Out of the Dark(1988) Movie Review

Trailer here.

Out of the Dark is a 1988 horror movie directed by Michael Schroeder and starring Karen Black and Bud Cort.

The movie begins with a man calling a sex phone line. A woman called Camille(Black) is starting work at the sex line. A creepy clown talks to a woman in the park. He hits her with a baseball bat and kills her. The cops are on the case. She was working at the sex line. Kevin (Cameron Dye) is a photographer who also knows some of the girls at the line.  The cops pay him a visit. The cops are led by Lieutenant Myers(Tracey Walter) and McDonald. They question Kevin about the dead girl. A man called Dave (Cort) is working in the same building as the sex line. He is an accountant and he likes a woman called Barbara. She is giving one of the sex line workers, Camille, a ride home. The clown is following them.  Barbara drops her home and the clown follows her. He forces her to crash her car and then he kills her.

Kevin gets another visit from the cops. His girlfriend is Kristi and she works at the sex line. She is upset about Kevin being accused of being the killer. The boss, Ruth(Black) is not happy about all of this. A witness saw the killer and she says that he wore a clown mask. The cops decide to set up a phoneline to draw the killer out. The clown calls Camille and he gets angry with her. Later on, he finds her and he kills her. The cops realise that the clown outsmarted them. They find Camille's body. Ruth is very upset at the cops for causing the killer to strike.

Kevin and Kristi suspect Dave. They discover sex items in his office. Kevin and Kristi go to a seedy motel to hide. The killer just happens to be at the same motel. He murders a prostitute. The motel owner discovers the body. Along come the cops and Kevin and Kristi see them. They make a run for it but get caught. Kevin is taken to jail and he calls Kristi and tells her to go back to Dave's office and find something to incriminate him. She finds stuff but gets caught by Dave. He chases her and tries to kill her but he gets hit by a car and dies. The cops think that he was the killer. Kevin is cleared and released.

Kevin and Kristi go to his place in the desert. Kristi finds a clown mask in his trunk. She realises that Kevin was the real killer. He has a gun and he tells her that he used to be a professional clown. He tries to kill her and she ends up shooting him. He isn't dead though and he comes back to finish her off when he is shot dead by Meyers who found them just in time. This is a decent thriller/horror. It has some good stuff in it even though it is a little cheesy in parts. I think that it is worth a look and I will give it a 5/10.

Silent Scream Movie Review

Trailer here.

 Silent Scream is a 1979 horror film directed by Denny Harris and starring Rebecca Balding, Cameron Mitchell, Barbara Steele and Yvonne DeCarlo.

A college girl called Scotty(Balding) needs a place to stay as she is going to live off campus. She finds a place that she likes. She meets Doris(Juli Andelman) who lives in the house. She also meets Peter(John Widelock) who is moving in too. Mason(Brandon Rearden) is in charge of renting out the rooms. Mason lives there with his mother, Mrs. Engels(De Carlo). There is another roommate called Jack(Steve Doubet). Scotty and Jack like each other. Peter gets drunk and he falls asleep on the beach. He gets killed. The cops are on the case. Lt. McGiver(Mitchell) and Sgt Rusin(Avery Schreiber) ask some questions. Mason talks to his mother about it. She is upset. Jack and Scotty go to the beach and they kiss.

Doris decides that she wants to leave the house. She is in the basement when a woman comes and attacks her. She runs off up a secret stairway. Scotty goes looking for Doris and finds the secret stairs. She finds the woman who killed Doris. She is going to attack Scotty but Mrs. Engels stops her. Jack is looking for Scotty and Doris. Mason and his mother don't know what to do with Scotty. Mason tells his mother that they should have sold the house. Mrs. Engels tells him the truth about the woman, who is called Victoria(Steele). She was pregnant and she tried to kill herself. Then she was put into a psychiatric hospital and her brain was messed up after a lobotomy.  Mason is the child of Victoria. Jack arrives but Mason  hits him and knocks him out. The cops find out about Victoria.. They realise that she has been living at the house. They run over there.

Mason starts to go crazy. He turns on his mother and he shoots her by mistake. He shoots Victoria next and then himself. Victoria isn't dead, though. She tries to kill Scotty. Jack wakes up and he hears the noise. The cops arrive. Scotty ends up pushing Victoria onto her own knife and she dies. This is an entertaining slasher film. I like the cast. It has Barbara Steele and Cameron Mitchell, who are both well known to horror audiences. I like the story and the ending is pretty good. It is definitely worth a look for fans of slashers or 80's horror. I will give it a 5/10.

Graduation Day Movie Review

Trailer here.

Graduation Day is a 1981 horror movie directed by Herb Freed and starring Christopher George, Linnea Quigley, Michael Pataki.

A girl called Laura dies on the running track during a meet. A few months later, her sister Anne, arrives back in town to attend a graduation ceremony at the high school where her sister will be honoured. She is in the Navy. She sees one of Laura's friends, Paula. She is jogging through town. Someone is following her. She gets killed by the person. Paula's teammates are waiting for her. When she doesn't show up, they have to take their team picture without her. Anne calls to see her mother. She looks around Laura's room. Anne's stepfather isn't happy to see her. Someone has a photo of the running team and is crossing off Paula's face. Anne goes to the graduation ceremony rehearsal. She visits Laura's boyfriend, Kevin. She gives him the graduation present that Laura had bought for him.

Coach Michaels(George) is hard on the running team. He expects perfection. He yells at one of the girls, Sally. She is alone in the locker room and someone is in there with her. It is the killer who has a fencing sword. She ends up dead. Anne blames Coach Michaels for Laura's death. She thinks that he pushed her too hard. Another member of the track team meets a grisly end. Principal Guglione(Pataki) gets calls about missing students. An Inspector Halliday shows up at the school to investigate. He is interested in the students and what has been going on. The principal thinks that it is a prank. The inspector thinks that maybe they are off somewhere partying.

More students start to die. The inspector goes to see Coach Michaels. He asks him some questions. The coach gets fired. Sally's dead body pops up . Coach Michaels finds it and people think that he is the killer. Kevin chases him and they have a fight. Coach Michaels runs, Kevin follows and so does the inspector and Anne. The coach finds another body in the woods and Kevin is revealed to the killer.

He is bitter because of Laura's death. He tries to kill the coach too with a knife. Coach Michaels gets the knife when the inspector arrives and shoots the coach as he thinks that he is the killer. Anne goes to see Kevin and she goes up to his room where Laura's body is sitting. