When you watch one of the original slashers now, it’s hard to remember if it’s full of tropes that have accumulated over nearly 50 years, or it they were already tropes when the films were originally made. For example, in Friday the 13th Part 2, when Ginny’s (Amy Steel) car is “sick” and Paul (John…

Unmasked Part 25 (1988) opens as a typical 80s slasher film might and, based on the special effects, a pretty good one. A hockey-masked killer executes (pun intended) five kills: The movie then almost comes to a complete halt, just as the killer does when he’s about to stab a blind woman. She mistakes him for…

There are two 1980 science-fiction films I remember seeing at the Esquire Theater in my home town of Enid, Oklahoma, that I absolutely did not like. In fact, I haven’t seen either one since. One was The Final Countdown, one of only a couple moviegoing experiences during which I fell asleep. The other was Hangar…

I’ve fallen victim to false advertising many times, but no movie in a long while has been as egregious with it as Sweet Sixteen (1983.) However, I don’t blame Century International; they needed some kind of an angle to sell this one. Remove the pretty, underaged (and underdressed) young woman who’s about to turn 16…

During the summer of 1983, I had the best time of my life. I was home from college following my sophomore year and had reconnected with a group of high school friends who were a year behind me. We loved movies and pop culture, so stood in line to see Return of the Jedi, made…

When it was released in 1984, Terror in the Aisles was ravaged by the critics. Gene Siskel wrote: Scary movie scenes work best when they’re set up by some expository foreplay, which is why this compilation of horrors doesn’t really work. Vincent Canby wrote: Because Terror in the Aisles is composed entirely of climaxes, it…

Since this is the last entry into our 1980’s horror-comedy/spoof series, it’s a good time to summarize them in a way that I’ve been considering for a few weeks now. The 80’s horror spoofs can be compared to the humor magazines of the era. For example, you have Mad Magazine, the cream of the crop. In…

For the first few minutes of Transylvania 6-5000 (1985), I had real hopes that memory wasn’t served and it was going to be better than my preconceived notions. Those were a precious few minutes that soon became a long, agonizing hour and a half that I had to split over the course of two evenings.…

Does anyone remember the Hudson Brothers? Bill, Brett, and Mark Hudson were discovered by a record producer in Portland and offered a contract. They released several singles in the late 1960s under the names The New Yorkers, Everyday Hudson, and Hudson. I know them from The Hudson Brothers Show, a summer replacement for The Sonny…