Skip to main content

The Horror Show

So, I debated on doing a New Year's Evil post today, but I'm not ready to dive into that can of shitty worms. Instead, I bring you this: The Horror Show.

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all 80's horror movies starring Lance Henriksen will be bad, that any movie sold to us as a sequel to House (1986) will have NOTHING to do with the original movie, that we will love these idiotic movies, regardless of their shortcomings.

This one you may not know: The Horror Show was released nearly in tandem with Shocker. The two movies are nearly identical with the biggest differences being that Shocker developed a completely unbelievable cult following while The Horror Show crawled off under an old lady's porch and curled up to die a completely deserved death.

In case you're falling behind on your bad 80's horror movies, let me give you the $.25 overview of The Horror Show / Shocker: serial killer gets caught and is sent to the electric chair. Zap that bastard as they may, his blood thirsty spirit just can't be killed. After making a deal with the devil, our serial killer returns to slaying the living. Joy.

 As I mentioned in my intro, The Horror Show was billed as a sequel to House AND HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH EITHER House or House II. In fact, the plot is fairly fuzzy in places: on top of the serial killer who comes back for revenge story line, there are also extensive hallucinations including one in which the turkey dinner mutates into a tentacled beast with the killer's face.

I'll give you a minute to process that one...

 I will say that The Horror Show outshines Shocker in the casting of their serial killer.

Brion James (Blade Runner, Flesh + Blood, Cherry 2000) was an ugly, imposing creep of a man whom no one would have a hard time believing was a murderer. It's said that in an interview with Fangoria he quipped, "I always like to play bad guys. I'm really good at psychotic behavior". What a charmer, I tell you.

 Mitch Pileggi (absolutely best known for his role on The X-Files) is a fantastic actor. He is not, however, a particularly scary man or an exceptionally convincing serial killer. He's more like that high school english teacher that really took an interest in his students and not in a creepy, sexual predator kind of way.

Now for the spoilers. At the end of the movie, all that Lance Henriksen has to do is defeat the killer's spirit to get his dead family back (sort of like Nightmare on Elm Street). And yay! Everyone lives happily ever after, even the family cat.

...for no good reason, someone actually released this movie in blu ray last year. Great...

 Watch it if: you have an obsession with Lance Henriksen or you like horror movies with happy endings.

Watch the trailer here and call it a night:

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rebuttal: 17 Disturbing Horror Movies You Will Never Watch Again

When I'm not watching movies, I'm reading about movies. I stumble across all kinds of articles, blog posts, book excerpts, etc. in my quest to absorb as much movie knowledge as possible. Now, I'm snotty and loud-mouthed and opinionated but I'd never begrudge another human their opinion. Seriously. You're absolutely welcome to have any opinion about any thing you want. However, I must warn you, if I think your opinion is stupid, I'm absolutely going to say so. I've recently stumbled on an article completely  brimming with so many idiotic opinions that I'm actually compelled to craft a response. Here's the gist of the original article: there are some horror movies out there that are so disturbing , you'll only ever want to watch them once. I've have taken her original list and refuted her claims without pulling her entire article over. You can read the original article here . Let's start at the beginning, with her opening statement
Post a Comment
Read more

What Is Genre And Why Should I Care?

There are terms that always seem to come up when talking about films: director, actor, plot, theme, score, etc. These terms are all self-explanatory; no one ever asks, ‘what’s a director?’ However, there are other terms that are equally common but less clear: genre, sub-genre, auteur, oeuvre, etc. These terms are more abstract then ‘director’ or ‘actor.’ It is entirely likely that someone will ask, ‘what is genre, anyway?’ This question specifically is what I will be answering with this paper. The answer to the question ‘what is genre,’ is multi-layered: genre is a means of classification. Genre is a means of communication. Genre is a means of understanding films. Genre is a means of relating to films. To one person all movies rated “PG” are a genre – possibly one also known as “children’s movies” – while to another all movies with similar topics treated in similar ways are a genre: i.e. movies dealing with frontier life depicted in a nostalgic manner are a genre often kn
Post a Comment
Read more

Contracted Or I Just Watched A Zombie Movie

Seems like horror fans fall into two buckets these days: zombie lovers and zombie haters. That dividing line just keeps getting deeper and darker the more zombies gain "mainstream popularity". I currently fall into the "I am so tired of zombies I could puke" bucket. I haven't stopped  watching zombie movies so much as I've started avoiding them at all costs, literally watching every other subgenre offering I stumble onto, regardless of how terrible it is. I seriously re-watched Wishmaster  this past week. That's how far out of my way I've been going to avoid the significant number of zombie movies flooding Netflix. Then I accidentally watched one. Contracted - 2013 I'm sure it was partially due to the really terrible movie synopsis that Netflix provided, which I'm prepared to admit that they may have nothing to do with and  that I likely didn't read it very well. In a strange twist of events, the movie cover actually helped
Post a Comment
Read more