceived by the people around them. Aaron in particular gets obsessed with becoming a "hero" by stopping a shotgun-wielding maniac at a party. He goes back in time again and again until he figures out the exact sequence of events that must happen in order to stop the man. Abe goes back and sabotages the original machinery, trying to make it so that the "original" Abe won't discover its time travel abilities. The two men become entangled in increasingly complex paradoxes, and lose trust in one another as they use the machine for personal gain. Ultimately these deceptions destroy their friendship, and Aaron leaves the country. The last scene in the film shows him instructing a team of workers to line the walls of a warehouse with metal plates, as he begins construction on an enormous version of the time-machine.

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Feast (2006)

Feast is a 2006 horror film that is a result of the third season Project Greenlight contest. The winning team was composed of writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton and director John Gulager. It was executive produced by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Chris Moore (through their LivePlanet production company), Wes Craven and the Maloof family. The film was produced and distributed by Dimension Films in association with Maloof Motion Pictures and Neo Art & Logic.

As the clientele are enjoying their drinks, a man covered in blood (identified onscreen as "Hero") enters through the door and warns them all of impending danger, but no one heeds his warning. To prove his point he exposes the head of a repulsive monster. Soon after this he is promptly decapitated by one of the monsters following him.

After the carnage, a woman ("Heroine") bursts through the door and reveals herself to be the recently deceased man's wife. After a brief sentimental moment between the wife and her late husband, they begin boarding up the windows in the bar. Despite their efforts, a young monster bursts through an uncovered window and begins incapacitating the people inside the bar. It attacks one of the women ("Harley Mom") and it is initially assumed that she died from massive blood loss.

After she is taken out, the monster disappears only for it to be found attempting to sexually penetrate one of the deer heads nailed to the wall. A shotgun blast promptly removes the deer head and monster from the wall and the monster then drops into a refrigerator which is sealed shut, trapping it inside.

Following this, the remaining windows are boarded up and the bar patrons are given a moment of peace. Trying to call for help, they learn that the only phone in the bar has been hit by a stray shotgun blast and has been rendered useless. After a short breather, one of the women ("Tuffy") suddenly realizes that her son is still upstairs and runs to get him.

Once she finds her child the group rejoices until the boy is pulled through a window and eaten by one of the monsters, leaving only his sneakers behind. Tuffy is now incapacitated by grief, and the monster then vomits a stream of slime at one of the group ("Beer Guy"). As the remaining people regroup downstairs, they realize that the slime has a decomposing effect and the victim is slowly overcome by its effects.

The group kills the young monster in the refrigerator and hangs it outside. The monster's parents quickly have sex and produce two offspring in a matter of seconds, all of whom begin to attack the pub with renewed fury. Meanwhile, one of the women ("Honey Pie") begins washing off the blood and has to take off her clothes, much to the amusement of the others. The patrons regroup and enact various attempts to escape or drive off the monsters, all of which lead to more casualties, including the death of the Heroine at the hands of the character aptly nicknamed "Bozo". Driven by her rage over the death of her child, Tuffy aggressively takes charge of the remaining survivors, which results in the audience seeing her nickname change from "Tuffy" to "Heroine 2". "Honey Pie" successfully makes it to a truck, giving the other characters brief cause for hope (until they realize she's speeding off by herself).

After many attacks and ultimately, a fight to the death between the last remaining humans and monsters, only four people survive the ordeal. One person ("Grandma") seems to survive but in the last second is seen being attacked by one of the remaining monsters.

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Solaris (1972)

Solaris (Russian: Солярис, translit. Solyaris) is a 1972 Russian film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. It is based on the novel of the same name by Polish science fiction author Stanisław Lem. The film features Natalya Bondarchuk, Donatas Banionis, Jüri Järvet, Nikolai Grinko and Anatoly Solonitsyn and has a soundtrack by Eduard Artemyev.

Solaris is a meditative psychodrama that is set mostly on a space station in orbit around a planet called "Solaris". The scientific mission on the space station has fallen into a crisis. Psychologist Kris Kelvin travels to the station to evaluate and explore the situation, but soon experiences the same kind of hallucinations that have befallen the other crew members. The film concentrates on the thoughts and the conscience of its characters and is a "drama of grief and partial recovery". Solaris and its complex and slow storytelling has sometimes been contrasted with Western science fiction films, which rely on special effects and an imagined version of the future.

Solaris was a critical success and is widely regarded as a masterpiece.  The film was presented at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury and the FIPRESCI prize and was nominated for the Palme d'Or. Another film adaption of the novel by Stanisław Lem directed by Steven Soderbergh was released in 2002 to neither its predecessor's critical nor commercial success.

The film opens with psychologist Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) walking in the land around his father's house, the day before he is to leave for the space station orbiting the remote, liquid-covered planet called Solaris. After decades of study, the scientific mission there has made little progress in understanding its subject, and has fallen into crisis. Kelvin is being sent to evaluate the situation and determine the future of the outpost.

A former pilot named Burton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky) is visiting. Together they watch footage of hearings many years before, in which Burton recounted seeing a bizarrely huge child on the surface of Solaris during a search for two missing scientists. His craft's cameras having only recorded clouds and the serene surface, his claims were dismissed as hallucinations. After unsuccessfully trying to convince Kelvin of the truth of his experience Burton leaves angrily, only to call from his car to say that later he met the child of one of the scientists and that except for its size, it was the same one he had seen. In an extended sequence, Burton drives with his son through the streets of a busy, foreign city (Tokyo).

