THE KILLER SHREWS

Review contributed by new panel member, Dr. Niemann.

To say Ray Kellogg’s THE KILLER SHREWS (1959) was shot on a low budget is as much as an understatement as saying WATERWORLD is a tad silly. Indeed, most of the film could have been filmed in the backyard of any house in rural Texas. The plot is based around the old deserted-island motif, where yet another misguided scientist (Baruch Lumet), experimenting with a growth hormone, has inadvertently increased the size and appetite of otherwise tiny shrews (definition: Any of various small, chiefly insectivorous mammals of the family Soricidae, resembling a mouse but having a long pointed snout and small eyes and ears).

RING OF DARKNESS

Let’s get right to it: the opening kill scene of RING OF DARKNESS features a kid being attacked and eaten by a crazed boy band.  Yes, you read that correctly, a crazed BOY BAND.  And then what plays over the opening credits?  A montage featuring the boy band trying their best impression to imitate the Backstreet Boys.  I should stop watching right now, shouldn’t I?  Instead, I decide to put on the hard hat, punch my card and go to work…And work it is.  I can say that, without a doubt, RING OF DARKNESS is the worst horror movie I have reviewed thus far. 

ZOMBIE

Review contributed by new panel member, Hateful Jock.

Anyone who loves to spend hours looking at the covers of newly released DVD boxes at the video store has noticed a slick little box with the word ZOMBIE on the cover. It depicts the city of New York being overrun by zombies with nice shiny detail and a friendly cream background. The cover fills your mind with great ideas of what the box may hold. Perhaps there is a scene of screaming zombies descending upon a frightened civilization unable to fight off the bloodthirsty demons now threatening their very existence. Or maybe there is an epic battle where the humans use mortar shells and flamethrowers to no avail and are eventually overcome and torn apart by the sheer mass of the living dead.

SLEEPAWAY CAMP 3: TEENAGE WASTELAND

Our favorite camp killer (yes more than Jason), Angela Baker, is back in the third installment of the SLEEPAWAY CAMP series and once again, it’s so bad it’s good!  So here’s the thing with sequels - for the most part, you know the identity of the killer in advance so the true creativity and originality must come in the way each victim meets his doom.  I won’t spoil any of the kills that await you upon viewing SLEEPAWAY CAMP 3, but let’s just say that I appreciate the time, thought and creativity put into them.  And that’s not the only thing you’ll enjoy about this movie.

SLEEPAWAY CAMP 2: UNHAPPY CAMPERS

Every good horror movie deserves a sequel and the 80’s classic SLEEPAWAY CAMP has thankfully delivered a second helping.  I love 80’s movies, especially 80’s horror movies because the characters can basically do whatever they want.  A character can deliver the cheesiest lines imaginable and you can’t get mad at him because, hey, it’s an 80’s movie.  If a hot, busty blond wants to jump into the pool wearing a white t-shirt with no bra, she will do so. If some guy campers want to conduct a panty raid, it’s not lame if it’s in the 80’s.  If some hot campers want to lounge around in their underwear, it’s normal.  All of the above is featured in this movie.

SLEEPAWAY CAMP

One night my friend and I entered a video store determined to rent the movie with the cheesiest cover we could find. Before long, we found our winner - SLEEPAWAY CAMP. On this box, there is neither a description of a movie nor any shots from the film.  Instead the box is a simple handwritten letter from a child to his parents, describing camp and the fact that there is a killer on the loose.  Are you ready for my favorite part?  The kid doesn't get a chance to finish the letter since the killer interrupted him mid-sentence and all that’s left is a trail of blood.  What started out as a winner in the cheesiest cover contest became our unintended introduction to a classic horror trilogy.

THE STUFF

This movie was single-handedly responsible for both scarring my psyche and showing me the deadliness of…yogurt (a.k.a. “THE STUFF”). Foolishly, I always thought the worst my little cup of Danon’s Mixed Berry could deliver would be a mild yeast infection.  A movie about a yeast infection would be scarier than this classic 1980's attempt at riding the coattails of The Blob.  An attempt, might I add, that missed by a mile.

PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

It may seem like a distant memory to many of us, but back in the late 80s there was actually a bit of a Phantom of the Opera craze.   Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical just hit Broadway and junior high school girls all over the country obsessively listened to their soundtrack audiotapes, thinking it romantic to be wooed by a hideously disfigured freak.   In those days, infamous horror and action schlock producer Menachem Golan decided to cash in with an R-rated horror version of the movie.   The result is THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA starring Robert Englund (best known as Freddy Kreuger) as Erik, the Phantom – and it’s good for many an unintentional laugh.

DRACULA 3000

We all love bad movies. I don’t care who you are: from the movie snob (“I will only watch movies from countries whose name I cannot pronounce”) to the film purist (“anything made after 1944 is crap”), we all are drawn to these guilty pleasures. Maybe it’s that feeling of empowerment (“Jeez I could have done better”) or maybe it’s just that innate desire to see a train wreck. We watch these films even though we know they suck donkey balls, but we still feel compelled to watch them when they are cable or even worse…we buy them on DVD. I love Jaws 3. I mean the idea of a shark attacking an amusement park balances that tight rope of brilliance and stupidity. And that’s why we love them; it’s the line that they almost cross that keeps us watching. Then there are those films that not only cross the line, but they have sniffed it and are looking to do a long jump over it.  DRACULA 3000 is such a film.

OFFICE KILLER

Okay, so I watched this one because it was released in 1997 and featured Molly Ringwald and Michael Imperioli. So you get Ringwald after her prime “Breakfast Club” days and Imperioli before he went on to his career-defining role as “Christo-fah” on the Sopranos. And when well-known actors get together in their “off-prime” years, the result is often pretty funny.