While I watch dozens of horror films during the month of October…these are a mix of classic favorites and recent horrors that I feel are especially perfect to watch during the Halloween season!
(Click on the titles below the movie poster gallery to get to our reviews!)
Click on the titles here to go to the review page for the corresponding movie!
Memorial Day is here and that means the start to the summer vacation season!…It also means camping, barbecuing, swimming, cabins in the woods and maniacs in hockey masks! Halloween isn’t the only time of the year when things go bump in the night, as these 15 fright flicks prove! (…and no, I didn’t forget the cabin set Evil Dead films, they take place in the fall!)
Click on the titles here to go to the review page for the corresponding movie!
Most of us hardcore horror fans cringe at the word “remake”, but there are some that are certainly worth a look and even a few that actually surpass the original. So, with the spooky season in full swing, here are 15 remakes to watch during the Halloween season!
(Click on the titles below the movie poster gallery to get to our reviews!)
Honorable Mention
Click on the titles here to go to the review page for the corresponding movie!
While I watch dozens of horror films during the month of October…these are a mix of classic favorites and recent horrors that I feel are especially perfect to watch during the Halloween season!
(Click on the titles below the movie poster gallery to get to our reviews!)
Click on the titles here to go to the review page for the corresponding movie!
Sad news tonight for the horror film community. We have lost a modern horror icon. Actress Betsy Palmer, who was immortalized in the horror classic Friday The 13th as Jason’s mother, Mrs. Voorhees, passed away on Friday at age 88, of natural causes. She was the killer in the original film before her loyal son took over for the sequels. A sad farewell to a horror legend.
(Clicking the highlighted links brings you to corresponding reviews and articles here at The Movie Madhouse!)
Marcus Nispel’s abandoned asylum horror has gone through more than one name change, It started out as Blackmask, then became Exeter and now has settled on the generic The Asylum…for now. The film tells of the long abandoned Exeter Asylum where mentally disturbed children were brought for care and rehabilitation. The place became more of a house of horrors and after a fire, was shut down. As the structure is being slowly emptied out for refurbishing, a group of youths decide to hold a rave inside. As this is never a good idea, those remaining in the building the following morning, are locked in by a vengeful spirit and suffer a horrible ordeal of possession and gruesome fates. Will any escape alive?
Nispel, who directed remakes of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday The 13th and Conan The Barbarian, delivers a goofy, dumb, but actually kind of fun horror from his script with Kristen Elms. There is nothing we haven’t seen before, but Nispel knows it and just goes with it. The result is a silly but fast paced and very gory 90 minutes that can be entertaining if you just go along with the blood spattered chaos. Nispel presents his story with a serious tone…and with some atmosphere…but throws every possession/haunted asylum trope he can at you and showers it in blood and gore. It’s far from a classic and we are very familiar with the story elements, so there are little actual scares or any real intensity about it, but it is energetic and unapologetic…and that helps make it fun. Nispel has always had a strong visual sense, so it looks good and the gore and make-up FX are quite well executed. As with many horrors of this nature, expect characters to do dumb things to make the situation worse or put themselves in harm’s way and Nispel especially seems to have fun with this ‘tradition.’
As for the cast…veteran Stephen Lang is the priest who ran the asylum, Father Conway. He is appropriately mysterious and only appears in the beginning and then in the last act. A paycheck job, probably, but he gives it his spooky all. Other than Lang we have an attractive and adequate cast of relative unknowns. Our leads are Kelly Blatz cutting a fine but reluctant hero as Patrick and pretty Brittany Curran as our heroine with a touch of mystery, Reign. The supporting actors, Gage Golightly as Amber, Brett Dier as Brad, Michael Ormsby as Patrick’s brother Rory, Nick Nicotera as Knowles and Nick Nordella as Drew, are all fine in their parts as party animals at a party gone very wrong. As angry spirit fodder they all do their jobs efficiently.
So, in conclusion, I had a fun time with this. To a degree it’s not an overly good movie and certainly not very original. It does have a good time, though, with the familiar elements of it’s unoriginal story and approached from a certain viewpoint, can be a lot of fun because of it. The cast are all serviceable, the film does have a disturbing look and feel to it and splatters the screen often with gore and body parts when not possessing it’s attractive young cast with evil entities. Good movie?…not in a strictest sense. A fun movie…yes!
The original Friday The 13th was released 35 years ago today on May 9th, 1980. I saw it on Friday June 13th, 1980…the day it takes place…at the long gone Rialto Theater in Ridgefield Park,N.J. It is now considered a horror classic and has spawned 10 sequels and 1 reboot and given us a horror icon in Jason…though his mom was the killer in this first installment. Happy Anniversary to a classic!
Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney)
The Rialto Theater where I saw in on Friday June 13th, 1980!
Cult Classic Cuties are characters from some of our favorite cult classics and midnight movies who captured our hearts and/or actresses who got our attention but, sadly, never returned to these type of flicks or whose sexy stars shined only briefly, not quite achieving scream queen status. And this installment’s cutie is…
DANA KIMMELL
The Friday The 13th series has featured a lot of crush worthy young ladies during it’s…so far…12 flick run. One of the favorites has to be adorable Dana Kimmell as Chris in Friday The 13th Part 3. Not only is Chris a first class cutie but, she is a resourceful young woman having survived a previous attack by Crystal Lake’s favorite son a few years before the film opens. When she returns to the cabin near the site of the attack on a vacation with her friends, Jason tries to pick up where he left off and once again finds himself and the resilient Chris going one on one. Guess who wins?
While the third Friday flick is not her only foray into horror… she was in Sweet Sixteen and the TV horror Midnight Offerings before that… this was Kimmell’s only high-profile fright flick as a lead and her only other horror role was a small part as a model in the supernaturally themed Night Angel in 1990. Dana modeled and had done a few films and quite a lot of TV work before and after her throw-down with Jason and even played Chuck Norris’ strong-willed daughter in Lone Wolf McQuade, another cult classic of a different genre. Her last film role was in 1990 thought, she does do convention appearances as part of Friday The 13thmovie panels.
While Dana may have left acting at the end of the 80s, we still have a little crush on her Chris as one of our favorite Friday The 13thfinal girls and Cult Classic Cuties (click on the link to see our other entries in this column)!
Be sure to check out our Cult Classic Cuties (click right here on the link) section to see more crush worthy ladies from cult films and midnight movies!
