American Gothic (aka Hide and Shriek and Dark Paradise) is a 1988 Canadian/British horror film written by Burt Wetanson and Michael Vines and directed by John Hough (Twins of Evil, The Legend of Hell House, Incubus). It stars Rod Steiger, Yvonne DeCarlo (The Munsters) and Michael J. Pollard.

A group of prosperous young people plan a camping trip in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, but they are forced to make an emergency landing on an isolated island. They end up staying at a house run by the old-fashioned Ma (Yvonne De Carlo) and Pa (Rod Steiger), an elderly couple who seem to have stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Little do the group know that Ma and Pa are also the heads of a vicious serial killing family…

The poster and all other related media art were based on Grant Wood‘s famous painting by the same name. The British VHS cover art was supplied by Graham Humphreys.

Wikipedia | IMDb

Buy American Gothic on DVD from Amazon.com

“I was constantly entertained by the exploration of the American family in this movie and at times was reminded of Spider Baby or some of John Waters films. If you don’t take it too seriously there is a lot of fun to be had here.” Jeremy Dunn, Horrorphilia

“Overall this is a pitiful attempt at horror movie making. It fails to be either offbeat or scary and only succeeds at becoming mind numbingly sterile.” Scopophilia

Wood’s Original Painting

Post by Will Holland

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Deadly Eyes (aka The Rats, Night Eyes) is a 1982 Canadian film directed by Robert Clouse, very loosely based on the horror novel The Rats by James Herbert. It stars Scatman Crothers, Sam Groom, Sara Botsford and Lisa Langlois.

Corn grain contaminated with steroids produces large rats the size of small dogs who begin feeding on the residents of Toronto. Paul, a college basketball coach, teams up with Kelly, a local health inspector, to uncover the source of the mysterious rat attacks. They rush to try and prevent the opening of a new subway line as well as find the mutant rats nest. The whole of the city is under threat…

Dachshunds wearing rat suits were used in the filming of Deadly Eyes to achieve the effect of super-sized rodents.

Wikipedia | IMDb | Creature Features | Canadian Horror

“Despite its pedestrian plot, Clouse pays tribute to the midnight movies before him. In a Blob-like moment and one of the better set pieces, the giant rats descend upon a movie house where unsuspecting teenagers are watching Clouse’s Bruce Lee epic Game of Death (where the bride of Kill Bill got her get-up). One wishes Clouse had more fun, campy moments like this but the movie is saddled with some ridiculous plot points such as the budding romance between Groom and Leonard. I can’t deny that there is something charming about the film.” Jeffery Berg, JBDRecords

“Go along with the formulaic plot and you’ll be rewarded with some solid characters,a fair bit of gore and a decent enough early 80s horror TV movie-like experience.”                Eat My Brains

Buy They Came From Within – A History of Canadian Horror Cinema at Amazon.com

Buy James Herbert’s The Rats novel from Amazon.co.uk

Post by Will Holland

The Vineyard is a 1989 American/Canadian horror film written by James Marlowe and Douglas Kondo and directed by James Hong and William “Bill” Rice. It stars James Hong, Michael Wong, Sherri Ball and Playboy ’Playmate‘ Karen Witter. The film received a limited theatrical release by New World Pictures in the United States in 1989.

Dr. Elson Po is one of the world’s most famous wine growers. He has a magic potion which has kept him handsome and alive during the centuries. However, lately the magic which rejuvenates him seem to be less and less effective. As a side project he make movies and invites a group of young, aspiring actors to his private island for a party, believing that the young, handsome actress Jezebel can be his new source of life…

Wikipedia | IMDb

There are regular human zombies in The Vineyard, as part of the film’s admirable ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ approach to horror narrative, where coherence and plot development are tossed away like the distractions they are. There’s no real explanation for the zombies, so it’s best to simply sit back and accept them as simply another mad distraction in this delirious, hilariously inept movie that proves to be tremendous fun – admittedly, for all the wrong reasons.

Legendary character actor James Hong takes a rare leading role here, and also co-writes and directs. Perhaps this is why his character gets to grope a lingerie-clad hotty before having a nude sex scene in the opening minutes, and why he keeps a dungeon full of half-naked, chained up women for his vague experiments – after all, why not write yourself a plumb role like that?

Hong is Dr Elson Po, who produces top rate wine on his private island and also dabbles in film production – or so he claims. His movie-making is actually a scam to lure young actors – here represented by several planks of wood and a girl who looks like she stumbled into the film en route to a porn set or Motley Crue video shoot – to the island where he can use them in curious Mayan rituals that restore his youth. Note here that Hong was 60 years-old when this film was made, so the youth-restoring powers of his rituals seem rather limited. It’s especially odd, as in a flashback we see him as a child stealing the magic amulet needed to make his magic formula of blood, wine and gibberish to work, so we can only assume that he’s put it in a drawer for the next fifty years and forgot about it – oh, how he must have kicked himself.

Anyway, horny Dr Po decides that glam metal / porn star lookalike – and former real-life Playboy ’playmate’ – Karen Witter (playing, would you believe, ‘Jezebel Fairchild’) is his perfect woman and decides to marry her in some arcane ceremony, while chaining up most of her friends. Only hipster glasses-wearing bookworm Jeremy (Michael Wong) guesses the truth, and teaming with a couple of other friends, sets out to defeat Po and his army of kung fu fighting henchmen.

Surely a shoe-in for future Bad Movie Night screenings, The Vineyard is so gleefully ridiculous that you can’t help but enjoy it. Nothing really makes sense – it’s never really explained what part the dungeon full of people (and at one point it’s more rammed that half the gigs I’ve been to!) actually plays in the youth-restoring ritual, or even where the wine-making really fits in. The zombies seem an afterthought, and other weird moments, like a girl coughing up spiders and bugs, seem thrown in just to keep the audience from nodding off. Hong aside, the acting is shockingly poor, though no one is helped by the ludicrous dialogue they are given. It’s hard to imagine that anyone could do better with decent dialogue though, given their astonishing inability to emote. And of course, being 1989, the film is full of yuppie hair, muscle shirts and other fashion faux pas.

But all this actually makes the film more entertaining – the bad actors, bad dialogue, lunatic moments and piss-poor special effects combine to make something that is compulsively fun to watch. And Hong seems under no illusions that he is making art here – instead, he positively revels in the exploitative nature of the film. The luckless actress – Lissa Zappardino – playing his unfaithful wife spend the entire film in skimpy, sexy lingerie (apart from her nude scenes) and much of it chained in the dungeon, while Witter also has to spend a lot of time in silk bed wear – no one in this film goes for frumpy pyjamas. The film is surprisingly – or not, given the era – light on gore, but the sleaze factor is high, there are cheesy optical effects and only slightly less cheesy old age make-ups, a brain-curdling synth score (and numbing closing credits song) and a general tackiness that is just irresistible. And to make things even more wrong, Arrow’s new disc looks absolutely gorgeous. Apparently, you can polish a turd.

So, no masterpiece certainly. But The Vineyard is wonderfully entertaining, albeit not for the reasons intended. Best watched with beer and company.

Review by David Flint

Buy on Arrow DVD from Amazon.co.uk

“Even with the overall mess that is The Vineyard, Hong contributes a “Lo Pan”-quality performance, which is my way of saying he’s good.  Combined with the fact that the rest of cast is so incredibly lifeless and stiff, Hong comes out looking like an Olivier-class thespian.  Nobody does a menacing, ancient, mysterious Asian character better than Hong, and he gets quite a few opportunities to really turn it up in The Vineyard. He screams and cackles his way through the film with unabandonded glee, and isn’t shy about chewing up the scenery as the evil Dr. Po. It’s just that Hong’s presence alone is not enough to rescue The Vineyard from the land of sub-standard B-movie horror.” Digitally Obsessed

“There are a few amazing 80′s dance party scenes, and an almost unbelievable scene where Dr. Po causes one of the young actors to basically jizz in his pants by performing acupuncture on his neck. It’s all hugely entertaining in it’s awfulness, but also kind of worrying that it seems to have been made without a hint of irony.” Trash Flavoured Trash Movies

James Hong is such a joker:

WH

Kissed is a 1996 Canadian film, directed and co-written by Lynne Stopkewich, based on Barbara Gowdy‘s short story “We So Seldom Look On Love”.

The film stars Molly Parker as Sandra Larson, a young woman whose fixation on death leads her to study embalming at a mortuary school, where in turn she finds herself drawn toward feelings of necrophilia. Peter Outerbridge also stars as Matt, a fellow student who develops romantic feelings for Sandra, and so must learn to accept her sexual proclivities.

