These days USA Network is known for wrasslin’, Law & Order marathons, and hip original shows like Burn Notice. Back in the 1980s and early 1990s USA featured some really wild and crazy shows, the kind of shows that stay with impressionable young children long after they’ve turned old and gray. So here’s a fond look back at some of the programs on USA Network that corrupted my youth.
A remake may be out in a few weeks and an appendage-movie in Father’s Day later, but June 7 brings Mother’s Day (1980) home on blu-ray. Not typical Troma fare at all, but back then 80’s Troma wasn’t really Troma yet. I always found the flick somewhat atypical and unsafe. The opening scene pulls a real con on slasher tropes, and once the ladies are in over their head, story structure falls apart for a seemingly never-ending loop of degradation. Of course it’s all set-up for another reversal, this time comeuppance for the villains. It’ll be interesting to see how well this grungy movie scrubs up for BD – not too well I hope! Read on for cover art & extras.
Over the last thirty years the market for horror novels has exploded, dried up to almost nothing, found new life through the splatterpunk movement, died off again, and then made a comeback through Leisure Books’ line of mass market horror novels. Last September, Leisure shut down their paperback lines with all future publications coming out in electronic form. Now that the biggest horror publisher is out of the game horror writers are scrambling to find new outlets for their work. Horror fiction has suffered many set backs before but this time it looks like the genre is down for the count.
Start-up distributor Intervision Pictures Corp, who have a name and logo right out of the 1980’s, will release Sledgehammer (1983) to DVD on May 10. There’s something about a clear “laughing” mask that’s creepy beyond Michael Myers’ pale mug. Variations of it have been commonly employed in horror movies as a prankster’s tool (Friday The 13th Part 3, Whodunnit: The Creep Island Murders) or for brief maniac usage (Slumber Party Massacre 3), but Sledgehammer gave the visage a little more due. Read on for the cover art and skinny.
The terror that hides inside your mind will soon be the terror that hides in your media player. Armand Weston’s The Nesting (1980) is coming to DVD and BD from Blue Underground on June 28. This is quite the unexpected announcement as the title has long been associated with Code Red DVD as a future release and was still buried as a page on their website last we checked. But if any other company exercises due diligence in acquisitions, it’s Bill Lustig’s BU. Extras are thin, but in this case the most special feature is the film itself – we’ll be getting the previously unreleased Director’s Cut! Read on for the synopsis, cover art and disc details.
There once was a local Pic-A-Flick-Video store that was home to the greatest collection of horror movies I’ve ever seen. What made this store so special was its location, a two story building. Downstairs was pretty much like every other video store, but the upstairs was Shangri-La for horror fans. The shelves held hundreds of beautifully garish horror video boxes. And you could rent as many as you wanted for only a $1 each. The Attic of Terror was really designed for hardcore horror fans. You’d never see a John Carpenter flick on these shelves but you could find a large selection of films directed by Jess Franco, Umberto Lenzi, Joe D’Amato, Lucio Fulci, and the master Dario Argento. You’d never find slashers like Halloween or Friday the 13th upstairs but there was The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Bloody Moon, New York Ripper, and Monster Hunter (a.k.a. Anthropophagus 2). Independent slashers featuring reformed porn stars (Demented, Deranged) and SOV low budget wonders (Night Ripper, The Ripper) promised viewers a night of down and dirty slasher thrills.