Kelvin burns most of his old papers in a bonfire before leaving, remarking on how much he had kept. From his conversation with his father we learn that they both realize his father won't live to see Kris return, possibly due to time effects of traveling near speed of light. This was Kelvin's choice, and it adds to his feeling of guilt for betrayals he committed. (This is a deviation from the book, in which his father was not part of the plot).

Arriving at Solaris after his journey, Kelvin is not met by any of the three remaining scientists, and finds the space station in dangerous neglect and disarray. He searches them out, finding that his friend Dr. Gibarian (Sos Sargsyan) has died mysteriously and the remaining two offer only unhelpful and confusing information. Shortly after being advised by Dr. Snaut (Jüri Järvet) not to overreact if he sees anything unusual, he begins to catch glimpses of other people on the station. He begins his investigation against the backdrop of the swirling ocean like surface of the planet.

Waking from an exhausted sleep, Kelvin finds a woman in his quarters with him despite his barricaded door. It is his wife, Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk), who committed suicide long time ago, when he left her after a verbal fight. The "resurrected" Hari, created by Solaris, is unaware of her suicide. She seems as puzzled by her appearance as he. Realizing she is an apparition of some sort, he lures her into his spacecraft and launches her into space, being caught by the rocket's blast in his haste. Dr. Snaut tends his burns, opening up more now that Kelvin is sharing their experiences, and explains that the "visitors" began appearing after the scientists attracted Solaris's attention with their first surveys.

That evening Hari reappears in his room. He is calmer, holding her through the night. When he wakes he attempts to hide the duplicate clothes left by her predecessor, but when he leaves the room she panics, beating her way through the metal door and badly cutting herself. He carries her to his bed, where her injuries heal in front of his eyes. When Dr. Sartorius (Anatoli Solonitsyn) calls up for a meeting, Kelvin introduces her to the others as his wife, and insists that they treat her with respect. In the discussion the scientists begin to understand that Solaris has created her from his memories of her. She is not human, but has thoughts and feelings. Sartorius suggests that they are made of neutrinos, and it may be possible to destroy them.

Kelvin shows Hari films of himself and his parents when he was a boy, and, later, herself. While she is asleep, Snaut comes and promotes a plan of beaming Kelvin's brainwave patterns at Solaris, in hopes that it will understand them and stop trying to communicate with its disturbing apparitions, and Sartorius suggests a more radical plan to attack it by bombarding it with heavy radiation.

As time passes Hari becomes more independent, able to exist out of sight of him without panicking. From Sartorius she learns that the original Hari had committed suicide ten years earlier, and Kelvin tells her the whole story. The new Hari kills herself again outside of his quarters by drinking liquid oxygen, only to painfully, spasmodically return to life a few minutes later. The surface of Solaris has become agitated. Kelvin falls into a fevered sleep, dreaming of his mother and many Haris walking around his room. When he recovers she is gone, and Snaut reads him a note she left, in which she explains that she herself asked the scientists to destroy her.

Snaut informs Kelvin that since they broadcast Kelvin's brainwaves at Solaris, islands have begun forming on its surface. Kelvin debates whether to return to Earth or to stay on Solaris in the hope of reconnecting with all that he loved and has lost. He is then seen back on the shore of the frozen pond beside his father's house. His dog runs toward him and he walks happily toward it, but his face falls when he sees that something is wrong: water is falling inside the house and though his father (Nikolai Grinko) is inside he seems unaware of it. They embrace on the front step. The camera draws back; the house, lake and surrounding land is revealed to be on an island, floating on the surface of Solaris.

And that is why I am a shut-in!

Attention Class! Today we will be discussing the single most overused cliché in all of scary movie history, The Summer Camp Scenario. Since I have never been to summer camp, but i did spend a summer at a Vacation Bible School ( a whole different type of horror movie ), I can only imagine the emotions that Billy and Mandy not coming home from Camp SunnyshineAxeGrind-ohontas would elicit from William and Amanda’s parents…unless that is in fact the plot of a different horror movie. So let us begin with the most famous of the summer camp movies, and by the way – THERE WILL BE SPOILERS:

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Friday the 13th (1980)

Friday the 13th is a 1980 American independent horror film directed by Sean S. Cunningham and written by Victor Miller. The film stars Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby and Kevin Bacon in one of his earliest roles. The film concerns a group of teenagers who re-open an abandoned camp site years after a young boy drowned in a lake located nearby. One by one, the teens fall victim to a mysterious killer.

Friday the 13th, inspired by the success of John Carpenter's Halloween, was made on an estimated budget of $550,000. Released by Paramount Pictures in the United States, and Warner Bros. internationally, the film was poorly received by film critics, but grossed over $39.7 million at the box office in the United States, and went on to become one of the most profitable slasher films in cinema history. It was also the first movie of its kind to secure distribution in the USA by a major studio, Paramount Pictures. The film's box office success led to a long series of sequels, a crossover with Freddy Krueger and a series reboot released on February 13, 2009.

The film begins in 1958 as two summer camp counselors at Camp Crystal Lake sneak away from a campfire sing-along to have sex. Before they can completely undress, an unseen assailant sneaks into the room and murders them both.