Sandra Larson stares at a human corpse while she reminisces about at her childhood fascinations with death. As a young teen Sandra was enthralled by the feelings invoked by the stillness and smell of death. At night, she would dance with the corpse of an animal rubbing it on her body, before giving the animal a funeral.

Sandra learns of an opening for a chauffer at a funeral home. She asks Mr. Wallis (Jay Brazeau), the mortician, for the job. The funeral home’s janitor Jan (James Timmons) believes, like Sandra, that dead bodies still have a soul in them.

Mr. Wallis apprentices Sandra in embalming. She starts studying mortuary science in college, where she meets a med student named Matt (Peter Outerbridge). Matt and Sandra begin to date, and he is intrigued by Sandra’s death fascination. Occasionally they would spend night’s together in Matt’s basement apartment, but Sandra would leave for late night visits to the mortuary to celebrate the dead bodies of young men with dance ceremonies which escalate into necrophilia as her death fascination increases to an extreme obsession. Matt becomes distraught when he discovers that he is competing with dead bodies…

Wikipedia | IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes | Related: Nekromantik 

“Stopkewich has taken on a subject that can’t help but be controversial but presents it in a way that is completely non-exploitive and non-sensational. Don’t underestimate that achievement. In fact, she’s made a film that is, and I don’t use this word lightly, lyrical. It’s an effect aided in no small way by Molly Parker, who plays Sandra. Possessed of a delicate face able to convey an odd blend of introspection, reverence and puckishness, she seems to be keeping a secret that amuses her no end, which of course, she is.” Killer Movie Reviews

“Of course, it’s quite unsettling at times, a bit gobsmacking and obviously extremely thought-provoking, but due to the fact that we get to see “beautiful”, the sensitive, the somewhat spiritual side of necrophilia, you can’t help ending up mesmerized and moved by seeing that woman’s adoration for the mortal, the dead and death itself. It’s like a gloomy version of May mixed together with a “Nekromantik light”, focusing on the romantik part. Maynard Morrissey’s Horror Movie Diary

“Ultimately, Kissed is more of a love story than a horror tale. Maybe that’s why I’m disappointed. In the end, Matt proves he’ll go to extremes to get to know Sandra intimately. Maybe that’s part of this film’s grotesque point, that we’ll change the very core of ourselves to stay alive with someone we want to be with … The acting and directing are fantastic, and it is a compelling tale, it just didn’t do anything for me.” Fister Roboto

Slashers, also known as $lasher$ and スラッシャーズ Surasshāzu in Japan, is a 2001 Canadian satirical low-budget horror film, produced, directed and written by Maurice Devereaux (End of the Line, 2007). It took a while to receive distribution but was eventually picked up for DVD release by Fangoria Films in the US and Redemption in the UK.

“$lasher$” is a brutal Japanese TV reality game show in which six contestants try win a million-dollar cash prize by surviving in a vast arena whilst three costumed serial killers try to kill them.

The current six contestants are all North American. They are:

• Sarah Joslyn Crowder as Megan Lowry, a 20-year old law student and political activist from Seattle studying in Tokyo.
• Tony Curtis Blondell as Devon White, a 29-year old ex-Marine and former boxer from New York City.
• Kieran Keller as Michael Gibbons, a 28-year old computer programmer and serial killer from Chicago.
• Jerry Sprio as Rick Fisher, a 32-year old nightclub doorman from Detroit.
• Carolina Pla as Rebecca Galley, a 31-year old fitness instructor and bodybuilder with MS from Buffalo.
• Sofia de Medeiros as Brenda Thompson, a 22-year old aspiring actress and model from Portland.

The $lasher$ and their unique weapons are Dr. Ripper (Christopher Piggins), a maniacal surgeon with oversized shears; Chainsaw Charlie (Neil Napier), a masked hillbilly with a chainsaw;  and Preacherman (Napier), a Bible-thumping newbie to the program, with a razor-sharp crucifix.

Wikipedia | IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes

‘It takes a while between blood baths in Slashers but once the red stuff starts to flow, the gore effects once again exceed expectations. Early on, one contestant is sliced in half with a generous serving of blood and guts spilling out of her torso, and later, there are a few impressive beheadings and a stake through the side of the head, all with appropriately generous arterial sprays. The only issue with the film is the lack of character development and the wholly inexperienced cast, many of whom turn in overwrought, painful performances.’ Canuxploitation.com

‘Writer/director/producer Maurice Devereaux shoots the film in real time and with the appearance that it’s all one shot, Rope style, much like a TV show (or at least a TV show that only has one cameraman). Devereaux’s sense of humor is as twisted as they come … and he’s jammed a surprisingly high level of production values into this all-video effort. The gore is very well done, and the sets are designed extremely well.’ Christopher Null, ContactMusic.com

‘Too bad Maurice Devereaux didn’t explore more interesting aspects of a reality show that featured people being murdered for entertainment and decided to stay focused on the contestants themselves. Because of this, Slashers ends up being what no movie should ever be regardless of budget or genre — mind-numbingly boring.’ The Dreamin’ Demon

Gutterballs is a 2008 Canadian horror film written and directed by Ryan Nicholson  and starring Dan Ellis, Nathan Witte, Mihola Terzic, and Alastair Gamble.

Tensions between two rival cliques boil over during an after-hours bowling session and a fight breaks out. When a girl from one of the team forgets her purse in the arcade, she returns only to be brutally raped by members of the other team. The following night, both groups return to the bowling alley. Except this time, they’re being stalked by a deranged serial killer adorned with a bowling bag as a mask and by sunrise, the alleys will run red with blood…

The film has a total of 625 uses of the word “fuck”, ranking it second (behind the documentary of the same name, about the history and usage of the word) and first in total usage for a scripted motion picture.

There is a “hardgore” version of the film with 20 minutes of extra footage. The Pin-Etration Edition, a version of the film containing hardcore inserts and limited to 69 copies, was also made available for purchase on the Plotdigger Films website in 2011.

A sequel, entitled Balls Deep, is in development.

Wikipedia | IMDb

Buy Gutterballs on DVD from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Buy Gutterballs “Hardgore” version on DVD from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

“A deliberate attempt to make the most extreme, repugnant slasher film imaginable, Gutterballs is a neon-drenched genre offering with all of its exploitative elements exaggerated so far that good taste is left in the dust within the first 90 seconds.” Nathaniel Thompson, Mondo Digital

“If you’re in the mood for a flick with plenty of T&A, a good amount of blood and characters who exist for no other purpose than to die horribly, Gutterballs is right up your alley (pun intended), as long as you can get past the protracted rape scene, of course (that’s why the fast forward was invented).  If you’re looking for something fresh and interesting from the indie horror scene, I recommend you look elsewhere.”   Dread Central

WH

Infected (2008), a genre derivative Canadian television adventure/science-fiction thriller, is also known as They’re Among Us and The Hatching. Stinkweed by any other name is still stinkweed.

An X-Files re-dux, which also borrows heavily from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), a newspaper reporter and his ex-girlfriend (also a reporter, who won’t put it on the glass for him anymore), uncover an extraterrestrial plan to take over human bodies so that aliens can live more comfortably on this toilet Earth. Most of Infected is spent running, hiding, and uncovering proof of the colonisation. What little pay-off there is comes in the form of a naked humans wrapped in sheets that probably won’t be able to be cleaned and kept under alien sedation in a facility that looks suspiciously like my proctologist’s office.

Once the aliens have been outed their true selves emerge, looking like a cross between a lobster and black. The reporter risks his neck to save his ex, who previously did not want to put it on the glass for him anymore. But it’s amazing how alien intervention can mend broken glass. So does Infected end happily for the aliens or the humans? I am beyond caring. 

Jeff Gilbert, Drinkin’ & Drive-In

Thanatomorphose is a 2012 Canadian film directed by Eric Falardeau and starring Emile Beaudry, Kayden Rose, Eryka Cantieri and Roch-Denis Gagnon.

