My Bloody Valentine
“There’s more than one way to lose your heart,” states the catchiest of the many taglines attached to the original, and best, Valentine’s-themed horror film. George Mihalka’s second feature, and still his most celebrated work, is holiday-specific in both its Valentine’s Day setting and its locale, a small made-up Canadian mining town called Valentine Bluffs.
The Awakening
I recently visited Queen Hatshepsut, the model for the mummy in The Awakening and the novel it’s based on: Bram Stoker’s wild horror/fantasy The Jewel of Seven Stars.
Starman
John Carpenter has often turned to the horrors of science fiction, most brilliantly in The Thing (1982) and They Live (1988), and also in his Village of the Damned remake (1995), Ghosts of Mars (2001), and his more humorous feature debut, Dark Star (1974).
Bad Dreams
In the discussion of the ’80s being the golden age of horror, Bad Dreams is far too often left out of the conversation. Granted, the film has its competition—coming from 1988, no less—but Andrew Fleming’s debut feature deserves deeper consideration.
The Kiss
Suckers for crazy-ass voodoo curses that travel down female family bloodlines should delight in The Kiss, a film that got lost among the wealth of 1988 horror gems like Child’s Play, The Blob, and Pumpkinhead, and still hasn’t found its rightful place in the pantheon.
The Fly
It’s an unfortunate fact of life: even super-smart women sometimes end up with terrible boyfriends. This, along with a very different tragic, universal reality—everyone’s body radically changes and deteriorates with illness and/or age—forms the basis of David Cronenberg’s The Fly.
Nightmare Beach
The close of the ’80s brought a consummate entry in that decade’s trash-horror cinema. Nightmare Beach takes a sex-comedy setting—spring break at Miami Beach—and tosses in a killer, who so inconveniently disrupts the visiting horny teens’ partying agendas.
Murder by Phone
This rarity by the director of Logan’s Run and Orca may be one of the silliest slasher films ever made, but it’s also irresistible fun, both well-executed and rapidly paced.
The Thing
The horrible miracle of John Carpenter’s The Thing is that it manages to absolutely terrify the viewer while also being patently, grotesquely absurd.
Paperhouse
Paperhouse has many frightening scenes, but one stands out as particularly scary for its brevity and almost inexplicable terror.