El Ataud Del Vampiro

If you're gonna steal a coffin (don't) then for God's sake don't steal the damn vampire's coffin.

RATING: 23%

Haxan

This is a movie about witches and devils and so forth that is ostensibly a horror movie because people in the 1920s would probably be scared if somebody dressed up as Satan for Halloween. Anyway, there's some ok makeup and some old ladies kiss the devil's butt but it's more of a historical curio than a good movie or anything.

RATING: 44%

Onibaba

An old woman gets mad when her widowed daughter-in-law hooks up with some grifter because it means she might not help her murder travelers anymore. It doesn't get super creepy until the last half hour but it's all shot in a tall grass field that seems almost other worldly, so it gets a buncha points for style.

RATING: 68%

We Are What We Are

A mean father makes his daughters eat humans after their mother died because human stew was their mom's favorite meal. I like the idea of hillbilly cannibals but the movie is just too serious - for any horror movie to be successful you need a variety of tones, and this one is just sad and dark.

RATING: 44%

Cannibal Holocaust

Structurally this movie, notorious for its excessive gore, depravity, etc, is interesting, since it's one of the first round footage horror flicks, but I dunno, it's pretty tough to watch a sea turtle actually get killed and mutilated on camera. Anyway the plot is some jerky white filmmakers basically rape and murder a bunch of indigenous people in South America and eventually some fight back and they all get killed, and there's a frame story of a professor finding the footage and watching it. I felt terrible the whole time I was watching the movie, so success?

RATING: 43%

Hannibal

I don't exactly consider The Silence of the Lambs to be a horror movie, but I thought I remembered this movie being a weirder goth fest. Well, the last thirty minutes or so are terrific, with some man eating pigs and man eating mans, but the rest of the movie is excruciating. Is it worse than, like, Scarecrow Night or whatever? Not technically, but with all the talent behind this one it shoulda been at least moderately watchable.

RATING: 27%

Dark Night of the Scarecrow

Dark Night of the Scarecrow is basically The Ox-Bow Incident meets And Then There Were None with the addition of one creepy scarecrow. When a small town simpleton named Bubba (played "full retard" by the future Dr. Giggles, Larry Drake) is falsely accused of killing a small girl, he is subsequently chased and murdered by a gang of good ol' boys, lead by the local postman (and implied pedophile) Otis, played by Charles Durning. After the good ol' boys escape punishment from the law for their crime, they begin to get killed off, one by one, by a sinister scarecrow. Dark Night is a decent thriller that is very much of its time. Also, being that was made for television, it doesn't feature much in the way of gore. When it's suggested that there are movies that could never be made "in this day and age" I think of movies like this. It's hard to imagine a new movie coming out wherein a mentally disabled protagonist is murdered by a vigilante group. Only for said vigilantes to be killed themselves by the supernatural manifestation of the wrongly accused. Sure, some schlock meister could trot out a low budget version of the story, but I can't imagine it would be something that a major network would pay for and promote.

Rating: 66%

(Image from Amazon)

The Faculty

Remember in the 90s when meth was a drug that was "cool" enough that you could have the high school meth dealer in a horror flick defeat the alien teachers with his meth?

RATING: 36%

Eyes Without A Face

This old French horror movie is pretty by the numbers at first - a (mad?) doctor chloroforms random women so he can cut off their faces to transplant onto his disfigured daughter, no big deal. But the great Maurice Jarre score and the human face mask the woman wears in addition to the eerie crescendo of a conclusion make it worthwhile. Also they show some pretty heavy gore for an early 60s flick, especially one from Europe!

RATING: 63%

Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland

I must be in the minority because I found Sleepaway Camp III to be an improvement over Sleepaway Camp II. It's still not a particularly good movie, but I thought it was less sleazy and gross than its predecessor. The two sequels were filmed back to back over a six week period and to the filmmakers credit, they avoided reusing a lot of the same locations and shots. For whatever reason, the MPAA required extensive cuts to the kill sequences this time around, virtually eliminating all of the gore. Also, oddly enough, the movie features enigmatic character actor Michael J. Pollard delivering a goofy (and at times discomforting) performance.

Rating: 57%

(Image from Wikipedia)

V/H/S Viral

I guess it wouldn't be Halloween season (um at least since 2013) if I didn't plug one of these anthology bad boys in and intensely dislike it. Seriously, everybody should watch V/H/S 2 for the crazy cult segment, but no sketches in the rest of this series have been any good. Here we've got a magician short, a dimension jumping short (that's got some ok oddities), and a skate punk short with a society freakout wraparound. I theoretically still like anthology horror, but maybe what I'm figuring out is that I just really love Creepshow.

RATING: 29%

Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers

The first Sleepaway Camp movie, released in 1983 during the "Golden Age" of slasher films, was a whodunit. The film's notoriety and continued popularity (?) is due almost entirely to the reveal of the killer's identity. In Sleepaway Camp II, we learn who the killer is in the first five minutes. Released in 1988, and followed by another sequel in 1989, Sleepaway Camp II is exploitation for the sake of exploitation. The nudity is gratuitous, the kills are frequent and ridiculous, and the story lacks any sense of logic. If the first Sleepaway Camp film was Gremlins, then Sleepaway Camp II would be Ghoulies Go to College.

Rating: 52%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus

I must confess that I have never seen Ganja and Hess, the cult classic this is a remake of, but this one is terrific. It's definitely boring, and it's not exactly scary, but Spike Lee's careful pacing and beautiful cinematography paired with great performances and a killer soundtrack create a melange of sorrow and dread that's difficult to put out of one's mind. You could say this is one vampire movie that doesn't su--(Glenn has been fired from R3 for even attempting that joke.)

RATING: 78%

The Crazies

If you look up "The Crazies" on IMDB, the first search result you get is for the 2010 remake. And that's probably because it has over 87 thousand user review scores. The original 1973 version of The Crazies has less than 8 thousand user review scores and let me tell you, that's a damn shame. For whatever reason I, and apparently countless other horror movie fans, had never seen this movie before. I was missing out and if you haven't seen it yet, you are missing out. It's the missing link between what Night of the Living Dead was and what Dawn of the Dead would eventually become. And yet, there isn't a single zombie in it.

Rating: 73%

(Image from impawards.com)

The Babadook

I'm not sharing any kind of news here, but this movie is one of the best and most terrifying horror movies made in this century. A woman dealing with the anniversary of her husband's death and also a weirdo son has also a ghost or monster type thing to deal with which is not exactly a thrill for her. Anyway, I'd like to think I'm a big boy or whatnot but I definitely almost had a panic attack in the theater when I saw it, so check it out!

RATING: 100%

Maniac

Maniac has managed to achieve cult status among horror fans for two reasons: Tom Savini’s special effects and Joe Spinell’s unhinged performance as the titular maniac. Because much the film was shot at night without the proper permits, it presents an eerily spare New York City. Aside from the lovely Caroline Munro, most of the cast is made up of porno actors who had previously worked for the director. Famously, critic Gene Siskel walked out of a screening of the movie after one particularly gory effects sequence.

Rating: 62%

(Image from bloody-disgusting.com)