Thanatomorphose is a French word meaning the visible signs of an organism’s decomposition caused by death. One day, a young and beautiful girl a wakes up and finds her flesh rotting…

Buy Thanatomorphose on DVD from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

“As a lifelong student of horror cinema, I found a lot to admire here. This is not the kind of horror film I’d want to watch every week — and I may even find it difficult to recommend — but I’d be lying if I said Thanatomorphose didn’t fascinate, aggravate, and impress me at the same time. FEARnet

“Sure, gore hounds may plant themselves in front of the screen and cheer as flesh flops from bone, however, Thanatomorphose leaves a pit in your belly not just from what you’ve been forced to watch but what you’ve been forced to feel. With nerve fraying practical effects, an eerily haunting score, and a palpable menace throughout, Thanatomorphose flaunts its brutality without once pausing to pull back or apologize for itself.” The Conduit Speaks

“Jorg Buttgereit’s Nekromantik would seem to be an influence here – it appears that director Eric Falardeau is trying for the same grim, social realist atmosphere of that movie. But Buttgereit knew how to tell his story tersely, with humour and real characters alleviating the bleakness. Here, we’re stuck with a tedious tale that takes forever to go nowhere and only works as a make-up effects showcase – and even then, not well, given how dark and murky much of the movie is.” David Flint, Strange Things Are Happening

“Thanatomorophose is a fascinating and grotesque deconstruction of gender; female suffering has never been as poetic as this. Thanatomorophose is cult cinema in the making!” Cinezilla

IMDb | Facebook

WH

Antisocial is a 2013 Canadian horror film directed and co-written by Cody Calahan. It stars Michelle Mylette, Cody Thompson, Adam Christie, Ana Alic, Romaine Waite and Ryan Barrett. This Black Fawn Films/Breakthrough Entertainment film is due for video-on-demand release on December 10. 2013.

New Year’s Eve, the not so distant future: Five university friends gather at a house party. Unbeknownst to them, an epidemic has erupted outside, causing outbreaks around the world. With nowhere else to turn, they are told to barricade themselves indoors with only their phones, laptops, and other tech devices. They use their devices to research the possible cause of this outbreak. Information and video footage over flow their computers as they descend further into the cause and the ensuing chaos. As the virus spreads, the mood in the house changes from fear to paranoia. Reality becomes blurred as they slowly discover the source of the virus causing the sickness…

‘Antisocial has a smart social message-style feel of the early George Romero films had paired with a genuine feeling of paranoia I haven’t felt in a film since the 70’s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The film sets up an amazing premise and runs with it, taking full advantage of our addiction to everything online and exploiting it, and by the end of the film made me a little leery about picking up my iPhone again. Writer/director Cody Calahan and writer Chad Archibald have some up with a new type of zombie for the online age, and it’ a pretty compelling one at that as it plays with our own obsessions and twists it in monstrous ways. This type of smart handling of what’s going on right now is what innovative horror is all about.’  Ain’t It Cool

Christmas is generally seen as a jolly old time for the whole family – if you are to believe the TV commercials, everyone gets together for huge communal feasts while excited urchins unwrap whatever godawful new toy has been hyped as the must-have gift of the year. It is not, generally speaking, seen as a time of horror.

And yet horror has a long tradition of being part of the festive season. Admittedly, the horror in question was traditionally the ghost story, ideally suited for cold winter nights, where people gather around the fire to hear some spine chilling tale of ghostly terror – a scenario recreated in the BBC’s 2000 series Ghost Stories for Christmas, with Christopher Lee reading M.R. James tales to a room full of public school boys. That series was part of a tradition that included a similar one in 1986 with Robert Powell (Harlequin) and the children’s series Spine Chillers from 1980, as well as the unofficially titled annual series Ghost Stories for Christmas than ran for much of the 1970s and is occasionally revived to this day.

A Christmas Carol

The idea of the traditional Xmas ghost story can be traced back to Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol, where miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by three ghosts in an effort to make him change his ways. It’s more a sentimental morality tale than a horror story, though in the original book and one or two adaptations, the ghosts are capable of causing the odd shudder. Sadly, the story has been ill-served by cinematic adaptations – the best version is probably the 1951 adaptation, though by then there had already been several earlier attempts, going back to 1910. A few attempts have been made at straight retellings since then, but all to often the story is bastardised (a musical version in 1970, various cartoons) or modernised – the best known versions are probably Scrooged and The Muppet Christmas Carol, both of which are inexplicably popular. A 1999 TV movie tried to give the story a sense of creepiness once again, but the problem now is that the story is so familiar that it seems cliched even when played straight. The idea of a curmudgeon being made to see the true meaning of Christmas is now an easy go-to for anyone grinding out anonymous TV movies that end up on Christmas-only TV channels or gathering dust on DVD.

A Christmas CAROL (1999)

Outside of A Christmas Carol, horror cinema tended to avoid festive-themed stories for a long time. While fantasies like The Bishop’s Wife, It’s a Wonderful Life and Bell, Book and Candle played with the supernatural, these were light, feel-good dramas and comedies on the whole, designed to warm the heart rather than stop it dead. TV shows like The Twilight Zone would sometimes have a Christmas themed tale, but again these tended to be the more sentimental stories.

Buy Dead of Night on Blu-ray | DVD from Amazon.co.uk

The only film to really hint at Christmas creepiness was 1945 British portmanteau film Dead of Night, though even here, the Christmas themed tale, featuring a ghostly encounter at a children’s party, is more sentimental than terrifying. Meanwhile, the Mexican children’s film Santa Claus vs The Devil (1959) might see Santa in battle with Satan, but it’s all played for wholesome laughs rather than scares.

Santa Claus vs The Devil

It wasn’t until the 1970s that the darker side of Christmas began to be explored, and it was another British portmanteau film that began it all. The Amicus film Tales from the Crypt (1972) opened with a tale in which murderous Joan Collins finds herself terrorised by an escaped psycho on Christmas Eve, unable to call the police because of her recently deceased hubby lying on the carpet. The looney is dressed as Santa, and her young daughter has been eagerly awaiting his arrival, leading to a suitably mean-spirited twist. The story was subsequently retold in a 1989 episode of the Tales from the Crypt TV series.

Buy Tales from the Crypt on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

This film would lead the way towards decades of Christmas horror. Of course, lots of films had an incidental Christmas connection, taking place in the festive season (or ‘winter’, as it used to be known). Movies like Night Train Murders, Rabid and even the misleadingly named Silent Night Bloody Night have a Christmas connection, but it’s incidental to the story. Those are not the movies we are discussing here. No, to REALLY count as a Christmas film, then the festive celebrations need to be at the heart of events.

Buy Black Christmas on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

Two distinct types of Christmas horror developed. There was the Mad Santa films, like Tales from the Crypt on the one hand, and the ‘bad things happening at Christmas’ movie on the other. The pioneer of the latter was Bob Clark’s 1974 film Black Christmas, which not only pioneered the Christmas horror movie but also was an early template for the seasonal slasher film. Some critics have argued, with good cause, that this is the movie that laid the foundations for Halloween a few years later – a psycho film (with a possibly supernatural slant) set during a holiday, where young women are terrorised by an unseen force. But while John Carpenter’s film would be a smash hit and effectively reinvent the genre, Black Christmas went more or less unnoticed, its reputation only building years later. In 2006, the movie was remade by Glen Morgan in a gorier but less effective loose retelling of the original story.

Black Christmas

Preceding Black Christmas was TV movie Home for the Holidays, in which four girls are picked off over Christmas by a yellow rain-coated killer who may or may not be their wicked stepmother. A decent if unremarkable psycho killer story, the film was directed by TV movie veteran John Llewellyn Moxey.

Buy Dead of Night from Amazon.co.uk

Also made for TV, this time in Britain, The Exorcism was the opening episode of TV series Dead of Night (no connection to the film of that name) broadcast in 1972. One of the few surviving episodes of the series, The Exorcism is a powerful mix of horror and social commentary, as a group of champagne socialists celebrating Christmas in the country cottage that one couple have bought as a holiday home find themselves haunted by the ghosts of the peasants who had starved to death there during a famine. While theatrical in style and poorly shot, the show is nevertheless creepily effective.

1980 saw Christmas Evil (aka You Better Watch Out), a low budget oddity by Lewis Jackson that has since gained cult status. In this film, a put-upon toy factory employee decided to become a vengeful Santa, putting on the red suit and setting out to sort the naughty from the nice. It’s a strange film, mixing pathos, horror and black comedy, yet oddly it works, making it one of the more interesting Christmas horrors out there.

Buy Christmas Evil on Arrow DVD from Amazon.co.uk

Also made in 1980, but rather less successful, was To All a Goodnight, the only film directed by Last House on the Left star David Hess and written by The Incredible Melting Man himself, Alex Rebar. This generic slasher, with a house full of horny sorority girls and their boyfriends being picked off by a psycho in a Santa outfit, is too slow and poorly made to be effective.

The most notorious Christmas horror film hit cinemas in 1984. Silent Night Deadly Night was, in most ways, a fairly generic slasher, with a Santa-suited maniac on the loose taking revenge against the people who have been deemed ‘naughty’. The film itself was nothing special It’s essentially the same premise as Christmas Evil without the intelligence), and might have gone unnoticed if it wasn’t for a provocative advertising campaign that emphasised the Santa-suited psycho and caused such outrage that the film was rapidly pulled from theatres.

