THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES (1971)

 One of the all-time great Vincent Price performances here. Also one of the easiest jobs for Caroline Munro as his deceased wife and the catalyst for his revenge-fueled murder spree. Killer bats, rats, locusts and even a golden unicorn are among the tools used by Dr. Phibes to wreak his biblically-inspired vengeance(I don't remember any unicorns actually being in the bible but I'm no scholar). Fun horror flick that sorta inspired SAW(but they forgot the whole fun part). AKA DR. PHIBES

 There was a sequel the next year and a planned BRIDE OF DR. PHIBES that sadly never got made.   

 

FACELESS (1987)

  Jess Franco basically rehashes his AWFUL DR. ORLOFF plot here once again. He even gets Howard Vernon to play a character named Doctor Orloff. In addition to the standard searching-for-a-new-face-for-my-disfigured-love storyline this one throws in a bunch of ultra-gory scenes of driller killing, acid-melting faces, scissors in throats, needles in eyeballs and of course faces being peeled right off of living patients. There's also a decent budget and some bigger-named stars than usual for one of these Eurotrash horror flicks including Telly Savalas and Caroline Munro who don't really do much but appear in a few scenes. Helmut Berger is our main evil doctor and Christopher Mitchum gets the heroic detective role. 

 One of the weirdest decisions in this movie is to not bother dubbing the final line, uttered by Telly Savalas, which is integral to the conclusion of the whole plot! I assume this isn't a problem outside of the English version. 

               Known in France, and a few other places, as PREDATORS OF THE NIGHT:

DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS (1984)

 This slasher flick from England reverses the more standard killer Santa Claus plot and has a killer going around hacking up anyone wearing a Santa, or Father Christmas, outfit. It has a little of everything you need in a movie like this including quite a castration, some bare boobs, exploding presents and quite a bit of blood. Caroline Munro shows up to sing and dance for us in one scene while a Santa has his faced hacked up. Edmund Purdom, who I know best from the classic stupid Italian slasher PIECES, plays a creepy Chief of Police here. While not the greatest slasher it does have a semi-giallo vibe which is cool and  I do find myself watching this one around this time of year. This is most likely because there's so few other halfway decent Christmas horror flicks to watch.

 This is the only directing credit for Edmund Purdom but apparently he actually quit and was the first of 4 directors to work on this which explains why it took 2 years to complete. 

                         Cool poster! Woulda been cool if this actually happened in the movie:

SLAUGHTER HIGH (1986)

                                  "Talk dirty, Frank! Talk dirty!" "Um... tits"

 If you took FRIDAY THE 13th mixed it with THE TOXIC AVENGER and threw Caroline Munro in there it would seem like a good idea on paper, in reality though I would probably rank this 80's slasher somewhere in the middle of all the many stalk and kill flicks from that decade.  It starts out like your average teen sex comedy and then our nerd character, Marty, gets horribly scarred in a prank gone wrong and from there on out it's exactly what you expect(at least up until the ending when, I think, it may have been all just a dream).  It all takes place on April Fool's Day and that was the original title up until that other APRIL FOOL'S DAY slasher movie came out(the one that had all the fake death's in it and a shitty ending).  This movie here not only resembles FRIDAY THE 13th in plot and bloody kills(a guy's intestine's explode out of his body, a gal takes an acid bath and a guy getting chopped-up by a lawn-mower being some highlights) but they got Harry Manfredini to score it so it sounds pretty much exactly like F13 in a bunch of places and they even go so far as having one character wear a hockey mask at one point and joke around about being Jason. The kills are good and gore-filled(I watched this on an old VHS but I'm pretty sure there's an even gorier DVD release) and this is an OK watch if you dig these type of 80's stupid dead teen flicks.