MURDER SET PIECES

Submitted by Absolute Horror panelist, Legion

Society in chaos...black and white 35 MM film footage, shot by editor Brendan Flynt, of NYC on that terrible day in September almost five years ago...is the apropos image to begin one of the greatest horror films of all time, perfectly titled MURDER SET-PIECES. Not since William Friedkin's masterpiece of horror THE EXORCIST has a film captured the essence of the terrifying and the profane. Filmmaker Nick Palumbo's simple tale about an anonymous photographer slaughtering beautiful women in the seamy city of Las Vegas enraptured me from the first horrific frame of a bloodied, nude, semi-conscious woman strapped down in a torture chair all the way to the end credits.

MASTERS OF HORROR: FAIR HAIRED CHILD

When Showtime announced their Masters of Horror series, I have to admit that I was very skeptical.  I expected thirteen poorly acted, not scary and boring episodes.  Luckily for fans of horror, the Masters of Horror episodes thus far have run the gamut.  There have been great episodes like Incident on and Off a Mountain Road and Cigarette Burns to the truly awful Jenifer.  This episode is actually worse than JENIFER as it lacks nudity and manages to hit the trifecta of poor acting, terrible writing and a boring premise.  Seriously, you might consider watching a movie on the Hallmark channel before you sit down for this one.

SLEEPSTALKER

A totally random pick from the video store, SLEEPSTALKER has some interesting ideas but never really gets off the ground. The real question is: is this a TV movie? I mean, lots of the things portrayed in it are definitely not made-for-TV stuff.  Yet, on the other hand, there's no real gore, no nudity, and no bad language. What gives?  Read on if you haven't already lost interest.

SKINNED DEEP

Submitted by Absolute Horror panelist 385-horror

I came across this movie reading one of the previous issues of Fangoria. If you are a regular reader, you know that they tend to feature strange movies and SKINNED DEEP is definitely one of the stranger ones. I have managed to watch it twice in a week, first time alone, and the second one with a couple of friends, aficionados of strange cinema.  It starts up as a badly shot TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE wannabe clone, but after about ten minutes of watching, I just opened my mouth in a WTF way and just stared toward my TV.  I was wondering if the author (screenwriter, producer, director all in one person) had a 24/7 week of LSD usage or what? Let's go into some details...

THEY LIVE

A sci-fi/conspiracy film directed by John Carpenter, THEY LIVE! apparently has a bit of a cult following. Watching the film, I can see why it has a cult following and not a popular, mainstream one.  Funny, weird, relatively low-budget, and starring really bad actors, THEY LIVE! is a very entertaining film.

SUBSPECIES

The SUBSPECIES franchise has turned into one of those straight-to-video goldmines, with its producers churning out one after another only to be eaten up by fans of shlock horror.   I thought I’d take the opportunity to visit the first of the series.  My conclusion is that this is actually a pretty cool movie from the fine folks at Full Moon Entertainment, those great people who brought you such classics as PUPPET MASTER and TRANCERS.  Unlike the latter film, this one suffers from not starring Tim Thomerson, but really, doesn’t any movie?  SUBSPECIES is still well worth your investment in time and money.