Buy Silent Night, Deadly Night on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

Nevertheless, it had made a small fortune in the couple of weeks it played, and continued to be popular when reissued with a less contentious campaign. The film is almost certainly directly responsible for most ‘psycho Santa’ films since – all hoping to cash in on the publicity that comes with public outrage – and spawned four sequels.

Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 is notorious for the amount of footage from the first film that is reused to pad out the story, and was banned in the UK (where the first film was unreleased until 2009). Part 3 was directed, surprisingly, by Monte Hellman (Two Lane Blacktop, Cockfighter) and adds a psychic element to the story. Part 4, directed by Brian Yuzna, drops the killer Santa story entirely and has no connection to the other films beyond the title, telling a story of witchcraft and cockroaches, while Part 5 – The Toymaker – is also unconnected to the other movies.

Buy Silent Night, Deadly Night 3-disc set from Amazon.co.uk

Also made in 1984, but attracting less attention, Don’t Open Till Christmas was that rarest of things, a 1980s British horror film – and one of the sleaziest ever made to boot. Starring and directed by Edmund Purdom from a screenplay by exploitation veterans Derek Ford and Alan Birkinshaw, the film sees a psycho killer, traumatised by a childhood experience at Christmas, who begins offing Santas – or more accurately, anyone he sees dressed as Santa, which in this case includes a porn model, a man at a peepshow and people having sex. With excessive gore, nudity and an overwhelming atmosphere of grubbiness, the film was become a cult favourite for fans of bad taste cinema.

Buy Don’t Open Till Christmas on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

The third Christmas horror of 1984 was the most wholesome and the most successful. Joe Dante’s Gremlins is all too often overlooked when people talk about festive horror, but from the opening credits, with Darlene Love’s Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) belting out over the soundtrack, to the carol singing Gremlins and Phoebe Cates’ story of why she hates Christmas, the festive season is at the very heart of the film. Gremlins remains the most fun Christmas movie ever made, a heady mix of EC-comics ghoulishness, sentiment, slapsick and action with some of the best monsters ever put on film.

Buy Gremlins on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

Gremlins would spawn many knock offs – Ghoulies, Munchies, Critters and more – but only Elves, made in 1989, had a similar Christmas theme. This oddball effort, which proposes that Hitler’s REAL plan for the Master Race was human/elf hybrids. When the elves are revived in a pagan ritual at Christmas, only an alcoholic ex-cop played by Dan Haggerty can stop them. It’s not as much fun as that makes it sound.

Family horror returned in 1993 stop-motion film A Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick and produced / co-written by Tim Burton. This chirpy musical see Pumpkin King Jack Skellington, leader of Halloween Town, stumbling upon Christmas Town and deciding to take it over. It’s a charming and visually lush movie that has unsurprisingly become a festive family favourite over the last twenty years.

Santa Claws

Rather less fun is 1996′s Santa Claws, a typically rotten effort by John Russo, with Debbie Rochon as a Scream Queen being stalked by a murderous fan in a Santa outfit. This low rent affair was pretty forgettable. It is one of several low/no budget video quickies that aimed to cash in on the Christmas horror market with tales of killer Santas – others include Satan Claus (1996), Christmas Season Massacre (2001) and Psycho Santa (2003).

1997 saw the release of Jack Frost (not to be confused with the family film from a year later of the same name). Here, a condemned serial killer is involved in a crash with a truck carrying genetic material, which – of course – causes him to mutate into a killer snowman. Inspired by the Child’s Play movie, Jack Frost is pretty poor, but the outlandish concept and mix of comedy and horror made it popular enough to spawn a sequel in 2000, Jack Frost 2 – Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman.

That might seem as ludicrous as Christmas horror goes, but 1998 saw Feeders 2: Slay Bells, in which the alien invaders of the title are fought off by Santa and his elves. Shot on video with no money, it’s a film you might struggle to get through.

Rather better was the 2000 League of Gentlemen Christmas Special, which mixes the regular characters of the series into a series of stories that are even darker than usual. Mixing vampires, family curses and voodoo into a trilogy of stories that are linked, Amicus style, it’s as creepy as it is funny, and it’s perhaps unsurprising that Mark Gatiss would graduate to writing the more recent BBC Christmas ghost stories.

The League of Gentlemen

Two poplar video franchises collided in 2004′s Puppet Master vs Demonic Toys, with the great-nephew of the original Puppet Master battling an evil organisation that wants his formula to help bring killer toys to life on Christmas Eve. Like most of the films in the series, this is cheap but cheerful, throwaway stuff.

2005′s Santa’s Slay sees Santa reinvented as a demon who is forced to be nice and give toys to children.Released from this demand, he reverts to his murderous ways. Given that Santa is played by fearsome looking wrestler Bill Goldberg, you have to wonder how anyone ever trusted him to come down their chimney and NOT kill them.

Santa’s Slay

Also in 2005 came The Christmas Tale, part of the Spanish Films to Keep You Awake series, in which a group of children find a woman dressed as Santa at the bottom of a well. It turns out that she’s a bank robber and the kids decide to starve her into handing over the stolen cash. But things take a darker turn when she escapes and the kids think she is a zombie. It’s a witty, inventive little tale.

A Christmas Tale

2006 saw Two Front Teeth, where Santa is a vampire assisted by zombie elves in a rather ludicrous effort. Equally silly, Treevenge is a 2008 short film by Jason Eisener, who would go on to shoot Hobo with a Shotgun. It’s the story of sentient Christmas trees who have enough of being cut down and displayed in people’s home and set out to take their revenge.

Treevenge

Recently, the Christmas horror has become more international, with two European films in 2010 offering an insight into different festive traditions. Dick Maas’ Sint (aka Saint) is a lively Dutch comedy horror which features a vengeful Sinterklaas (similar to, but not the same as, Santa Claus) coming back on December 5^th in years when that date coincides with a full moon, to carry out mass slaughter. It’s a fun, fast-paced movie that also offers a rare glimpse into festive traditions that are rather different to anything seen outside the local culture (including the notorious Black Peters).

Finnish film Rare Exports, on the other hand, sees the original (and malevolent) Santa unearthed during an excavation, leading to the discovery of a whole race of Santas, who are then captured and sold around the world. Witty and atmospheric, the film was inspired by Jalmari Helander’s original short film Rare Exports, Inc, a spoof commercial for the company selling the wild Santas.

Rare Exports

But these two high quality, entertaining Christmas horrors were very much the exception to the rule by this stage. The genre was more accurately represented by the likes of 2010′s Yule Die, another Santa suited slasher, or 2011′s Slaughter Claus, a plotless, pretty unwatchable amateur effort from Charles E. Cullen featuring Santa and the Bi-Polar Elf on an unexplained and uninteresting killing spree.

Slaughter Claus

Bloody Christmas (2012) sees a former movie star going crazy as he plays Santa on a TV show. 2009 film Deadly Little Christmas is a ham-fisted retread of slashers like Silent Night Deadly Night and 2002′s One Hell of a Christmas is a Danish Satanic horror comedy. Bikini Bloodbath Christmas (2009) is the third in a series of pointless tits ‘n’ gore satires that fail as horror, soft porn or comedy.

And of course the festive horror movie can’t escape the low budget zombie onslaught – 2009 saw Silent Night, Zombie Night, in 2010 there was Santa Claus Versus the Zombie, 2011 brought us A Cadaver Christmas, in 2012 we had Christmas with the Dead and Silent Night of the Living Dead is currently in pre-production. None of these films are likely to fill you with the spirit of the season.

So although we can hardly say that the Christmas horror film is at full strength, it is at least as prolific as ever. With a remake of Silent Night Deadly Night, now just called Silent Night, playing theatres in 2012, it seems that filmmaker’s fascination with the dark side of the season isn’t going away anytime soon.

Silent Night

Article by David Flint

WolfCop is an upcoming Canadian horror film from writer/director Lowell Dean. The film is set to be released in Cineplex theatres nation wide in 2014. It is the first film chosen for production from the CineCoup Film Accelerator. It stars Jesse Moss, Amy Matysio, Jonathan Cherry, Sarah Lind, Aidan Devine, Corrine Conley and Leo Fafard.

Filming began in October 2013 in Regina, Saskatchewan and surrounding area. It is Dean’s second feature having previously shot 13 Eerie in the same location. The film is set to rely on “retro-style” practical effects instead of computer-generated imagery.

The plot revolves around an alcoholic small town cop who transforms into a werewolf after being cursed when he interrupts a ceremony in the woods.