The film then moves forward to Friday, June 13, in the present day; a young woman named Annie (Robbi Morgan) enters a small diner and asks for directions to Camp Crystal Lake, much to the shock of the restaurant's patrons and staff. A strange old man named Ralph (Walt Gorney) reacts to the news of the camp's reopening by warning Annie that they are "all doomed". Enos (Rex Everhart), a truck driver from the diner, agrees to give Annie a lift halfway to the camp. During the drive, he warns her about the camp, informing her that a young boy drowned in Crystal Lake in 1957, one year before the double murders occurred. After Enos lets her out, Annie hitches another ride in a Jeep. The second driver, whose face is never seen, murders Annie by slashing her throat with a large hunting knife after her futile efforts of running.

At the camp, the other counselors, Ned (Mark Nelson), Jack (Kevin Bacon), Bill (Harry Crosby), Marcie (Jeannine Taylor), Brenda (Laurie Bartram), Alice (Adrienne King) and the camp's owner, Steve Christy (Peter Brouwer), are refurbishing the cabins and facilities. As a violent storm closes in on the horizon, Steve leaves the campgrounds to get more supplies. The unidentified killer begins to isolate and murder the counselors. Later that evening, Steve returns from town and is also murdered, apparently familiar with his attacker. Alice informs Bill that she saw the lights turn on at the archery range and that she thinks she heard Brenda screaming. Bill and Alice leave the cabin to investigate, and find a bloody axe in Brenda's bed. Attempting to phone the police, they discover the phones are dead and that the cars won't start when they try to leave. When the lights go out all over the camp, Bill goes to check on the power generator. Alice heads out looking for Bill when he doesn't return; she finds his body pinned to a door by several arrows. Now alone, Alice flees back to the main cabin and hides. After a few moments of silence, Brenda's corpse is hurled through the window.

Alice hears a vehicle outside the cabin and, thinking it to be Steve, runs out to warn him. Instead, she finds a middle-aged woman who introduces herself as Mrs. Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), stating that she is an "old friend of the Christys". Alice hysterically tries to tell her about the murders. Mrs. Voorhees expresses horror at the sight of Brenda's body, but she soon reveals herself to be the mother of the boy who drowned in the lake in 1957, and that today is his birthday. Talking mostly to herself, she blames her son Jason's drowning on the fact that two counselors were having sex and were unaware of Jason struggling in the lake. Mrs. Voorhees suddenly turns violent and pulls out a knife, rushing at Alice. A lengthy chase ensues, during which Alice flees her attacker and finds Steve and Annie's bodies in the process. Alice and Mrs. Voorhees have multiple confrontations, each time with Alice believing she has finally beaten Mrs. Voorhees. During their final fight, Alice manages to decapitate Mrs. Voorhees with her own machete.

Afterwards, Alice boards a canoe and floats to the middle of the lake. As the sun rises, the decomposing corpse of Pamela's son, Jason (Ari Lehman), attacks Alice while she waits for help in a canoe. Just as she is dragged under water Alice awakens in a hospital, where a police officer tells her that they pulled her out of the lake. Alice is informed that everyone is dead; when she asks about Jason, the officer informs her they never found any boy, which leaves her with the impression that it was just a dream.

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Sleepaway Camp (1983)

Sleepaway Camp is a 1983 cult classic horror movie written and directed by Robert Hiltzik—who also served as executive producer. The film is about teen campers getting killed at a summer camp. The film came at a time when slasher films were in their heyday. It has since developed a large cult following and is considered by many viewers to have one of the most disturbingly shocking endings of all horror films.

The film opens in the summer of July 3, 1975, with a family consisting of John Baker (Dan Tursi) and his two children Angela (Colette Lee Corcoran) and Peter Baker (Frank Sorrentino) out on a lake near a summer camp. After their small boat accidentally flips, John and the children begin to head ashore, where John's lover, Lenny (James Paradise) is calling to him. As the family swims, a pair of teenagers pulling a water skier in a motorboat fail to notice them in time and hit them, killing both John and Peter. The surviving Angela is sent to live with her eccentric aunt Dr. Martha Thomas (Desiree Gould) and Martha's son Richard "Ricky" Thomas (Jonathan Tiersten).

Eight years after John and Peter's deaths, Angela (now played by Felissa Rose) and Ricky are sent to Camp Arawak by Martha. Due to her introverted nature, Angela is ridiculed and bullied, her main tormentors being fellow camper Judy (Karen Fields) and camp counselor Meg (Katherine Kamhi). During dinner, Angela, having not eaten for some time, is taken into the kitchen by a counselor to see if there is anything in there she would like to eat. Left with the head cook Artie (Owen Hughes), Angela is taken into a back room by Artie, who intends to molest Angela. Before any harm can come to Angela, Artie is found in the midst of unfastening his pants by Ricky, who flees from the kitchen with Angela after Artie threatens him. After the incident in the pantry, Artie is seriously injured when he is knocked off a chair by an unseen figure while tending to a large pot of boiling water which spills on his face and hands. Artie's injuries are deemed accidental by camp owner Mel Costic (Mike Kellin), who pays off the rest of his kitchen staff to keep the event quiet.

