Originally titled Zombie 2 as a craven attempt to piggyback on the success of Dawn of the Dead, Lucio Fulci’s Zombie has nothing to do with George A. Romero’s undead classic, though that doesn’t mean it’s not without its gruesome charms. The Italian goremeister’s breakthrough film features not a single believable character or plot point,…

Vishnu sits in for Satan in Audrey Rose, a possession thriller in The Exorcist mold that replaces Christian claptrap for Hindu hokum. Elliot Hoover (Anthony Hopkins) is convinced that prepubescent Ivy (Susan Swift) – the daughter of Manhattan ad exec Bill Templeton (John Beck) and wife Janice (Marsha Mason) – is filled with the spirit…

John “Johnny Wadd” Holmes was solely noteworthy because of his prodigious member, and director James Cox’s foolish decision to only perfunctorily mention the porn legend’s elephantine organ in Wonderland is indicative of this ludicrous, pointless Rashomon-meets-Boogie Nights saga. Detailing Holmes’ alleged participation in a 1981 murder case involving his scuzzy drug-pushing associates, Cox’s film proves…

The Slumber Party Massacre is something of a 1980s slasher film anomaly: written by lesbian erotica novelist Rita Mae Brown and directed by Amy Holden Jones, this gory story about a drill-wielding serial killer terrorizing scantily-clad high school girls during a nighttime get-together is, in fact, a gruesome, T&A-filled feminist tract about female fears of…

Mel Stuart’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory has given pleasurable highs to many an acid dropper, but there’s nonetheless something dreary about all the song-and-dance numbers peppered throughout this adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved children’s tale. Listening to Jack Albertson’s Grandpa Joe sing about Wonka’s factory tour-yielding golden ticket is enough to make one…

Tobe Hooper’s imprint is nowhere to be found on Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, a failed attempt by New Line to reinvent the titular chainsawer into a Freddy Krueger-style villain. Two bickering ex-lovers (Kate Hodge and William Butler) driving cross-country run into trouble when they hit a stretch of deserted highway used by Leatherface and…

Shot almost immediately after Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers, Michael A. Simpson’s Sleepaway Camp 3: Teenage Wasteland is the type of cheap quickie sequel that eventually ruined the slasher film genre. Angela (Pamela Springsteen) murders a poor girl with “Milk” and “Shake” tattooed on her chest, assumes her identity, and takes her place at Camp…

Gender-confused Angela is back and crazier than ever in Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers, a sequel that finds the murderous androgyne taking a counselor job at Camp Rolling Hills after having undergone snip-snip sex change surgery to become a real woman. It’s the perfect summer gig for the guitar-strumming, camp song-singing psycho, whose bunk is…

Robert Hiltzik’s Sleepaway Camp unimaginatively mimics Friday the 13th’s summer camp setting for its string of mysterious slayings, but the film’s infatuation with gender confusion is its own dubious legacy to the 1980s slasher flick genre. Years after a boating accident claimed her father and younger brother, silent, wide-eyed Angela (Felissa Rose) is sent to…