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Benjamin ‘Bob’ Clark could have been one of the leading lights of the horror genre after making a series of popular and critically acclaimed shockers during the 1970′s. Yet despite being as prolific (often more so) than the likes of Wes Craven, George Romero, Tobe Hooper and David Cronenberg, he never had the same fan following, and was able to leave the genre behind at the end of the decade whilst other directors found themselves pigeon-holed.

Clark made his movie debut in 1967 with the incredibly obscure She-Man, a strange comedy about transvestism which has now vanished without trace. Around the same time, he had been working with writer Alan Ormsby, who he met at the University of Florida. The two of them worked on several plays together, taking it in turn to write and direct, with Ormsby also acting in many of them.

When the two met again in 1971, Clark revealed that he had raised a tiny budget to make a horror film. His story, entitled Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, was an unashamed rip-off of George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, which had been a major hit a few years before despite having been made on a low budget. Hoping to capitalise on the success of that film, Clark had written a story which took many of the elements which made Night so successful and reworked them into a comedy-flavoured story. Ormsby would add his own contributions to the story, and also took the lead role.

Although Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things didn’t match the critical or financial success of Night of the Living Dead, it was popular, and quickly gained a cult following. Noting the popularity of the film, a group of Canadian producers invited Clark and Ormsby to travel North to make another horror movie. This time, Ormsby wrote the screenplay, initially called The Veteran but eventually released in different territories as Deathdream and Dead of Night in 1972.

Deathdream eschewed the comic elements of Children… and instead offered a downbeat, bleak and subtle twist of the old Monkey’s Paw story which illustrated the old adage ‘be careful what you wish for because it might happen’. In this case, a woman who’s son has been killed in Vietnam wishes him to return to life – he does, but as a bloodthirsty zombie. Critically praised, Deathdream remains one of the sleeper classics of Seventies horror cinema.

In 1974, Ormsby and Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things co-star Jeff Gillen made the Ed Gein-inspired Deranged. Although not credited, Clark served as a producer on the film.

His next film as director would be the influential Black Christmas, again shot in Canada in 1974. This psycho movie predated Halloween yet had many of the same elements, and boasts a genuinely unnerving ending, where the unidentified killer is still very much at large. It reinforced Clark’s growing reputation as a horror movie director amongst hardcore fans.

In 1976, he had a change of pace with the thriller Breaking Point before helming the popular British/Canadian co-production Murder By Decree in 1979. This moody gothic piece had an all-star cast and successfully combined the fictional character of Sherlock Holmes with the all-too-real serial killer Jack the Ripper. The two characters had met before in 1965′s A Study in Terror, but Clark’s film was in a class of its own. One of the very best Holmes movies (and almost certainly the finest Ripper film) it boasted a fine performance by Christopher Plummer as the great detective, and is unquestionably Clark’s best work.

Clark may have looked set to continue on the path of urban gothic horror during the 1980′s, but his career instead took a very different turn as he directed the huge hit Porkys in 1981. This immature sex comedy was a huge hit, spawning sequels and imitations throughout the decade, and its success propelled Clark very much into the Hollywood establishment. He never made another horror film (although he was an uncredited producer on 1991 movie Popcorn, written – and initially directed – by Alan Ormsby).

Instead, his career varied from comedies like Loose Cannons (1990), action movies (Turk 182 – 1985) and syrupy family films (the perennial favourite A Christmas Story, 1983). These films have had varied levels of critical and commercial success, and few of them suggest the work of an auteur – rather, Clark seems very much like a director for hire, a safe pair of hands who can make all types of movies, even if they are The Karate Dog and Baby Genuises 2 – Return of the Super Babies, his two 2004 productions that would be, tragically, his final films.

Clark intimated in interviews around the time that his early films began to appear on DVD that he planned remakes of Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things and Deathdream. Sadly, he was killed, along with his son, in a head-on collision in Los Angeles in April 2007.

Written by David Flint, Horrorpedia

Alan Ormsby has been something of a jack-of-all-trades in the film industry: not only a highly successful and award winning screenwriter, but also director, actor, make-up effects technician and author. And although his career has taken him far from the world of the horror movie, it remains a genre for which he has fond feelings.

As a child, Ormsby grew up watching classic horror and fantasy films like King Kong and Disney’s Pinocchio, and was fascinated by animation. His early ambition was to be a cartoonist, and would hold strange garage shows for the local kids where he told stories and displayed illustrations on huge sheets of paper. After a while, Ormsby graduated to shooting these garage shows on 8mm film, and slowly his interests moved from cartoons to film-making, and acting in particular.

In the late Sixties, he met Bob Clark whilst the two of them were attending the University of Miami. Clark was an aspiring playwright and Ormsby too was developing his writing skills. Before long the two of them were working together on plays, sometimes writing, sometimes directing, sometimes acting. It was the start of a working relationship that would last several years.

When Clark raised a pittance to make a low budget horror film which would become Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things, he turned to Ormsby to help him. Although mainly written by Clark, Ormsby would rework elements of the screenplay enough to secure a co-writer credit. He also took the lead role in a cast that was mainly made up of friends and family (Ormsby’s wife Anya took the female lead). On top of this, he also provided the make-up effects for the film, which not only included the expected gore effects but also several zombies. These walking corpses looked surprisingly effective given the low budget and lack of time available.

Children… was successful enough to bring Clark and Ormsby to the attention of a canadian production company who hired them to make another horror film. This time, Ormsby wrote the screenplay for a movie he called The Veteran. Unlike the jokey Children…, this was a dark, fairly low-key tale inspired by J.W. Jacobs’ classic story The Monkey’s Paw, transposed to 1970′s America. In Ormsby’s version of the tale, a soldier killed in Vietnam is wished back to life by his mother, only to return as a zombie in need of blood to live. The film was retitled several times – at one point known as The Night Andy Came Home, it eventually saw release as both Deathdream and Dead of Night in 1972.

In 1974, Ormsby worked with another Children… alumnus, Jeff Gillen, on Deranged, a fairly accurate retelling of the crimes of Ed Gein, the inspiration behind Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Although the Gein character was renamed Ezra Cobb, the film stuck mainly to the facts, told with a strong sense of gallows humour. A fine twitchy performance from Roberts Blossom and gore effects by a young Tom Savini (supervised by Ormsby) have made the film a cult classic over the last thirty years.

In 1975, Ormsby wrote a book called Movie Monsters  – Monster Make-Up & Monster Shows To Put On, which gave kids instructions on mixing fake blood and horror make-up, plus details of how to run effective garage shows, much like those he used to run himself. He also created the doll Hugo: man of a Thousand Faces (a reference to Lon Chaney).

In 1977, Ormsby would provide the make-up for Ken Weiderhorn’s Nazi zombie film Shock Waves (aka Death Corps).

Throughout the 1980′s and 1990′s, Ormsby would work as a writer on a wide variety of films and TV shows. He won acclaim for his screenplay for My Bodyguard in 1980, and returned to horror a year later, writing Paul Schrader’s controversial remake of Cat People. He also worked again with Bob Clark on Porkys II: The Next Day in 1983.

For TV, he wrote science fiction film Almost Human (1987) and thrillers Indecency (1992), The Disappearance of Nora (1993) and Deadly Web (1996), the latter an early cyberstalking tale.

In 1991, Clark asked Ormsby to write and direct Popcorn, a modern horror film that he was producing. Unfortunately, there were a series of disagreements between Ormsby and studio executives, and he left the project (his screenplay is credited to Tod Hackett). In 1996, he wrote crime thriller The Substitute, about a Vietnam vet who goes undercover as a teacher to root out gang violence. Amazingly, the film has spawned three sequels!

Ormsby’s work has slowed down in the last decade, suggesting that he is now enjoying retirement, though he still pops up for interviews about his early work.

Bio by David Flint

Some animals are guaranteed to inspire feelings of disgust and fear in cinema audiences, and not more so than the humble rat. While many people keep rats as pets, even they will see a difference between their domesticated companions and the sewer-dwelling, disease carrying vermin that we are continually told that none of us are ever more than six feet from (an urban myth perhaps, but with a certain basis in facts – there are a LOT of rats in the world). Collective memories of the black death, horror stories about rats climbing out of toilet bowls or being found in babies cribs and the mere possibility of waking up to find a rat siting on your bed, possibly eating your face (and yes, it’s happened!) ensure that rats will never be seen as cuddly by the majority. And with news stories about oversized ‘super rats’ or claims that they are becoming resistant to poisons, it’s not hard to see why rats make many people shudder. There is nothing we can do to stop their rise, it seems, and if filmmakers are to be believed, even a nuclear holocaust won’t slow them down.