While in the recreation cabin, Angela is accosted by two boys who begin mocking her, prompting Ricky and his friend Paul (Christopher Collet) to get into a fight with the boys which several others join in on. After the brawl is broken up by a counselor, Ricky and the rest of the boys involved in the fight leave while Paul stays behind and succeeds in befriending Angela by telling her about misadventures he and Ricky would get into when they were younger. Later, out on the lake, Kenny (John E. Dunn), one of the boys who had mocked Angela, is drowned, his body being found the next day and his death is also ruled accidental by Mel, despite suspicion from camp employees and police. After Billy (Loris Sallahan), another boy who had bullied Angela, is killed when he is locked in a washroom stall which has a beehive dropped in it, Mel grows suspicious of Ricky, who he believes is killing those who bully Angela.

The relationship between Angela and Paul grows strained when Paul attempts to make out with Angela on the beach, causing Angela to have a flashback to her youth when she and her brother witnessed their father in bed with Lenny. Confused and angered by Angela's rejection of his advances, Paul is easily seduced by Judy, who lures him away from a game of capture the flag and into the woods where the two are found kissing by Angela and Ricky. Guilty about what happened between him and Judy, Paul attempts to explain himself to Angela while on the beach. As Paul talks to Angela, he is shooed away by Judy and Meg, who throw Angela into the water. After being taken out of the lake and having sand flung at her by several small children, a clearly disturbed Angela is comforted by Ricky, who swears revenge on her aggressors. After the affair at the beach, Meg, while preparing for a date with Mel, is murdered with a knife while taking a shower, having her back sliced open.

Meg's disappearance goes largely unnoticed and camp activities go on as usual with a social being held. At the social, Angela is approached by Paul, who she tells to meet her at the waterfront after the social. Next, Judy, who had decided to skip the social, is killed in her cabin when the murderer forces a hot hair curler into her vagina. After the social, the camp is thrown into a panic when several children who had gone out camping are found hacked to bits in the woods. Ricky, who had missed the social due to feeling ill, overhears this news before being attacked by Mel, who had discovered Meg's corpse and blames Ricky for her death. After beating Ricky seemingly to death, Mel stumbles into the camp archery range, where he is shot in the throat with an arrow by the real killer.

As the counselors and police scour the camp, Angela meets Paul on the beach, where she tells him to undress, which Paul enthusiastically agrees to do. After finding the dead Meg and Mel, as well as the still living Ricky, a pair of counselors find Angela nude on the beach, softly singing to herself and clutching a large knife and Paul's severed head in her hands. Angela is revealed to be both the killer and a boy - the thought-to-be-dead Peter; through flashbacks it is shown that after Martha gained custody of him, she decided to raise Peter as a girl, already having a son and coming to the conclusion that another boy "simply would not do." It's also implied that the children were mentally affected in a very negative way by seeing their father sharing a homosexual embrace with another man. The film ends with Angela, male genitalia in full view, letting out an animalistic hissing sound.

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Madman (1982)

While attending a youth summer camp for gifted children, pre-teens call out the name of serial killer "Madman Marz" above a whisper. Camp counselors begin being maimed and slaughtered by the backwoodsman who returned when his name was called.

The film opens to a very detailed view of the credits with creepy music playing in the background. We see that T.P, one of the head counselors at a camp, is telling a scary story around a campfire to the campers and other counselors, which consist of the sweet, innocent Betsy, Ellie the annoying screamer, Dave the peculiar hottie, the smart, courageous Stacy, Bill the quiet but macho guy, and Max the 40-year-old head counselor. After T.P. finishes his story, Max begins to tell of a man named Madman Marz, who killed his whole family with an axe, and was convicted, hit in the face with an axe, and hung for his crimes, only to break free of the noose and disappear into the woods. Max continues by saying that anyone who says his name above a whisper will awaken him and cause him to come back and kill that person. All of a sudden, Richie, a cocky teenager, stands up and screams Madman Marz, throwing a rock into his old house, smashing a window. Max gets annoyed at Richie and ends the campfire, sending everyone to their cabins for the night, while he goes into town to retrieve supplies to help tear down the camp, since it was to end the next day. While they go back to the cabins, Richie sees Madman Marz up in a tree, and goes to see if it's really him. Everyone else gets back to camp, and Max and Dave try to retrieve the axe they had used to cut wood, out of a log, but it won't budge. The cook, Dippy, comes out, and wishes them all a good night, right before Marz comes in and rips his throat out, and rips the axe out of the log. T.P. tries to get Betsy to go out with him, but she refuses, causing a scene. After the kids have gone to sleep, the rest of the counselors see Max off and go into the rec room to relax. T.P apologizes for being rude to Betsy and she goes with him to have sex in the hot tub, all the while being watched by Madman Marz. Stacy, Bill, Dave and Ellie, meanwhile, are sitting in the rec room by a fire, listening to one of Dave's weird monologues.

