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Before Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez’ excellent The Blair Witch Project was released to theaters this past Summer, the ‘90s had the distinction of yielding some of the absolute worst horror films I have ever seen. From Kevin Williamson’s terrible pop-horror franchises Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer (Williamson makes horror films for people who hate horror films), Guillermo De Toro’s pathetic Mimic (I don’t care how dark you make your film – monster roaches simply are not scary), to Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn (a would-be horror satire that may be among the worst horror films I have ever seen), the once fertile horror field has become a playground for filmmakers who seem to have little or no feel for the genre whatsoever. So thank God for Blair Witch, a creepy (but not really very scary) little film that returns the genre back to the filmmakers who understand that horror need not be subservient to millions of dollars of special effects to be effective – sometimes the most effective horror films have no special effects. (Myrick and Sanchez also have a good sense of film history: their film company name, Haxan films, comes from the Swedish title of Benjamin Christensen’s seminal 1922 film Witchcraft Through the Ages.) So, in honor of the return of cheap horror films, I’m recommending some cheap thrills from the past on video for Halloween this year.
Halloween (1978)
Directed by John Carpenter
"Brilliantly paced and packed with more genuine atmosphere than a dozen Wes Craven films, Halloween is a suspenseful, funny, scary movie that is just as good today as it was 20 years ago – maybe better......"Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Directed by George A. Romero
"Romero’s film still seems startlingly original. In Romero’s world, there is no salvation, no happy payoff for traditional heroics, and nothing happens the way you think it should. By the film’s still shockingly effective ending, you realize that not only has Romero re-written the book on zombies, he’s re-written the rules for the whole genre..."The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Directed by Tobe Hooper
"A sweat-inducing, claustrophobic film of unrelenting terror, it takes the viewer to the absolute ground zero of redneck freak Hell with a capital H and barely offers any respite from the horrors of the said (heretofore unexplored) milieu..."Dementia 13 (1963)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
"While, in the long run, Dementia 13, a no-budget American International production and Pyscho rip-off filmed cheaply, may not be the best film of the period, it is nevertheless an atmospheric, eerie Grand Guignol style shocker, written and directed by a young Francis Ford Coppola..."
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Nick Burton lives in Newport Beach, California. His fiction has appeared in many small press and web publications, including: Chronicles Of Fiction, Pauper, and of course Pif.