Rats have long been used by filmmakers as shorthand for disgust, decay and dirt. Think of how many times you have seen someone exploring an old building, a gothic castle or a disused warehouse in a horror film where the sense of creepiness is emphasised by scuttling rodents. Rats have also been the food for mutated throwbacks and subhuman monsters, to show how depraved they are – having your character snatch up a rat and start munching on it is sure to repulse the audience.

In George Orwell’s futuristic fear of a totalitarian state novel 1984, protagonist Winston Smith is driven to breaking point when confronted with his worst fear – rats – in Room 101. This was memorably shown in the controversial BBC TV version of the story broadcast live in 1954, with a pre-Hammer Films star Peter Cushing suitably terrified as a ‘rat helmet’ is placed on his head. Viewers of early British TV were thrilled and appalled in equal measure. This showed the power that rats had to terrify not only Smith, but viewers in general. Yet, oddly, it wasn’t until the 1970s that rats became the central figures in horror movies.

British eco sci-fi series Doomwatch gave a hint of the rodent horrors to come in 1970 episode Tomorrow, the Rat, in which a new strain of voracious, flesh eating, intelligent and poison-resistant rats is created by a scientist – as you do – and some inevitably escape to attack Londoners. It’s an interesting story, let down by some frankly laughable special effects – the scenes of rubber rats sewn to the clothes of actors who frantically try to look as if they are under attack became a staple of comedy shows looking to sneer at low budget productions of the past, and truth be told, these moments are pretty ludicrous. But the episode as a whole – and the series in general – is worth a look.

The most famous and successful rat movie was Willard, made in 1971. The film follows social misfit Willard (Bruce Davison), who develops a strange relationship with the rats that surround the old, dilapidated house he lives in with his mother. After the old woman dies, this odd relationship increases, as a large number of rats begin living in the house and he develops a close bond with two unusually smart one – Socrates (who is, rather impossibly, white) and Ben. He soon starts using the rats to take revenge on those who have made his life a misery, namely his exploitative boss Mr Martin (Ernest Borgnine). But when Martin is torn apart by the rats in revenge for him killing Socrates, Willard is snapped back into reality and decides he must get rid of the rats – but by this time, it’s too late.

An intriguing and effective psychological horror film, Willard was a surprise box office hit and would inspire imitators like Stanley (where snakes took the place of rats) as well as spawning a sequel, Ben.

Also in 1971, rats were one of the Biblical plagues used by The Abominable Dr Phibes to take revenge against the doctors he blamed for his wife’s death. Actually, rats were not one of the plagues in the Bible and the scene where a handful are found in the plane being piloted by Dr Kitaj (Peter Gilmore) is possibly the weakest of the film, with the clearly disinterested rodents hardly looking like much of a threat.

Ben, made in 1972, sees the titular character – who is considerably smarter than the average rat – leading an army of rodents after escaping the purge on the household after the events of Willard. While the scenes of rat attacks and vast colonies of the creatures in sewers ramp up the horror of the first film, the movie hedges its bets by also introducing a maudlin story where Ben is adopted by a sickly child. This rather schizophrenic storyline ensured that the film would be less successful than Willard, and allowed for the inclusion of the teeth-grindingly sentimental title song, performed by Michael Jackson (who would trouble the horror genre again many years later, with Thriller)  – possibly the only love song to a rat that has ever entered the pop charts.

The popularity of Willard didn’t see a massive explosion of rat cinema – most imitators copied the story but used other animals – but the ever opportunist and eccentric Andy Milligan tried to ride the wave with The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here! in 1972. This film had started life in 1969 as one of Milligan’s London-lensed low budget period horror films, this time about a family of werewolves, but had sat on the shelf of infamous producer William Mishkin until 1972, when the director was instructed to add around 20 minutes of rat footage to the film in order to cash in on Willard and Ben. The resulting film is as weird as you might expect. Milligan has seen a degree of critical reassessment over the last few years, and it’s true that much of his work is less ‘bad’ as it is bizarre. The unique Milligan style is on full display in this film.

Also possibly showing some influence from Willard at this time was The Pied Piper, a British version of the famous fairy story made in 1972 by French director Jacques Demy. This is a darker tale than you might expect. Set at the time of the Black Death and with English folkie Donovan as the Piper, it mixes in corruption, revenge, anti-semitism in a film that is often an uneasy mix of children’s fantasy and adult drama. Towards the conclusion of this offbeat production, the piper takes his revenge on the corrupt townsfolk by unleashing the rats he has promised to rid them of, resulting in amazing and unsettling scenes of rodent rampage – at one point they even burst out of a wedding cake! It’s a curious, unique film that is sadly rarely seen today, possibly because of the strange mix of styles it contains.

Paul Naschy battled rats in his appearance in the title role of The Hunchback of the Morgue, one of his livelier films. In a controversial scene in this 1972 film, when he finds them eating his beloved’s corpse, Naschy sets the rats on fire – no special effect this, real rats were burned!

If regular sized rats are scary, then imagine how much worse giants rats would be! That, I assume, was the thinking of legendary B-movie maestro Bert I. Gordon, when he embarked on a ‘loose’ (to put it kindly) adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Food of the Gods in 1976. Mr BIG had long had a fixation on oversized creatures – his earlier films include The Amazing Colossal Man, War of the Colossal Beast, Earth vs. The Spider and Village of the Giants, and he would follow this film with Empire of the Ants. In The Food of the Gods, a couple discover a mysterious and miraculous food stuff, resembling porridge, bubbling out the ground and start to feed it to their chickens, as you do. This causes massive growth in the birds. But unfortunately, the local rats, wasps and worms have also developed a taste for the stuff, and soon a small band of survivors are being terrorised by the giant rodents (the wasps and worms only play a minor role in the proceedings).

This is a surprisingly slow moving and unsurprisingly inept effort, with Bert’s trademark shoddy special effects, yet it proved to be an unexpected box office hit. In 1989, an overly belated direct-to-video sequel was made – Food of the Gods 2 (aka Gnaw: Food of the Gods II) that had no connection to the earlier film, this time telling the unlikely story of a misguided scientist who grows giant rats whilst trying to find a cure for baldness! These oversized rodents are released by animal rights activists and cause the expected amount of chaos in a film that is notable only for making the original Food of the Gods look like art.

The same year, Yugoslavian satire The Rat Saviour sees a writer discover that rats are learning how to imitate and ultimate replace humans. Much like Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, the film is a comment on the loss of humanity and a biting criticism of the socialist state.

Also in 1976, British TV series The New Avengers took a rare step into the fantasy world with the episode ‘Gnaws’ by Dennis Spooner. While the 1960s series The Avengers was often fantastical, this 1970s spin-off tended to be more ‘realistic’ and concerned itself with espionage rather  than science fiction on the whole. But there were exceptions, and Gnaws was the most obvious, with Steed, Purdy and Gambit chasing a giant rat through the London sewers!

Showing alongside The New Avengers on TV in 1976 was Beasts, a horror anthology by Nigel Kneale, which included the episode During Barty’s Party. In this two hander, a middle aged couple find themselves besieged by ‘super rats’ (the titular radio show fills in what is happening in the outside world). We never see the rats in this story, the horror being effectively conveyed by sound effects and the growing panic of the couple.

The 1922 Nosferatu had featured scenes of rat filled coffins that added to the general creepiness of the film (and similarly, 1931′s Dracula added rats to the creatures infesting the Count’s castle), but Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake emphasised the rat infestation much more, showing Dracula as, quite literally, the plague – the rats he brings with him spread disease just as much as the vampire does.

In 1974, James Herbert’s novel The Rats had become a massive success in the UK, spawning a whole ‘animal attack’ pulp fiction sub genre and eventually leading to several sequels. This graphic and lurid novel about giant rats seemed ripe for filming, and in 1982, it was finally shot by Enter the Dragon director Robert Clouse for Hong Kong’s Golden Harvest. Relocating the action to Canada (doubtless for the tax breaks that encouraged many productions during this period), the resulting movie was decidedly less outrageous than Herbert’s novel, and proved to be a pretty ineffectual and slow moving affair. Things were not helped by the low budget, which didn’t allow for decent rat effects – notoriously, the giant rats were played by dachshunds in rat suits, which fooled nobody. In Britain, the film was released on video as The Rats, but elsewhere – where Herbert’s novel was less well known – it went out as Deadly Eyes, which probably just confused potential viewers more.