After this, Dave is called out to Richie's cabin, and the boys there tell him that Richie never came back, so he goes and informs the others, who are all rejoined up with each other. T.P decides to go and find him, and sets off into the woods, carrying a flashlight. He comes across an opening and calls for Richie, who is busy wandering around the woods looking for Marz. All of a sudden, a noose falls over T.P's neck, and lifts him up into the air on a tree branch, he quickly grabs it and hoists himself up, only to have Marz grab his leg and pull him back down, snapping his neck on impact. Back at the camp, Betsy and Stacy begin to talk about T.P, Stacy believes that T.P only wants sex, and apologized because he knew he would get some, but Betsy thinks he's a nice guy who really likes her. After a while passes, Dave decides to go find T.P and Richie, telling Ellie and Bill to tell Betsy and Stacy. Dave ventures out into the woods and comes across T.P's hanging body, and panics, running farther into the woods. Marz is right behind him with the axe and begins to chase him, swinging it left and right. Dave finally falls over a fallen tree branch and is decapitated by Marz with the axe. Betsy wants to talk to T.P, but finds out that he's still gone and begins to worry. Richie, meanwhile, is still out in the woods, but is now looking for the road back to camp, or someone to take him back.

Stacy finally decides to take the car down to see where everybody is, suspecting that T.P's just playing a trick on them. So she gets into her car and drives out on the road, towards the woods by the campfire spot, and Marz's house, where we see him run out of. Stacy begins to look around for Dave, T.P, and Richie, but finds nothing, except an abandoned flashlight in the clearing where the two were killed, only T.P's body is now missing. Stacy begins to look around, and sees blood on the trees and starts to panic, hurrying through the woods, until she spots Dave's head laying on the ground. She stifles her screams and rushes back to her car, and starts to drive away, only to have her engine stall, so she carefully gets out and opens the hood, looking for the problem. All of a sudden, Marz jumps onto the car hood, smashing it down on Stacy, decapitating her on impact.

Ellie and Bill have gone to have sex in the woods, leaving a worried Betsy back at camp. When she doesn't hear any word back, Betsy goes into the woods to find Ellie and Bill. Once she does, she tells them that she has to stay at camp to watch the kids and wait for everyone else to show up, and that Ellie and Bill should go and try to find them. Ellie and Bill get dressed and take Bill's car out to look for the others, while Betsy goes back to camp. While looking through the woods, Ellie sees Marz at Stacy's car, and begins to scream, making him run away and Bill come up to see what's wrong. She tells him that she saw a man there at Stacy's car, so both of them go up and decide to drive back to camp. The car won't start, and Bill gets out to see what's wrong, he pops open the hood and sees Stacy's head on the engine! He gags, making Ellie curious enough to get out of the car and see, where she screams, and has Bill knock it out with his flashlight. Then they get back in the car and hurriedly drive away, only reaching the end of the road, when Bill is pulled from the car window, causing the car to crash into a tree, and Ellie to fall out of the door and into a ditch. She looks up and watches in horror, as Bill has his back broken in half by Marz, and runs away, presumably back to camp.

Betsy is in one of the girl's cabins and doesn't see Ellie come back and try to find her. Ellie then goes into the kitchen cabin and tries to find Betsy, but with no luck, she goes to go outside when Marz appears at the door, chasing her all through the cabin until she hides in a refrigerator. Once she thinks he leaves, she climbs out and tries to leave, only to have him spring up and hit her with the axe. Betsy finally leaves the cabin and sees Marz running around the campgrounds, so she grabs a shotgun and quietly makes her way to the open-doored kitchen cabin, only to have a non-dead Ellie pop up, causing her to shoot her friend in the face. Once she realizes that Ellie is dead, she runs and wakes up the kids, telling them to get into the bus they took to get there. They quickly do and she joins them, and begins to drive the bus away from camp, only to have Marz pop up at the door and try to get in, Betsy can't shoot and drive at the same time, so a little girl hits his hand with a metal baton, making him let go. Then she stops and has the oldest boy drive the rest to safety, while she goes to kill Marz and save her friends. So she gets out, and follows Marz to his house out in the woods. Once inside she tries not to make any noise, but makes a step creak, causing him to come at her in the darkness, where she shoots him with the rifle. He then snatches it from her during a struggle, when he hits her in the face with his long, sharp claw nails, ripping her face open. He then drags her towards the basement, while she screams and tries to get away, but at the bottom, he shoves her up onto a coat hanger poker, and as she dies she pulls out a knife she had in her pocket, and stabs him in the shoulder, and dies. He turns around and knocks over a candle, illuminating his face, and quickly leaves, but while the candle begins to burn everything, we see all the dead people he had killed, including the skeletons of his wife and two children, T.P, Bill, Dave's headless body, Stacy's headless body, and now Betsy. Plus, we see Max driving back to the camp and almost hitting a shaken Richie, who now says that Madman Marz is real.

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The Burning (1981)

The Burning is a 1981 slasher film directed by Tony Maylam, with music by Rick Wakeman. It tells the story of a cruel, alcoholic caretaker at a summer camp (nicknamed Cropsy, after the huge garden shears he carries) who falls victim to a prank that went out of control and leaves him horribly burned and disfigured. Following his release from hospital, he returns to his old stomping ground and begins a murder spree.

The film opens at a summer camp, where a group of boys are planning to pull a prank on the weird, alcoholic caretaker, Cropsy (Lou David) during the middle of the night. They sneak into his cabin and set a rotting skull on fire, only to have Cropsy wake up and accidentally knock the skull onto his gas tank, causing flames to spread all over the cabin. The horrified boys then watch as Cropsy, engulfed in flames, stumbles out and falls down a ravine into a river, putting out the flames. Five years later, Cropsy is released from hospital, wearing a heavy coat, sunglasses, and hat to hide his deformities. Shortly after his release Cropsy takes his anger out on a prostitute by gutting her with a pair of scissors. He then sets out back to the camp where he was burned.

