THE FREAKMAKER (1974)

  If you take the classic 1930s movie FREAKS and add in a FRANKENSTEIN-ish mad-doctor(Donald Pleasence who instead of trying to reanimate the dead is trying here to splice human and plant DNA for some reason which just results in Venus flytrap monsters)  you would get this weird 70s British horror flick. 70s DR. WHO himself, Tom Baker under some heavy ugly facial makeup, is the leader of the carnival freaks which include a few midgets, that black "Popeye" fellow who can make his eyes bulge out of his head and of course Dr. Pleasence's rejected experiments.   A strange grimy little English oddity that doesn't get much attention but is worth a gander. AKA THE MUTATIONS

 

PAGANINI HORROR (1988)

 So Paganini is a phantom who kills off this 80s girl-group who sound like either Bon Jovi( or Olivia Newton-John depending on the song) with his golden violin-sword while they're trying to shoot their music video in an old mansion because of some haunted sheet music . It's kind of like that other Italian horror movie Stagefright but even stupider! Director Luigi Cozzi claims his gore budget was cut right before filming started so that explains why there isn't even a ton of that on display. Donald Pleasence  shows up as The Devil himself in a couple of scenes and Daria Nicolodi has a bigger role and apparently helped write the screenplay which I assume couldn't have taken very long.

THE MONSTER CLUB (1981)

 Remember that movie where there's a stripper who strips all of her skin and flesh off and ends up just a dancing skeleton? Well if you do, this is that movie. I recall first seeing this one on t.v. as a youth which probably wasn't too long after it originally was released. So I assume it wasn't much of a big hit or anything. Vincent Price and John Carradine, both sadly past their prime, star in what is an anthology deal with 3 horror tales. It's in the Amicus studios mold(produced by Amicus' Milton Subotsky and the last film directed by Amicus regular Roy Ward Baker) but came out a few years after they went out of business. The stories are a bit slow for the most part but the wraparound scenes in the actual "monster club" are goofy fun. You get Donald Pleasence as a vampire hunter and Britt Ekland as a wife of a vampire who is somehow not a vampire herself. How does that work exactly? The new wavey musical bits(including The Pretty Things who were somehow still together since the 60s!) really bring things to a halt but at least I know what a shadmock is now. 

 

ALONE IN THE DARK (1982)

 Not to be confused with the shitty Uwe Boll-directed video game movie from the 2000's with the same title, this is the 80's sorta-slasher flick starring the stellar line up of Donald Pleasence, Martin Landau and Jack Palance as a nutty psychiatrist and two psychopaths respectively. I think the main thing I like about this is that it plays mostly like a slasher movie but it's very atypical of the genre primarily because there's so many kill-crazy psychos running around. The other big plus is there's a punk rock club where The Sic Fucks are always playing which is pretty sweet. Strangely enough the guy who played the nutty character of Murdock on THE A-TEAM is one of the few sane people here as a doctor trying to protect his family from a bunch of kooks on the loose. There's also a killer who wears a hockey-mask before Jason found his, small but perky naked boobs and that huge Baldie from THE WANDERERS as a monstrous, backbreaking, child-molesting hulk of a nut-job. A great crazy 80's horror flick with a great soundtrack.

The timeless classic featured in this film!:

HALLOWEEN (1978)

 I watch this film about once a year. It didn't invent the slasher genre(BLACK CHRISTMAS is usually cited as being the film to do that) but due to it's success it did kick-off the 80's glut of stalk n' kill movies that followed. Probably the first few times I saw this was on TV which is a different cut from the original theatrical release so when I finally caught it on VHS it was strange to see all the little differences. Of course now having seen it so many times on VHS and DVD it's pretty ingrained in my memory.
 Everything about this film is very iconic to the horror genre. Shots are framed with an amazing focus on detail, the camerawork is incredible, the music fits everything perfectly and the characters are about the best the slasher genre would ever see. Donald Pleasence was the only actual name actor at the time this was made but everyone does a great job and of course Jamie Lee Curtis would become a household name after this. This also started director John Carpenter down the road of making some great 80's horror flicks and unlike many of the other supposedly great horror films of the 80's his weren't all full of jokes, but actually scary movies.
 There were 8 official sequels and then a shitty pointless remake from Rob Zombie.



HALLOWEEN posters from around the world!

WAKE IN FRIGHT (1971)

 I got a chance to experience this film which was lost for many years last night in a theater and I have to say it's definitely worth checking out if you're a fan of insane cinematic head-trips.  This film is really the story of a man's decent into madness as he ends up stuck in a strange outback Australian town where binge-drinking, gambling & friendly drunken fistfights are everyday expected events.  A place for rugged manly men who shoot kangaroos for sport and when they don't die fast enough don't mind using their bare hands and knives to finish the job.(these kangaroo kill scenes are edited together from real hunts which might upset ultra-sensitive animal lover-types)  Donald Pleasence isn't our main character here(that would be Gary Bond) but he really steals the show as an alcoholic doctor of sorts who's a complete madman under his seemingly intellectual exterior.  It does start out a bit slow at first and you're not sure where things are going but this all works to build things up until they reach an insane climax.  A strange view into a part of Australia that I'm not sure I could ever live in but it would be one hell of a vacation.  AKA OUTBACK

THE DEVONSVILLE TERROR(1983)

If you like watching women getting burned alive and killed in various ways for being witches maybe you will dig this. Has director Ulli Lommel ever made a decent film? I've yet to see one. THE BOOGEY MAN was another incoherent mess from what I recall of it. Plays sorta like Ulli's version of MARK OF THE DEVIL. Donald Pleasence shows up as a doctor for a bit trying to help one woman. The ending is pretty strange as one of the witches turns out to actually have super-powers and shoots laser beams out of her eyes which melt faces and make heads explode. Not sure if it's worth sitting through all the talky crap, in the rest of the movie, just for that though. Especially since you can just watch all 90 seconds of the highlights right here:

LAND OF THE MINOTAUR (1976)

OK so you got Peter Cushing heading up this cult of colorful Klu Klux Klan-looking, robe-wearing knuckleheads who worship a minotaur. Now a minotaur I don't think, from what I know of mythology, was a god. But anyway this one grants his worshipers super-powers if they sacrifice a few people to him every once in a while. Like they can get run over by a bus or shot with bullets and still walk around fine. Donald Pleasence plays a priest who doesn't think it's such a great idea and goes about bringing down this little group with some help. Overall this is a dreadfully boring movie with typical scenes and even a dull climactic battle with people exploding cuz of a cross and some holy water. The females are fairly attractive but that's about all there is to recommend about this turd. The poster makes the minotaur look like some kinda Godzilla-sized monster. Unfortunately he's just a person-sized stupid stone statue that blows fire out of his nostrils and falls on intruders into his cave. Dumb.

Groovy enough for Commander USA, so I guess that's something: