Night School isn’t just an underrated slasher, or an underseen one. For my money, it’s one of the best films the subgenre has ever produced, full stop, and Vinegar Syndrome’s new 4K UHD restoration, arriving just in time for the film’s 45th anniversary, is must-have proof. Stacked with special features highlighting the craft of the film and its place in slasher history, and headlined by a gorgeous restoration showcasing the wonderfully textured production, this is Night School as it’s meant to be seen for slasher devotees everywhere. 

So, what makes the film so effective? It starts very simply, with the revelation that a killer with a very cool knife and a motorcycle helmet as a mask is murdering young women in Boston, taking off their heads, and dropping those heads in the nearest body of water (no matter how small).

Solving the case falls on Judd Austin (Leonard Mann), a detective with an academic background who traces all of the victims in one way or another back to a local night school. There, suspicion falls on a womanizing professor (Drew Snyder) who sleeps around on his research assistant and romantic partner, Eleanor (Rachel Ward), whose own death could be right around the corner. 

I’m doing my best to stay as spoiler-free as possible here, not just because I think plenty of slasher fans still need to see Night School, but because the film is quite determined to be a whodunit in the classic Italian giallo sense. The kills are brutal and elaborate, the killer deliberately covered head-to-toe in leather and a gleaming black helmet, the knife and the headhunting a disturbing signature. Avergon’s script is well-versed in the trappings of exactly this kind of story, complete with red herrings galore. And yet, by the time it’s all wrapping up, there’s also the sense that the answer was right there in front of you the entire time, something the very best films by legends like Mario Bava and Dario Argento could also achieve. 

But on to the restoration: Like the best of the gialli, Night School is also a beautifully engineered film full of colors and delicate camera compositions and sound design. The opening kill, which takes place on a playground carousel outside of a daycare, is rich in exactly this kind of thing, from the cityscapes that lead into the scene to the sound of a motorcycle slowly rolling forward, its engine already dead. Cinematographer Mark Irwin, best known for his many collaborations with David Cronenberg, paints the film in rich reds, absinthe greens, and haunting, chilled blue-white light on wet Boston streets, all of which are preserved beautifully by the restoration team at work on this one.

It’s a movie that very deliberately evokes a specific place – the aging streets of Boston in the 1980s, and the halls of relatively low-level academia – and then takes that place into haunted territory, saturating every frame with color and shadow that suggests a killer lurking just out of view.

Night School is not a massively gore-heavy film, but it does deliver the slasher goods with a series of tense, often unpredictable kills and body discoveries that range from the darkly comic to the flat-out jaw-dropping. That’s thanks to the sound design, the score, the editing from Robert Reitano, and more, all of which add to the film’s giallo soul.

In every case, the scene’s geography is outstanding, and it’s easy to see where the simplest possible kill shot might land, but the film never goes for the obvious. Throw in a surprisingly (for 1981, anyway) feminist bent to the storytelling and some very progressive moments for an early slasher film, and this one fits right in with Black Christmas and The Slumber Party Massacre as a film with depth you can just keep unpacking. 

That depth, helped along by a load of featurettes and two new commentary tracks featuring members of the crew, is what stands out the most in this new 4K set. Night School may be a niche film recognized mostly by horror addicts and the slasher faithful, but it deserves to be something more, a landmark on the roadmap of slasher cinema history. It’s one of the best in the genre, and this restoration highlights, underlines, and shouts that from the rooftops.

Night School is now available in 4K UHD from Vinegar Syndrome.

The post ‘Night School’ 4K UHD Review: An Essential Slasher with Giallo Soul appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Matinee (also released as Midnight Matinee in some territories) is a movie that understands this from the jump, setting up a stunning opening kill that predates a similar sequence in Scream 2 by almost a full decade. A smart, layered, very stylish Canadian slasher released at the tail end of the 1980s, it’s one of those films that’s spent a lot of time in the dark even among the horror faithful (I’m willing to admit that I hadn’t seen it until recently). Now, a new Kino Cult Blu-ray release is out to change that, and it reveals a slasher essential that, while not perfect, has charm and style to spare. 

Two years ago, the Paramount Theater in the small town of Halston closed its doors when, during the theater’s annual horror festival, a young moviegoer was murdered in his seat, mid-movie. Leads in the murder quickly dried up, and the case is cold enough now that the town barely talks about it anymore. Fortunately for local horror fans, that means the Paramount can open again in time for its Halloween horror festival, and they’ve got a hotshot producer (William B. Davis) in town for just such an occasion.

As the festival draws closer, the film introduces us to a variety of characters, including rebellious teenager Sherri (Beatrice Boepple), her boyfriend Lawrence (Jeff Schultz), her overbearing mother Marilyn (Gillian Barber), and the theater’s kindly owner, Earle (Don S. Davis), who’s just hoping he can run a business without more bloodshed. But someone clearly remembers what happened two years ago, and their violent streak is on a collision course with opening night. 

Matinee has quite a few things going for it, but what stands out right away, and maintains a consistent grip right up through a wonderful crescendo in the third act, is the film’s visual style. Writer/Director Richard Martin, cinematographer Cyrus Block, and special effects wizard Bob Comer make great use of the film’s limited locations, giving the movie a charming small-town feel reminiscent of Halloween or The Blob while building a self-contained little world inside the theater itself that’ll remind you of films like Popcorn and Demons.

The colors are striking, the framing is clever, and the film clearly has a ball making references to all kinds of other horror cinema moments ranging from The Phantom of the Opera to Friday the 13th. The kills, while relatively sparing with gore, are delivered with style and appropriate tension, creating that sense of unease right in the middle of a place where we as movie fans should be comfortable: The movie theater. Along the way, the Paramount itself becomes a character, and this release definitely dials up its retro splendor.  

The Blu-ray upgrade preserves the film’s attention to detail and ambitious cinematography, helping the colors to pop while never letting go of the texture and feel of a relatively low-budget horror film made in Canada in the 1980s. There’s a certain gauziness to many exploitation films of this era, that haloed light you get when the scene is perhaps overexposed just a little too much. It makes the film dreamlike even when it reaches for realism, and Kino Cult’s upgrade preserves that feeling. Throw in a smart script and a whodunit plot that leans heavily into the psychological details of each character, and you’ve got a winner. 

There are a couple of things that stick out as slight issues here, including the lack of special features beyond an excellent commentary from film historians and Kino regulars Jason Pichonsky and Paul Corupe. The disc is quite reasonably priced, so it’s not a letdown economically speaking, but I’d love a deeper dive into the film and the Canadian slasher boom in general, particularly for a movie like this that seems to have faded from so many memories, including mine. The sound mix also has some issues, probably left over from previous releases, that might have you playing with your volume settings a little more than you’d like over the course of a 90-minute film, particularly when lines of ADR dialogue crop up. 

These are minor concerns, though, and they do nothing to diminish the impact of Matinee, or the joy that’ll come from watching this film for the first time if you’re a slasher devotee in search of something new, or even someone who saw this movie way back when hoping to relive its glories. This is one of those slashers I’ll be talking about with fellow horrorphiles for a long time, and it’s because of this disc.

Matinee is now available on Blu-ray from Kino Cult.

The post ‘Matinee’ Blu-ray Review: Kino Cult Revives an Overlooked Canadian Slasher Gem appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

I, for one, had been waiting for this announcement ever since experiencing that Psycho Killer needle-drop during the closing credits of the original film back when I was a teenager, but now that the dust has settled and we eagerly await further news about the follow-up that felt like it would never come, I’d argue that this is the perfect time to think about what a sequel to Behind The Mask actually means. The original movie was a love-letter to the Slasher genre and its complicated position in the mid-2000s media landscape, so it’s fair to assume that Behind the Mask II: The Return of Leslie Vernon will have a lot to say after two decades of cinematic silence.

After all, the 2006 production released during a divisive period in film history where it was generally accepted that the industry had become oversaturated with Americanized J-Horror, so-called “Torture Porn” and excessive remakes. This situation led to many fans becoming nostalgic for the horror titans of yesteryear. While the truth is that the 2000s actually had plenty of original genre filmmaking going on, the lack of easily accessible online distribution meant that genuinely memorable flicks like Laid to Rest and The Hills Run Red would only find their audiences years down the line.

Leslie Vernon was created as both an homage to our favorite Slashers and this new wave of underappreciated killers created by indie filmmakers attempting to carve out their own niche during a period when the best they could hope for was a straight-to-video release. By the end of Behind the Mask, however, Vernon had more or less ascended to legendary status, carrying out his first massacre and earning a spot among his murderous heroes (including Eugene, the mentor figure played by Scott Wilson who is heavily implied to be Billy from the 1974’s Black Christmas).

Back when a sequel was first announced, Glosserman and co-writer David J. Stieve explained that they wanted to continue analyzing recurring trends in 2000s genre productions. The follow-up was initially planned to poke fun at the Found Footage technique itself while also exploring the appeal of Torture Porn among then-modern audiences. Unfortunately, as time went on and the team failed to secure funding for their idea, this script became more and more dated. And with the filmmakers’ first attempt at crowdfunding ultimately turning into a flop (which makes their latest success that much more impressive), they ultimately decided to release this story as a comic-book.

Feeling like a comic adaptation of a movie from an alternate universe, Before the Mask: The Return of Leslie Vernon was conceived as a “Spreemake” – a simultaneous sequel, prequel and remake explaining how Leslie planned his initial massacre while also following up on the aftermath of his crimes when a movie studio attempts to adapt his bloody moment of glory to the big screen.

While this comic is an undeniably fun time and a must-read for fans of the original movie, it’s already been confirmed that the new sequel is completely ignoring this story in favor of a new script more in line with current horror trends. With indie Slashers having a much more prominent role in modern-day Hollywood (just look at the Terrifier franchise or even the absurd Poohniverse films), it would make sense for a sequel to reevaluate Leslie’s position as an icon.

Glosserman and Stieve have already explained that they imagine Behind the Mask II: The Return of Leslie Vernon taking place in a tongue-in-cheek reflection of the real world where Leslie is respected by fans after the orchard killings despite not being quite as feared as more popular criminals like Michael Myers. The idea here wouldn’t be to merely comment on the current state of Slashers, however, (though I imagine we’ll be seeing plenty of references to modern titans like Art the Clown), but also to explore how familiar archetypes have evolved into new forms that say more about how society views who is and isn’t expendable.

It’s easy to imagine the upcoming flick discussing the rise of the hardened Final Girl (like Jamie Lee Curtis in the recent Halloween trilogy) or even the complicated victim selection process now that hard labels like “jock,” “virgin” and “stoner” are no longer as useful as they once were. Of course, what I’m most excited to see is more screen-time by Robert Englund as our vengeful “Ahab,” Doc Hallorann – an underutilized part of the original movie that makes Leslie’s mythos that much more fascinating.

Of course, only time will tell exactly what kind of story the filmmakers have in store for us when The Return of Leslie Vernon finally comes out (hopefully in the next year or so). But, regardless of any meta genre analysis or potential cameos, I think the main takeaway here is that Glosserman and company have managed to create characters so memorable that we’re still dying to see them again two decades later. And if you ask me, that’s what really makes Leslie unkillable.

The post ‘Behind the Mask II: The Return of Leslie Vernon’ Wraps Up a Wildly Successful Fundraising Campaign appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The talent roster on the film is pretty remarkable for a slasher, and it’s the feature debut for actors like Holly Hunter, Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens, and Brian Backer. Tom Savini did the practical gore effects, and editor Jack Sholder would go on to direct his own genre bangers, including Alone in the Dark and The Hidden.

Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…

The Burning (1981)

Commentators: Tony Maylam (director), Alan Jones (film journalist)

1. There aren’t a lot of American slashers directed by British filmmakers, and Maylam credits his own journey towards that dream to a sexual predator named Harvey Weinstein. The creep saw an early concert film that Maylam made about Genesis and asked if he’d like to make a movie for him. “He was manic,” says Maylam about the prick. (Okay, I got that out of my system.)

2. The initial story idea was called The Cropsey Maniac about a summer camp killer. It was very loosely inspired by an urban legend known around the New York area that’s explored further in 2009’s Cropsey. They don’t mention it here, but the film’s core premise regarding Cropsey and a summer camp was reportedly conceived before the release of Friday the 13th. Also, Madman was heading into production around the same time with a similar Cropsey premise and decided to change it up some to avoid feeling identical.

3. Weinstein’s mother and father were named Mira (Miriam) and Max, respectively. We’ll probably never know if that had any bearing on the name of the Weinsteins’ production company.

4. The early murder of the prostitute doesn’t seem to fit the narrative of Cropsey (Lou David) being fixated on killing folks at a summer camp, but Maylam recalls a certain producer not wanting to wait too long for a kill.

5. Tiger is played by Shelley Bruce, who was starring as Annie on Broadway at the time (possibly as an understudy?) but left the show to do this film. It’s her only feature film credit. She also apparently hung out with Maylam’s fourteen-year-old son and brought him to nightclubs during the film’s production.

6. Cropsey’s choice of garden shears as a weapon was Maylam’s idea.

7. Jones asks why Maylam never worked with the Weinsteins again, especially seeing as this was their first feature, and he helped put them on the road to success. The director says they’re all still friends (as of this recording back in 2007, just over a decade before Harvey Weinstein was arrested for numerous assaults), but the right project never really came along.

8. He says that while the story was conceived by Weinstein, it was Peter Lawrence who wrote the bulk of the actual script, with minor contributions from himself and Bob Weinstein. Maylam doesn’t know why Brad Grey is given a story credit on the film. “Brad was the manager of the camp’s superintendent and was basically a manager of comedians at the time,” and he worked very closely with Weinstein as the man’s gofer. He ultimately went on to become CEO of Paramount Pictures.

9. The story goes that Savini turned down working on Friday the 13th Part 2, “because he was so in love with this script,” but Maylam doesn’t quite confirm that. “We flew to Pittsburgh and went to his home. He liked the script very much, and he was on board, simple as that.”

10. Maylam suggests that the burn makeup effects in 1996’s Academy Award-winning The English Patient are pretty poor. He adds that looking back at The Burning, it would have been “much more sexy” if they had Cropsey’s burnt facial skin peeling off.

11. The original ending was meant to unfold in a big cave, but they discovered it was home to a high number of bats, so they squashed the idea. Cowards. They went with an old copper mine instead, and Maylam spent the next two months coughing up red dust.

12. The mask used to scare campers at the campfire was designed by Savini.

13. The “massacre on the raft” scene is the main one that caused the film issues with censors, particularly in the UK. Maylam considers it one of the best scenes in the film, and he giddily recalls handling the blood pump for the finger-cutting beat.

14. Maylam’s also standing in as the silhouetted Cropsey with the shears and is even the one holding the shears for 90 percent of the killer’s POV shots. He says it’s because he couldn’t get anyone in the crew to do it exactly right.

15. There are two times where the film fades to red, and Maylam thinks he maybe used the gag two times too many.

16. This is the slightly uncommon slasher that eschews the traditional “final girl” ending and has male characters defeat Cropsey instead. Jones references that as if to ask why they went that route, but Maylam says only that female characters give you “more vulnerability” before going silent for ten seconds.

17. He’s not aware of any thoughts on rebooting The Burning, but Maylam says there was brief interest in a possible sequel that ultimately went nowhere. He seems okay with that, in part because a sequel would have to go the supernatural route if they wanted to bring back Cropsey.

18. There’s a weird stinger at 1:21:45 where one of our final boys, Todd (Brian Matthews), sees a dead woman with a neck impalement. The camera seems to zoom in on a still photograph instead of being an actual filmed moment, and Maylam says the Weinsteins added it on their own in the editing room. “I don’t know why it was put in.”

19. There’s an end credit listing nine people as Special Business Advisors, and Maylam adds that they were all “Harvey’s friends.”

Quotes Without Context

“You bump into Bob or Harvey [Weinstein] in a hotel room, and we have a chat.”

“There’s nothing particularly innovative about this film at all.”

“Here’s Brad Grey’s plant again. I’ve never seen him since.”

“Look darling, we’ve all seen naked women for goodness sake, just get on with it.”

“The superhuman strength of these maniacs is always quite amazing.”

“You really hate this guy.”

Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.

The post 19 Things We Learned from ‘The Burning’ Commentary appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Speaking of video games, one could even argue that the visceral thrills of being chased through a labyrinthian nightmare are at the heart of quite a few interactive classics that folks don’t even associate with the horror genre. For instance, there’s an argument to be made that 1980’s Pac-Man is one of the very first survival horror titles, as the game has you collecting resources while evading literal ghosts in an ultimately unwinnable situation. I’m not the only one who sees the potential for genre scares here, as even the Atari 2600’s licensed Alien tie-in happened to be a Pac-Man clone where Xenomorphs stood in for Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and Clyde!

Though the industry has changed a lot since the ‘80s arcade scene, this familiar gameplay loop continues to be used by developers wanting to add an extra layer of tension to their games. In fact, just this past month, Resident Evil Requiem terrified series veterans and newcomers alike with its latest collection of ghoulish stalker enemies, continuing the tradition of fan-favorite antagonists like Nemesis and Lady Dimitrescu.

In honor of the mini heart-attack I have whenever “The Girl” shows up onscreen, today I’d like to invite readers to look back on the evolution of video game stalker enemies in an attempt to understand why this mechanic has made such a big comeback.

The Origins of the Scary Stalker

Since Pac-Man was clearly developed as more of a tongue-in-cheek experience rather than anything meant to resemble a proper horror game, our story actually begins a year later in 1981 with the release of what many historians consider to be the first true horror game, Akira Takiguchi’s AX-2: Uchuu Yusousen Nostromo. Putting players in the desperate shoes of an astronaut attempting to escape a maze-like spaceship as they’re hunted by an alien monster, the title’s unkillable antagonist is (arguably) the first instance of a recurring stalker enemy in a video game, though several other titles with similar ideas would be released around the same time.

For instance, J.K. Greye Software’s infamous 3D Monster Maze trapped players in a literal maze inhabited by a hungry T. rex, with this early example of an interactive first-person thriller feeling strangely prescient in its design. The next few years would also see the rise of licensed horror experiences like the aforementioned Alien and even a surprisingly effective adaptation of John Carpenter’s Halloween that saw Michael Myers hunting you down while you attempted to rescue children in a looping suburban hellscape.

Of course, it was only in the 90s that survival horror would take the gaming world by storm, and we’d see the first franchise built around the stalker mechanic. While 1995’s Clock Tower was more inspired by Giallo films (specifically Dario Argento’s underrated supernatural thriller Phenomena) than slasher flicks, it proved that combat wasn’t really necessary for games to provide a satisfying survival horror experience.

While Clock Tower would continue to dominate this sub-genre of survival horror through its sequels and spiritual successors, the series was popular enough to influence rival franchises as well. That’s why we’d see stalkers show up again in games like Resident Evil 2 with the infamous Mr. X (which was originally limited to the title’s B Scenario) and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis.

Stalkers Slowly Creep Back in at the Turn of the Century

Though the 2000s saw the release of excellent stalker-based games like Haunting Ground and even Yahtzee Crosshaw’s Five Days a Stranger series, this decade is where we first start to see a certain backlash towards the idea of recurring enemies that can’t be killed and only serve to annoy players during their attempts to progress through the campaign. As horror games began to incorporate more action elements into gameplay in an attempt to appeal to a wider audience, it seemed like the cat-and-mouse thrills of being forced to hide from antagonists were on their way out.

Thankfully, when AAA horror gaming was going through its action-heavy phase, indie developers began to look back fondly on the days of helpless protagonists that couldn’t fight back against the terrors surrounding them. While Amnesia: The Dark Descent opened the door for scarier experiences that didn’t require guns or in-depth melee combat to be entertaining, later releases like the viral hit Slender turned this new kind of first-person chase-simulator into a genre in and of itself.

This is where we get to what is arguably the best game to feature a relentless pursuer enemy, which is 2014’s Alien: Isolation, a title that features some of the most advanced stalker AI in gaming history while also harkening back to the Alien-inspired retro game that started this whole trend in the first place.

In the following years, gamers would once again become accustomed to the thrills of virtual hide-and-seek, with stalker enemies even making their way online with the rise of titles like Dead by Daylight and its legion of imitators (which often use official licenses in order to draw in hardcore horror fans). In fact, for a while there, it seemed like there was an industry bias where slasher-inspired titles could only be developed as online multiplayer experiences.

As usual, it took brave indie developers like the fan-favorite Puppet Combo to convince folks that the older style of stalker-focused survival horror was still viable, with titles like Stay Out of the House and Murder House proving that there is still a huge market for lo-fi slasher simulators.

Resident Evil Helped Ensure That Stalker Enemies Have a Bright Future

I’d argue that this resurgence in popularity is partly responsible for Capcom choosing to include Mr. X in the base game of their Resident Evil 2 remake instead of relegating him to a secondary playthrough, and it likely also influenced the decision to incorporate more unkillable pursuers in both Resident Evil 7 (the scariest entry in the series to date) as well as Resident Evil Village.

The success of this formula makes it unsurprising that the mechanic returns once again in Requiem, with the latest game treating us to a photosensitive monster that escalates tension while playing as Grace and makes it all the more satisfying when we’re finally allowed to let loose as an older and more badass version of Leon S. Kennedy. Personally, I believe that this two-pronged approach to gameplay is a much better way of appealing to mainstream gamers than Village’s more action-oriented experience, especially since Leon’s segments feel like a reward for surviving Grace’s nightmare.

Beyond the AAA space, the future of video game stalker enemies is also looking especially bright. From the final chapter of the Remothered trilogy (a spiritual successor to the Clock Tower games) to a whole slew of slasher-inspired indie titles, 2026 is shaping up to be a standout year for the genre. Hell, we’re even getting a new Halloween game with a single-player mode meant to round out the online multiplayer experience, so it seems like this is one gaming trend that will continue to pursue horror fans well into the coming decades.

The post Lurking Fear: The Evolution of the Video Game Stalker Enemy appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Director Fred Walton is best known for his feature debut, 1979’s When a Stranger Calls, and he made a career built on low-key suspense tales for theatrical release and television. His best film, though, is undoubtedly April Fool’s Day. Part slasher, part mystery, all fun – the film is a delight, even on repeat viewings, as it’s an attractive, entertaining, and smartly crafted ride for fans of good times.

Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…

April Fool’s Day (1986)

Commentators: Film historians Howard S. Berger, Steve Mitchell, and Nathaniel Thompson

1. One of them recalls seeing the film in the theater and encountering “a certain anger in the audience” at the ending, as some people see it as a cheat. The consensus is that it was older viewers who were upset, while the youths actually liked the playful reveal.

2. There are conflicting reports as to the film’s origin. Some reports say writer Danilo Bach was shopping it around as a spec script, while others suggest that producer Frank Mancuso Jr. concocted the idea and then tasked Bach with writing it. Unrelated, but Bach also wrote the terrifically entertaining but severely underseen “90s erotic thriller” Escape Clause. Seek it out!

3. Mitchell says the slasher formula in the 1980s was to gather some attractive young people and then “watch them perish,” and he adds that he was part of it all as the co-writer of 1986’s Chopping Mall.

4. “It doesn’t rely on cutting, it relies on staging,” says Mitchell as a compliment towards Walton, who made this film because he was pretty much broke at the time.

5. It was filmed around Victoria, British Columbia, after earlier suggestions, including Martha’s Vineyard and Seattle, fell through.

6. The bit around the 18:45 mark sees characters taking a sex quiz from a magazine, and it was added on the day after Walton saw the cast members doing just that before filming began.

7. They compliment the film’s use of natural light, particularly with scenes overlooking the water towards dusk, and compare favorably to Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood.

8. This is an ensemble film, but they all agree that Deborah Foreman is the de facto star here, seeing as she was still riding high off Valley Girl. She auditioned for the film and was dismissed early on, but she kept track of casting and re-auditioned for the same role. This time, though, she leaned into the subtleties of the character’s evil twin conceit and won everyone over.

9. They talk about Walton’s “mathematical use of long takes” when building to and forming scares, and they even suggest it was an influence on films like William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist III.

10. They give a shout out to Cinephile Video in Los Angeles, which has a director’s wall dedicated to all the big names you’d expect – and Walton, too. Asked why, the store owners said they just wanted to shake things up with a great director you just don’t expect to see represented as such.

11. The film is devoid of nudity, and while that seems odd for a slasher – and may have contributed to genre audiences being unhappy with it – it’s also fitting as the end of the ’80s marked a more chaste period for horror movies.

12. The well scene was filmed on a set in Los Angeles, and the water was apparently so “fetid” that Deborah Goodrich developed an ear infection from her time in it.

13. Walton uses his camera to ratchet up tension and claustrophobia, and they point out some examples around the 1:01:08 mark. Hal (Jay Baker) sits on the stairs, shot so that their shadows resemble prison bars, and the next shot is made through the metal bars of a bedframe.

14. “This is a movie void of primary colors except for reds,” they say, adding that the reds are used as subconscious nods towards doomed characters. Arch is wearing red before he’s caught in the trap, Hal is sitting on a red carpet, Nikki is wearing a red robe, etc.

15. The film originally had an extended ending that featured Buffy (Foreman) actually being murdered, but it didn’t make the final cut – it’s another fake out, instead. It did, however, make it into the film’s novelization by Jeff Rovin, as that was based on the script. The book currently runs about $100 on eBay, which is unfortunate for me and my bank account.

16. They praise the film’s deep blacks – shout out to both cinematographer Charles Minsky and the recent 4K release from KL Studio Classics – as being atypical. Thompson breaks down the difference between legitimate dark and “movie dark,” which is dark-ish but lit so viewers can see what’s happening.

17. The great Amy Steel wears primarily baggy clothing throughout, and a producer allegedly approached her during filming to ask if maybe she was gaining too much weight on the film. “Well,” she reportedly replied, “you hired this amazing caterer, so whose fault is that?” I would have added a hearty “fuck you” to the producer, too.

18. While some people may be put off by the entire fake out, as it basically means the film’s events are all reset to zero, the commentators see it as a positive. For one, it’s a nice change of pace from the genre norm of dead teens, and another points out that the actual finale allows for Nan (Leah Pinsent), a character who has zero fun throughout, to finally have a laugh and a smile. “Even though it’s not a horror movie in the conventional sense, we got the thrills, and it was fun to experience a fright.”

19. They draw an interesting contrast between the ’80s and now, suggesting that today’s horror movies “are just so serious” while they used to be fun, entertaining times designed to be enjoyed as part of an audience. It’s a generalization, obviously, but fans of ’80s horror know it to be true as the genre definitely had a looser, more entertaining vibe back then.

Quotes Without Context

“In the ’80s, that was the decade of the dead teenager movie.”

“The one thing that’s actually real in the film is the sexuality, and the violence is all gags. That’s the fake.”

“There’s such a salad of bodies there.”

“If this movie had been made by Roger Corman’s company, there would have already been three to four nude scenes.”

“If I was to see this at a famous 42nd Street grindhouse, I don’t think I could see the actors for the grain.”

Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.

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It’s a phenomenon I don’t shy away from discussing here in the column, but let’s be honest, some releases of the period deserved their beatdowns.

Nelson McCormick’s Prom Night (2008) is the kind of no-good horror remake that fuels biases against the practice. A 9% critics’ score is generous, based on who you ask (me). Maybe you’re thinking, it can’t possibly be worse than some of the remake swill that I’ve already analyzed here on Bloody Disgusting … right? Don’t get me wrong, it’s no April Fool’s Day. But it’s also an insult to Paul Lynch’s Canuxploitation original from 1980, in that it doesn’t even deign to be a slasher.

Title recognition gets fans through the door, but disappointment sets in early once audiences realize there’s no mystery to solve or backbone to brag about.

The Approach

Schlock peddler J. S. Cardone scripts an updated Prom Night that doesn’t care to indulge much of what makes William Gray’s initial blueprint, and therefore Paul Lynch’s source, a cult classic. It’s silly in a braindead Nu-Horror way, communicating all the wrong lessons learned from past horror creators. Cardone ditches whodunit suspense in the opener, and doubles down only a few scenes later. You know, from the beginning, who the killer is. Bodies start mounting WAY quicker (not around the hour-plus mark), but more action somehow produces a lethargic drag of a stalker picture.

Brittany Snow stars as Donna Keppel, an Oregonian teen who watches her mother get murdered in front of her eyes. The killer, teacher Richard Fenton (Johnathon Schaech), professes his hot-for-student love for Donna and swears they’ll never be separated. Fast-forward three years, and Donna is gearing up for every budding young adult’s dream: senior prom. Kids hoist kegs through multi-story windows; everyone arrives at a swanky hotel for a red carpet entrance. Donna, her nice-guy boyfriend Bobby (Scott Porter), besties Claire (Jessica Stroup) and Lisa (Dana Davis), football star Ronnie (Collins Pennie), and Claire’s drunk gnat of a boyfriend, Michael (Kelly Blatz), are ready to kiss this chapter of their lives goodbye.

But, wait for it, they’re not alone.

Guess who shows up. Richard! Before anyone can even obnoxiously shout-dance to “Sweet Caroline,” there’s a shot of a now clean-shaven Richard on the premises. For some reason, Cardone and McCormick think there’s value in having their villain be in plain sight for the entire movie. Detective Winn (Idris Elba) isn’t very good at protecting Donna, along with his partner, Detective Nash—a baby-faced James Ransone (RIP). It’s such an odd choice; a monumental risk that doesn’t pay off even for a second.

Does It Work?

It’s not just one decision that crashes Prom Night; blame is everywhere. However, the familiarization of Richard Fenton from square one cuts any slasher intrigue off at the knees. Goodbye, red herrings. Be gone, investigation tension. Richard waltzes to the check-in desk, Ronnie accidentally points the psycho to their floor, and he immediately snags a master key by killing a maid. There’s no struggle for Richard; he’s gifted his way back into Donna’s life. From here, it’s just a not-so-bloody waiting game as Donna’s friends venture one-by-one to the room for various reasons, and are killed by Richard in PG-13 approved stab attacks—big freakin’ yawn.

Frankly, McCormick approaches Prom Night (2008) more like a Fatal Attraction, evoking thrillers about obsession, danger, and lust. It’s a piss-poor slasher film because it doesn’t pay the subgenre any mind. Lynch has way more fun decapitating cafeteria bullies with mighty unibrows, keeping his glittery masked axe murderer in the shadows, where McCormick presumes there’s more to fear when staring down Schaech’s cold, fixated eyes. He’s wrong, unfortunately, because in revealing Richard, all expectations are now evident. Richard will knife innocents to death, Richard will encounter Donna, and either one of them will die—but let’s be honest, in a PG-13 theatrical Screen Gems package? We’re just waiting for Donna to exorcise her demon (the dead way).

It begs the age-old remake question—what value does your remake bring to the original’s concept? There’s nothing reminiscent of Gray’s oddball of a revenge massacre that, itself, calls back to dynamite Canadian slashers like My Bloody Valentine and Black Christmas. The concept of setting your horror tale during prom has been retread a billion times, to the point where there’s no uniqueness to revamping Prom Night if you’re not going to abide by its premise. The nostalgia backfires monumentally, inviting plot comparisons that would never be in the film’s favor.

The Result

Prom Night (2008), frankly, stinks. We’re held hostage inside a generic Hollywoodized school dance, complete with a corny DJ on a balcony stage, lifeless outlines of hallway stereotypes (sup, Kellan Lutz), and the gooniest affinity for prom night’s milestone afterglow. Cardone’s screenplay is incorrigibly sappy: if he can’t write any scares into the film, he’ll at least attempt lazy emotional pops before characters meet Richard’s blade. Bobby’s constant reassurances that he and Donna will survive their long-distance college relationship, Ronnie pulling an engagement ring from his pocket, or Lisa’s insistence that everyone will stay friends. It’s all rigid stereotypes crammed into tuxedos and a parade of meaningless deaths.

There’s more personality in Jamie Lee Curtis’ epic Saturday Night Fever-y dance number for 1980’s Prom Night than there is in the entirety of 2008’s Prom Night. Scenes play out like stock footage of “fun party dance floor” or “pretty teens prom night,” running through the same droll mechanics as Detective Winn scampers around, trying not to alarm anyone about Richard’s likely presence at the hotel. Cue Donna’s Uncle Jack (Linden Ashby) tearily reasoning with Aunt Karen (Jessalyn Gilsig) about why he didn’t pull his niece from the probably doomed event, because he didn’t want to ruin her therapeutic progress (Chun-Li and Mulan actress Ming-Na Wen plays Donna’s doc for a hot second).

Reason after reason keeps Donna in peril purely for the movie’s entertainment, which there is none to speak of—and then it keeps going. This movie is like being dragged across concrete at 2 miles an hour, and being told, in excruciating detail, about every bump and point you’re about to encounter because no one here believes in anticipation.

I can’t comprehend how someone could watch Prom Night (1980) and be inspired to regurgitate something so uninspiringly vanilla. You watch a movie with disco mania, car explosions, and scintillation … and the best you can do is a jealous serial killer deleting cute pics of Donna and the creatively named “Bobby Jones” on a digital camera? Prom Night (2008) doesn’t deserve its Bloc Party needle drop. Nor Brittany Snow, stuck with dialogue that makes me want to stab my eardrums with a shimmery tiara. It probably wouldn’t even take a half-assed argument to convince me Prom Night (2008) is AI-generated, it’s so tropey and algorithmic. Are we sure this isn’t a VH1 made-for-television horror movie? (I can’t even namecheck MTV since My Super Psycho Sweet 16 has more moxie and terror.)

The Lesson

The in-your-face lesson? Make a good damn movie. The deeper lesson, in terms of remake potential? Display even the most basic understanding of what makes the original you’re referencing tick. We just had this conversation in my The Strangers examination last month. McCormick and Cardone can’t luck themselves into even the slightest tingle of fear. I’m at a loss—My Bloody Valentine 3D was able to drop a bombshell reveal despite being based on a film that, itself, contains a nasty and memorable twist. You’ve got no excuse, Prom Night—you didn’t even try.

So what did we learn?

• Turns out slashers based on human killers aren’t all that fun when the bad guy is unmasked in the first scene.
• Not all 2000s horror remakes are underappreciated or unfairly criticized.
• Remakes by name invite unavoidable comparisons you’d better be ready to answer for.
• The Canuxploitation to PG-13 Americanized remake pipeline ain’t that impressive.

Woof! Maybe I’m just the jaded kid from a small suburban town who fled and never looked back, but Prom Night is some of the hokiest, most cringe-worthy prom-o-ganda I’ve endured in quite some time. It’s got a “Hello, fellow kids!” energy, like a teen flick written by a, well, senior citizen.

Congratulations to those who might feel the warm nostalgia of high school sweethearts beating the odds, or friend groups never losing touch, but for the rest of us? It’s not even the butter-knife-edge horror that possesses; it’s the diet Hallmark vibes that had me wincing the hardest.

The post The Early Aughts ‘Prom Night’ Remake Skewers The Original Slasher Formula For The Worse appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

After kicking off March with a look at Radio Silence’s Scream VI (listen) and Alejandro Amenábar’s debut feature Thesis (listen), we’re celebrating March’s Friday the 13th with a look at Steve Miner‘s Friday the 13th Part III, aka the one in 3D!

Picking up right where Friday the 13th Part 2 left off, Friday the 13th Part III sees Jason discover his iconic hockey mask while stalking a new group of kids. Leading the group is Chris (Dana Kimmell), who has a shared history with Jason that led to her current PTSD. Everyone else is…there.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, and RSS.

Episode 377: Friday the 13th Part III (1982)

Blast that Hot Ice, flip that switch on your van’s reserve gas tank and put on your 3D glasses because we’re talking Steve Miner’s Friday the 13th Part III, the only entry in the franchise with the audacity to kill a pregnant character!

Join us as we discuss the many, many problems the 3D filming caused for the production before defending maligned characters like Shelly and Chris, the latter of which proves herself to be a very capable final girl in the film’s extended climactic chase scene.

Plus: a random Kill Bill connection, an absolute banger of a disco theme, and discussing the differences between “theme park 3D” and “cinematic 3D.”

Cross out Friday the 13th Part III!

Coming Up Next: We’re revisiting Radio Silence’s Ready or Not in anticipation of the release of Ready or Not 2: Here I Come.

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The post 3D PTSD in ‘Friday the 13th Part III’ [Horror Queers Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The first month of 2026 has flown by thanks to titles like Alex  Garland’s directorial debut Ex Machina (listen), Danny Boyle’s Infected return 28 Weeks Later (listen), and M. Night Shyamalan’s Split (listen). And that was before we closed out the month with underseen/under rated 1991 slasher, Popcorn.

In director Mark Herrier (or is it Bob Clark?)’s film, a group of College students stage a fundraiser at a derelict theater, showing three old horror movies to an enthusiastic crowd.

Unbeknownst to them, a killer is stalking the group, murdering members and taking their place with the help of life-like masks. It’s up to protagonist Maggie (Jill Schoelen) to decipher the clues, as well as her recurring nightmares, to find the culprit. Is it cultist Lanyard Gates (Mat Falls) or someone else, like concession attendant Cheryl (Kelly Jo Minter), disabled technician Bud (Malcolm Danare) or horror movie enthusiast Toby (Tom Villard)?

And – most importantly – will she survive long enough to hook up with her crush, Mark (Derek Rydall) now that he’s ditched his bitchy girlfriend Joy (Karen Lorre)?

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, and RSS.

Episode 371: Popcorn (1991)

Come on down to the Dreamland Theater because we’re turning a trio of turkeys into a memorable moviegoing feast with director Mark Herrier’s 1991 slasher Popcorn.

Starring a bunch of horror royalty and featuring three movies-within-a-movie, this cult title is a fun slice of entertainment with some great mask FX!

Plus: queer actor Tom Villard, a himbo with head injuries, remake potential, and debate about whether the film is meta or not.

Cross out Popcorn!

Coming Up Next: We’re talking the messy Michael Crichton adaptation Sphere (1998)!

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The post The Delights of Cult Slasher 1991’s ‘Popcorn’ [Horror Queers Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Our exclusive TV spot celebrates the franchise’s enduring legacy and how everything has led to this, the seventh installment of the slasher sequel created by original director Wes Craven and writer Kevin Williamson.

Watch below as the clip rewinds to 1996 to chronicle Sidney Prescott’s enduring battle with Ghostface, one that brings her daughter into the mix in the upcoming sequel. Even the Scream logo gets the legacy treatment, highlighting its transformation over the years between films.

Paramount’s Scream 7 will be slashing its way into theaters on February 27, 2026.

Neve Campbell is back as Sidney Prescott, with the character taking center stage in the seventh installment, and she’ll be joined by returning players including David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Scott Foley and Matthew Lillard, with Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown also set to reprise their roles from the previous two installments.

Here’s the official plot synopsis: “When a new Ghostface killer emerges in the quiet town where Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) has built a new life, her darkest fears are realized as her daughter (Isabel May) becomes the next target. Determined to protect her family, Sidney must face the horrors of her past to put an end to the bloodshed once and for all.”

This Ghostface wants to burn it all down.

Set two years after Scream VI, Scream 7 is being directed by Kevin Williamson from a script by Guy Busick (Scream 2022, Scream VI) and Williamson.

The cast for Scream 7 also includes Anna Camp, Joel McHale, Mckenna Grace, Michelle Randolph, Jimmy Tatro, Asa Germann, Celeste O’Connor, Sam Rechner, Ethan Embry, Tim Simons and Mark Consuelos.

William Sherak, James Vanderbilt, and Paul Neinstein produce.

The new TV spot doesn’t just look to the past; watch below to get a peek at the upcoming sequel. That includes a few intense moments involving franchise newcomers, like Joel McHale’s Mark. and Isabel May’s Tatum.

The post ‘Scream 7’ Exclusive Clip Carves Into Franchise’s Killer 30-Year Legacy appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

After celebrating the holidays with a look at one of my favorite gateway horror films Jumanji (listen) and the underseen holiday thriller P2 (listen), we’re wrapping up 2025 with a look at Ken Hughes‘ (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) forgotten 1981 slasher Night School.

In Night School, a motorcycle helmet-clad serial killer is decapitating a bunch of women enrolled at Wendell College and leaving their severed heads in water.  Assigned to the case is Lieutenant Judd Austin (Leonard Mann), who begins suspecting womanizing professor Vincent Millett (Drew Snyder) as the possible culprit. Meanwhile, Millett’s teaching assistant and secret paramour Eleanor (Rachel Ward) is newly pregnant and struggles to break the news to him.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, and RSS.

Episode 367: Night School (1981)

Pull that severed head out of the aquarium and grab a pomegranate to take with you into the shower (seriously) because we’re discussing Ken Hughes’ Boston-set slasher Night School (1981)!

Join us as we go all in on this forgotten film, from its original title of Terror Eyes (get it?) to its notorious status as a video nasty. And on top of everything, it’s got a predatory lesbian character to boot!

Plus: lauding that “is the head in the pot?” diner sequence, wondering why no one gets killed at the titular school, and debating whether or not the killer’s M.O. counts as cultural appropriation (spoiler alert: it does).

Cross out Night School!

Coming Up Next: We’re kicking off the new year with a look at Alex Garland’s directorial debut Ex Machina (2014)!

P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 446 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Return to Silent Hill, The Creep Tapes Season 2, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Primate and – to coincide with Johannes Roberts’ killer chimp movie – we’ve got a brand new audio commentary on the 1995 adaptation of Michael Crichton’s Congo.

The post The Predatory Lesbian and Cultural Appropriation of ‘Night School’ [Horror Queers Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Horror is designed to get under the audience’s skin and challenge societal norms. Perspective and point of view are incredibly powerful tools for horror that can creatively reinvent tired and overdone stories. Haunted house and slasher films are some of the oldest and most reliable horror subgenres, with the former being around for well over a century. Accordingly, it’s always exciting when something original and post-modern can rejuvenate particular horror classics. These movies can effortlessly eschew trope-filled subgenres to tell new stories that play into the audience’s existing expectations, only to then do something radically different with the form. In doing so, these subversive and stylized supernatural and slasher films utilize unconventional points of view to enhance the horror experience and make the viewer feel vulnerable in unprecedented ways. There’s the potential for this to trigger a new movement in horror that could bring forward a radical style of storytelling. Ben Leonberg’s Good Boy, a horror film that’s told through a dog’s perspective, is the most recent example of this. However, Steven Soderbergh’s Presence and Chris Nash’s In A Violent Nature also reinforce this exciting horror renaissance. 

There’s a common superstition that animals are especially susceptible to supernatural influence. Ben Leonberg’s Good Boy becomes a fascinating deconstruction of this theory, rather than coming across as a random and unjustified stylistic experiment. The story that Good Boy tells isn’t exactly remarkable – a man is plagued by supernatural forces after he and his dog move into a new home – but what makes it stand out is the way in which it’s told. By presenting this horror story from a dog’s perspective, Leonberg creates a uniquely disorienting encounter that’s filtered through a creature that perpetually senses peril, yet struggles to make sense of what’s happening. One of Good Boy’s most inspired stylistic choices involves the decision to obscure the face of Indy’s owner so that incident feels even more detached from reality and the standard horror experience.

A human who is caught in a horror film at least has the resources to understand the nature of ghosts and supernatural scenarios. A dog does not have these same frames of reference and media comprehension skills. A dog instead experiences everything through heightened senses, which turn a stressful situation into something that’s almost unbearable for Good Boy’s Indy. There are plenty of horror films that explore the dissolution of an unbreakable bond as loved ones are torn apart. Good Boy endlessly heightens this concept through the conduit of a dog who operates as this eternally loyal companion who does whatever he can to protect his partner. In many ways, Good Boy is a greater risk than Presence and In A Violent Nature. The latter two films are still subversive horror movies, albeit stories that can still rely upon the familiarity of human characters and creative cinematography. Good Boy lives and dies on how well its lead animal sells this story. Indy rises to the occasion, which is surely why he’s the dog who headlines the movie. Good Boy’s risk seems to pay off, although there will still be audiences who are inevitably left unmoved by this “final canine’s” performance.

Steven Soderbergh is a filmmaker who has been directing for four decades and is a name that is practically synonymous with subversion, due to his sophomore film, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, which redefined the medium itself. He’s one of cinema’s most exciting innovators and someone who has bucked up against convention through movies like Solaris, Full Frontal, The Girlfriend Experience, and more recent offerings like Unsane and Kimi. Presence, at the surface level, doesn’t seem to be anything extraordinary. Much like Good Boy, the film looks at perturbing paranormal activity that begins when the Payne family moves into their new suburban home. However, Soderbergh is a filmmaker who has disrupted the medium and industry throughout his entire career, so a movie like Presence is incredibly fitting as a late-game project for the unconventional storyteller. 

