Why take crack when you can watch this video and get whacked out of your head?! This is what I imagine Texas Chainsaw Massacre as a Japanese supermarket commercial would look like. The music is from a Nintendo Kirby game. Yes, how very disturbing.
Retro Slashers has been nominated in the category Best Horror Blog or Website for the 4th Annual Splatcademy Awards presented by Deadlantern.com’s Splattercast podcast. We’re running with four respected peers in the genre community, and voting runs to February 15th.
More longed-for rarities and hidden treasures are on the way to DVD next year! Code Red has inked an exclusive deal with VCX to release their back catalog titles of horror films. Here is the official press release, exclusive to Retro Slashers.
Bob Clark’s classic slasher is set to debut on Turner Classic Movies Saturday, Dec. 18th at 2:00 A.M. during the TCM Underground block. This 1974 ode to Yuletide slaughter is one of the best and creepiest films in the slasher genre. If you’ve never seen it, then you’ve got to check it out this weekend. Black Christmas joins a growing list of good horror movies showing up on TCM Underground in recent weeks. Recently, The Boogens and Fulci’s The Beyond have aired uncut on the cable network dedicated to old films.
The Warner Archive Collection have confirmed they will release long sought after titles Killer Party and Night School to DVD in 2011.
[audio:http://www.retroslashers.net/puppetmaster.mp3]
Puppet Master Theme – Richard Band
There’s a camp not far from here, just across the lake. It was called Camp Blackfoot. No one goes there anymore. Everything burnt down. This camp had a caretaker. His name was Cropsy. Now, this cropsy was a sadist, and he got real pleasure out of hurting people. Scaring them. And he had these… garden sheers. The kind with long, thin blades. And he carried them all the time, wherever he went. And he had this kind of demonic way of looking at you.
One time Cropsy really went after this kid from Brooklyn. Followed him around night and day, and made this kid’s life a living hell. But this time he chose the wrong guy, because the kid and some of his buddies had planned a little prank. The only problem was… the gag went wrong. The next thing anyone knows, Cropsy’s trapped alive and burning in his bunk. They try to get him out but the fire’s so fierce they cant reach him. All they can do is stand outside and listen to him cry out in agony. They say he smashed his way through the bunk room door, just a mass of flames. And as he burned alive he cried out.. “I will return!” “I will have my revenge!”
They never found his body. He survived. He lives on whatever he can catch. Eats them raw. Alive. No longer human. Right now, he’s out there. Watching. Waiting.
Don’t look… he’ll see you. Don’t move… he’ll hear you. Don’t breathe… you’re dead!
Fangoria have revealed the reversible artwork to Synapse’s The Dorm That Dripped Blood blu-ray release due on March 8. The front cover is the classic US artwork, and the inside is the spiked bat iconography of the original version, as released in the UK under the title Pranks.
The 1983 Slasher Classic “Curtains” is out on DVD, legally released and without any fanfare. Starring John Vernon and Samantha Eggar, and co-directed by Richard Ciupka and Peter Simpson, “Curtains” is the flick with that indelible scene featuring a skater chased by a hag mask-wearing killer brandishing a scythe. It’s a title that Slasher fans have been screaming for for years. So why no PR?
Released by Platinum Disc in October of 2010 as part of a four-movie set called the Midnight Horror Collection, according to Rue Morgue Magazine, the version of the movie presented here is less than stellar (i.e. full-frame and sourced from VHS). Still, for those who haven’t seen “Curtains”, or for those longing to re-visit it again, this is the only legit way to go at the present (“Curtains” is a mainstay in the DVD-R grey market). I suspect the other movies in the set – Hoboken Hollow, Secrets of the Clown, and Room 33 – won’t do much to lure customers. However, “Curtains” stands as a fine example of the Golden Era Slasher, and until a Special Edition comes along, this may be worth picking up for that hag mask/scythe scene alone.
On Dec. 8, 1980, a crazed fan murdered the voice of a generation. The outpouring of grief occurred on a global scale. Thirty years later, it’s almost impossible for those of us not yet born or too young to understand what was going on to grasp the magnitude of John Lennon’s death. In the weeks following Lennon’s death, a wave of anti-violence in cinema sentiment swept across the United States. Slasher films were already under attack by film critics and women’s groups but now they had Mark David Chapman as a prime example of the type of diseased minds created by these diseased movies.
The first major victim of the slasher backlash was My Bloody Valentine, a film finally released uncut last year. Director George Mihalka explained how Lennon’s death directly affected how the MPAA handled the film on the special features found on the Lionsgate dvd. The MPAA refused to give the film less than an X rating until almost all of the blood and gore was removed. A running joke among slasher fans was the film should’ve been called “My Bloodless Valentine” until the lost footage was finally restored.
Other victims of the backlash included Friday the 13th Part II and The Burning. Friday the 13th Part II was a major target because the original film made $42 million during a summer when most Hollywood films bombed. Like My Bloody Valentine, The Burning is finally available uncut almost thirty years after its theatrical release. Anything from Italy also went under the knife. The works of Argento, Fulci, Lenzi, and D’Amato were hacked up worse than most of the victims in the films.
Taxi Driver, while not a slasher, was frequently listed as one of those films that promoted anti-social behavior. Sure, Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro are considered major talents today, but back then Taxi Driver was lumped in with Maniac and I Spit on Your Grave as proof only sick degenerates were drawn to and inspired by these films. Actually, Taxi Driver is the only film mentioned in this article that really did inspire a nutcase. John Hinckley watched Taxi Driver, fell in love with Jodie Foster, and decided to win her heart by shooting President Ronald Reagan.