The camp is populated with many characters, who are each going through their own situations: Eddy (Ned Eisenberg) wants to get it on with the shy hottie, Karen (Carolyn Houlihan), Todd (Brian Matthews) struggles as head counselor and trying to find time to be with his girlfriend, Michelle (Leah Ayres), and Alfred (Brian Backer) is trying to make friends with Dave (Jason Alexander), Woodstock (Fisher Stevens), and Fish (J.R. McKechnie), who are all trying to get back at cocky, cruel Glazer (Larry Joshua), who lusts for cutie, Sally (Carrick Glenn).

Cropsy makes it to the camp as everyone is playing baseball, and almost kills a female camper, but hesitates too long. The whole gang then heads to the mess hall for supper, and Karen tells Michelle that she isn't sure if she wants to have sex with Eddy or not, then everyone goes to bed. The next morning, Sally goes to take a shower, senses that someone is inside the showers, and pulls back the curtain, exposing a shocked Alfred, who runs out of the shower. Sally's screams bring Karen, Michelle, Todd, and Eddy who catch Alfred, who Michelle insists should be thrown out, but Todd takes him to have a stern talking-to instead. During this conversation, Todd learns that Alfred doesn't have any friends, and was just trying to pull a prank on Sally to make her laugh. After the discussion, Glazer attacks Alfred and warns him to stay away from Sally, but Todd breaks them up, telling Glazer to go cool off, and letting Alfred go and apologize to Sally.

That afternoon, everyone goes to the lake to swim, and Alfred (who can't swim) is pushed into the lake by Glazer, who goes and swims over to the raft Sally is on. Dave, Fish, and Woodstock help Alfred out of the water, and begin to shoot at Glazer with a BB gun, making him turn around and see them moon him, and become susceptible to being pushed into the water himself by one of Sally's friends. Todd and Michelle, meanwhile have taken a walk out in the woods, to spend some time together, all the while being watched by Cropsy, who is now equipped with a pair of garden shears.

Night rolls around, and Alfred spots Cropsy outside his window, but no one believes him, so he, Dave, Fish, and Woodstock go to the mess hall with everyone else. While everyone is eating, Karen tells Michelle that her and Eddy are going to spend the night together, and that she should be back before morning. After supper, everyone then goes to sleep, except for Karen and Eddy who sneak off into the woods by another lake, to skinny-dip. They begin to fool around in the lake, while someone takes Karen's clothes. Just as Eddy and Karen are about to have sex, Karen decides she's not ready, upsetting Eddy who tries to force himself inside her, making her slap him. Eddy is outraged and orders her to leave him, which she does, only to discover that her clothes have been strewn all over the woods. She begins to collect them all, until she reaches her last article of clothing on a tree, where she is grabbed by Cropsy and has her throat viciously slashed.

The next morning, Michelle finds that Karen hasn't returned, and her and Todd go out and find Eddy, where they demand they know where she is, but he tells them she left. They take him and go back to camp, only to discover that the canoes have been cut loose and are floating adrift in the lake that surrounds the island the summer camp is located on. Michelle doesn't believe Karen would do this, so she has all the campers fix up a raft for them to go on and collect the canoes, while other campers and counselors go out to find wood. Glazer goes with Sally and tries to pressure her into having sex with him, but she tells him to wait until nightfall, while Eddy, Fish, and Woodstock finish the raft and board it, along with two female campers, who then set off to find the canoes. Alfred feels that something is wrong, and begins to explore, while Todd reassures Michelle, that Karen is okay. Eddy and the campers spot a canoe and begin to paddle towards it, only to have Cropsy pop up with his shears and snip off Woodstock's fingers. He then swings his shears, chopping one of the boards apart, and hitting Fish through the chest, killing him. One of the girl camper's is then stabbed in the stomach, while Eddy falls back against a post, where he is stabbed through the throat. The shears then slash Woodstock's throat and face, and the last female camper is hit in the head, having her skull split and brains pour out. Michelle begins to worry when the raft doesn't return, but keeps the kids busy, while Todd takes Dave, Alfred, and a few other campers out on a camp out. Night falls, and Glazer finally has sex with Sally, pre-ejaculating inside her, so he decides to make it up to her, and goes to get matches to start them a fire, and spark things back up. While he's gone, Cropsy appears behind Sally, and begins to shove the shears into Sally's chest, as she begs for him to stop. Alfred finds the spot where Glazer and Sally were, and watches as Glazer returns, thinking Sally is asleep, and uncovering Cropsy, who pops up from the sleeping bag, and rams the shears through Glazer's neck, pinning him to a tree. Alfred sees this and tries to make his way back to Todd and the others, finding them at sunrise the next morning.

He awakens Todd, and tells him to go over to the site, and Todd manages to get there, not believing Alfred until he finds the dead bodies. He is then attacked by Cropsy, who hits him in the face with the shears, and begins to chase Alfred. Alfred is chased all through the woods, becoming extremely dirty, and cut up, while Todd regains himself and chases after Cropsy, finding an ax before following Alfred and Cropsy's footsteps. Everyone else has awakened, and are waiting for the raft to return, and after awhile spot it floating towards them, but no one is moving. Dave thinks it's a joke and tries to swim in towards it, only to have a worried Michelle do it instead, who, upon reaching the raft is bombarded with blood and the dead bodies, sending her screaming and swimming back. Once back on the island, she has the kids Todd took out camping grab a canoe that is floating nearby, and begins to row them back towards the campsite. Meanwhile, Cropsy has captured Alfred, in a rocky hill, by forcefully dragging him by the throat towards an abandoned mineshaft. Todd follows nearby, and hears Alfred's screams, finally tracking him down to the mineshaft, where Alfred has the garden shears embedded into his arm, pinning him to the wall. Michelle makes it back to land with the campers, and calls the police to come by helicopter to save the kids, and anyone else still alive. Todd is then attacked by Cropsy, who steals the ax, and begins to swing it around, knocking Todd into a room, where Karen's body is shown, and cutting him up some more. Then he and Cropsy struggle, and Cropsy's disfigured face is shown, making Todd remember back to when he and his friends set Cropsy on fire by accident. Alfred is able to take the shears out, and finds Cropsy and Todd, stabbing the shears into Cropsy's back, while Todd makes him fall onto them. The police arrive by helicopter, while Michelle travels by boat to find Todd and Alfred. While Todd and Alfred are walking away, Cropsy pops back up, and attacks them, resulting in a struggle, which ends with Alfred igniting Cropsy's clothes, and Todd hitting him in the head with the ax. Afterward Alfred and Todd make their way out to Michelle, who brings them to the helicopter and to the hospital.

One televised version has a crossfade at this point which brings the storyline back to Todd, sitting at a campfire with all his friends and the camp kids, concluding the tale of Cropsy as if the entire movie had been a campfire ghost story.

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I searched high and low for movie stills from the last two movies but i failed you readers, outside of the posters i just couldn’t find any. Heck, i had to work to find any for Friday and Sleepaway. You would think that being influential films in the horror genre they would make my job easier, but no…those bastards are interfering in my art.

Just plain cool!

`

Where are they now: Friday the 13th (1980)?

As a glowing display of my parenting skills, my 13 year old daughter comes back from the public library with a copy of this movie and I sit down and watch it with her. I’m not sure when I turned a perfectly happy, socially concerned little girl into a horror movie fan, maybe it was exposing her to “Killer Klowns From Outer Space” when she was 6, maybe it was the excitement that comes in October not for costumes and candy but because AMC and TCM go apeshit with the classic and cheesy movies. Ah Hell, I’m just happy to have someone to share with.

In 1980 as a response to John Carpenter’s Halloween, feeling that it wasn’t scary or bloody enough, Sean S. Cunningham started production on what would become one of the most important horror film of the genre. And although Kevin Bacon was a no-name at the time he would go on to be a huge star. These are the other people in Friday the 13th and what their major film credits look like.

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Betsy Palmer – Mrs.. Pamela Voorhees

Palmer was born in East Chicago, Indiana, the daughter of Marie (née Love), who headed the Chicago Business College, and Vincent R. Hrunek, an industrial chemist who was an immigrant from Czechoslovakia. She graduated from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois.

Palmer got her first acting job in 1951 when she joined the cast of a 15 minute long, daily soap opera, Miss Susan, which was produced in Philadelphia. She was "discovered" for this role while enjoying a party in the apartment of actor Frank Sutton (Sgt. Carter of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.). She had been in New York City less than one week.

She would later become a familiar face on television as a long-running regular panelist on the quiz show I've Got a Secret. She joined the show's original run, replacing Faye Emerson in 1958 and remaining until the show's finale 1967. She did not subsequently reprise her role in any of the various revivals of the show.

Palmer also played nurse Lt. Ann Girard (the most prominent female character) in the all-star cast of the film Mister Roberts (1955) starring Henry Fonda, Jack Lemmon, and James Cagney, which became an Oscar nominee for Best Picture and won one for Lemmon.

She was the character Carol Lee Phillips in the film Queen Bee (1956) starring the legendary actress Joan Crawford. She starred alongside Fonda again as well as Anthony Perkins in the Paramount production of The Tin Star (1957), a Western that was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Story or Screenplay.

Palmer's need to purchase a new car was her reason for taking her most famous role in Friday the 13th. She recounted, in an interview, that her initial reaction to the experience was: "What a piece of junk! Nobody is ever going to see this piece of crap". In spite of her apparent distaste for the film, she consented to a cameo appearance in Friday the 13th Part II. She ultimately came to embrace her participation in the films, appearing in the 2006 documentary Betsy Palmer: A Scream Queen Legend. Palmer was asked to reprise her role as Mrs. Voorhees in Freddy vs. Jason in 2003 but turned it down due to low offered salary.

Betsy created the role of "Suz Becker" on the CBS daytime soap opera, "As the World Turns." From 1989 to 1990, the actress appeared on the CBS prime time soap opera Knots Landing as "Aunt Ginny Bullock", the aunt of Valene Ewing (played by series star Joan Van Ark).

She acted in a Mayfield Dinner Theatre production of "On Golden Pond" in 1997 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, playing the role of Ethel Thayer. Now in her 80s, Palmer continues to act. In 2005, she provided the voice of the title character, the ghost of a witch, in Bell Witch: The Movie. In 2006, she appeared in the independent horror film Penny Dreadful and in 2007 as the older version of the title character in Waltzing Anna.

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Adrienne King – Alice

Adrienne King (born 4 February 1960) is an American actress and painter. She is mostly known for her starring role in the original Friday the 13th.