Presence depicts the Payne family’s plight as they begin to believe that their home is haunted. Presence presents a fairly run-of-the-mill ghost story, but where it excels is that it’s told through the spectre’s perspective. The film’s floaty and dream-like camerawork – which Soderbergh is also responsible for – doubles as the poltergeist’s POV. Presence never feels indulgent in this regard, and it uses its subversive idea to deliver some particularly inspired cinematography. Presence doesn’t feel like the average haunted house story because it’s made up of long, lingering sequences that fade in and out of existence, like a ghost. Presence is more of a visual spectacle than Good Boy and In A Violent Nature, even though they all create unique shots through their original approaches to storytelling. 

Haunted house stories often rely on jump scares, yet Presence creates horror and tension by the growing unease that each sequence generates until the film’s suffocating finale. Presence is an intricate tightrope walk in tone, pacing, and tension, but it pulls it off and rejuvenates the horror subgenre in the process. Presence filters its story through not just a ghost, but a lost spirit who shares a connection to the family that lives in the house that it’s haunting. The film is just as much an emotional family drama as it is a poltergeist picture. Much like with In A Violent Nature and Good Boy, Presence finds the perfect story for its revolutionary point of view so that the cinematography and visual storytelling match — and strengthen — the movie’s themes.

While Good Boy and Presence use perspective to redefine haunted house stories, In A Violent Nature uses this idea to deconstruct slasher cinema. Horror offers endless versatility when it comes to its slasher icons, but masked murderers like Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers have certainly become iconic subgenre archetypes. Horror directors have been making slasher films for over 50 years, and director Chris Nash’s In A Violent Nature wisely pulls from the genre’s biggest cultural touchstones in order to establish a framework and foundation that’s second nature to the audience before it subverts and destroys. 

In A Violent Nature seems as if it will play out like any nature-based slasher movie, only for it to be told entirely from the killer’s perspective, who just so happens to be a resurrected undead slaughter savant. In A Violent Nature gets a lot of mileage out of some of its more obvious subversions, such as shifting the slasher narrative from the prey’s perspective to that of the cold, calculating killer. However, in the case of In A Violent Nature, the killer is an inscrutable, stoic monster who communicates with murder. This allows the movie to play with existing horror constructs, like tension, but through completely original ways. 

The experience has less to do with which sympathetic characters will survive and how they will outsmart the killer, but rather how to make the audience become complicit in this deranged spirit’s deadly ways. There’s a level of unprecedented intimacy with the film’s killer – Johnny (Ry Barrett) – that’s previously been explored in other subversive horror deconstructions, such as Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. In A Violent Nature the audience with the killer, but in this case, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they understand this force of nature any better. It’s a detached, callous experience that evokes the rawness of the early 2000s’ aforementioned “torture porn” fascination where uncomfortable stories would become even more disturbing. 

The way in which In A Violent Nature depicts its vicious kills with a detached impartiality is reminiscent of the unbiased eye of a nature documentary. Nature documentaries play with the audience’s perceptions of safety and danger, predator and prey, which was explicitly part of Nash’s agenda with this experiment. In A Violent Nature makes the audience become a fly on the wall of this deranged experience, yet in a manner that’s unique from how Good Boy or Presence taps into comparable feelings. It’s interesting to see how the “nature documentary” style that’s been cited by Nash has evolved to the point where this concept has become explicit. For instance, Blumhouse’s Nightmares of Nature documentary series turns the natural world into a “serial killer’s” playground. Nightmares of Nature uses perspective to blur these lines. It’s a fascinating companion piece to Nash’s blood-soaked slasher.

This trio of films teases a future for the haunted house and slasher subgenres where their survival depends upon their ability to make tired ideas feel reinvigorated and original again. However, this becomes a problem because the innovation seen in these movies is finite. You can’t have a dozen horror movies from a dog’s perspective. These ideas work because they’re creative, unique, and justify their stylized nature, but endlessly replicating this formula dooms it to become as hollow and pointless as anything else. This is all to say, what’s going on in these movies can’t be copied 1:1, but it can still function as a framework that seeks to disrupt these tried and true horror staples through perspectives that are genuinely fresh, yet still relatable. 

It’s worth pointing out that the latest installment in the Predator franchise, Predator: Badlands, is also embracing this subversive experimentation to some degree. For the first time, a Predator film will be told through the perspective of a Predator — Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) — who operates as the film’s protagonist, rather than a threat. An entire Predator movie that’s told through the Yautjan perspective, without subtitles, would be the truest expression of this recent POV trend. Predator: Badlands seems like it’s slightly restraining itself in this regard through the addition of a Weyland-Yutani synth android (Elle Fanning) who works alongside Dek. Nevertheless, Predator: Badlands continues to reinforce this exciting change of pace in horror, let alone in a mainstream IP.

Curiously, there have also been a handful of films that explore the collective impact of a single object as it moves between different individuals. 2010’s Changing Hands demonstrates this with a gun and the different people who possess it, but the idea has also been explored through a car in 1964’s The Yellow Rolls-Royce and a counterfeit franc in Robert Bresson’s L’Argent. These aren’t horror movies by any stretch, but it’s possible that the experimentation that’s begun in In A Violent Nature, Presence, and Good Boy could carry over to slasher films that are told through the “perspective” of a weapon, like a machete.

Another potentially unexpected side effect of this trend is that the success and creativity of these high-concept horror films make it harder for something more conventional, like a standard Poltergeist, Amityville Horror, or even Paranormal Activity haunted house story, to succeed. These types of projects, while all innovative in their own ways, may now seem even more generic in comparison to these cutting-edge takes on the subgenre. Alternatively, this rejuvenating trend could see the snake eating its own tail and attempt to revive Poltergeist or Amityville through unique POV-based projects that are set from the spirit’s perspective. It’s no different than when the found-footage subgenre was consuming every horror franchise and nearly made its way into Friday the 13th. What films like Presence, Good Boy, and In A Violent Nature are doing with POV isn’t quite “the new found-footage,” at least not yet, but it has the power to make an equally profound impact if it’s properly utilized.

The post Dogs, Spirits and Slashers: The Power Of POV In New Wave Post-Modern Horror appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The film stars Jennifer Connelly as Jennifer Corvino, an American girl sent to a Swiss boarding school. The girl has a mysterious ability: she can communicate with insects and even get them to do her bidding. This proves to be a wildly helpful skill when Jennifer finds herself targeted by a killer who preys on young women, including her roommate Sophie.

But who is committing the murders and why? Could it be the disabled local entomologist, Professor John McGregor (Donald Pleasence) or his chimp, Inga? Could it be the tailgating Inspector Rudolph Geiger (Patrick Bauchau)?

Obviously the correct answer is Frau Brückner, played by frequent Argento collaborator Daria Nicolodi! But the truth is that the reveal hardly matters in a film filled to the brim with big swings and unexpected mayhem. Nothing is off the table until the credits roll because this film is WILD!

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, and RSS.

Episode 344: Phenomena (1985)

Assemble your spear and follow the fly in the box because we’re discussing Dario Argento’s 1985 giallo fairytale, Phenomena.

Starring Jennifer Connelly, Donald Pleasence and Argento’s frequent collaborator, Daria Nicolodi, this movie is wild (seriously: take a shot every time we say the word). From questionable disability representation to a Friday the 13th-inspired climax, from chimps to bugs, Phenomena kinda has it all.

Plus: Trace tackles the multiple cuts, Joe’s fantasy double bill, a “sleepy” Connelly, maggot baptisms, and debate about who committed the murders and why.

Cross out Phenomena!

Coming Up Next: We’re closing out the month with a look back at Korean director Park Chan-wook’s classic tale of revenge, Oldboy (2003).

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The post The Wild, Big Swings of Dario Argento’s ‘Phenomena’ [Horror Queers Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Warning: This feature has HEAVY SPOILERS for 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer.

It’s been 27 years since an I Know What You Did Last Summer film was in theaters. The horror landscape has significantly evolved since the late ‘90s, yet there’s been more and more of a push to return to the nostalgic creature comforts of the past. Legacy sequels have become the new normal and the past decade has featured follow-ups to Halloween, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Candyman, and even The Exorcist. This practice has become increasingly normalized to the point that a legacy sequel to 1997’s I Know What You Did Last Summer makes perfect sense, especially during a time where Scream’s own legacy sequel has its second sequel in production.

I Know What You Did Last Summer was never high art and much of its popularity rides on the wave of Scream’s recent success and rejuvenation of the slasher genre. I Know What You Did Last Summer’s story is perfect for a single movie, but the idea of repeated attacks happening to the same people certainly requires a suspension of disbelief. To this point, it’s perhaps the last horror movie that needs a legacy sequel. And yet, 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer manages to take this simplistic slasher morality tale and turn it into a deeper meditation on nostalgia, legacy, and how to control the past so that it doesn’t control you.

Much in the same vein of the original slasher, a night of teenage debauchery on July 4th leads to a grisly car accident and a case of manslaughter that five teens — led by Danica (Madelyn Cline) and Ava (Chase Sui Wonders) — swear to take to their graves. A year later, these guilty parties and their loved ones get picked off, one-by-one, as a hook-wielding killer, The Fisherman, enacts revenge. This is fairly standard slasher fare and neither the original I Know What You Did Last Summer or I Still Know What You Did Last Summer were particularly known for their surprise killer reveals. Nevertheless, this 2025 follow-up culminates in some major twists and turns that take lofty risks that may surprise horror fans.

Who Is Behind The Fisherman Killings?

I Know What You Did Last Summer doesn’t have a huge cast of characters and any of the more ancillary individuals like “Live, Laugh, Slaughter” true-crime podcast host Tyler (Gabbriette Bechtel) or Danica’s fiancé, Wyatt (Joshua Orpin), become early casualties. It’s certainly not past a film like this to reveal that characters who are presumed dead are actually the ones who are pulling the strings. The film thankfully avoids this temptation and really just teases one potential individual, Pastor Judah (Austin Nichols), as The Fisherman. The car crash victim, Sam Cooper, was in Judah’s vehicle during the crash and is revealed to have ties to Judah’s church. However, it’s not long before Judah also turns up dead and proves to be innocent in these affairs. He took a payout to stay silent on Sam Cooper’s death, but this speaks to a larger issue of corruption in Southport that has nothing to do with this murder spree.

It’s not until Danica and Ava escape with Stevie (Sarah Pigeon) on Teddy’s yacht that all the pieces fall into place and the truth comes to light. It’s Stevie who emerges from The Fisherman disguise and she reveals that she and Sam Cooper were romantically involved. After Stevie’s life fell apart and she was abandoned by her friends following her stint in rehab, it was Sam and the church who were there for her. Ironically, Sam’s car crash was partly because he was rushing to Stevie’s aid and trying to help her from relapsing. Stevie had no idea that her partner was in the car when the crash took place, but the truth left her scarred and terrified. 

Stevie resented Danica, Ava, Milo (Jonah Hauer-King) and Teddy (Tyriq Withers) due to their decision to flee the scene of the crime, ensuring that there’s no way that Sam could be saved. Stevie takes glee in the fact that she’s able to kill the loves of Danica and Ava’s lives. She wants them to know that she was responsible for this carnage and that it’s payback for what she lost. There’s no grander endgame in sight for Stevie and she doesn’t even necessarily want to get away with these crimes. Stevie came close to taking her own life, only to decide that this revenge is the more empowering alternative, but she’s fully made peace with own demise after inflicting pain on Danica and Ava.

Freddie Prinze Jr.’s Ray Bronson, Stevie’s boss and a friend of her deceased father, ultimately comes to Danica and Ava’s aid. He shoots Stevie and her body falls off the yacht and into the watery abyss. In perfect slasher fashion, I Know What You Did Last Summer features one last bait-and-switch; Stevie wasn’t the only participant in these killings. Stevie’s trauma may have been the catalyst for this attack, but Ray gives Stevie this idea and motivates her to follow through with this massacre. Ray informs Stevie of The Fisherman’s 1997 killings and turns these into the de facto playbook for their attacks. Not only does this allow Stevie to get revenge on those who are responsible for Sam’s death, but it allows Ray a certain level of catharsis that he’s been seeking for nearly three decades.

Throughout the film there are several allusions to how Southport swept 1997’s massacre under the rug in efforts to rehabilitate the small community’s reputation and turn it into a Hamptons-like locale. Ray is tortured over the fact that the most traumatic event of his life just hasn’t been forgotten, but is actively being erased and denied. By Stevie and Ray carrying out murders in the same fashion as before, it forces Southport to acknowledge the past and accept that it can’t just be erased. 

This is a surprisingly complex angle for a legacy horror sequel to take, especially by turning one of its original characters into the murderous masterplan. I Know What You Did Last Summer deconstructs nostalgia, but it’s also deeply interested in trauma. On some level it makes sense that some survivor from the original would be corrupted by the past and perpetuate the same cycle of violence. It’s unlikely that Sidney Prescott will ever be the one beneath the Ghostface mask, but Ray’s pivot to antagonist is a brave twist that fits the movie’s message. Freddie Prinze Jr.’s Ray Bronson and Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Julie James are both haunted by their past, only Julie channels this into productive empathy that helps others heal, while Ray festers and gets consumed by unresolved pain. In the end, it’s Julie and Ava — Southport’s final girl of the past and present — that kills Ray and puts an end to these killings.

Who Survives The 2025 Southport Massacre?

When the dust settles in I Know What You Did Last Summer, Ava and Julie seem to be the only survivors of this massacre. Thankfully, Danica, who was gutted by Stevie and thrown overboard, washes up on shore and recovers from her wounds. Ray, before his death, also drops a veiled hint that Stevie also survived her gunshot wounds and that he intentionally didn’t shoot to kill – which seems to later be fully confirmed in the film’s final moments.

This isn’t a huge cast of survivors, and any potential sequel would likely add fresh blood to the mix, just like past I Know What You Did Last Summer films. Between Danica, Ava, Julie, and Stevie, there’s a strong foundation to build upon in any next installment.

What Does The Post-Credit Scene Tease?

A legacy sequel often naturally looks forward with future franchise plans in mind. In the case of Halloween and The Exorcist, these were even designed as trilogies. Such an approach would be bold for I Know What You Did Last Summer, especially considering the diminishing returns of the original’s sequel. That being said, the 2025 legacy sequel takes some big swings that clearly indicate that at least one sequel is on the mind.

Up until the film’s ending, I Know What You Did Last Summer has played it rather coy regarding whether this is just a sequel to the original 1997 film that ignores I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, or if both movies are still canon. There’s a tongue-in-cheek gag where Ray advises the group to not just flee to the Bahamas for safety — a reference to the sequel’s Tower Bay massacre — albeit one that’s oblique enough to not officially make the sequel canon. Fans would likely be satisfied if this were the only reference to I Still Know. However, the film builds to an unbelievable post-credit scene that goes out of its way to say — yes, we still do very much care about I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.

The post-credit scene picks up with Karla Wilson (Brandy Norwood) watching a news report that covers Ray’s actions from the film. For a moment it looks like someone — a killer perhaps — is spying on Karla from outside her home. A frantic Karla answers her door, only to find Julie there, who she hasn’t seen in years. Julie reveals that she received a photo of the two of them, with her own face X-ed out, prompting her to reach out. The two, despite the absurdity of this situation, pledge to work together to kill whoever is after them before they’re taken out. This parallels Danica and Ava’s own murder pact to take out Stevie. It’s likely that a sequel would have these two storylines overlap as legacy characters and fresh faces continue to intermingle in this ever-growing saga.

While it’s possible that Stevie is the one who sent this threat to Julie, it seems like it’s someone who also shares history with Karla. There really aren’t many options for who this new Fisherman could be, considering that I Still Know What You Did Last Summer takes great lengths to explain how Ben Willis’ entire family — including both children — are now dead. There’s always the possibility that he had some illegitimate child that Ben didn’t know about, but it’s likely that this mystery assailant will be an original character with ties to the past — perhaps a relative of Ryan Phillipe’s Barry Cox — rather than someone we’ve actually seen before. 

Then again, there’s always the option to canonize the direct-to-video I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer and incorporate its cast into this chaos. Kidding. Maybe. 

The post ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Ending Explained – Shocking Reveals & Post-Credits Surprises appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

After shifting gears into full-on summer blockbuster territory with a look at Steven Spielberg’s juggernaut of a creature feature in Jaws (listen) and being introduced to our first Jean Rollin joint in the lesbian “vampire” movie Fascination (listen), we’re checking in with the girls of Stanford High School in Amy Jones‘ The Slumber Party Massacre (1982).

The Slumber Party Massacre sees high school senior Trish Devereaux (Michelle Michaels) host a slumber party for her friends Kim (Debra Deliso), Jackie (Andree Honore) and Diane (Gina Mari) the same weekend that escaped serial killer Russ Thorn (Michael Villella) makes his way into her neighborhood. Wielding an incredibly long power drill, Russ sets his sights on Trish’s house, putting her and all of her friends in grave danger.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, and RSS.

Episode 343: The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

Check the temperature of that pizza and close the damn refrigerator because we’re finally (finally!) discussing the female-written and female-directed 1982 slashic The Slumber Party Massacre. Tagging in for the conversation is News is Out‘s managing editor Dana Picccoli!

Join us as we go all in on this Frankenstein’s monster of a slasher film that showcases some feminist themes, while courting to Roger Corman‘s demands of boobs, butts and blood. That it all began with a parody script from noted queer feminist Rita Mae Brown makes it all the more interesting!

Plus: P.E. representation (huh?), comedic match cuts, gratuitous shower scenes, debating Courtney’s intended age, and #JusticeForCoachJana.

Cross out The Slumber Party Massacre!

Coming Up Next: We’re heading back into the world of Dario Argento with a look at his bonkers 1985 film Phenomena!

P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 398 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Squid Game Season 3, Dangerous Animals, M3GAN 2.0, I Know What You Did Last Summer and a brand new audio commentary on Species for its 30th anniversary!

The post Power Drills and Pizza in 1982 Slashic ‘The Slumber Party Massacre’ [Horror Queers Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Warning: This feature has HEAVY SPOILERS for 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Pop culture has reached a dangerous inflection point where everything old is new again. It’s no longer enough to franchise out IP and reboot beloved classics, but the past decade has been rich in legacy sequels that are largely dependent on the power of nostalgia. There are so many hollow legacy sequels that coast on inauthentic sentimentality that cinema has reached a point where these franchise extensions feel inevitable, rather than exciting. Legacy horror sequels like Exorcist: Believer, Halloween Ends, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) hit diminishing returns. A project like a new I Know What You Did Last Summer almost seems set up to fail by this metric, yet Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s movie becomes a powerful commentary on the benefits and dangers of nostalgia. A narrative tug-of-war takes over the film and transforms it into a surprisingly insightful meditation on legacy sequels and fan service with a meta angle that would make Kevin Williamson proud.

A legacy sequel’s premise and how it handles its new characters versus legacy figures is often a helpful way to determine the project’s sincerity. Countless legacy sequels make its new characters related to the OG crew or bend over backwards to connect dots that will always feel implausible. 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer copies the template of the original when five friends’ recklessness leads to a car crash and manslaughter. However, even at this point there are clever attempts to subvert the nature of this opening tragedy. Numerous fake-outs take place that tease fans of the original movie who are expecting the exact same events to go down. Early on, I Know What You Did Last Summer establishes that it will zig when the audience expects it to zag. 

Similarly, it would be so easy to make Danica Richards (Madelyn Cline) or Ava Brooks (Chase Sui Wonders) the daughter of Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Julie James and Freddie Prinze Jr.’s Ray Bronson. It’d be ridiculous, but lazier legacy sequels have conditioned such an expectation. I Know What You Did Last Summer shows surprising restraint in this department. It doesn’t succumb to these pitfalls and instead adopts a very progressive approach to legacy sequels. Julie, Ray, and none of the original cast are even mentioned within the film’s first half-hour. If anything, it seems to actively be against the idea of hollow nostalgia and force-feeding fan service through some expository prologue.

Once the bodies start to mount around Danica and Ava, the legacy characters and references to the original begin, but in a manner that still feels natural to the story and these characters. The original I Know What You Did Last Summer honors the original cast in clever ways, like a true crime podcast that touches on the 1997 Southport massacre, Barry Cox’s headstone, and Etsy murder merch that gets the face of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Helen Shivers on one of the characters who is attacked by the killer in the same place where Gellar’s Helen was killed. It’s an inspired way for the new I Know What You Did Last Summer to riff on the original and even have Helen relive her murder, so to speak. It’s a smart device that plays by the film’s rules.

Curiously, I Know What You Did Last Summer slowly becomes more gratuitous and succumbs to the very shortcomings that it did such a good job avoiding up until this point. The legacy sequel shifts from a movie that trusts its audience to literally splicing in scenes from the original so that there’s no possible confusion. There are even tongue-in-cheek gags about the sequel that wink at fans instead of a more subtle approach. Julie and Ray are eventually incorporated into this story, but in a manner that makes sense and continues to reflect restraint. However, the legacy sequel reaches a point where Sarah Michelle Gellar actually makes an extended cameo during a completely unnecessary dream sequence in a film that doesn’t have any other dream sequences. I Know What You Did Last Summer already featured its Helen Shivers fan service, and gracefully at that. This is just putting a tiara on a tiara here. Only one of these moments is necessary.

This pattern continues as the film reaches its endgame and I Know What You Did Last Summer even resorts to Julie James screaming “What are you waiting for?!” – her most iconic line from the original movie – as it waits for the audience to cheer. It’s a moment that’s a complete 180 from the version of this film that barely features Julie or any references to 1997. Julie and Ray transform from passive, ancillary characters into legacy figures who are forced to repeat the past. This culminates in a truly outrageous post-credit scene where Brandy Norwood’s Karla Wilson from I Still Know What You Did Last Summer appears and Julie recruits her for what’s basically the Slasher Initiative. You’re practically expecting the duo to perform some voodoo witchcraft and resurrect Ryan Phillipe’s corpse so Zombie Barry will be along for the ride in the sequel.

The schism that occurs in I Know What You Did Last Summer between a legacy sequel with restraint that chastises nostalgia and one that’s overly-indulgent in fan service and lost in the past is jarring, but part of the film’s point. Freddie Prinze Jr.’s Ray Bronson is revealed to be the film’s killer, but his motive stems from his fear and anger over his past being erased. Southport hasn’t just moved on from its ‘90s slasher spree, but it’s actively buried it and scrubbed it from the records. It’s hard not to draw parallels between Ray’s 1997 Southport tragedy being forgotten and I Know What You Did Last Summer being discarded as a viable horror franchise and deemed disposable by a direct-to-video sequel, a forgotten 2021 Amazon Prime Video series, and numerous unproduced sequels and reboots that were stuck in development hell. Ray is driven by nostalgia and a desire to make people remember his past – a narrative that’s applicable to Ray the character, but also Freddie Prinze Jr. the actor. The reason that the movie’s heavy-handed nostalgia doesn’t kick in until the murders start is because this is when Ray’s actions start to control the story. His desire for relevancy and for 1997’s massacre to be remembered – even if it needs to be forced upon the world – takes over.

This idea shares some similarities with the message from 2022’s Scream – one of the more successful legacy sequels – but I Know What You Did Last Summer ultimately takes it in a very different direction. Both propulsive characters are motivated through a disappointment over how the past is being treated and a compulsion to “fix this” and prove the opposition wrong. It’s interesting that these are both legacy sequels that have the same name as their original and use the reflexivity of this to say something deeper about their films’ characters.

Last Summer’s final act devolves into messy fan service that’s triggered through Ray’s domination over the narrative. However, Ray is ultimately foiled by Julie, a character who actively pushes the message that “nostalgia is overrated,” has moved away from Southport, and channeled her trauma into helping others. Julie has repressed her past to some extent, but still manages to turn it into productive output for not just herself, but her students. Julie doesn’t let her past control her; she controls it. Alternatively, Ray is stuck in the past, living in the same place, and so desperate to rekindle nostalgia and become relevant again that he latches onto Stevie Ward’s (Sarah Pigeon) trauma and turns it into an opportunity to make this his story. Ray uses his past to inform Stevie’s playbook in the present and, when the dust settles, he’s the mastermind who has co-opted this next-gen character to be his minion and an arbiter of the past. Admittedly, Ray is dead when the film ends, but his accomplice is still at large and carrying on his legacy. It wouldn’t even be that surprising if Stevie were literally haunted by Ray in any future sequels.

I Know What You Did Last Summer sets up dueling paths for its future. Its two new heroes, Danica and Ava both survive and make a murder pact to take out Stevie before she gets them. However, this also appears to be in conflict with the fan service post-credit scene that sets up Karla and Julie as the sequel’s head murderistas. In all likelihood, any potential sequel will feature both generations of killers overlapping as everyone works together, while fan service and nostalgia cooperates with new characters and ideas to create something original. One would presume that such a sequel will continue to be a gonzo expansion of this universe that has its cake and eats it too between these two sets of characters. There’s likely to be new revelations and even more gratuitous returns to the past. 2025’s I Know What You Did Last Summer is deeply flawed, but this legacy sequel revival acts as a proof of concept that such a reflexive approach to nostalgia and fan service can work. There just needs to be a method to the madness.

The post How ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Deconstructs Cinema’s Love/Hate Relationship With Legacy Sequel Nostalgia appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Besides, from their iconic masks to their fantastical super-powers, slasher villains have a lot more in common with superheroes than most people tend to realize. That’s probably why so many comic artists have featured slasher tropes in their work – often with incredible results. And in honor of these genre-savvy artists, we’ve decided to come up with a list recommending six horror comics for slasher fans! After all, genre fun doesn’t have to be limited to the big screen.

For the purposes of this list, we’ll be focusing on comic-books that directly tell stories related to slasher movies. This means no one-off gags like that time Doctor Strange battled Freddy Krueger or even slasher-adjacent characters like Batman’s Dollmaker. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own slasher comic favorites if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.

With that out of the way, onto the list…

6. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2007)

Platinum Dunes’ Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake and its prequel may not have been critical darlings upon release, but I’m glad that these films are now mostly respected as gnarly little slasher flicks that were content to do their own thing. And if you’re also a fan of these films, I’d highly recommend checking out Wildstorm’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre comic-books, as their six-issue series picks up one year after the events of the remake – making it the official sequel that we never got to see!

Not only do we get to see Leatherface adapting to life with only one-arm while Jessica Biel’s Erin is imprisoned in a mental institution, but the comics also expand the Hewitt’s mythology by revealing that the entire town of Fuller is aware of the family’s cannibalistic activities.

The lack of MPAA interference also makes these comics even more brutal than the movies that inspired them, so make sure that you have a strong stomach before diving into these hyper-violent stories.

5. The Deviant (2023)

Picture a Thomas Harris novel combined with Silent Night, Deadly Night (as well as a generous helping of neo-noir atmosphere), and you’ll get the gist of James Tynion IV’s criminally underrated The Deviant. However, don’t be fooled by the book’s familiar setup, as this sexually charged thriller has a lot more going on under the surface than its slasher-adjacent setup might initially suggest.

In this ongoing series, we follow a troubled True Crime writer as he interviews an aging prisoner who was arrested back in 1972 for having committed a murder spree while dressed as a mall Santa. And yet, despite the overwhelming evidence against him, the so-called ‘Deviant Killer’ still insists on his innocence all these years later.

4. Friday the 13^th: How I Spent My Summer Vacation (2007)

Like many other genre fans, I remember anxiously awaiting the announcement for a new Friday the 13^th movie immediately after the release of the 2009 remake. And as the wait grew longer, I eventually decided to turn my attention towards other mediums in an attempt to scratch that slasher itch. This is how I fell down the F13 franchise’s surprisingly messy rabbit hole of spin-off comic-books.

And among these loving homages to the golden years of slasher flicks, one of the best has to be a certain two-issue miniseries written by Jason Aaron and illustrated by Adam Archer. In 2007’s How I Spent My Summer Vacation, we follow a disabled child at Camp Crystal Lake who finds respite from constant bullying suffered at the hands of his fellow campers when he befriends a certain masked killer with a tragic backstory of his own.

3. Hack / Slash (2004)

A highly entertaining example of mid-2000s excess, Hack/Slash may not have aged as well as some other horror comics on this list, but I can’t help but look back on this iconic series fondly. After all, it’s one of the most entertaining love-letters to horror fans that I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading.

Following slasher-hunter Cassie Hack as she teams up with a masked brute with a heart of gold and travels the country on a never-ending quest to rid the world of supernatural killers, Hack/Slash combines humor and horror in infinitely entertaining ways. The series also featured plenty of memorable crossovers with iconic characters like Chucky and even Jeffrey Combs’ rendition of Dr. Herbert West – with the latter actually being a big part of the series’ mythology!

2. Halloween: Nightdance (2008)

There are so many conflicting timelines within the Halloween franchise that the IP actually feels right at home in the world of comic-books. But if you only ever read one book inspired by John Carpenter’s seminal slasher, I’d recommend Stefan Hutchinson and Tim Seeley’s surprisingly dark Halloween: Nightdance, a Devil’s Due miniseries that takes place between H20 and Resurrection.

Following a traumatized young woman who discovers that she’s the latest target of a seemingly unstoppable serial killer, this four-issue story features one of the scariest depictions of The Shape in any media – as well as a surprisingly memorable cast of victims.

1. Maniac of New York (2021)

From war-torn horizons to global pandemics, humankind is capable of adapting to all manners of different horrors if given enough time to adjust. It’s this nonchalant approach to terror that inspired Elliott Kalan to come up with the bloody satire of Maniac of New York – a slasher comic that combines brutal massacres with biting social commentary.

This wonderful ongoing series tells the story of an alternate version of New York City under siege by a seemingly unkillable masked murderer. However, the killer’s appearances are so frequent that they have now become an accepted part of modern city life, with the comic daring to explore the socio-economic consequences of living in a neighborhood inhabited by a Jason Voorhees-inspired murderer.

The post Hacking & Slashing: Six Horror Comics for Fans of Slasher Movies appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Hell Motel is a blunt, brutal, and bloody slasher series that’s right at home with the visceral nature of Friday the 13th and Halloween, while also riffing on true crime, the murky ethics that surround its sensationalization, and also humanity’s inherent need for answers and understanding. The series mixes a pulpy murder mystery with meta postmodern storytelling and supernatural theatrics like seances, Satanic rituals, and murder recreations that occur in a hyperbolized setting. It doesn’t amount to mandatory viewing from Shudder’s vast streaming library. However, it’s dumb fun that’s made with unabashed passion for the genre and a playful ambition that isn’t afraid to push things a little too far once the bodies hit the floor.

There’s always been a thin line between horror and murder mysteries, the likes of which have become increasingly blurred in recent years. What is a slasher if not just a bloodier whodunnit, after all? In this sense, Aaron Martin and Ian Carpenter’s Hell Motel doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel with its premise where ten true crime fanatics, all from different backgrounds, are asked to stay at a freshly renovated hotel that just so happens to be the site of a mass slaughter. That being said, this doesn’t make it any less enjoyable when history begins to repeat itself and the body count begins to mount. In many respects, Hell Motel feels like it’s doing its best impression of 13 Ghosts or even Prince of Darkness as these eclectic strangers enter a haunting scenario and fight for survival. The series certainly embraces stereotypes with these characters and doesn’t feel the need to subvert them. 

Some of these characters are more successful than others, while various innocuous details — like Paige’s age — are misaligned. The whole cast, which includes several of Martin and Carpenter’s ensemble players from Slasher, like Paula Brancati, Jim Watson, Genevieve DeGraves, and Eric McCormack, are clearly relishing these roles. McCormack in particular is chewing scenery like his life depends on it. He, and most of the performers in Hell Motel, understand the assignment when it comes to pushing the requisite levels of camp.

Hell Motel quickly settles into a comfortable rhythm and its general premise works. There’s one twist in particular that works exceptionally well. Unfortunately, there are even more moments that are filled with generic storytelling and characters. To the show’s credit, it does successfully subvert the expected whodunnit slasher angle so that the audience is on its big secret, yet also simultaneously kept in the dark. That being said, there are still plenty of surprises peppered throughout.

At eight episodes, Hell Motel is allowed restraint and doesn’t wear out its welcome by padding this story and diluting its message. That being said, there’s sometimes a questionable scope to the storytelling that’s reminiscent of the vibe of American Horror Story’s later seasons. The compulsion to provide background context on its characters is sometimes advantageous to the grander story, but it also comes across as self-indulgent and unnecessary. The series does improve over time and become more confident in its storytelling, the likes of which really hits a satisfying groove around episode five.

All this reinforces a successful-enough structure that turns a gruesome murder into each episode’s centerpiece. It’s a formula that’s identical to Martin and Carpenter’s Slasher, right down to the killer’s mask and pageantry. Hell Motel also features the same mix of subpar, pulpy writing and intense ultra-gory kills. It’s not at all surprising to learn that the project was originally produced as Slasher’s sixth season before this innocuous rebranding. These kills are certainly the most interesting thing about Hell Motel and there’s just enough depth to its meta-textual message to not just watch a “Hell Motel Kill Count Compilation” video instead. There’s a disgusting sauna death that puts Final Destination’s tanning bed kills to shame. At one point a Satanic ritual becomes almost comically violent. The sound design absolutely kills it with these horrific setpieces, which become so much more repulsive due to the wet, blunt noises that accompany them. Unfortunately, these grisly massacres are arguably the least memorable of Martin and Carpenter’s past productions. 

Hell Motel crafts a compelling and carnage-filled story about the disgusting cycle of commodifying pain and trauma into entertainment and profit. It’s at its best whenever it digs into more complex questions about culpability and the ways in which people detach and justify their actions as a coping mechanism. Everyone wants to believe that they’re the heroes of their own story, but there can be very real consequences to this when it comes at the expense of rewriting the narratives of those who no longer have a voice. Hell Motel, concessions aside, culminates in a rather reflexive finale that deserves credit for its ambition, even if some of the season’s strongest moments riff on better horror films. It’s breezy, disposable horror content, but it’s still likely to strike a chord with plenty of fans who just want to watch some misguided fools get slaughtered. 

‘Hell Motel’ premieres on Shudder on June 17.

The post ‘Hell Motel’ Offers Death & Dismemberment But Half-Baked Mystery [TV Review] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The eight-episode limit series debuts with a two-episode premiere on June 17 on Shudder and AMC+. New episodes will follow weekly on Tuesdays.

A group of 10 true crime obsessives are invited to the opening weekend of the newly renovated Cold River Motel, the site of a 30-year-old unsolved satanic mass murder. History repeats itself when the guests get stranded and start getting knocked off one by one during a murder spree that grows exponentially more gruesome than the original with each kill.

The cast includes Eric McCormack (“Will & Grace”) as Hemmingway, a chef with a wickedly sinister flair, Paula Brancati (“Slasher)” as Paige, a former scream queen actress looking to revive a career that has seemingly left her behind; Shaun Benson (“The Boys”) as Crow, a new-age medium with an apparent connection to the massacre’s victims; and Atticus Mitchell (“The Hardy Boys”) as Blake, a true crime writer and himself a survivor of a mass killing.

They’re joined by Emmanuel Kabongo (“Outer Banks”) as Kawayan, a talented artist with a dark focus on murder; Jim Watson (“Transplant”) as Andy, a bookish academic at the forefront of contemporary true crime studies; and Genevieve DeGraves (“Chapelwaite”) as Adriana, a hybristophilic flight attendant with several notorious serial killer notches on her bedpost.

Drag queen Icesis Couture (“Canada’s Drag Race”) also makes a guest appearance as Magenta, a stylish real estate agent who sells the Coldwater Motel to its new owners Ruby and Portia, played by Brynn Godenir (“Burden of Truth”) and Michelle Nolden (“Nikita”), respectively.

“When Aaron Martin and Ian Carpenter reached out to tell me they had crafted another irredeemable A-hole for me, my response was, ‘Where do I sign?’” said Eric McCormack, who delivered a memorable performance in “Slasher: Ripper.” “If you loved hating Basil Garvey, prepare to feel an instant disdain for Hemmingway.”

“With ‘Hell Motel’ we take a good look in the mirror as both horror fans and horror creators, delving into the allure of a genre of storytelling as old as drama itself,” added Martin and Carpenter. “But as any horror fan who’s ever uttered ‘Bloody Mary’ three times into a mirror knows, you’ve got to be careful what you wish for…”

Carpenter serves as showrunner, with Adam MacDonald (Backcountry, Pyewacket) directing.

The post Check Into Shudder’s ‘Hell Motel’ from the Creators of ‘Slasher’ [Trailer] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The Fisherman slashes back into theaters on July 18, 2025.

In this summer’s legacy sequel, “When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences. A year later, their past comes back to haunt them and they’re forced to confront a horrifying truth: someone knows what they did last summer…and is hell-bent on revenge. As one by one the friends are stalked by a killer, they discover this has happened before, and they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport Massacre of 1997 for help.”

Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson (Do Revenge) co-wrote the script with Sam Lansky, based on an earlier draft by Leah McKendrick (M.F.A.).

Chase Sui Wonders (Bodies Bodies Bodies), Madelyn Cline (“Outer Banks”), Sarah Pidgeon (“The Wilds”), Jonah Hauer-King (The Little Mermaid), and Tyriq Withers (Him) lead the new cast.

Jennifer Love Hewitt is back as Julie James and Freddie Prinze Jr. is back as Ray Bronson in the legacy sequel. Prinze Jr. previously teased that Robinson “just took such good care of Love’s character, Julie James, and my character, Ray Bronson. They’re not the leads of the movie by any stretch of the imagination.”

Robinson also delivered a rather intriguing tease when promising a more ruthless slasher villain this round. “When Sony came to me and asked if I would be interested in taking on this IP, I said I would love to do this, but there are two things I would need you to let me do if we’re going to make this sequel together. They agreed to both. You’ll just have to see what those things are on July 18.”

Jim Gillespie directed the 1997 original I Know What You Did Last Summer, which was written by Kevin Williamson (Scream) and based on Lois Duncan’s novel. 

Look for the trailer to arrive tomorrow.

The post ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Teases The Fisherman Ahead of Trailer Reveal Tomorrow appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Holidays can be a wonderful time of unity where friends, family, and loved ones come together, whether they subscribe to the entrenched tropes of these seasonal customs or have created their own. Holiday horror films have become one of the genre’s most cathartic traditions. This subversive brand of horror started to find its footing during the ’70s through movies like Silent Night, Bloody Night, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?, and of course — Black Christmas and Halloween.

The tongue-in-cheek nature of Christmas horror movies have helped make these the most popular holiday horror sub-genre. There are close to 100 Christmas horror movies, but this hasn’t stopped other holidays, like Thanksgiving, April Fool’s Day, and even Independence Day, from also leaving their mark on the horror genre. 

Valentine’s Day is especially rewarding territory to explore through the horror lens. A time of love, affection — and often jealousy — is subject matter that naturally feeds into horror’s heightened, emotional characters. Josh Ruben’s Heart Eyes — a throwback slasher that revolves around a festive serial killer who targets couples — is a modern classic-in-the-making that reminds audiences why Valentine’s Day is the perfect vehicle for scary slasher shenanigans.

Anyone who wants to program a flawless night of Valentine’s Day-fueled horror should turn to the following films…

My Bloody Valentine & My Bloody Valentine 3D

There may not even be a Valentine’s Day horror sub-genre without 1981’s My Bloody Valentine, a revelatory slasher that is the holiday’s equivalent to Black Christmas. There’s a deliciously Jaws-esque plot that drives My Bloody Valentine forward. A deranged miner who had to resort to cannibalism during a tunnel disaster threatens to wreak violent vengeance on the sleepy town of Valentine Bluffs if they ever hold the annual Valentine’s Day Dance again.

After 20 years, Valentine Bluffs finally decides to return to this tradition, content that Harry Warden (Peter Cowper) is confined to a mental institution and unable to do any harm. Of course, Harry escapes, dons a miner’s mask and pickaxe, and returns to Valentine Bluff to terrorize the community’s lovesick youth. A miner’s mask turns out to be a very effective slasher disguise that’s simple, yet creepy. My Bloody Valentine features an abundance of removed hearts and foreboding POV segments that are rich in atmosphere. It’s also just so silly that the film’s dangers have an easy solution — the canceling of the dance — but such a setback is viewed as an impossible imposition to this party-deprived community.

The original My Bloody Valentine is an evergreen classic, but 2009’s My Bloody Valentine 3D is actually one of the better remakes to come out of the 2000s that taps into exactly the right tone for this heightened horror hysteria. It’s also one of the best uses of 3D in a horror film that effectively recaptures the comical, cringe-inducing experience of flinching from projectile eyeballs and spraying blood. Director Patrick Lussier has been involved with big-budget productions like Drive Angry and Terminator Genisys, but My Bloody Valentine 3D is his masterpiece. It’s unfortunate that the proposed sequel never came to fruition. 

Picnic At Hanging Rock

Many Valentine’s Day horror movies focus on the holiday’s immediacy and a desire for resolution. Peter Wier’s Picnic at Hanging Rock spits in the face of these principles in favor of a terrifying thriller that crafts a suffocating mystery that’s in no hurry to provide answers. It’s a film about humanity’s inherent helplessness and their ultimate insignificance in comparison to the universe’s infinite vastness. The film investigates the disappearance of three young girls who go missing during a Valentine’s Day school trip to Hanging Rock. There’s a cinema verité quality to the picture that evokes the feeling of early found-footage or even the hazy obscurity of something like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that blurs the lines between fact and fiction.

Picnic at Hanging Rock crafts a compelling story, but it’s really the movie’s visuals and mesmerizing cinematography that elevate it to something greater. This film has such a hypnotic hold over the viewer that makes them feel haunted and at the mercy of some unexplainable supernatural force. It’s like you’re drowning in a nightmare. Picnic at Hanging Rock gets under the audience’s skin and is the type of film that viewers will immediately want to rewatch the minute that the credits begin to roll. It’s one of the darkest and most unnerving Valentine’s Day horror films, but it’s also widely considered to be one of the best Australian movies of all-time.

Valentine

Valentine is the pinnacle of early 2000s era slashers, albeit a title that’s actually held up incredibly well nearly 25 years later. The slick slasher has a cast that’s full of some of the decade’s top teen-skewing talent, such as David Boreanaz, Denise Richards, Marley Shelton and two Grey’s Anatomy alum, Katherine Heigl and Jessica Capshaw. Valentine is very generic on paper — a killer in a Cupid mask begins racking up a body count that connects back to an embarrassing incident from junior high. Directed by Jamie Blanks of Urban Legend fame, the film has fun with a whodunnit element that keeps audiences guessing up until the very end. 

It’s easy to dismiss Valentine as one of the decade’s many Scream rip-offs, but this horror movie actually has something to say and executes it through a surprisingly intricate revenge plan. It’s full of provoking set pieces that fully take advantage of the many tropes and traditions that are connected to Valentine’s Day. All these moments connect, but there’s a particularly disturbing scene that involves chocolates and maggots, not to mention a truly vicious kill with an iron. Valentine punches way above its weight, even if it’s far from a perfect horror movie.

Hospital Massacre

Hospital Massacre, also known as X-Ray (as well as Be My Valentine, Ward 13, and Or Else), is entertaining slasher shlock from the early ’80s that’s slipped through the cracks for many. Hospital Massacre — unsurprisingly — uses the claustrophobic and sterile setting of a hospital and turns it into an inescapable house of horrors. An unpopular boy, Harold Rusk (Charles Lucia), finds himself mocked by Susan Jeremy (Barbi Benton) and her boyfriend on Valentine’s Day, only for Harold to snap from the embarrassment and murder Susan’s partner. Now, 19 years later, Susan is divorced and excited to embrace life with her new boyfriend, Jack (Jon Van Ness). Susan has to pick up her routine physical results from the hospital, where she’s interrupted by her former stalker who murders a surgeon and masquerades as a medical professional. 

A lot of Hospital Massacre involves Harold killing off doctors and hospital staff with precise medical tools. At only 89 minutes, it’s hardly a long movie, but the final act does drag, despite the harrowing situation that Susan finds herself in. Hospital Massacre culminates in an emotional reunion that avoids a cliched conclusion and argues that a final girl doesn’t have to perish in order for a horror film to be successful. This is a niche Valentine’s Day slasher that’s a lot of silly, stupid fun.

Tales From The Crypt (“Poetic Justice”)

Amicus Productions helped lead the charge for anthology horror in film through the ’60s and ’70s. Freddie Francis’ Tales from the Crypt is considerably less campy than the HBO series that followed, but it’s still a very entertaining production that concludes with a cathartic twist. Out of the film’s five segments, it’s frequently the Christmas-centric killer Santa story, “…And All Through the House,” that receives the most praise. However, there’s also an excellent Valentine’s Day segment in the mix. “Poetic Justice” is a title that may seem appropriate for most Tales from the Crypt stories, but this operates as a tight, tense revenge story that hits its mark and doesn’t overstay its welcome. 

“Poetic Justice” involves a petty feud against a neighbor – Arthur Grimsdyke (Peter Cushing) – who may seem odd, but he largely keeps to himself and doesn’t disturb others. Cushing brings something special to this story and Grimsdyke’s complete earnestness really aids this performance and gives his character real pathos. The central “prank” exploits the death of Grimsdyke’s wife, on Valentine’s Day no less, which triggers a melancholy chain reaction. “Poetic Justice” is rather heartbreaking and it’s easy to see why this story wasn’t adapted into an episode of the TV series, which went for broader and more extreme tales of terror. Any misgivings in the segment will be forgotten by the time the pitch-perfect ending arrives. It’s pure E.C. Comics bliss and the weaponization of seemingly sweet Valentine’s Day card limericks helped “Poetic Justice” walk so that Valentine could run. 

Broken Hearts

Jake McDowell (2012’s Found Footage) is a Canadian filmmaker whose first student film — at the age of 17 — was a modern update to John Carpenter’s Halloween, which makes him the perfect choice for a Valentine’s Day-based slasher movie. Broken Hearts is cut from the same cloth as Heart Eyes and Valentine. There’s a lot of crossover between these bloody affairs. A masked psychopath begins offing his unrequited crush’s romantic interests so that no one can get in the way of their love. Broken Hearts celebrates a robust body count, graphic violence, and a retro aesthetic that brings the slashers of the ’70s and ’80s to mind. The killer’s Cupid-esque mask may have a low-budget direct-to-video look to it. However, there’s such passionate love for the genre and filmmaking that’s on the screen. 

Broken Hearts keeps its audience guessing over the serial killer’s identity and playfully indulges in twisted fantasies and disturbing set-pieces that feed into the murderer’s delusions and slipping grasp on reality. Not only does Broken Hearts gleefully wear its slasher love on its sleeve, but it directly name-drops My Bloody Valentine 3D and coyly asks the audience, “Tell me, who would actually pay to see a Valentine’s Day horror movie?” 

Holidays (“Valentine’s Day”)

2016’s Holidays has good intentions and features some particularly satisfying highs, the likes of which make it all the more disappointing that they’re sandwiched between some lackluster lows. Holidays is an eight-segment anthology film that showcases a different holiday in each story, the likes of which are helmed by promising genre filmmakers. “Valentine’s Day” kicks off the film and benefits from Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer’s (Starry Eyes) direction.

This tale is fairly formulaic Valentine’s horror, but it’s presented with a brutal intensity and rawness that helps it stand out among the anthology film’s other segments. “Valentine’s Day” tackles bullying, revenge, and unrequited love with a bloody climax that’s reminiscent of Tales from the Crypt’s “Poetic Justice.” It’s exactly the sort of slasher-based situation that one might expect to find in a film like Heart Eyes.

Pontypool

Canadian apocalypse thriller, Pontypool, is one of the most creative takes on a zombie-esque virus that spreads through society. It’s easy to miss the fact that Pontypool begins on Valentine’s Day, but the affectionate holiday becomes vital subtext to this alarming story. Many zombie films explore a toxic outbreak that’s spread through human contact or bites to the flesh. Pontypool explores an even more disturbing idea that presents a virus that spreads through human language. In doing so, Pontypool is able to present such a unique and methodical look into society’s breakdown. It’s truly chilling to see this virus spread and society struggle to figure out what’s going on.

There’s a clear progression to this infection as individuals begin to uncontrollably repeat certain words before their vocabulary and comprehension become progressively garbled and regresses into nonsense. There’s a particularly powerful sequence where Grant (Stephen McHattie) convinces Sydney (Lisa Houle) that the word “kill” actually means “kiss,” which is a stunning distillation of what it means to be in love in a horror movie. Pontypool’s finale is a beautiful expression of love that’s shrouded in hopelessness.

Pontypool doesn’t push the fact that it begins on Valentine’s Day in the audience’s face. However, the movie’s message about the importance of communication, the power of language, and how the loss of these things leads to total disaster becomes even stronger when it’s contextualized through romance and relationships. Love and affection increasingly evaporate — and madness reigns — when language is lost, whether it occurs in a zombie apocalypse or a mundane break-up.

The post Beyond ‘Heart Eyes’ – The Perfect Valentine’s Day Horror Movies to Watch This Year appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Ruben, working from a script by Phillip Murphy (The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard) and Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day, Freaky) & Michael Kennedy (Freaky), sets the charming, funny, and suspenseful tone straightaway with a cold open that introduces the Heart Eyes Killer and his rather gnarly modus operandi of savagely slaughtering lovers in punny, elaborately gory form. This killer, sporting a memorable mask destined for merchandising, targets couples every Valentine’s Day from across the country.

That Ally (Holt) is single should mark her safe, but a bitter breakup has put her career on the line and prompted her boss to pair her with suave fixer Jay (Gooding) to salvage a botched campaign. A business dinner on Valentine’s Day puts the pair directly in the Heart Eyes Killer’s crosshairs, and sparks fly as Ally and Jay fight to survive the night.

It’s not the steadfast commitment to intense thrills and suspenseful set pieces that earns easy rooting interest in Heart Eyes, though that certainly helps, but rather its magnetic cast. Gooding and Holt impress for their natural chemistry and playful banter, but Holt’s Ally, in particular, has an extremely tough needle to thread as the awkward romcom heroine who’s prone to clumsiness yet proves herself capable of thinking on her feet when the horror comes in earnest. Gooding establishes himself as a generous and charismatic scene partner, supporting Holt’s rise from timid love interest to clever final girl. Gigi Zumbado also shines as Ally’s fiery best friend, with horror stalwarts Devon Sawa and Jordana Brewster complicating matters as Hobbs and Shaw (because, of course), the detectives tracking the serial killer.

Heart Eyes moves at a rapid clip, building steady momentum as Ally and Jay are forced to flee all over the city. It yields no shortage of exciting set pieces that often end in inspired bloodshed, culminating in a thrilling climax that lets its cast cut loose in a go-for-broke showdown. Ruben doles out enough foreshadowing that makes it seem easy to surmise the killer’s identity, but luckily, Heart Eyes isn’t so straightforward in this department and retains a few tricks up its sleeves to keep the savvy slasher fan on their toes.

While Heart Eyes will likely earn easy comparisons to similar themed slashers like My Bloody Valentine, Ruben instead draws from Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives both in the killer’s physicality and in the perfect blend of fun and horror. Heart Eyes, simply put, is a blast. There’s no winking attempt to reinvent the subgenre- either of them- or go meta. Instead, Ruben pairs this genre hybrid down to the basics and ensures each component stands on its own. As a romcom, Heart Eyes is sexy and endlessly charming. As a slasher, the typically comedic Ruben finally gets to cut loose and demonstrate his chops for crafting intense slasher scares and suspense. The director also refreshingly keeps any callbacks or easter eggs relegated solely to romcoms, acting as a tongue-in-cheek primer for the horror fan.

Heart Eyes walks the fine line between a ’90s slasher with a modern savage edge and a romcom with rare, white-hot chemistry without ever feeling novel or gimmicky. It’s simply a breathlessly entertaining ride that leaves you cheering for love and creative kills in equal measure. Heart Eyes doesn’t shake up the slasher or romcom formulas but seamlessly marries the two and puts its characters first. It’s arguably the best mashup of two seemingly disparate genres yet, and this charming, violent, and romantic slasher feels all but destined for sequel status. 

Heart Eyes releases in theaters on February 7, 2025.

Editor’s Note: This review was originally published on January 31, 2025.

The post ‘Heart Eyes’ Review – A Crowd-Pleasing Blend of Savage Slasher and Romantic Comedy appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Screenwriters Phillip Murphy (The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard) and Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day, Freaky) & Michael Kennedy (Freaky) seamlessly marry the slasher and rom-com genres together for one entertaining, gory romp centered around an emoji mask-inspired killer who stalks and hunts couples on the most romantic holiday of the year.

It may come as no surprise that Heart Eyes originated from a date gone wrong. Great chemistry in a Zoom chat didn’t translate in person, but it did leave Phillip Murphy with killer inspiration. “I was on my moped, driving home from that date just livid, furious,“ Murphy tells Bloody Disgusting. “I was like, ‘I know there’s something there.‘ I was thinking of a killer coming after us. That was pretty seamless. Then, the rom-com started to evolve when I started working with Chris, who was an early shepherd of it and was great.

“But for me, the slasher, that was really already in place, and then Chris and Michael just built it up even more. But my draft really did come together really quickly and organically because I was so pissed off at that date. I was so angry. It’s almost like this idea was in there just waiting to come out.”

Murphy landed on the slasher-meets-rom-com concept early on, and the next step, of course, was landing on the perfect villain. What’s a slasher without a memorable masked killer, after all? While the film’s killer and title draw from a popular emoji, Murphy reveals that he began with a drastically different idea in mind for the Heart Eyes Killer’s mask.

“It was supposed to be Chuck Woolery but rest in peace, he recently passed away,“ Murphy says. “But it was a Chuck Woolery mask, and I thought I could probably do better than that. Nobody really knows who he is, outside of ’80s kids.” That’s when inspiration struck again. “When I just was looking at the emoji and thinking about how that would look, I’m like, ‘That’s got to be it, that just has to be it.‘ Then it evolved with these two guys.”

Landon and Kennedy looked to the killer’s motives to further evolve Murphy’s concept for a heart eyes emoji-inspired killer. Landon explains, “Michael and I came on, and one of the things that we knew based on some of the changes that we were making to the script is that we wanted this to feel like it was a sexualized get-up that was very kink-specific and kind of S&M-y. That this was more than just a person stomping around, killing couples. It was someone who deeply loved what they do, how they do it, and the style with which they approach it. That was something that we were really into. Then Josh [Ruben] came into the process and then leveled it up even more.”

Landon adds, “It was Josh’s idea to have these eyes that light up and, actually, our night vision goggles as well. So there’s functionality to it, as well as the bespoke weapons with parts in them. That was a Josh thing, and that was what made us really fall in love with his angle.”

More than the killer’s design, Landon and Kennedy also ensured this slasher came loaded with inventive kills. “I always credit Chris; he’s come up with the elaborate ones on this,“ Kennedy says of Heart Eyes’ more elaborate deaths. “I’m the stabby-stab writer, and Chris is like, ‘No, no, no, we should cut him in half with a table saw.‘ Oh, okay.”

“I walk into a lot of rooms and just imagine how people would die or how I would kill them,“ Landon amusingly says of his talent for penning on-screen horror kills. “So, it’s always very much germane to the setting. I knew I wanted to open the movie at a winery. I knew that just felt like this is where you would propose. I actually live near Wine Country up in Santa Barbara, and so I thought, ‘Oh gosh, two really bougie, douchey people having this romantic moment in a winery.‘” We won’t spoil what, exactly, this opening kill entails, but let’s just say that it’s gloriously gory and original.

“My poor husband probably sleeps with one eye open because I really do love thinking of ways to kill people,“ Landon cracks.

While the trio nailed the mechanics of a slasher/rom-com hybrid, all three screenwriters are unanimous in that characters are the most important part of any script. Especially in horror. “I think any great slasher movie starts with characters first,“ Kennedy says. That’s reflected in the complexity of Olivia Holt‘s final girl, Ally.

While Kennedy took care to ensure a complex heroine, he’s quick to credit Holt for what she brought to the role. “The thing about Olivia is everything about her just brought so much to the character that you can’t even put on screen or on paper. She just has this thing about her. The other thing that was really important too, was also making her smart. She does so many really smart things in the movie, and she fights back. The belt situation? The belt on the door, that is so smart.”

Having horror stalwarts like Landon and Kennedy on board also helped with keeping seasoned horror fans on their toes, especially when it comes to the whodunnit aspect of this slasher.

“A huge part of it was the subversion and also knowing that we get to build to a certain kind of climax, pun intended, that is different than what we’ve traditionally seen in these kinds of movies and specifically a Valentine’s slasher,“ Landon explains. “It’s character-driven, but it’s also very much driven by, I think, a group of people who are all very familiar with the genre. We know all the tropes, and so that’s the other joy in writing these kinds of things. It’s like, ‘Oh, here’s where you’re expecting us to go, and then here’s our hairpin turn the other way to keep it interesting.‘”

Kennedy adds, ‘The Valentine’s Day movies before us really helped us set the table and then flip it over, you know what I mean? Even going back to Scream, the boyfriend being the killer is already in people’s heads just because there’s a boyfriend in the movie. So, we really got to take advantage of what people think is going to happen in a lot of fun ways.”

Heart Eyes releases in theaters on February 7, 2025.

The post ‘Heart Eyes’ Screenwriters Talk Creative Slasher Kills and Reveal the Killer’s Original Mask Design appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

And in a year chalk-full of new monsters and killers I thought it might be fun to highlight six of the scariest horror masks of 2024. After all, a slasher is only as good as his murderous attire, and last year offered up plenty of memorable headgear for fans of stylish antagonists.

As usual, this list is purely based on personal opinion, but keep in mind that we’ll be focusing on the scare factor and memorability of the masks themselves rather than the overall quality of the film they originally appeared in. With that out of the way, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite horror masks of 2024 if you think we missed a particularly cool one.

Now, onto the list…

6. The Player Masks – Stream (2024)

The varied assortment of killers in Michael Leavy’s Stream (a sister-production to the same team’s excellent work on the Terrifier films) all benefit from unique character designs and personalities, but it’s the recurring player masks that really tie this ragtag gang of competing murderers together.

On their own, these grinning black masks seem like your standard Purge-inspired Halloween store fare, but the fact that you can still make out the actors’ eyes underneath the tinted lenses means that there’s an added level of unhinged performance here that you don’t usually get with slashers.

5. The Founder’s Theater Mask – Founder’s Day (2024)

Scream-inspired whodunnit slashers are a dime a dozen, but not every scary movie needs to reinvent the genre wheel. That’s why I appreciate Erik Bloomquist’s Founder’s Day as a well-executed piece of bloody political satire that also happens to feature one of the most memorable masks of cinematic year.

While the scare-factor behind this crimson theater mask really depends on your definition of “scary,” I like how production designer Joshua Schneider hand-sculpted this contorted face to look like an American equivalent to a Japanese Oni mask. It’s just a shame that the killer’s (thematically appropriate) legal wig doesn’t do the design any favors.

4. The Frank Stone Mask – The Casting of Frank Stone (2024)

Yes, this long-awaited Dead by Daylight spinoff is technically a videogame, but Supermassive’s narrative-driven projects are basically interactive movies at this point, and that’s why I feel comfortable with including the mangled Frank Stone mask on this list alongside entries from more traditional scary stories.

A welding mask from hell (with the underside even featuring tusks made out of warped metal), the headgear on the very first Dead by Daylight killer is one of the coolest horror designs of the year, with the developers of the main game even including it in DbD as cosmetic DLC so players could show it off online.

3. The Fool Mask – Tarot (2024)

Tarot may have been dismissed by some viewers are a disappointingly tame creature feature (I personally think it’s a fun example of PG-13 Gateway Horror), but I don’t think anyone will be surprised to learn that a film featuring monsters designed by the insanely talented Trevor Henderson – creator of viral hits like Sirenhead – would also be included on a list celebrating the best horror masks of the year.

More specifically, I’d love to shout-out Tarot’s eerie portrayal of the Fool archetype, with this multi-faceted demonic entity being one of the film’s creepiest monsters. And while Felix Leech’s performance is clearly responsible for a lot of the spook factor here, it’s clear that the Fool’s uncanny facial expressions are what make him so memorable.

2. The Soul Eater Mask – Soul Eater (2024)

The darkest film featured on this list, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s investigative folk horror opus Soul Eater is a deeply haunting exploration of cult mentality and child abuse. That being said, I have to admit that I only decided to check it out because of the freaky horned mask featured on the film’s posters.

While the film itself is by no means a slasher, with the oddly foreboding mask only being a small detail among a larger smorgasbord of horrific storytelling, I can’t help but include the design on this list if only as an excuse to recommend this deeply disturbing flick to other genre fans.

1. Vintage Firefighter Mask – In a Violent Nature (2024)

Chris Nash’s introspective commentary on slasher flicks may have divided audiences with its deliberate pacing and arthouse presentation, but even the film’s harshest critics agree that the undead Johnny is a great addition to the slasher genre’s ever-growing pantheon of masked killers. And while having Johnny use an assortment of firefighting tools as weapons was an inspired choice, it’s his vintage headgear that really completes the ensemble.

Funnily enough, Johnny’s decision to wear the anti-smoke helmet is much less arbitrary than Jason Voorhees’ sudden obsession with hockey gear, as our undead anti-hero was actually killed during a prank gone wrong at a local fire lookout tower. I also appreciate the implication that an instrument which once represented safety has been turned on its head as a symbol of violent death.

The post Six of the Scariest Horror Movie Masks of 2024 appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Naturally, the slasher in question is Friday the 13^th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. And with the film celebrating its 35th anniversary this year, this seems like the perfect opportunity to discuss why I believe this over-hated sequel deserves to be re-evaluated as an oddly fascinating (and likely accidental) homage to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. So please join me as I attempt to unravel the possible inspiration for one of the most hated entries in the F13 franchise.

In order to properly dive into this wild comparison, it’s only appropriate that we look back on the ideas that originally informed Stoker as he wrote Dracula, which is why our journey begins long before the iconic Count was even a twinkle in the author’s eye.

In the days before the industrial revolution, it was believed that horror exclusively lurked outside human settlements, taking the form of Big Bad Wolves and Baba Yagas that would patiently wait for naïve children to step out of the safety of their close-knit communities. Whatever mysteries that lay beyond familiar population centers was seen as dangerous and otherworldly, which is what led to the legends and superstitions that eventually gave birth to both blood-sucking vampires and murderous revenants with a penchant for hockey masks.

Of course, this idealized black-and-white view of the world couldn’t last forever, and the population boom of the 18^th century (the result of an abundance of resources spawned by technological innovation) led to larger cities and our first taste of true urban chaos. From the widely reported horrors of Jack the Ripper to the fantastical rumors concerning Spring-Heeled Jack – as well the horrors of abusive capitalism – it seemed like evil was finally managing to seep in through the cracks, infecting society like the (then) new diseases attracted to crowded living spaces. And as our fears evolved, urban legends began to replace the witches and werewolves of old.

This is where Bram Stoker comes in, with the legendary author realizing that the late 19^th century no longer had room for the superstitions of yesteryear and deciding to write a story where the old-fashioned horrors of pre-industrialized society would attempt to invade what was then the largest and most technologically advanced city in the world.

In case you need a refresher, Dracula follows an ensemble of “modern” professionals (including lawyers, doctors and Texan gunslingers) as they band together to prevent a demonic foreigner from turning London into his new playground. In many ways, Count Dracula himself represents an antiquated and superstitious view of the world, which is why it’s only appropriate that his old-fashioned evil is ultimately thwarted by scientific advances like blood transfusions (which were still experimental back when the book was released) and rational, scientifically minded protagonists.

And this is where slasher flicks enter the picture. Better writers have documented how cultural events like the Vietnam war, celebrity serial killers and the civil rights movement led to both studios and audiences craving for simpler times, but suffice to say that there was yet another shift in how storytellers saw the world. People once again wanted to believe that evil only lurked out in the middle of the woods and targeted those who foolishly engaged in chaotic behavior.

This is one of the main reasons that the Friday the 13^th franchise saw so many sequels, as villainizing “backwoods” regions made the cities seem safer by comparison. But when the time came for an 8^th entry, newcomer writer/director Rob Hedden wanted to do things differently, coming up with two completely different pitches that would finally free Jason from Crystal Lake. One of these ideas was meant to be a claustrophobic homage to Alien set on a cruise ship, while the other was an urban exploitation flick set in an over-the-top version of Manhattan. Due to budgetary constraints (and a desire to hold onto his favorite ideas), Hedden ended up combining both concepts – though many critics argue that we ended up getting the worst of both worlds.

In case you haven’t seen the finished film, Jason Takes Manhattan follows a group of High School graduates and their chaperones as they embark on a celebratory cruise to New York City. Unfortunately, the undead killer Jason Voorhees has just been revived and is now stuck on the ship alongside them, with the inevitable bloodshed eventually spilling over into the City That Never Sleeps.

Even on the surface, you can already find a few similarities between this story and Dracula. For starters, the setup of Jason on a ship is clearly reminiscent of the Last Voyage of the Demeter section of the novel, with the SS Lazarus (named in honor of the villain’s “miraculous” revival) serving as an isolated slaughterhouse before unwittingly releasing a killer upon an unsuspecting city. There’s also the psychic connection between Jason and Rennie, which is arguably similar to Dracula’s connection to Mina Harker.

Diving a little deeper, however, you may start to recognize some surprising thematic similarities – especially concerning Jason’s relationship with the Big Apple itself. Much like Dracula was forced to hide out in secret estates while relying on a madman to do his dirty work – a far cry from his noble status in Transylvania – Jason’s work is also made much harder when he finally makes it to New York. Jaded citizens ignore the rotting killer as he stomps after his prey, and he even has to deal with law enforcement aiding the survivors now that they’re in a bustling city instead of a remote campground.

Then there’s that ending. The toxic waste that saves our heroes may be a hilariously contrived plot device (“it floods every night at midnight!”), but it can also be argued that the green sludge represents the very same rational thinking that ultimately defeated Dracula – just with some added post-nuclear flavor. Life in an oppressive metropolis was simply too much for Jason to bear, and what better way of showing this than by having him be killed by the toxic byproduct of the city’s seedy underbelly? After all, the spawn of superstitious legends simply can’t survive in a modern society already jaded by urban evil.

There are a few more common points between the stories, such as the villains’ seemingly arbitrary obsession with a virtuous woman and the recurring imagery of water as a weakness, but I’m not actually here to convince anyone that the film is an unhinged take on Dracula. Instead, I’d only like to suggest that there may be more to this ill-fated pleasure cruise than meets the eye, and there are enough similarities here that it might not be a mere coincidence. Like Milla Jovovich said at the end of The Fourth Kind: “In the end, what you believe is yours to decide.” And while I can’t be sure that Hedden intentionally set out to recreate the O.G. story about an unkillable monster reaching the big city only to be defeated by it, I don’t think that really matters.