Curiously, it wasn’t the only Canadian rat film at the time, as 1983′s Of Unknown Origin also features rampaging rodents, though this time on a more domestic scale, as Peter Weller (future Robocop) find himself becoming increasingly obsessed with catching a huge rat that is in his house, even if it means destroying the property in the process. As much an allegorical tale as anything (Weller’s character is literally caught in a rat race and his desperation to the marauding beast represents his ineffectuality in face of his desire to ‘own’ his own space), the film is well worth seeking out. For a more comedic version of the same story, check out the 1997 film Mouse Hunt.

Director Bruno Mattei had featured a scene involving a zombie rat in his entertainingly trashy Zombie Creeping Flesh in 1981, and he later expanded on the idea in Rats: Night of Terror, a post-apocalyptic tale where survivors of the nuclear holocaust stumble upon a village full of food and water. Unfortunately, it’s also full of mutant rats… deliriously trashy and gory, it’s no surprise that the film has built up quite a cult following over the years.

1983 horror anthology Nightmares featured the tale Night of the Rat, where a young couple argue over what to do about a rat that is apparently living in their house – Clair (Veronica Cartwright) wants to call in an exterminator, but Steven (Richard Masur) is convinced he can sort out the problem with rat traps. But as things get worse, with huge holes appearing in the walls and the family cat vanishing, it soon becomes clear that this is no ordinary rat, but a giant variation. Directed by Joseph Sergeant, the film was originally made for TV, but was considered too scary for the small screen and so benefitted from a successful theatrical release.

Giant rats were also among the horrors facing survivors in the post apocalypse comedy Radioactive Dreams, made in 1985. This is as Eighties a film as you could hope (or dread) to find, and the giant rodents are a mere aside to the action involving cannibals, mutants and roving bands of Mad Max inspired punks.

The same year saw Terror in the Swamp, in which a mutant cross between a nutria (a type of swamp rat) and a human, being bred for the fur industry, escapes and goes on a killing spree. Set in Louisiana, this is a classic example of a local horror production, and is probably for rat horror completists only.

In 1987, the spectacularly tasteless Ratman emerged from Italy, courtesy of director ‘Anthony Ascot’ [aka Giuliano Carnimeo]. Starring dwarf Nelson de la Rosa, this was the story of a homicidal rat/monkey hybrid creating by a mad scientist in the Caribbean, for reasons that are never made clear. Italian exploitation veterans David Warbeck and Janet Agren turn up in this bizarre effort.

Stephen King’s short story Graveyard Shift was filmed in 1990. The film takes place during the night shift clean up of an abandoned mill that has just reopened, where the workers find themselves attacked by rats… and something much worse. The film invariably pads King’s original story out with ‘personality conflicts’ that add little to the story – you would be better served sticking to the prose.

The third season of TV series Monsters, broadcast in 1990, opened up with Stressed Environment, where super intelligent rats bred by scientists fight back against plans to close the lab and exterminate them, even crafting miniature weapons to attack their enemies with. It’s an interesting idea, but it’s rendered ridiculous when we see the rats, which are terrible stop-motion models. I’m not sure the sight of spear-carrying rats could ever be certain to cause shrieks of horror rather than shrieks of laughter, but the monsters here are especially rotten.

1991′s The Demon Rat is set in the near future, when environmental pollution has reached new levels and toxic chemicals have created mutant animals, including a giant man-rat! This Spanish film mixes science fiction and satire in a fairly effective manner.

In 1995, Bram Stoker’s short story Burial of the Rats was adapted – if that is the word – by producer Roger Corman. As the plot involves a young Bram Stoker being captured by scantily clad female warriors who use hungry rats to punish evil men, it should go without saying that any connection to the original short story begins and ends with the title. It should not be confused with the 2007 Japanese film of the same name, which has no connection to Stoker or rodent rampages.

Altered Species, made in 2001, sees rats attacking partygoers after the scientist host pours his new formula down the sink. For some reason, one of the rats has mutated into a giant.

2002′s The Rats has no connection to James Herbert, but instead has a department store infested by mutant rats – clearly, regular rats were no longer cutting it as horror creatures by this time. A year later saw the release of the similarly titled Rats, which takes place in a multi-purpose institution that houses both rich drug addicts and the criminally insane. It also turns out to be home to an army of super-intelligent giant rats, the result of past medical experiments of Dr Winslow (Ron Perlman).

2001 German movie Ratten: Sie Werden Dich Kriege (also known as Revenge of the Rats) sees an army of rats brought out onto the streets during a garbage collectors strike. To make things worse, these rats are carrying a deadly virus! Jörg Lühdorff’s film was popular enough to spawn a 2004 sequel, Ratten 2 – Sie Kommen Wieder!

2002′s Nezulla is a Japanese film in which a half rat, half human monster that has been created by American scientists goes on the rampage in Tokyo. Inevitably, the film is let down by its shot-on-video visuals, but might appeal to fans of Eighties monster movies.

Willard was remade in 2003, with Crispin Glover in the title role. Directed by Glen Morgan, the film sticks pretty much to the story of the original film, and is quite effective in its own right, but failed to connect with audiences.

2006 film Mulberry Street sees an infection turning people into mutant rat creatures. Closer to the zombie genre than usual rat movies (the film was retitled Zombie Virus on Mulberry Street for UK release), this is one of the better recent films in that overdone genre.

Most recently, 2011′s Rat Scratch Fever sees giant mutant space rats, who have stowed away on a spacehip and are now terrorising Los Angeles. Cheap, trashy and unashamed, the film is likely to appeal to anyone who enjoys watching low rent giant monster movies on SyFy.

The days of the serious rat horror film would seem to be over for now, which is a pity – there is still a lot of potential in the genre I would think. Perhaps one day, an enterprising filmmaker will once again remember that rats are both omnipresent and terrifying for many, and exploit that to its full potential…

Article by David Flint

Afflicted is a 2013 Canadian action horror film written and directed by Clif Prowse, Derek Lee, both of whom star. The rest of the cast are Baya Rehaz, Edo Van Breemen, Zachary Gray.

Plot:

Two best friends set out on the trip of a lifetime around the world. Their journey, documented every step of the way, soon takes a dark and unexpected turn after an encounter with a beautiful woman in Paris leaves one of them mysteriously afflicted.

Reviews:

” … the film works so well is that you really care about these men and you feel the pain and fear Derek is dealing with both directly with him, and through Clif’s eyes. It is because these men matter, that they are important that the dire, scary situation they find themselves in resonates as well as it does. Often scary and with a real emotional core, Afflicted is an unexpected gem that I hope gets some serious support when released.” Flay Otters, Horror-Movies.ca

“Afflicted is a small concept thriller that attempted to fake its way into becoming a feature film, but there just isn’t enough story to sustain 45 minutes let alone this movie’s miniscule 85 minute running time. About a third of the way through the film should have ended, it had run its course and could have come to a close with a satisfying, creepy and freakishly humorous conclusion as Derek proves killing himself is not the answer to his newfound vampire affliction.” Brad Brevet, Rope of Silicon

“Afflicted is also really fucking scary. Lee and Prowse do not waste a shot, do not waste a moment, in telling their story. Through sound, the careful use of effects, and through great character work, Prowse and Lee take an intimate story and turn it into something larger than itself.  It explores the genre with true grace, intelligence, and terror; for a monster to truly work onscreen, you have to love it a little. Afflicted loves its monster, and so do we.” Ain’t It Cool News

“Afflicted is the perfect film through which one can cast off the negativity associated with found footage and simply call it what it is: a unique and engaging way to present the narrative. It doesn’t need to be a found footage movie, but the perspectives Derek and Clif give to his physical changes and the subsequent mess they find themselves in allows for some incredibly effective and creepy horror filmmaking.” Brad McHargue, Dread Central

IMDb

Prom Night is a 1980 American/Canadian slasher film directed by Paul Lynch and starring Leslie Nielsen and Jamie Lee Curtis. The original music score was composed by Paul Zaza and Carl Zittrer. The film was given a limited release in the United States on July 18, 1980 (eventually going wide on August 15), and was considerably popular, especially within the drive-in theater circuit. It was released in Canada in September that year, and went on to become the country’s highest-grossing horror film of 1980.

During the video rental boom years, it spawned three unconnected-except-by-title sequels: Prom Night II: Hello Mary Lou (1987), Prom Night III: The Last Kiss (1990) and Prom Night IV: Deliver Us From Evil (1992). A remake, Prom Night, was released in 2008.

