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Early Bird SOV Slasher Sledgehammer Coming To DVD

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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.

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Blue Underground Bring The Nesting To DVD/Blu-Ray

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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.

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The Slasher Expeditions Part 2: The Attic of Terror

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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.

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SPAGHETTI SLASHERS – Tenebrae

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“Tenebrae is a sexist novel. Why do you despise women so much?” Perhaps the most self-reflective moment from Dario Argento’s entire career. Having constantly been accused of misogyny due to the excessive violence his films have often levelled at their female victims, Tenebrae was a chance for the Italian filmmaker to finally comment on the treatment of women in horror. This scene would come shortly after a graphic murder in which a promiscuous shoplifter (having offered sex in return for avoiding prosecution) is brutally stabbed and then pages of the novel shoved down her throat. Does fiction promote violence in society and are the likes of Argento to blame when one of their fans rapes or murders? “Women as victims?” continued the journalist who had accused Tenebrae of being sexist, “The male heroes with their hairy macho bullshit.” Whatever the critics thought of Tenebrae, Argento’s first giallo thriller since Profondo rosso (Deep Red) in 1975, the BBFC and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) certainly were not impressed, resulting in the movie being labeled as a ‘video nasty.’

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Human Blood Required: The Making of Evilspeak

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You could be forgiven for spending the first hour of Eric Weston’s horror drama Evilspeak wondering why on Earth it would have been included amongst the ‘video nasties’ during the mid-1980s. After all, it was relatively blood-free, inoffensive and the two brief moments of nudity were far less graphic than scenes that were included uncut in more mainstream pictures. But then, as the tension begins to build towards its inevitable climax, the film would subject the viewer to a sequence that would challenge that last sacred taboo – religion. Standing over his alter, Reverend Jameson speaks to the young group of cadets about their upcoming game and the overall game of life, when a pulse suddenly appears on the palm of the statue of Christ that hangs behind him. A stigmata wound is formed and blood begins to drip down onto his bible. Turning around to see a large nail slowly forcing its way out of the wound, he barely has time to react before the sharp implement is sent hurtling across the room and straight into his forehead.

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The Burning Man: The Making of Don’t Go in the House

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Michael Myers had an axe, Leatherface had a chainsaw and Jason Voorhees had whatever was lying around – yet one of the most grizzly murder weapons used in the vintage days of exploitation was the flamethrower, the weapon of choice for Donny Kohler, the disturbed antagonist from Don’t Go in the House. Released amid the onslaught of low budget slashers that populated the drive-ins during the early 1980s, Joseph Ellison’s feature debut was a grim and unpleasant Oedipal thriller that depicted a young man whose abusive mother suddenly passes away, leaving him unable to deal with the grief and so he begins to take his frustration out on a succession of unsuspecting women. Don’t Go in the House became infamous in the United Kingdom during the mid-’80s when it was labelled as a ‘video nasty’ and faced prosecution, only further fuelling its reputation and arousing the interest of young bloodthirsty audiences.

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New York’s Finest Slashers Posterized

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William Lustig’s Maniac has been getting a lot of renewed appreciation lately, centered on the seminal 1980 NY slasher’s new theatrical run – if the recent Stephen Romano poster wasn’t cool enough (it was!), here’s another by Ken Taylor for Mondo Tees in support of the Alamo Drafthouse’s recent showing. Not only that, but it was screened back-to-back with Lustig’s slasher-action hybrid Maniac Cop 2 (1990), and we’re also showing off the custom poster artwork for that by Jason Edmiston here.

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Gross Gifts

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The success of Blanche Knott’s Truly Tasteless Jokes spawned numerous rip-offs in the early 80s.  Julius Alvin cashed in on the raunchy joke book craze with the Gross Jokes series.   Gross Gifts, the entry from 1983, skips the usual dead baby material and focuses on “everything from gross cosmetics to gross movies to gross vacations.”  The “gross movies” sections will appeal to slasher fans the most.  Gross Gifts is a mouth-watering time capsule that showcases some of the great merchandise available during the golden age of slashers.

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David Schow’s Leatherface

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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 had proven to be the third financial failure in a row for both director Tobe Hooper and Cannon Films, who had entered into a rather dubious three-picture deal following his exit from The Return of the Living Dead. With the rights available once again, New Line Cinema optioned to produce the second sequel to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and met with Hooper to discuss story ideas, although his commitment to another project, Spontaneous Combustion, would eventually force him to step down. Kim Henkel, Hooper’s co-writer on the original movie, would also attend a production meeting but soon realised that executives at the studio had little interest in what he had to offer. New Line’s Michael De Luca, an avid reader, had already become seduced by the writings of a young author called David J. Schow and, after his brief involvement with A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 (which he had dubbed Freddy Rocks) resulting in him being replaced by more experienced screenwriters, Schow completed work on an episode of the small screen spinoff, Freddy’s Nightmares.

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