Personally, I’m way more interested in how the ideas that inspired Jason Takes Manhattan have a common origin with the themes present in Dracula – which is why I’d argue that these yarns are undoubtedly connected despite existing nearly a century apart. Friday the 13th Part VIII may not be an excellent film, suffering from severe pacing issues and lackluster production value, but on this Friday the 13th, I recommend setting expectations aside and revisiting this over-maligned sequel from a slightly different point of view.

Just don’t expect a Jason vs. Dracula crossover anytime soon…

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First up is the 2024 Chicago Horror Film Festival, which takes place this weekend from September 27th through the 29th at Chicago’s Logan Theater. The genre fest, which celebrates its 25th anniversary, will screen the film on the evening of Sunday the 29th as part of its “Feature Overload” programming block. It’s also being nominated for Best Feature.

Alongside hundreds of additional features and shorts, the Chicago festival will also host filmmaker Jennifer Reeder on Saturday night, who will screen her new Shudder Original Perpetrator. Tickets, film listings, and additional details can be found at www.chicagohorrorfilmfest.com

For those in the New York area, good news: Director’s Cut screens again on Friday, October 18th as part of the 17th annual Bushwick Film Festival at Brooklyn’s Williamsburg Cinemas. In addition to the screening, the cast and filmmakers will be attending the festival’s Opening Night Pink Carpet Reception on October 16th. Tickets can be purchased here.

Following its festival run, Director’s Cut will open exclusively in select cinemas on October 31st, with a VOD release to follow. Written and directed by Capria, the picture stars Louis Lombardi, Lucy Hart, Danielle Kotch, Tyler Ivey, Haley Cassidy, Louis Rocky Bacigalupo, Brandy Ochoa, Greg Poppa, and Darin Hickok.

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What is it about the first day of April that makes us want to torture our friends? History tells us that just about every culture honors a day where tricks are not only celebrated, they’re the law of the land. In the west, we recognize April Fool’s Day – an auspicious 24-hour stretch in which the rules of logic and truth no longer apply. From gimmicky corporate announcements to fake positive pregnancy tests, the first day in April is a virtual smorgasbord of deceit designed to get a laugh or incredulous grin out of unsuspecting dupes. But sometimes the tricks go too far. While commitment to the bit may be admirable, not everyone enjoys having the rug pulled out from under them and many a friendship has died on the April Fools altar. The Lady Killers explore this jovial minefield with Fred Walton’s April Fool’s Day, a 1986 slasher in which everyone’s a suspect and nothing is what it seems.

The film opens with a group of loveable 80s archetypes boarding a fairy to Muffy’s Island. (Yes, that’s her real name.) Deborah Foreman plays the glamorous heir to the St. John fortune as she opens her lake house for a spring break getaway full of mischievous games. The trip gets off to a raucous start with whoopie cushions, trick doorknobs, strategically placed bondage gear and elaborately staged death. It turns out Muffy is a prankster and has planned an “enjoyable” weekend filled with relentless jokes and innocuous gags she unleashes on her friends while they’re trying to relax. But someone’s not laughing at these “harmless” jokes. One by one, Muffy’s friends go missing as a deadly cloud hangs over the house. Has a maniacal killer returned to settle an old score or has one of Muffy’s friends simply had enough of the “fun”?

Co-hosts Jenn Adams, Mae Shults, Rocco T. Thompson, and Sammie Kuykendall board the ferry for a hilarious episode on the concept of April Fool’s day and this tricky film. They’ll chat about Cosmo quizzes, bizarre shorts, switchblade hijinx, and the proper terminology for baked beans served with hotdog. What are the ethics of pranking? Can abortion jokes ever be funny? Why would anyone name a child Muffy and how hard is it not to drop all your belongings into a well? This boathouse is a rockin and you won’t want to miss this ball-busting episode filled with questionable surprises.

Stream below and subscribe now via Apple Podcasts and Spotify for future episodes that drop every Thursday.

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Is there anything quite so devastating as the concept of original sin? The idea that we’re damned at conception before we’ve had a chance to take our first breath? What will it take to find salvation and how much will we have to pay for the actions of those who came before us? It’s a particularly painful topic for women. With Eve’s first bite of the apple weighing heavily against us and men holding all the levers of power, the path to righteousness can feel like a minefield. Some women will kill to escape these oppressive gender-based norms while others double down and kill to make sure they stay in place. The Lady Killers conclude a month of hidden horrors by unmasking the feminine terror of original sin in the 1976 Catholic horror film Alice, Sweet Alice.

Despite director Alfred Sole’s angelic title, Alice Spages (Paula E. Sheppard) may not be as sweet as she seems. Not only is she jealous of the attention heaped on her younger sister Karen (Brooke Shields), she has an antagonistic relationship with her handsy landlord Mr. Alphonso (Alphonso DeNoble), and spends her days wandering construction sites in her yellow school slicker and creepy, clear mask. When Karen dies moments before taking her first communion, Alice shoots to the top of the suspect list. Her recently divorced parents reunite to defend her honor, but it may not be enough to protect this not-so-sweet girl from leering police, aggressive aunts, and a tiny killer still on the loose.

Co-hosts Jenn Adams, Mae Shults, and Sammie Kuykendall make their way to the podcasting altar for a blessed conversation on this unholy hit. They’ll chat about masked attackers, sassy sisters, communion-craving whores, and a plethora of priests. What does it mean to receive the host? Is there a parallel between menstruation and communion? Why is Aunt Alice always yelling, and will someone please wash Mr. Alohonso’s pants? They’ll wander through construction sites and rectories as they tackle these questions and more with Alfred Sole’s iconic film.

Stream below and subscribe now via Apple Podcasts and Spotify for future episodes that drop every Thursday.

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Last Night at Terrace Lanes adopts a slasher approach (see: Gutterballs – or don’t), but maintains a humorous tone. The film, from director Jamie Nash and written by YA horror author Adam Cesare (working from a story by Jenna St. John), has a great logline: what if a killer cult attacked a bowling alley?

Sadly, the finished product struggles with its execution, leading to a decidedly mixed comedy slasher.

It’s the last night of business at Terrace Lanes, an aged bowling alley scheduled for demolition. Among the employees and the regulars bowling one last time, there’s Kennedy (Francesca Capaldi), a queer teen looking for some solo time with her crush Tess (Mia Rae Roberts). Unfortunately Tess has invited two boys – nice guy Pete (Lucas Sanchez) and asshole Cody (Elias Arnold) – for an awkward double date.

And that’s before the uninvited guests arrive for the evening: a group of murderous cult members dressed in identical blue tracksuits and white masks, intent on killing every single person on the premises.

For those familiar with Cesare’s Clown in a Cornfield series, Terrace Lane offers plenty of overlap in terms of narrative, tone and character. In the books, small town teens are preyed upon by a killer in a clown costume in what is eventually revealed to be a larger conspiracy.

Last Night at Terrace Lanes uses the same formula, though the presence and size of the cult is immediately evident by the opening scene in which a white van full of members abducts and murders a man (Sam Lukowski) off the street.

The group is acting on orders from their leader Dove (Christopher Walker), a numbers-obsessed figure who directs them to Terrace Lanes for a mission with a fixed deadline. Following the initial massacre (which occurs at roughly the half way point of the seventy-five minute film), the survivors must hide, seek an exit, and/or fight back using weapons available in a bowling alley.

Among the living is Kennedy’s estranged father, Bruce (Ken Arnold), an employee at Terrace Lanes. Naturally Bruce has a fraught back story with his daughter that becomes the centerpiece of the film’s narrative and emotional arc. Arnold and Capaldi’s scenes together are easily the most successful part of the film, so while the family conflict isn’t breaking new ground, the father/daughter relationship works to generate audience investment in their survival.

Initially it seems as though the film will subvert expectations about who lives and who dies, but very quickly it becomes clear that only Kennedy and Bruce matter. The romance between the girls is treated as a secondary plot and Tess is almost immediately relegated to damsel in distress. This would be more frustrating if she were a proper character, but outside of Arnold and Capaldi, none of the actors make much of an impact.

This frustratingly extends to both Terrace Lane’s other employees (all of them Red Shirts), as well as the cultists. Several of the killers have unique identifiers, such as a fanny pack or glasses, but this never amounts to anything. Outside of a shrug-worthy joke involving a cultist missing a kill due to his dirty glasses, the killers have no personality or individuality. Visually the group makes for an intimidating bunch when they congregate, but the effect is dampened the further the film progresses as the emphasis shifts to Dove and his sermons.

The main joke is that they’re driven by math and spirituality. We see coordinated watches used to synchronize their movements, a crystal is used to select the first victim, and Dove regularly speaks in math-based terms (at one point, he calls the survivors “variables” and “rounding errors”). It’s a one-note joke that is clearly intended to pay off in the climax, but it’s never as funny or interesting as the production believes it is.

Therein lies the film’s biggest hurdle: the ambition and the ideas are present, but the execution is lacking. Nash’s direction is relatively flat, so action sequences lack energy and while there are plenty of murders, they’re mostly gore-free and frequently occur off-screen. Add in questionable editing decisions, such as several fades to black in the last act that drag down the pacing, and Last Night at Terrace Lanes lacks technical polish.

On the plus side, the film features several sequences that make good use of Kennedy’s bowling talents (once in the lanes; once in a hallway of all places). These moments, as well as Capaldi’s inherent likeability, ensure the film is watchable, and even fun at points.

Overall, the premise and the father/daughter backstory in Last Night at Terrace Lanes are both solid. It’s the technical elements – direction, framing, editing, pacing and gore – that let the film down and prevent it from working as a cohesive whole.

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The town of Fairwood is celebrating its tricentennial and there’s a mayoral election on the horizon. The incumbent, Mayor Blair Gladwell (Amy Hargreaves), is campaigning on consistency, while her adversary, Harold Faulkner (Jayce Bartok), is advocating change. Divided along campaign lines are their children: Faulkner’s put-upon lesbian daughter Melissa (Olivia Nikkanen) and his son Adam (Devin Druid) who used to date Gladwell’s daughter Lilly (Emilia McCarthy).

The star-crossed lovers of competing political parents is a tantalizing premise, but Founders Day packs innumerable other characters and subplots into the mix. Adam and Lilly’s failed relationship involves bad boy Rob (Tyler James White), there’s plenty of plotting among the town council involved in the election, and even Melissa’s girlfriend Allison (Naomi Grace) has a tragic backstory involving her dead mother. The interplay between the adult and teen storylines occasionally feels at odds, particularly once dead bodies start piling up.

The first to go is Melissa, who is attacked and thrown off a bridge by Founders Day’s villain, who wears a tell-tale wig and brandishes a gavel that doubles as a knife. It’s a solid costume: the mask is evocative, and the weapon serves multiple purposes in different attacks. The kill scenes are mostly fine: a movie theater kill is well staged, though the killing blow needed another take, while a classroom attack and a twofer at city hall are captured better. And yes, a campaign sign is used as a murder weapon at one point.

As the film’s de facto lead, Grace’s performance is lacking. The actress struggles to convey emotion, particularly in the scenes after Melissa has been dispatched (Allison frequently looks confused rather than sad or scared). Ironically Grace has stronger chemistry with Druid’s Adam, particularly when a displaced Adam has to crash at Allison’s place because he’s fighting with his father.

The film’s politicians are also a mixed bag. Both characters are presented as politicians first, and parents second, though Hargeaves clearly understands her character’s campy sensibility and leans into it. Bartok’s performance, on the other hand, is too severe, which renders the character grating and cartoonish.

Supporting players fare better, including William Russ as Mr. Jackson, the well-respected high school teacher who refuses to weigh in on political discourse, and Commissioner Peterson (Orange is the New Black’s Catherine Curtin), who is always eating candy.

With a sprawling cast and a few rocky performances, Founders Day biggest opportunity to stand out in a crowded slasher field is its heavy emphasis on politics.

By focusing on municipal politics, Founders Day successfully avoids wading into real life Democrats vs Republicans discourse. Unfortunately while the interchangeability of Gladwell and Faulkner’s points of view is assuredly part of the film’s critique, it does render Founders Day’s message somewhat apolitical and both sides-y.

This is most evident in the pre-title climax. After Melissa’s attack, Allison runs into a downtown street crowded with people. Faulkner’s supporters stand on one side of the street, facing down Gladwell’s. As Allison screams for help, she’s surrounded by both groups, each of them so eager at the expense of the other side that neither actually addresses the issue (ie: helping the traumatized teen).

It’s not subtle, but that’s the point. Founders Day’s ultimate take-away is that the current state of political campaigning has gone too far and we need to reboot how elections and candidates are handled in order to get back to way the Founding Fathers intended (hence the film’s title and the killer’s costume).

The crowd scene highlights one of the film’s other challenges, which is how budget limits the scope of the visuals. The overhead aerial shot of Allison being overwhelmed by the town’s divided political groups reinforces the thematic message, but visually the impact is lessened because it looks like there’s only around 30 people present. Other establishing shots suggest there’s less than fifty people at large public events, which makes Fairwood feel much smaller than it is clearly meant to be.

These little challenges add up over the course of the film. In addition to the sprawl of character subplots and uneven acting, there’s one glaring plot development that undercuts the film’s pacing heading into the last act. When the killer is unexpectedly revealed, the reaction of other characters and the events that immediate follow don’t add-up; there’s a gap in logic that suggests the script needed another quick pass. So while the film’s cynical resolution is surprising audacious, this plot hiccup and the predictability of the killer reveal is less satisfying.

Overall Founders Day is a mixed bag: the cynical political elements are novel and the killer’s mask is visually distinct, but the film is held back by its performances and some bump plot mechanics. It’s worth a look, but would have benefitted from some tightening up.

Founders Day is currently on the festival circuit, including the Toronto After Dark Film Festival.

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Borrowing from horrific urban legends and schlocky exploitation flicks in equal measure, the title became a disturbing cult hit that’s still cited today as one of the most gruesome games ever made. And two decades after its release, I think that it’s time to look back on the origins of this strange little experiment in order to find out why there’s never been another horror game quite as infamous as this one.

Despite often being regarded as a small-scale successor to the 3D GTA titles, Manhunt was actually developed concurrently with those larger games. In fact, it was something of a pet project by Rockstar North, with the team wanting to craft a never-before-seen urban horror experience that wouldn’t rely on supernatural monsters or aliens to disturb players. While the Running Man meets 8mm premise of the title led to backlash within the studio itself, with several developers complaining that the project was headed too deep into “Adults Only” territory, the game would ultimately release without a hitch the very same year that it was first announced.

In the game, players take control of James Earl Cash, a death row inmate who finds himself coerced by a mysterious figure known as “The Director” into participating in a large-scale snuff film. Naturally, this results in an interactive grindhouse flick where players are forced to violently murder a wacky collection of psychos and criminals as they attempt to sneak through a dark and gritty gauntlet prepared by the Director’s organization.

With influences ranging from The Warriors (which is fitting since Rockstar would later adapt Walter Hill’s iconic movie into one of the best licensed games of all time) to Michael Mann films (with the game even benefitting from the sultry sounds of Brian Cox, who played Hannibal Lecktor in Mann’s Red Dragon adaptation, Manhunter), Manhunt was Rockstar’s first foray into serious adult-oriented entertainment – lacking many of the satirical elements that first put them on the map.

This more serious approach to storytelling and atmosphere likely played a part in the controversy surrounding the game’s release, with the title even being banned in a handful of countries due to its explicit nature and a supposed “glorification of cruelty.” In fact, it was only this year that New Zealand finally decided to release the game after a thorough re-examination, though it still remains unavailable in places like Germany and Australia.

However, looking back on Manhunt after decades of virtual blood and guts (especially of the high-definition variety), most players will likely come to the conclusion that the original game isn’t as violent and mean-spirited as its reputation makes it out to be. The lack of visual fidelity and some clever camera angles and editing usually mask the game’s crueler executions, and it’s never implied that Cash actually enjoys all this killing, as the protagonist is simply playing along in order to guarantee his freedom.

It’s really the context that makes Manhunt disturbing, with the implication that this secretive group has been hustling homicidal movies with impunity while transforming human beings into impromptu slasher villains making this the murder emulator that parents originally imagined Grand Theft Auto to be. Sure, it can be fun to role-play as a knock-off Michael Myers and stealthily massacre all your opponents, but the game usually makes it quite clear that you’re the one being hunted here.

These thrills are also intensified by the game’s oppressive environments, which all feel appropriately grimy despite the low-poly aesthetic. This is partially due to a genuinely unnerving score by Craig Conner, which could very well serve as the in-game soundtrack to the Director’s snuff masterpiece, featuring distorted tunes that wouldn’t feel out of place in a shot-on-video gore-fest.

Manhunt would later spawn a stand-alone sequel in 2007, with the developers upping the ante on every single aspect of the game and including even more vicious kills (though the Fight-Club-inspired plot was nowhere near as interesting as the snuff conspiracy of the first title). Unfortunately, that would be the last time that Rockstar would dip their toes into serious horror, with their more experimental games becoming a distant memory once the studio realized that they could simply milk the GTA franchise ad nauseum well into the future.

And while I’d argue that Manhunt’s legacy can still be felt in indie titles like Christmas Massacre and Hotline Miami, there’s never been a proper successor to the series – and I don’t think there ever will be. After all, a slow-paced single-player murder-fest would be too niche of a project to be banked by a major developer and would also probably restart the entire violent videogames debate in mainstream media. While I’d love to be proven wrong, it sounds like fans should get used to replaying these sixth-generation titles instead of expecting a modern return to their stealth horror thrills.

Even after 20 years of ever-evolving horror games, Manhunt continues to stand alone as an interactive video nasty that has to be played to be believed. It may not be the digital bogeyman that the media once made it out to be (and it has its fair share of rough edges during the shoot-out levels), but it’s still one hell of a disturbing experience that deserves revisiting in 2023.

At the very least, you’ll never look at a plastic bag the same way again.

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This ultimately led to an explosion of offbeat projects that would have previously been unfeasible to produce on regular TV networks. The rise of widespread internet access also gave these unusual cartoons a chance to connect with international audiences, marking a unique moment in animation when independent creations could compete on near equal footing with titans like Nickelodeon and even Cartoon Network.

One of the most iconic projects of this early 2000s boom came in the form of Mondo Media’s unexpectedly violent Happy Tree Friends, a mean-spirited parody of cute and cuddly early childhood cartoons. And while the popularity of Cuddles, Giggles, Lumpy and company has undoubtedly waned since the heyday of flash animation, I‘d argue that Mondo’s twisted satire remains one of the most influential pieces of internet culture out there.

Although Happy Tree Friends became a pop culture giant during the early-to-mid 2000s, it originally began as a product of late 90s cynicism, with the concept sprouting from a series of ironic sketches by children’s book author Rhode Montijo. Fellow Mondo Media employees Aubrey Ankrum and Kenn Navarro then helped to develop the idea into an animated short which featured primitive versions of the now-iconic characters.

Naturally, the short was so successful that Mondo Media soon commissioned a complete series that would be posted online. The rest is history, with the show debuting in 1999 and breaking internet records with numbers that are still mind-blowing over two decades later. This is even more impressive when you consider that these were pre-YouTube times, when viewers had to actively seek out specific websites in order to watch these animations instead of finding them all in a convenient media hub.

This surge in popularity led to the shorts being shown at film festivals and even late-night television specials. And much like the hyper-violent trading cards that once parodied child-oriented entertainment, Happy Tree Friends also became an ironic hit among kids of an edgier persuasion. Schools would often enforce an HTF ban thinking that the show was some kind of youth-corrupting phenomenon, believing that it was targeted towards kids simply because it was animated.

That’s actually how I first came into contact with the show, as it was an unwritten rule of the playground that if adults didn’t want us to see something, it had to be good. Of course, looking back on it now, the show is filled with dated attempts at humor and even some questionable stereotypes (I mean, the exaggerated depictions of PTSD aren’t doing anyone any favors), but this kind of thing was par for the course for this kind of online shock humor at the time.

After all, the appeal of the show was watching these cutesy characters undergo inhuman punishment, and you’ve got to admit that we got that in spades. I mean, certain moments (like Petunia shaving off her own skin with a vegetable peeler or Flippy going batshit crazy whenever he’s confronted with anything even remotely related to warfare) are forever burned in my retinas, and it’s easy to see why this kind of controversial content became an early internet viral hit.

And while the focus of Happy Tree Friends was always the absurd dark humor, there were plenty of obvious horror references and nods to the scary movies that inspired many of these random acts of violence. From a black and white parody of The Hitcher to George A. Romero-inspired promos and episodes literally named after horror flicks (like the obvious Friday the 13th), there’s plenty of fun to be had here for horror hounds on the lookout for Easter Eggs.

Like any commercial success, HTF also ushered in waves of imitators and successors in the form of other popular adult-oriented internet cartoons (with some of them coming from Mondo Media itself, like the equally-successful Dick Figures). The show would also undoubtedly influence future programming blocks of Adult Swim, which has been re-using the “recontextualizing children’s media with elements of horror” trope as recently as their 2022 April Fool’s special featuring Learning with Pibby.

Unfortunately, online animation would eventually become less profitable once media giants started to reward creators according to watch times rather than overall views. Plus, this kind of crass humor started to become less popular among younger generations, which led to a steady decline in viewership. One might also argue that HTF’s original audience simply grew up and moved onto more mature adult entertainment, be it animation or otherwise.

Happy Tree Friends was never technically canceled, with new episodes being produced as recently as late 2016, though it’s clear that the show and its characters are nowhere near the level of fame they were back in the early-to-mid 2000s. There have been rumors of a potential comeback, but I see the show’s premise as a true product of its time – so maybe we should simply let current animators come up with a more zeitgeist-appropriate successor instead.

Revisiting Happy Tree Friends nearly a quarter century later can be a little rough; the animation itself isn’t as smooth as it was in my memory and the gratuitously cruel violence can often come off as off-putting and problematic instead of entertaining, but the show can still work as a gory snapshot of a particular moment in internet history. Newcomers likely won’t see the show as anything more than a dated novelty akin to early rage comics, though that doesn’t mean that HTF isn’t deserving of merit for its part in popularizing adult-oriented animation.

And after all these years, I’m still trying to get that silly theme song out of my head.

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The series premieres with TWO EPISODES on April 6 only on Shudder and AMC+. Check out the brand new official trailer for “Slasher: Ripper” below, along with poster art.

“Slasher: Ripper” takes the franchise back in time to the late 19th century and stars Eric McCormack (Will & Grace) as Basil Garvey, a charismatic tycoon whose success is only rivaled by his ruthlessness, as he oversees a city on the cusp of a new century, and a social upheaval that will see its streets run red with blood.

There’s a killer stalking the mean streets, but instead of targeting the poor and downtrodden like Jack the Ripper, The Widow is meting out justice against the rich and powerful.

The only person standing in the way of this killer is the newly promoted detective, Kenneth Rijkers, whose ironclad belief in justice may wind up being yet another victim of The Widow.

Produced by Shaftesbury, the new season of “Slasher” is exec produced by Christina Jennings, Scott Garvie, Thomas P. Vitale, Aaron Martin, Ian Carpenter and Adam Macdonald.

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After all, a small-screen adaptation of a series known for its satirical meta elements and memorable protagonists could absolutely thrive on network television, especially with the TV horror renaissance of the mid-2010s gifting us with plenty of shows to satirize. From American Horror Story to Hannibal and Bates Motel, there was more than enough material to inspire a new masked killer.

Unfortunately, that’s not exactly what we ended up with. When Scream: The TV Series premiered back in 2015, many fans were outraged by MTV’s reimagining of the beloved franchise and its questionable creative decisions. First of all, the series ditched the iconic Ghostface mask due to legal complications, replacing it with a bizarre lookalike inspired by a deformed in-universe killer. Second, the show itself was more of a teen drama than a slasher-inspired meta experience, letting several episodes go by without any kills and not really taking advantage of the television format to comment on the medium.

If you haven’t seen MTV’s Scream, the first couple of seasons follow high-schooler Emma Duval (Willa Fitzgerald) as she becomes the target of a masked serial killer known as the “Lakewood Slasher”. With law enforcement unable to identify the criminal, our leading lady and her friends decide to investigate the dirty secrets of Lakewood for themselves, casting suspicion on Emma’s loved ones and frenemies as this small town is confronted with its sins.

All in all, it makes sense that hardcore horror fans were calling this show “Scream in name only,” and I was actually part of the original choir of dissenting voices claiming that MTV was ruining the franchise’s reputation. However, once I heard that Craven himself had given the project his blessing and even allowed the showrunners to credit him as Executive Producer, I finally decided to give it a chance.

Sure, it takes a while to get over how generally un-Scream-like the production is, with no sultry sounds from Roger L. Jackson and no iconic Ghostface mask, but as the show went on (especially during the second season, when Michael Gans and Richard Register took over the series), I found myself weirdly engrossed by these soap-opera charms. She may not be Sidney Prescott, but Emma becomes a truly compelling protagonist once she has to deal with the psychological aftermath of the series’ initial murder spree. Her evolving relationships with Audrey (Bex Taylor-Klaus) and the movie-loving Noah (John Karna) ultimately serve as the real heart of the story as things steadily become more horrific. Even Carlson Young’s bitchy Brooke Maddox becomes more fleshed out and entertaining as the saga goes on, and I even started to warm up to the Lakewood Slasher costume as the kills became more creative.

And despite not featuring any references to the events of the films, the first two seasons of MTV’s Scream were also chock-full of shout-outs to other beloved horror franchises. From familiar kills to obvious Carrie homages, it’s pretty clear that the showrunners were huge horror fans, especially Gans and Register. In fact, it was later revealed that the Weinsteins themselves prohibited the production team from referencing anything from the movies and refused to license FunWorld’s Father Death costume, against the wishes of the production team. Even so, a proposed third and fourth season was supposed to make things decidedly more meta, revealing that everything we’ve seen so far was part of Scream: The Television Series as the show’s actors begin to get killed off in “real life.”

Unfortunately, after consistent fan backlash and low ratings, MTV decided to completely re-imagine the show instead of concluding Emma’s story. This led to a six-episode mini-series in the form of Scream: Resurrection, a curious attempt at transforming the show into a horror anthology. Featuring a new showrunner and a brand-new cast, Resurrection was certainly a different take on the source material, but it wasn’t necessarily a better one.

Executive produced by Queen Latifah, the rebooted show finally brought back the original mask (along with Roger L. Jackson) and aired over the course of three summer nights in 2019. Relocating the action to Atlanta, the story follows high school football player Deion Elliot (RJ Cyler) as he becomes the target of a new Ghostface and has to rely on his friends and family to survive, with the updated cast including heavy hitters like the Academy-Award nominee Mary J. Blige and the always-charming Keke Palmer.

While Resurrection’s new setting and more diverse characters were certainly a breath of fresh air, the show’s actual story wasn’t really an improvement on the soap-opera thrills of the previous seasons. Not only was there not enough time to really develop these potential victims, but our own Trace Thurman criticized the lackluster finale for clearly being written by a non-horror-fan. It’s also a shame that the story once again avoids most of the clever meta commentary present in Kevin Williamson’s original scripts.

As if that wasn’t enough, the low saturation and heavy digital filters (meant to invoke a colder aesthetic) coupled with the original killer’s costume meant that the rebooted show ended up looking a lot like a mid-budget fan project rather than an official Scream production. That being said… the kills were a tad bit more entertaining this time around, and it was definitely refreshing to see Ghostface in a slightly more urban environment years before taking Manhattan in Radio Silence’s upcoming sequel.

While neither of MTV’s attempts at adapting the Scream franchise to the small screen could even hope to compare to Craven and Williamson’s beloved creations, I’d argue that they’re a lot better than most fans seem to remember. I mean, if you can separate them from the movies, the first couple of seasons of Scream are just harmless teen-oriented fun with a horror-loving twist, and you have to give props to Resurrection for trying something new with a familiar premise. These televised experiments may not have been entirely successful, but the TV slasher would only be perfected in future shows like Chucky and the later seasons of the appropriately titled Slasher, and I like to think that Scream was instrumental in getting this genre off the ground.

The post MTV’s ‘Scream’ TV Series – Revisiting the Franchise’s Three Seasons on the Small Screen appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Today we’ve learned that the series premieres April 6 on Shudder and AMC+.

“Slasher: Ripper” takes the franchise back in time to the late 19th century and stars Eric McCormack (Will & Grace) as Basil Garvey, a charismatic tycoon whose success is only rivaled by his ruthlessness, as he oversees a city on the cusp of a new century, and a social upheaval that will see its streets run red with blood.

There’s a killer stalking the mean streets, but instead of targeting the poor and downtrodden like Jack the Ripper, The Widow is meting out justice against the rich and powerful.

The only person standing in the way of this killer is the newly promoted detective, Kenneth Rijkers, whose ironclad belief in justice may wind up being yet another victim of The Widow.

Produced by Shaftesbury, the new season of “Slasher” is exec produced by Christina Jennings, Scott Garvie, Thomas P. Vitale, Aaron Martin, Ian Carpenter and Adam Macdonald.

The post “Slasher: Ripper” – New Season of Shudder’s Slasher Series Premieres in April appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It’s been a pretty wild December, with us covering off-kilter films like the much-maligned Batman & Robin, the not-as-bad-as-you-think Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings and the Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins-penned murder mystery The Last of Sheila. Now we’re wrapping up the year with a discussion of Carter Smith‘s (The Ruins, Jamie Marks is Dead) Into the Dark entry “Midnight Kiss“!

In the film, a group of friends (Augustus Prew, Scott Evans, Lukas Gage, Chester Lockhart, Adam Faison and Ayden Mayeri) gather at a beautiful desert resort on New Year’s Eve, and play a game called Midnight Kiss, as is their tradition. The purpose of the game is for each of them to find someone with whom to start the New Year. When a killer tries to join in, relationships that are already stressed are further tested, and life itself becomes the prize.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS.

Episode 210: Into the Dark: “Midnight Kiss” (2019)

Surprise! We’re celebrating New Year’s by unlocking the Patreon vault and releasing our 2019 episode on the gayest slasher film ever made: Hulu’s Into the Dark entry “Midnight Kiss” (yes, it’s even gayer than Hellbent).

Directed by former Horror Queers guest Carter Smith (see our episode on The People Under the Stairs) and written by queer screenwriter Erlingur Thoroddsen (Rift), “Midnight Kiss” follows a group of gay friends and their “fruit fly” as they are stalked by a mysterious killer wearing a pup mask!

Up for discussion is, well, a lot. We’re talking condoms, PrEP, gay stereotypes, Grindr, cocaine, molly, gay sex positions and so much more! So grab the nearest bottle of poppers and join us for this wild ride!

Cross out Into the Dark: “Midnight Kiss”!

Coming up on Wednesday: We’re kicking off 2023 with a re-visit of Richard Shepard’s twisty-turny secret rape revenge film: The Perfection!

P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for more than 211 hours of additional content! We’re wrapping up the year with episodes on Netflix’s Edgar Allan Poe-focused murder mystery The Pale Blue Eye, Shudder’s anthology sequel Scare Package II: Rad Chad’s Revenge, the creepy found footage film Skinamarink, Blumhouse’s killer robot movie M3GAN, and an audio commentary on Cloverfield, just in time for its 15th anniversary!

The post Is “Midnight Kiss” The Queerest Slasher Film Ever Made? [Horror Queers Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Hope so. Your Halloweenies have a special holiday treat for you to unwrap: their 2021 commentary track for Charles E. Sellier Jr.’s psychological slasher film Silent Night, Deadly Night. Join Justin Gerber, Dan Caffrey, and Mike Vanderbilt at Ira’s Toys where they hope to play with Return of the Jedi toys and, you know, stave off death.

Stream the commentary below or subscribe via iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, RadioPublic, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS. New to the Halloweenies? Catch up with the gang by revisiting their essential episodes on past franchises such as Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Scream, and The Evil Dead.

You can also become a member of their Patreon, The Rewind, for hilariously irreverent commentaries (e.g. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Gremlins, Child’s Play) and one-off deep dives on your favorite rentals (e.g. Saw, 28 Days Later, Manhunter, Near Dark). Each month promises something new and unexpected from the wildest corners of the genre.

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The post Gather Around the Tree for Another ‘Silent Night, Deadly Night’ Commentary Track [Halloweenies Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It feels like November has barely begun, and yet here we are three weeks in. Like most months on Horror Queers, we’ve been all over the place, including the dream-like pastel world of Jennifer Reeder’s women-centric Knives and Skin and the 25th-anniversary fascist machismo world of Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers. Now we’re pivoting for a return trip to Japan with our second foray into animated fare (after ParaNorman) with Satoshi Kon‘s stunning first film, Perfect Blue.

In the film, Mima (voiced by Junko Iwao) is an Idol being groomed for a career jump from singing to acting. Despite the protests of her manager Rumi (voiced by Rica Matsumoto), Mima agrees to a controversial and confronting storyline on the derivative police procedural ‘Double Bind.’ But her shift into increasingly adult fare doesn’t sit well with all of Mima’s controlling fans, including stalker Me-Mania (voiced by Masaaki Ōkura) whose obsession with the starlet grows increasingly dangerous.

As Mima’s life begins to mirror her character’s journey and she experiences hallucinations, those closest to her begin to die in gruesome ways. Is Mima losing her mind? Is she actually a killer? Or is she next in line to be murdered?

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS.

Episode 204 – Perfect Blue (1997) feat. Jenny Nulf

We’re dipping into the world of animation with Satoshi Kon’s gorgeous debut feature, Perfect Blue (1997). Joining us is returning guest Jenny Nulf, who schools us on Japan’s Pop Idol culture. C/W: sexual assault

Get ready for doppelgängers, disorienting dream-like imagery and commentary on the male gaze and fandom. Plus: multiple readings of the ending, tracing how language shifts over time, Trace’s struggle with nudity & mature content in animated fare, and more on Joe’s childhood imaginary friend.

Cross out Perfect Blue!

Coming up on Wednesday: We’re “celebrating” Thanksgiving with a trip to Camp Chippewa and Addams Family Values (1993)

P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for more than 210+ hours of additional content! This month, we’ve got episodes on the morals and ethics of True Crime, Fall’s box office smash Smile, the absolutely wild Barbarian, Anya Taylor-Joy’s culinary thriller The Menu, and an audio commentary on the sequel that’s better than the original, The Collection (2010), just in time for its 10th anniversary!

The post Doppelgängers, Disorientation and Double Binds in Satoshi Kon’s ‘Perfect Blue’ [Horror Queers Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

After closing out September with a discussion on one of the best horror remakes and a candid chat with Chucky creator Don Mancini, we kicked off spooky season by checking in with an infamous psychopathic bisexual and reevaluating the controversy surrounding that film’s release. Now, just after Halloween Ends (review) divided fans, we’re taking a look back at David Gordon Green‘s similarly polarizing sequel Halloween Kills.

In the film, unstoppable killer Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney) escapes from Laurie Strode’s (Jamie Lee Curtis) trap to continue his ritual bloodbath. Injured and taken to the hospital, Laurie checks out of most of the movie while Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), the boy she was babysitting on the night Michael began his reign of terror, takes control of the narrative. As Laurie continues to fight through the pain, Tommy leads an angry mob of vigilantes to rise up against Myers and destroy the evil once and for all.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS.

Episode 199: Halloween Kills (2021)

We’re opening the Patreon vault this week to unleash our episode on David Gordon’ Green’s divisive slasher sequel Halloween Kills just after last week’s release of Halloween Ends. But before you listen (or re-listen), please sing along with us!

♬♬ Through the streets, through the ‘burbs, through the Strodeses and the Bracketts!

Michael’s coming but it’s one exciting riiiiiiiide!

Say a prayer, then we’re there, at the doorway of the Myers house!

There’s something truly terrible insiiiiiiide. ♬♬

♬♬ A masked man!

He’s got knives, razor sharp ones!

Massive hands, killer plans, making friiiiiiiight!

Hear him stalk, see him roam!

But we’re not coming home until he’s deaaaaaaad!

Good and deaaaaaaaaad!

EVIL DIES TONIGHT! ♬♬

(Yes, we think we’re really clever for this. No need to smugly reiterate that sentiment in the comments. We know.)

Cross out Halloween Kills!

Coming up next: We’re celebrating 200 episodes(!!!) with a discussion of what we consider to be a perfect film, and that film is Karyn Kusama’s masterful exercise in unbearable tension: The Invitation!

P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for more than 207 hours of additional content! This month, we’ve got episodes on the film adaptation of My Best Friend’s Exorcism, Disney’s legacy sequel Hocus Pocus 2, Hulu’s Hellraiser reboot, the final(?) entry in David Gordon Green’s Halloween series Halloween Ends, and an audio commentary on Gore Verbinski’s The Ring, just in time for its 20th anniversary!

The post Living in a Fanbase Divided: An Analysis of ‘Halloween Kills’ [Horror Queers Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

After discussing the positive queer representation in John Carpenter’s Someone’s Watching Me! and the queer safe space of Midian at the center of Clive Barker’s Nightbreed, we’re heading over to Italy to wax poetic over Michele Soavi‘s 1987 giallo-cum-slasher Stage Fright!

In the film, a narcissistic director (David Brandon) locks a group of stage actors in a theater for a rehearsal of their upcoming musical production, unaware that an escaped psychopath has sneaked into the theater with them.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS.

Episode 191: Stage Fright (1987)

Get ready to sell your ass in the men’s room because we’re getting locked in a theatre with a theatre troupe in Michele Soavi’s giallo-cum-slasher Stage Fright (1987)! Joining us for the conversation is Arrow Video contributor and the Fragments of Fear Podacast co-host Rachael Nisbet!

After trying to figure out why Stage Fright is included in lists of gialli, we go all in on Soavi’s directorial debut and discuss how his tutelage from Dario Argento and Lamberto Bava fueled his creative vision for this film.

Plus, a subversive opening scene, another dull final girl, a delightfully sassy gay character, horny orderlies, one enormous skeleton key, face-level glory holes and…toilet troubles? Hoot hoot, bitch.

Cross out Stage Fright!

Coming up on Wednesday: Take some dramamine because we’re heading to the open seas to check in with Mr. Winslow, Mr. Wake and a pesky seagull in Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse (2019).

P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for more than 195 hours of additional content! This month, we’re discussing Netflix’s Resident Evil series, Dan Trachtenberg’s Predator film Prey, Peacock’s queer slasher They/Them and A24’s queer murder mystery Bodies Bodies Bodies. Oh, and we’ve got an audio commentary on Paul W.S. Anderson’s Event Horizon just in time for its 25th anniversary!

The post Skeleton Keys and Sassy Gays in Michele Soavi’s ‘Stage Fright’ [Horror Queers Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Season 4, “Slasher: Flesh & Blood” slashed its way onto Shudder last year.

Deadline reports that “Slasher: Ripper” will star Eric McCormack (“Will & Grace”).

The site’s report also teases, “The series is heading back in time to the late 19th century — there’s a killer stalking the mean streets, but instead of targeting the poor and downtrodden like Jack the Ripper, The Widow is meting out justice against the rich and powerful. The only person standing in the way of this killer is the newly promoted detective, Kenneth Rijkers, whose ironclad belief in justice may wind up being yet another victim.”

“McCormack will play Basil Garvey, a charismatic tycoon whose success is only rivaled by his ruthlessness, as he oversees a city on the cusp of a new century, and a social upheaval that will see its streets run red with blood,” Deadline adds today.

Production is expected to begin this spring on “Slasher: Ripper”.

Produced by Shaftesbury, the new season of “Slasher” is exec produced by Christina Jennings, Scott Garvie, Thomas P. Vitale, Aaron Martin, Ian Carpenter and Adam Macdonald.

The post “Slasher: Ripper” – Shudder’s Slasher Series Will Return for Season 5 appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

One of these reality shows happened to be 2005’s My Super Sweet 16, which dove into the drama-filled world of extravagant teenage birthday parties. While I was only tangentially aware of the show back in the day, it was actually a massive hit and even garnered its own feature film spin-off in 2007. However, this peculiar little program would also become the basis for MTV’s My Super Psycho Sweet 16, a bizarre slasher franchise satirizing the original show’s petty conflicts and themes.

It’s now been a decade since the premiere of the third and final entry in the series, and while these made-for-TV flicks didn’t exactly have a lasting impact (especially since they’ve become rather hard to acquire), I’d like to take this opportunity to look back on MTV’s first attempt at their very own horror franchise.

Strangely enough, it was the network itself that originally approached director Jacob Gentry with their idea for a horror-centric adaptation of their popular show. The director had already been featured on MTV in the past, with the channel airing his Terminator 3 fan film when he was just fifteen years old, but he also had experience in the horror genre after co-directing 2007’s underrated The Signal. The only problem was that Gentry was clearly not a fan of reality TV, openly admitting that he considered it one of the lowest forms of entertainment.

In a bizarre turn of events, this actually worked out for the best, as the director ended up realizing that the absurd situations and characters depicted in the show were already the perfect setup for a traditional slasher flick. Partnering with writers Scott Thomas and Jed Elinoff, Gentry soon had a weirdly entertaining mish-mash of teen drama and horror tropes on his hands, which could appeal to both fans of the original property and horror junkies alike.

Airing during the Halloween season of 2009 after a promotional theatrical release, My Super Psycho Sweet 16 stars Lauren McKnight as Skye Rotter, a teenage outcast whose father was responsible for a horrific mass murder at the local roller-skating rink. Unfortunately, the spoiled high-schooler Madison Penrose (Julianna Guill) insists on having her sixteenth birthday party at that very same Roller Dome, eventually leading to the unexpected return of Skye’s murderous dad during an unforgettable Sweet 16.

An uncomplicated teen horror flick, My Super Psycho Sweet 16 doesn’t reinvent the slasher wheel, but it doesn’t really have to. The birthday setting and appropriately dramatic teenage characters are interesting enough, with McKnight standing out as a memorable final girl and Guill turning in a respectable performance as a spoiled brat. The “Lord of the Rink” killer is also pretty cool, sporting a medieval motif as he takes down partygoers with swords and axes. I’d argue that the only real flaw here is the overall lack of brutality, as even the unrated version feels a bit tame.

Either way, the movie was a big hit for MTV, receiving mostly positive reviews and impressive ratings. That’s why it’s no surprise that a sequel was greenlit almost immediately, with Gentry and his team coming back for more the following year. Featuring a larger budget and more ambitious kills, the follow-up was bigger and meaner than the original without losing any of the teen soap-opera charm.

Once again starring McKnight as Skye Rotter, the sequel sees our traumatized protagonist move in with her estranged mother after fleeing the scene at the end of the first film. While it initially appears that Skye has earned a fresh start, her inevitable 16^th birthday party ends up attracting unwanted attention, with old friends and psychotic enemies returning for yet another Sweet 16 murder spree.

Airing in October of 2010, My Super Psycho Sweet 16: Part 2 is a surprisingly solid follow-up to an already entertaining movie. It still feels like 90210 meets I Know What You Did Last Summer, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Skye remains a memorably edgy protagonist and her teenage worries are compelling enough to make you not root for the killer, who remains appropriately threatening (though a little less over-the-top with his medieval antics).

This one was another hit for MTV, but judging by what happened to the third film, it’s likely that it wasn’t quite as popular as the original. The network still ended up commissioning another sequel, but the film suffered a few delays and it appears that budgets got slashed somewhere along the way. This resulted in a final entry that doesn’t quite live up to the standard of its predecessors.

In 2012’s My Super Psycho Sweet 16: Part 3, Skye is invited to her estranged half-sister’s 16^th birthday party before heading off to college. Things obviously don’t go according to plan, as it appears that the birthday curse lives on. With bodies beginning to pile, Skye once again has to face off against old enemies during yet another blood-soaked celebration.

Part 3 is still somewhat entertaining in its own right, but it lacks some of the charm present in previous entries. This is mostly due to the less-intimidating killer and the isolated country house setting, which is arguably the least interesting of the bunch. It also doesn’t help that the titular Sweet 16 is attended by a mere handful of characters, limiting the thrills in both quantity and quality. It may bring a satisfying conclusion to Skye’s story, but I often skip this one when re-watching the franchise.

These made-for-TV movies obviously aren’t for everyone, as the schlocky writing and teenage sensibilities may get on some viewers’ nerves, but I see this trilogy as a fun prototype for future teen-oriented horror shows like Scream and American Horror Story. While I think you’d probably get more out of the experience if you were a teenager yourself when you first watched the trilogy, there’s still a lot to love about these cheesy birthday massacres.

The peculiar mix of soap-opera styled drama and classic horror tropes makes My Super Psycho Sweet 16 surprisingly memorable, and I particularly enjoy how McKnight’s protagonist becomes more complex as the films go on. The MTV-approved soundtracks also serve as a musical time capsule of the late-2000s to early-2010s that’s sure to entertain the more nostalgic horror hounds out there.

Before the horror renaissance of the mid-2010s, TV horrors were few and far in between. That’s why I believe the My Super Psycho Sweet 16 trilogy stands out as a fun introduction to the horror genre for an audience that might never have seen a Slasher flick before. These movies may have suffered from watered-down kills and budgetary constraints due to their made-for-TV origins, but I think they’re still worth revisiting for their soap opera thrills and festive kills. At the very least, I’d say that they’re a hell of a lot more fun than the original My Super Sweet 16 show.

The post ‘My Super Psycho Sweet 16’ – MTV’s Attempt at a Slasher Franchise appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

This time, we’ll be discussing John Luessenhop’s 2013 legacy sequel, Texas Chainsaw 3D!

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has always been my favorite slasher franchise, and I believe that every single entry in the series has something uniquely lovable about it. Of course, some of these movies are more likable than others, and Texas Chainsaw 3D is definitely one of the least-appreciated sequels in this ever-expanding saga of blood, guts and cannibalism.

Keeping with the franchise tradition of only really acknowledging the first film when crafting a sequel, Luessenhop’s TC3D was Lionsgate Films’ attempt at distancing the series from Platinum Dunes’ surprisingly successful remake and prequel. Wanting to start fresh without necessarily re-introducing the entire TCM mythology, the studio opted to develop a new film directly following the events of Tobe Hooper’s 1974 classic.

Featuring hip casting and state-of-the-art 3D effects, TC3D was meant to make the franchise popular again while also providing audiences with a new take on an elderly Leatherface and his extended family. In this 90-minute slasher, Alexandra Daddario plays Heather, a troubled young woman who inherits a mysterious property in Newt, Texas many years after the events of the first film. Naturally, the house comes with more than a few strings attached, leading to a disturbing reckoning with a family history that simply refuses to die.

So What Went Wrong?

TC3D wasn’t exactly a box-office flop, hauling in over double its original budget, but the 19% score on Rotten Tomatoes and 4.8/10 on IMDB prove that neither critics nor audiences were all that impressed with this attempt at modernizing Leatherface. In some ways, one could argue that this legacy sequel was pretty much doomed from the start.

Not only was Adam Marcus and Debra Sullivan’s original script hastily rewritten ahead of production in order to tone things down and make the flick more marketable, but the filming schedule was also way too tight for a 3D feature on this kind of budget. In the end, the crew was forced to work 24-hour days and even had to switch cinematographers halfway through shooting, putting a tremendous strain on the project.

The original production company wasn’t even credited in the finished film, with Lionsgate scrambling to re-edit the picture on their own once the supposed final cut received the dreaded NC-17 rating from the MPAA. This resulted in a messy and disappointingly tame theatrical release of a movie that had already been streamlined for broader audiences.

Hooper’s classic may have been surprisingly light on violence when compared to modern horror flicks, but TC3D’s lack of proper gore seems a bit more egregious due to its ensemble of forgettable chainsaw fodder. Despite featuring familiar faces like Trey Songz and even Scott Eastwood, the haphazard writing makes you feel like these characters are only here to pad out the body-count. The lack of interesting characters even applies to the antagonists, with Leatherface not being backed up by other crazed members of his family this time around.

The look of the film is also rather bland, lacking the gritty aesthetics of earlier entries in the franchise while also forgoing the slick and stylish cinematography of the remake and its prequel. The lackluster visuals even extend to the effects, as the CGI-enhanced violence is often laughable. Sure, the makeup and designs are creepy enough (as long as you don’t think too much about how the props, wardrobe and casting don’t add up with the timeline), but there are few genuine scares to be found here. Viewing the picture in 3D certainly helps, making the experience feel more in line with a cheesy carnival ride, but that’s clearly not going to work for everyone.

The Silver Lining

A lot of things went wrong with the production of TC3D, but I stand by my opinion on the franchise as a whole. This may be my least favorite movie of the bunch, but it’s still a schlocky fun time if you can look past its troubled beginnings.

For starters, the movie’s intro is a loving homage to Hooper’s classic, with the Sawyer family standing by Leatherface as an angry mob gathers outside, Frankenstein-style. Set mere minutes after the end of the original film, this nostalgic scene features cameos from Marilyn Burns, Gunnar Hansen and franchise-favorite Bill Moseley standing in for Jim Siedow’s iconic Drayton Sawyer. Hell, even John Dugan is back as the vampiric Grandpa!

The rest of the film mostly ignores Leatherface’s extended family, but TC3D actually does a great job of re-imagining the iconic cannibal as an aging victim of injustice. The original film portrayed Leatherface as a helpless pawn of his own family, just doing as he was told, and Dan Yeager’s portrayal isn’t too far off from that idea. His version of the character retains the iconic childlike tantrums and mannerisms while also having grown older and bulkier, making for a downright terrifying interpretation of an iconic Slasher.

The family dynamic between (spoiler alert) Leatherface and Heather is also a surprisingly interesting idea that harkens back to Hooper’s attempts at subverting the traditional American family. Having a seemingly rational person aid and protect a maniacal serial killer because of blood ties is an undeniably creepy concept, and totally in line with the original franchise. It’s just a shame that the movie doesn’t go for this reveal sooner, as the closing moments when Daddario accepts her fate as Leatherface’s new caretaker cement her as one of the most interesting final girls in the franchise.

It may not be Shakespeare, but this rusty old chainsaw is still worth revisiting if you’re in the mood for some dumb fun, especially if you can get your hands on a 3D copy.

The post Finding Blood, Guts, Family and a Fun Movie in ‘Texas Chainsaw 3D’ [The Silver Lining] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

After touring the streets of Los Angeles in David Lynch’s masterpiece Mulholland Drive, we went all the way back to the ’30s to check in with Countess Zaleska in Lambert Hillyer’s queer horror classic Dracula’s Daughter, before hitting the road with Steve Zahn and Paul Walker in Joy Ride. Now, in celebration of the release of Halloween Kills this past weekend, we’re heading back to Haddonfield to discuss David Gordon Green‘s 2018 sequel Halloween!

It’s been 40 years since Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) survived a vicious attack from crazed killer Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney) on Halloween night. Locked up in an institution, Myers manages to escape when his bus transfer goes horribly wrong. Laurie now faces a terrifying showdown when the masked madman returns to Haddonfield, Ill. — but this time, she’s ready for him.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS.

Episode 147 – Halloween (2018)

Pull your phone out of that pudding because we’re heading to Haddonfield to revisit David Gordon Green’s 2018 sequel to Halloween titled…Halloween! Tapping in for the discussion is Richard Newby, the author of the horror short story collection We Make Monsters Here!

Join us as we take a deep dive into this legacy sequel that wants to remind us of every previous sequel in the franchise despite also wanting us to forget about them. We’ll discuss the film’s portrayal of trauma and how it compares to the portrayal in Halloween: H20. Oh, and how about the 30 minutes of deleted scenes (not all of which are on the Blu)?

Plus, Joe’s magical talents, Creighton Duke, British Ellie Kemper, baby-killing, Bánh Mi, “Gotcha!” and…..is that the same wig from 1981’s Halloween II just spray-painted gray? Oh, and we need to talk about Cameron…

Cross out Halloween!

Coming up on Wednesday: We’re going back to the original Marvel vampire movie with a discussion of 1998’s Blade!

P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for tons of additional content! This month, we’ll have episodes on Slasher: Flesh & Blood, Netflix’s Midnight Mass, the new Paranormal Activity and Halloween Kills. And to celebrate the release of the new Chucky series, we’ll be doing an audio commentary on Child’s Play 2!

The post Three Years Later, How Does ‘Halloween’ Hold Up? [Horror Queers Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Today, I’d like to talk about a certain film that was at the vanguard of this Arthouse Horror revival but was released a few years too soon and missed out on the trend. That film is Rob Zombie‘s unfairly maligned Halloween II, an underrated subversion of Slasher sequels that uses horror tropes to tell an introspective story about trauma and family legacies.

Zombie’s 2007 remake of Halloween was an admirable attempt at re-imagining the original’s vague mythology, but the experience kind of falls apart during the latter half of the film when the director is forced to recreate entire sequences from John Carpenter’s classic. While I still really enjoy the movie and think that it features the franchise’s most terrifying incarnation of Michael Myers, the lackluster second half makes it quite clear that Zombie is at his best when he’s allowed to experiment outside the confinement of an already-established story.

That’s why I view his Halloween II as a marked improvement over the first one. While it still begins with a lengthy homage to Rick Rosenthal’s 1981 sequel, placing a wounded Laurie in a spooky hospital as Myers attempts to finish what he started, the movie quickly subverts audience expectations by turning into a somber character piece. By focusing on the psychological consequences of surviving a mass murder spree, Zombie adds depth to characters that were once disposable archetypes. This results in a unique sequel that explores the tragic aftermath of a Slasher flick instead of simply recreating the events of the first film.

After the nightmarish prologue, Halloween II follows a deeply disturbed Laurie Strode struggling to overcome the Haddonfield murders and her personal connection to the killer. Meanwhile, Michael Myers is somehow still on the loose, living as a vagrant plagued by visions of his mother instructing him to reunite with his long-lost sister. While the details vary depending on which version you’re watching, both the theatrical and director’s cuts tell similar stories about a young woman coming to terms with the legacy of the Myers family as evil once again approaches Haddonfield.

Other than the increased brutality now that Michael is depicted as a nightmarish brute, the main draw of the film is its development of Laurie as a fully-fledged character, seeing an evolution from the playful schoolgirl of the first film into a broken mess of a person. Haunted by both literal and metaphorical scars, she lashes out at those closest to her (especially in the director’s cut), with the audience slowly realizing that Laurie has more in common with her big brother than she cares to admit. In fact, I personally love the theory that Michael truly died at the end of the first film and his appearances in the sequel are all a part of Laurie’s psychosis.

Of course, this extra nuance in the script means that Scout Taylor-Compton has a lot more to do this time around, and she absolutely nails her portrayal of Laurie as a tragic figure driven mad by circumstances outside her control. Regardless of which version of the movie you watch, she delivers a fascinating performance, leading to a genuinely heartbreaking finale. She also works really well alongside genre favorites like Danielle Harris, Brad Dourif and Malcom McDowell‘s reinvention of Dr. Loomis.

It was actually McDowell’s idea to turn Loomis into an attention-hungry media vulture attempting to cash in on the Myers tragedy, with the actor claiming that he’d only return for a sequel if he was allowed to deliver a different performance. Ironically, the character’s overall lack of empathy when exposing the lives of victims for his own personal gain was inspired by the real-world Dr. Phil, though Loomis ultimately redeems himself by the end of the picture. While this dramatic change in personality rubbed a lot of fans the wrong way, I think it’s an interesting and realistic take on how the character might react after being exposed to evil for so many years, especially after miraculously surviving his own close encounter with Myers in the previous film.

Unfortunately, not all of Zombie’s ideas contributed to the story, with the film suffering from a series of clumsy visual metaphors involving Sheri Moon Zombie and a literal white horse, not to mention the bloated runtime. Zombie’s characteristic use of classic songs to punctuate emotional moments also gets a little out of hand at times, though I really love the film’s eerie use of Nights in White Satin and Nan Vernon’s cover of Love Hurts.

The most obvious flaw here is the film’s messy pacing and structure, though it makes more sense when you realize that this is the result of both a troubled production and heavy studio interference by the Weinsteins. With constant setbacks like unexpected rainstorms, airport security accidentally destroying footage, forced reshoots and even crew members allegedly stealing from the budget, it’s a miracle that Halloween II turned out as well as it did. Even without these issues, I find it easy to forgive most of the film’s shortcomings when you consider that, for better or worse, it was made by a genuine auteur fighting the studio every step of the way.

Even then, Halloween II‘s nihilistic suggestion that madness can be an inherited trait, dooming some of us to repeat the mistakes of our families, is a truly terrifying and undeniably unique take on the franchise. It’s a real shame that the movie was rejected by critics and audiences back when it first came out, though I’m glad that it’s seen some reappraisal in recent years as fans realize how it paved the way for future subversive takes on horror, even leading to Zombie’s own Lords of Salem, his most serious film to date.

Had Zombie’s vision been supported by the studio and had the film come out just a few years later, when audiences were more used to established horror franchises reinventing themselves and playing with more serious ideas, I’m thoroughly convinced that Halloween II would have been a massive hit. Either way, now that the spookiest season is finally upon us, I’d say that this often-overlooked sequel is still worth revisiting as an exploration of the horrifying consequences of a Slasher flick.

The post How Rob Zombie’s ‘Halloween II’ Paved the Way for a New Kind of Horror appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The clip below pulls back the curtain and spotlights the artists behind this season’s gore and how they came up with those gnarly, memorable kills. Be prepared for some NSFW splatter-filled content.

“Slasher: Flesh & Blood” follows a wealthy but dysfunctional family gathering for a reunion on a secluded island. Their old wounds and competitive rivalries flare up when the family realizes a masked killer is on the island, intent on cruelly picking them off one by one.

The family at the center of the slaughter complicates things with their cutthroat mentality; the masked killer this season might have competition. It adds a fun new layer to the extreme gore this season, and “Flesh & Blood” isn’t afraid to showcase it.

Pyewacket‘s Adam MacDonald directed “Slasher: Flesh & Blood.” Along with David Cronenberg, the series also stars Paula Brancati, Jefferson Brown, Patrice Goodman, Sabrina Grdevich, and Christopher Jacot. New faces this year include Rachael Crawford (Heartland),  Jeananne Goossen (The Walking Dead), Sydney Meyer (Departure), and Alex Ozerov (The Americans).

“Slasher: Flesh & Blood” is available to binge on Shudder now.

The post “Slasher: Flesh & Blood”: Behind-the-Scenes Clip Digs Into the Guts and Gore! [Video] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The exclusive clip below highlights the carnage from the first four of eight episodes, and the amount of bloodletting, violence, and organ-spilling within means it’s NSFW.

“Slasher: Flesh & Blood” follows a wealthy but dysfunctional family gathering for a reunion on a secluded island. Their old wounds and competitive rivalries flare up when the family realizes a masked killer is on the island, intent on cruelly picking them off one by one.

The family at the center of the slaughter complicate things with their cutthroat mentality; the masked killer this season might have competition. It adds a fun new layer to the extreme gore this season, and “Flesh & Blood” isn’t afraid to showcase it.

Pyewacket‘s Adam MacDonald directed “Slasher: Flesh & Blood.” Along with David Cronenberg, the series also stars Paula Brancati, Jefferson Brown, Patrice Goodman, Sabrina Grdevich, and Christopher Jacot. New faces this year include Rachael Crawford (Heartland),  Jeananne Goossen (The Walking Dead), Sydney Meyer (Departure), and Alex Ozerov (The Americans).

Shudder releases new episodes every Thursday, so expect things to get even messier as the grisly body count rises.

The post “Slasher: Flesh & Blood” – NSFW Clip Compilation Highlights the Gory Deaths So Far! [Exclusive] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The premiere episode of “Slasher: Flesh & Blood” hits the ground running with a high-stakes game of life and death. Patriarch Spencer Galloway (David Cronenberg) gathers his highly dysfunctional family together on a remote island and restarts the annual family one last time, in which they’ll get knocked out of the game one by one. The prize? His entire fortune. What none of them know is that there’s another player on the field, a plague-masked killer out for blood.

That’s not the only significant revelation the premiere brings, either. Spencer lays his entire worth on the line because his life draws near its end. He’s dying of cancer, and once the game officially commences, Spencer decides to meet death on his own terms. A euthanasia cocktail is intravenously connected straight to his heart, allowing a swifter but gentle death. He sees visions of his first wife beckoning him into the afterlife before a masked killer comes into view. Spencer’s hopes for a painless death get dashed by a needle full of acid injected straight into his heart. Bloody Disgusting chatted with Spencer actor David Cronenberg to talk us through the season’s first major death.

Cronenberg breaks down his character’s mindset going into this scene, “[Spencer], being the control freak that he is, wants to control his death as well. He has a logic behind it. Spencer says that he’s seen as his first wife die horribly and in pain and didn’t want that for himself. Spencer knew there was no hope, so he has arranged to die an assisted death, which should be painless and in his control when he’s ready. If anybody’s going ever to have sympathy for him, this character, they would probably have it around that point. But then, of course, there’s a twist, and he realizes at the last minute that his control has been an illusion, and he is not at all in control.“

Spencer locks up in pain as the camera pans down to his chest, the acid bubbling up and dissolving the flesh and tissue to expose his heart. This moment is a blend of effects, including prosthetics, marking a first for the horror director. He explains, “Yes. That was another thing. I’ve often had my actors undergo being cast, having a prosthetic cast made of their faces, of their bodies. James Woods did Videodrome, of course, where there’s some unusual bodily thing, and you have to have a prosthetic part of your body made. For me, it was my head and my chest. You’re covered in silicone for 20 minutes. You can’t breathe, you can’t speak, you can’t see. It’s not for the claustrophobic when you’re getting a cast of your head made. And the chest. Part of what you see in episode one is prosthetics, and then it is, as we say, sweetened by digital effects. It’s a combination of CGI and an actual on-set prosthetic which I wore over my chest.”

While getting cast for on-screen prosthetics was a first for Cronenberg, he did get cast once before for the sake of fine art. “I did do it once, though, for a sculpture of me that was done by a Canadian sculptor. I had done it once before decades ago. The sculptor’s name was Don Bonham, and it’s quite good. It’s like I’m an angel of, not of death, but darkness,” Cronenberg refers to Bonham’s Saint Michael (The Angel of Vengeance).

Cronenberg previously spoke about how pivotal Spencer is to Flesh & Blood, but does the character’s death mean we’ve seen the last of him this season? That’s yet to be determined. But Cronenberg’s joy of playing Spencer in the past and present in the premiere might offer a hint at possibilities. “I played the present-day character with my own gray hair. For playing the character in the past, my hair was dyed, different makeup, different kind of clothing, in an attempt to de-age me a little bit. Not digitally, but just in terms of makeup and posture and so on. That was something that I’ve never done before as an actor. It was a lot of fun and really interesting to see the state of mind that it puts you in as an actor. It’s quite different from just playing a straight present role.”

One thing is for sure; if such a grisly demise of a prominent character kickstarts the season, things are about to get very bloody on “Slasher: Flesh & Blood.”

The post David Cronenberg Breaks Down That Surprising Moment in the “Slasher: Flesh & Blood” Premiere [Spoiler Interview] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Competition gets killer in the teaser, found below.

“Slasher: Flesh & Blood” follows a wealthy but dysfunctional family gathering for a reunion on a secluded island. Their old wounds and competitive rivalries flare up when the family realizes a masked killer is on the island, intent on cruelly picking them off one by one.”

The panel introduced key players for this season, including Canadian horror legend David Cronenberg, as well as showrunner Ian Carpenter and “Slasher” creator Aaron Martin. Aside from character intel, the panelists teased the series’ trademark deaths would deliver again this season.

Returning from previous seasons are Paula Brancati, Jefferson Brown, Patrice Goodman, Sabrina Grdevich, and Christopher Jacot. New faces this year include Rachael Crawford (Heartland),  Jeananne Goosen (The Walking Dead), Sydney Meyer (Departure), and Alex Ozerov (The Americans).

“Slasher” is developed and produced by Shaftesbury and created by Aaron Martin. “Slasher” is executive produced by Aaron Martin, Christina Jennings, Scott Garvie, David Ozer, Thomas P. Vitale, and Ian Carpenter, who also serves as showrunner; Pyewacket‘s Adam MacDonald is director.

The post Shudder’s “Slasher: Flesh & Blood”: Trailer for Season 4 Introduces David Cronenberg and a New Killer! [Video] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Happy July 4th everybody! After a very busy Pride month filled with a great range of films like Creature from the Black Lagoon, Bones, and Excision, we are beyond ready to celebrate the start of July.

To mark the occasion, we’re throwing a giant rager. At the top of the invite list is Adrian Rodriguez from the Slash Her podcast, who comes in to assist with our discussion of queer director Stewart Hendler‘s Sorority Row (2009).

In the film – a remake of the 1982 slasher The House on Sorority Row – the girls of Theta Pi find themselves targeted by a serial killer eight months after a prank left one of their sisters dead. Now the remaining crew, consisting of Final Girl Cassidy (Briana Evigan), bookish Ellie (Rumer Willis), “multicultural” Claire (Jamie Chung), drunk Chugs (Margo Harshman), imposter Maggie (Caroline D’Amore), and head bitch Jessica (Leah Pipes), must survive graduation night, as well as each other’s catty remarks, as they’re picked off one by one.

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS.

Episode 132 – Sorority Row (2009) feat. Adrian Rodriguez

It’s Theta Pi time, bitches! We’re throwing a massive party to celebrate Stewart Handler’s 2009 slasher comedy Sorority Row and along for all of the modified tire iron fun is Adrian Rodriguez of the Slash Her podcast, who loves the film as much as Trace.

Joe notoriously hated the film 4 years ago (Trace has the receipts!), but has come around on it. Still, expect plenty of debate about the balance between comedy and horror, particularly when it comes to the killer’s reveal & motivation. We also worship at the altar of Jessica (Leah Pipes), comment on the film’s very non-PC approach to sisterhood and sexual assault, and theorise why audiences hate Rumer Willis’ Ellie.

Plus: why Carrie Fisher should have been the star, Adrian’s Halloween QVC obsession and Joe elaborates on why Chugs is the best.

Cross out Sorority Row!

Coming up on Wednesday: We head over to France to check out queer coming of age film, Raw!

– Joe & Trace

P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for tons of additional content! In July we’re covering all new movies, including minisodes on Vicious Fun and Megan Fox’s new thriller Till Death. We’ll also have full-length episodes on Josh Ruben’s Werewolves Within and the Paramount+ debut of A Quiet Place 2. And, in lieu of an audio commentary, we’re doing a Super Chiller on Netflix’s Fear Street trilogy!

The post The Hilarious Bitchery of ‘Sorority Row’ [Horror Queers Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.