Feature Article

How things have changed. In the forties, for instance, one would find it difficult to name twenty good genre films of the decade but, since the late seventies, Hollywood has learned that their baby-booming audiences could not only handle strong horror and science fiction concepts, they craved them. Filmmakers everywhere went into overdrive. Like television today, there wasn’t a production …

In our last entry we studied the real life roots of Tobe Hooper’s 1974 film, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but now we’re going to fast-forward to 1976. Hooper’s debut film has become a monster hit that’s making a fortune in cinemas all across the US. Unfortunately, Hooper’s dead broke because Bryanston Film Distribution is stealing 99 cents on every dollar …

In their earliest incarnations, slasher films set themselves apart from the average horror film of the time by embracing a certain semblance of realism. Prototypical slashers such as Psycho, Peeping Tom and Texas Chainsaw Massacre utilized a human killer in the place of monsters, ghosts and demons to instill fear in the audience. John Carpenter’s Halloween was the turning point …

Every October, I struggle with what I should watch. There is so much good (and bad) stuff out there, that you have to choose wisely with the free time you have. So, I have decided to share a few of my designated titles to watch, “The Church” When I was around twelve-years-old, the image of Baphomet having sex with a …

Ask anybody who their favourite horror author is. Which name will most likely be the answer? Stephen King of course, and with good reason. For decades, Stephen King has haunted the dreams and nightmares of teenagers and adults alike, with him becoming one of the most established and famous writers of the genre, with his exceptional works reaching the 54 …

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – Directed by Wes Craven In Wes Craven’s ‘’A Nightmare on Elm Street’’, Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) lives in the perfect suburban area of Elm Street, Springwood. After the death of her best friend, Nancy realises that Elm Street has a dark secret after constantly having nightmares about a disfigured child murderer named Freddy …

In 1964 a short skinny kid entered film school at the University of Southern California, and fifteen years later he was a multi-millionaire. He was still skinny and shy back then. His name is George Lucas and, for a time, it looked as if his first feature film, THX 1138 (1971) was going to be his last. It was produced …

Buffy The Vampire Slayer is my favorite tv show of all time. For me it was my introduction to both the horror genre and the larger realm of pop culture. What has always stuck with me about this show is how engaging the villains or big bad’s  on the show were. Buffy fought every type of monster you could think …

Welcome back for another look at an eras sexist hottest horror posters. If you had a chance to look at some of our previous collections, you already know that it was the later eras that really started to exploit their marketing by featuring busty females and compromising positions into their marketing campaigns. Sadly, the 1960’s era was a less exploitative …

Hello horror fans! Welcome to another cool lil poster collection. In this posting we take on the hottest and sexiest poster/DVD/VHS covers from the 1980’s. Now of course astute viewers know that DVD’s didn’t come out till 1995, so it would make more sense if all were VHS/movie posters. However once DVD hit, some of the old art was refurbished …

In the horror genre we have films that either thrill and chill us or fail to tap into the core of our psyche leaving us in want for new nightmares. Over the last few years we’ve seen a plethora of films that have tried to terrify audiences and while some hit the mark, not of all of them were particularly …

While the commercial form of genre cinema was being shaped, first in Germany in the twenties and then Hollywood in the thirties, it was receiving a rather different kind of input from several non-commercial intellectual filmmakers in Europe. Yet it was not so very long before the influence of the artistic movement of surrealism was making its way into the …

Plastic skeletons dangling on wires above the audience! Theatre seats wired to buzz the audience! Fright-breaks giving cowardly customers a chance to escape to the lobby! Insurance policies guaranteeing audience members against death by fright! These and other outrageous gimmicks designed to pull in more moviegoers may seem like the creations of a P.T. Barnum rather than a directorial master …

Perhaps everyone’s secret favourite horror movie cliche, sex scenes have dominated decadent B-movie horror sleaze from the ‘80s onwards. Of course, if you’re in a horror movie and take part in such scenes, you’re almost guaranteed to be killed during these scenes, which is what makes horror sex scenes so much better than any old romantic comedy scene. Who doesn’t …

One of the most revered movies in horror history, Suspiria, is returning to our movie theaters after 41 years, this time as a modern remake. The first installment of Dario Argento’s ‘Three Mothers’ trilogy is not only his finest work, but one of the finest of its time. It’s very rare that a horror movie manages to leave such a …