LIFEFORCE (1985)

  So on paper this seems like it would be a cool movie. You get space vampires from Halley's Comet who end up on earth(one of which is the lovely Mathilda May who spends a majority of the film wandering around completely naked!) draining folks of their "lifeforce" and turning them into zombies. Unfortunately the movie manages to take whatever excitement could have been gleaned from this concept and present it in the most boring way possible. I know the backstory of the making of this involves lots of production problems so I guess we can blame that for any lack of engaging characters or compelling sequences. We could also blame director Tobe Hooper though his previous 2 films for Cannon Films(INVADERS FROM MARS and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACER 2 are at least competently directed and amusing schlock). Star Steve Railsback only manages to remind me of Charles Manson everytime I see him show up (due to his amazing performance in the TV-movie HELTER SKELTER) but hey at least you get some nice boobs to ogle. 

 There's a 116-minute cut of this that I can;t even begin to fathom siting through. It's supposed to have a better soundtrack though if that helps.

 This is sort-of a re-imagining of QUARTERMASS AND THE PIT though I don't recall any nekkid chics in that one. 

 

Japanese style!:

Known in some places as SPACE VAMPIRES!:

EATEN ALIVE (1976)

 Director Tobe Hooper followed up his classic THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE with this kinda similar horror tale of a hotel run by wacko Neville Brand who likes to feed various folks that set him off, for one reason or another, to his extra-large crocodile that he keeps in a moat under his establishment. Probably the best way to describe this film is that it's kinda like TCM but not quite as good. This isn't to say it's a bad watch since TCM is, by my estimation, one of the greatest horror movies ever made. Instead of a chainsaw you get a bunch of scythe violence plus lots of croc-chomping goodness(apparently this croc hadn't been fed in a long time before these events take place!). In addition to that there's a young Freddy Krueger(Robert Englund) shouting the famous line "Name's Buck and I'm rarin' to fuck"-line that Quentin Tarantino would recycle for KILL BILL, an old Morticia Addams(Carolyn Jones of THE ADDAMS FAMILY) and Marilyn Burns playing pretty much the same character she did in a year earlier in TCM. It never really manages to build the tension the way 'SAW does but still a solid Hooper entry. AKA BRUTES AND SAVAGES, DEATH TRAP, SLAUGHTER HOTEL, HORROR HOTEL, HORROR HOTEL MASSACRE, LEGEND OF THE BAYOU, MURDER ON THE BAYOU and STARLIGHT SLAUGHTER
 Mr. Tobe would go on to become a technically better director but sadly more mainstream after this.

Croc horror meets Marilyn Chambers horror!:

THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2 (1986)

 I saw this movie when it first came out back in 1986, which was kinda hard to do since I was only 15 at the time and it was released unrated, but despite this struggle it instantly became one of my favorite things in the world. I could quote entire scenes from memory(especially any scene with Chop-Top in it!) and figured no movie could ever match it's insanity, gore and absurd humour. As I've gotten older it's gotten harder to ignore some of the obvious flaws with this film. The main thing is there's really no reason for a sequel to what is the greatest horror film ever made and if you were going to make one, maybe making it an over-the-top black comedy isn't the best choice. I can see why director Tobe Hooper wouldn't want to try and top the aura of the first movie but it woulda been interesting to have seen him attempt something at least a bit scarier. There are really just jump scares here and there and the rest is all gore and dumb 80s jokes but if you were in your teens or 20s in the 1980s or if you just wanna see a really goofy cartoonish version of Leatherface then this might be the best thing ever for ya.
 There are 2 more sequels after this in the 90s which ignore this movie and in comparision make this movie look amazing! There's also a complete dogshit 2000s remake and a retarded prequel and finally another sequel(in 3D this time!) which ignores all those movies and somehow has people traveling through time or curing the aging process or something since it makes zero sense.