King was born in Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York. She appeared in her first commercial when she was six months old, and has stayed at it with a brief hiatus or two ever since. She has also studied voice and dance at the London Royal Academy, being continually involved in some phase of show business. She has done numerous television (such as the episode Inherit the Wind of Hallmark Hall of Fame in 1965 as "Melinda") and radio commercials.

King is also a member of the Joseph Jefferson Theatre Company, and her professional credits include summer stock and off broadway productions including "W. H. Auden". Then, she was a non-credit dancer in Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Hair (1979). Her biggest roles were Alice in Friday the 13th (1980) and Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981). King was cast after the producers' could not get their first choice, Sally Field.

After the success of these movies she was stalked by an obsessive fan. Shaken by the experience, she decided to take a break

from acting and focus on painting. She did voice roles in dozens of films, including What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), While You Were Sleeping (1995) and Titanic (1997).

In 2008, she was approached to appear in the remake of Friday the 13th. Days later, the production contacted her once more, stating that they had reconsidered and now wanted no one from the original to appear in the remake. Shortly thereafter, she signed on to the Texas-lensed science fiction/horror film Walking Distance, marking her first onscreen film appearance in 27 years.

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Jeannine Taylor - Marcie

Jeannine Taylor (born June 2, 1954) is an American actress who is perhaps best known for playing "Marcie Cunningham" in the 1980 horror movie Friday the 13th. She also starred in a TV film called The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana.

She married James McConnell on Feb 3, 1990. They currently live in Keene, New Hampshire.

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Harry Crosby - Bill

Harry Lillis Crosby III (born 8 August 1958) is an American actor, singer and investment banker.

Crosby was born in Hollywood, California. He is the fifth son of actor and singer Bing Crosby, the eldest from Bing's second marriage to Kathryn Crosby (née Grandstaff). Harry is: the brother of Mary and Nathaniel Crosby; the half-brother of Gary, Dennis, Phillip and Lindsay Crosby; the uncle of Denise Crosby; the nephew of Bob Crosby and Larry Crosby.

Harry gained showbiz experience at an early age, by appearing with his father and family on various Christmas television shows...and also at the London Palladium in 1976 and 1977.

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Kevin Bacon – Jack

Actor, Musician and all around great guy to work with. If you don’t know about the most successful of the Friday the 13th alumni then please do a search on Google, in the meantime, here is a brief list of his acting credits.

National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) as Chip Diller Starting Over (1979) as Husband The Gift (1979) as Teddy Hero at Large (1980) as 2nd Teenager Friday the 13th (1980) as Jack Burrell Only When I Laugh (1981) as Don Diner (1982) as Timothy Fenwick Jr. Forty Deuce (1982) as Ricky The Demon Murder Case (1983) as Kenny Miller Enormous Changes at the Last Minute (1983) as Dennis Footloose (1984) as Ren McCormick Mister Roberts (1984) as Ens. Frank Pulver The Little Sister (1985) as Probation Officer Quicksilver (1986) as Jack Casey White Water Summer (1987) as Vic End of the Line (1987) as Everett Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987) as Taxi Racer Lemon Sky (1988) as Alan She's Having a Baby (1988) as Jefferson 'Jake' Edward Briggs Criminal Law (1989) as Martin Thiel The Big Picture (1989) as Nick Chapman Tremors (1990) as Valentine McKee Flatliners (1990) as David Labraccio Pyrates (1991) as Ari Queens Logic (1991) as Dennis He Said, She Said (1991) as Dan Hanson JFK (1991) as Willie O'Keefe A Few Good Men (1992) as Capt. Jack Ross

The Air Up There (1994) as Jimmy Dolan The River Wild (1994) as Wade Murder in the First (1995) as Henri Young Apollo 13 (1995) as Jack Swigert Balto (1995) (voice) as Balto Sleepers (1996) as Sean Nokes Picture Perfect (1997) as Sam Mayfair Destination Anywhere (1997) as Mike Telling Lies in America (1997) as Billy Magic Digging to China (1998) as Ricky Schroth Wild Things (1998) as Sgt. Ray Duguette Stir of Echoes (1999) as Tom Witzky My Dog Skip (2000) as Jack Morris We Married Margo (2000) as Himself Hollow Man (2000) as Sebastian Caine Novocaine (2001) as Lance Phelps Trapped (2002) as Joe Hickey Mystic River (2003) as Sean Devine In the Cut (2003) as John Graham The Woodsman (2004) as Walter Cavedweller (2004) as Randall Pritchard Loverboy (2005) as Marty Beauty Shop (2005) as Jorge Where the Truth Lies (2005) as Lanny Morris Death Sentence (2007) as Nick Hume Rails & Ties (2007) as Tom Stark The Air I Breathe (2008) as Love Frost/Nixon (2008) as Jack Brennan Taking Chance (2009) as Lt. Col. Michael Strobl

Little bit of a shakeup

Well, this got crazy at MonsterMovieTV Labs for awhile but now we are reorganized and with my hand of this copy of “Death Bed: The Bed That Eats People” I swear we will do our best to bring you the news and smart assed commentary about the world of cheesy Horror and Sci-Fi you have been seeking.  So without further ado we return you to the scheduled broadcasts, and if you found us via our twitter feed, thanks for visiting and have a look around.

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