For six long years, Hamilton High School seniors Kelly, Jude, Wendy, and Nick have been hiding the truth of what happened to ten-year-old Robin Hammond the day her broken body was discovered near an old abandoned convent. The foursome kept secret how they taunted Robin – backed her into a corner until, frightened, she stood on a window ledge… and fell to her death. Though an accident, the then-twelve-year-olds feared they’d be held responsible and vowed never to tell. But someone else was there that day… watching. And now, that someone is ready to exact murderous revenge-on prom night…

According to director Paul Lynch in the documentary Going to Pieces: The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film (2006), he was having difficulty securing financing until Jamie Lee Curtis signed on. Once the film was shot, Paramount expressed interest in distributing the movie. However, they only wanted to open it in 300 theaters whereas Avco Embassy Pictures offered to release it in 1200 theaters. As a result Avco released Prom Night. and Paramount released another independent slasher film… Friday the 13th.

Buy Prom Night on DVD from Amazon.com 

“A lot of people don’t like Prom Night because it’s slow and not very wet with grue, and I’d like to say they’re WRONG! But my inner-Buddha democratic self will not allow it. For Vegan Voorhees, it doesn’t get better than disco NRG, an axe-wielding killer and Jamie Lee fucking Curtis – what more could there be!?” Vegan Voorhees

“Prom Night may be cheesy and it may seem terribly dated today, but it is the crowning example of the slasher film in its classical stage. Before disco cynicism or post-modern reflexivity, Prom Night is a simple and entertaining piece of 1980 nostalgia. Black Christmas may be more artistic, My Bloody Valentine more frightening and Happy Birthday to Me more surprising, but when it comes to Canadian slashers, no film is more fun Prom Night, because as even the theme song knows, ” At the prom night? everything is alright!”" Canuxploitation

“The most terrifying thing about Prom Night is the ruthless children at the beginning yelling KILL! KILL! KILL!. Little bastards. Other than that, it’s not scary and is ultimately pretty forgettable. Maybe that’s why I’ve seen it so many times. I’ll probably watch it again in a few months, then ask myself why I keep watching it. Well, there’s always Jamie Lee on the light-up dance floor.” Final Girl

Buy the Prom Night Collection Box Set from Amazon.co.uk

Wikipedia | IMDb

WH

Thralls (also known as Blood Angels is a 2004 (released March 2005) Canadian horror film directed by Ron Oliver (Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II), from a screenplay by Lisa Morton and Brett Thompson. It stars Lorenzo Lamas, Leah Cairns, Siri Baruc, Crystal Lowe, Lisa Marie Caruk, Sonya Saolmaa, and Moneca Delain.

Plot:

A group of six women, known as thralls, are in fact half-vampires. They are joined by Ashley (Baruc), the sister of one of the thralls, and together they attempt to escape from the control of Mr. Jones (Lamas). Leslie opens a dance club in Iowa, while waiting the arrival of her sister Ashley, who grew up in an abusive household. Her father dies of a heart attack, causing Ashley to live with her sister.

Leslie saves Ashley from a group of muggers, and drains one of them of his blood. At the club, a transvetite threatens to expose the girls for what they really are. Ashley learns that Leslie and her friends are half-vampire. They stole the Necronomicon to defeat Jones, who plans on taking over the world by unleashing Belial, a demon. It is said the Belial tried to make vampires in his own image, but it resulted into making them look human. It is also said that the ritual will begin on the winter solstice, which is the longest night of the year…

Reviews:

” … a pretty funny movie if you approach it in the right mood, and the second half has its tongue so firmly entrenched in its cheek that you wonder why the movie wasn’t sold as a comedy instead of a B-grade take on “Charlie’s Angels”. The script has nary an idea what it actually is, although that doesn’t stop it from being hilarious, especially at the hour mark, when Lorenzo Lamas shows up to crack wise until the end credits roll.” Beyond Hollywood

“Yet another movie about vampires and the plot travels familiar ground. The bulk of the film takes place at an all night rave during summer solstice and for the bulk of this time very little happens in the way of gore or action. The girl’s running the bar kind of look like they are working at the Coyote Ugly and not at a rave. The look of the film resembles that of the something one would expect to see while watching music videos on MTV.” 10K Bullets

“Do you want to know the worst part? It tries to be “quippy.” The dialog sounds like it’s written by someone who suffered massive head trauma, removed 85% of his brain, and then woke up deciding he could write like Joss Whedon. The puns, the quips, the “hysterical” one-liners fly like feces and ejaculate from an angry pack of monkeys. I’m undecided as to who the most hateful offender is—Lorenzo Lamas himself, or a “comic relief” nerdy Asian guy who says “yo” a lot and calls himself “Dough Boy” to sound like he’s street. I would happily murder either one of them, vampire or not.” Meadhall of the Comitatus

Wikipedia | IMDb

WH

Deadly Tracks is a 2014 Canadian supernatural horror film project written and directed by Sebastian Dove that is currently seeking funding via indiegogo.

Synopsis:

A group of young filmmakers are set to make the best, worst horror movie ever. What they discover on an abandoned railway will change their lives. For ever…

The Drownsman is a 2014 Canadian horror film directed by Chad Archibald from a screenplay by himself and Cody Calahan (Antisocial). It stars Michelle Mylett, Caroline Korycki, Gemma Bird Matheson, Sydney Kondruss, Clare Bastable, Ry Barrett. The film will have its first showing at this year’s Cannes Film Festival market.

Press Release:

‘After almost drowning in a lake, Madison finds herself bound to a life of fear. Unable to describe what happened to her during the moments she was underwater, Madison begins to develop hydrophobia: an abnormal fear of water. Crippled by her post trauma, Madison attempts to shut out the world around her but, her fear intensifies when she begins to be haunted by the vision of an evil figure. After watching her struggle for over a year, Madison’s four friends stage an intervention in a desperate attempt to help. In doing so, they accidentally open a floodgate to a dark place where none of them are safe. As Madison and her friends dive deeper into the dark history of the evil that haunts them, they’re dragged one by one to a horrifying place where they may never return.

“We set out to make a film that created a new supernatural villain like the classic horror films of Clive Barker and Wes Craven, something that has become rare in the horror industry over the last decade,” explains writer/director Chad Archibald. “Similar to Freddy Kruger, Michael Myers, Pinhead and Jason Voorhees, we wanted to create a villain with a rich history and a juicy hook that could make an appearance in a few viewers nightmares.”

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American Nightmare is a 1981 (released 1983) Canadian horror film directed by Don McBrearty (The Haunting of Lisa) from a screenplay by John Sheppard (Mania, Never Cry Werewolf) based on a story by John Gault and Steven Blake. Ray Sager – who played Montag the Magnificent The Wizard of Gore – produced. It stars Lawrence S. Day, Lora Staley, Neil Dainard, Lenore Zann, Claudia Udy, Page Fletcher, Michael Ironside (Scanners, Visiting Hours), Larry Aubrey, Michael Copeman, Bunty Webb, Tom Harvey, Paul Bradley, Peter Lavender, Martin Doyle, Don MacQuarrie, Alexandra Paul (Christine), Nancy Oliver.

Plot:

Wealthy pianist Eric Blade (Lawrence Day) tries to locate his missing runaway sister Isabelle in an unnamed city [actually Toronto] with the help of her roommate. He uncovers a sleazy trail of sex shops, strip joints, prostitution, drug addiction, incest, blackmail…and a serial killer. The police aren’t really interested in a missing hooker until they find out she is the daughter of a wealthy businessman.

Reviews:

“Overall, it’s more of a thriller than a straight-ahead slasher flick; it also bares more breasts than blood. But American Nightmare is interesting as a hybrid of slasher and giallo with a couple of key characters (Staley, Zann) who make you care about what’s going on, and a thoughtful subtext (that’s right, you heard me) that adds meat to the mystery.” Dave Stewart, Retro Slashers

Buy American Nightmare on DVD from Amazon.com

“Despite its title, American Nightmare is a uniquely Canadian perspective on the depravity of our southern neighbors. While the message may be a tad too pessimistic, and the overall feeling of the film may be gritty, dark and depressing, it is nevertheless a quality motion picture. The giallo film in Europe was a way for filmmakers to comment on the physical and moral decay of its city streets, and McBrearty has done something brave in reviving the fundamentals of the genre to offer a similar critique on America. If Canadians have to make American-based movies, they may as well flavour it with a little homegrown pessimism. American Nightmare, indeed!” Rhett Miller, Canuxploitation!

“Where it lacks in an engaging story and consistent acting, it totally makes up for with working with the uglier side of the underbelly of city life, specifically the red-light district. There are lots of street scenes with skin-flick marquees and sex shops, as well as some footage shot inside an actual sex shop. The female lead is a stripper, as are her friends, and they all show their stuff, resulting in a few prolonged strip teases to pad the movie nicely.” Todd Jordan, Rock! Shop! Pop!

Choice dialogue: “You come to a funeral to apologise?”

Wikipedia | IMDb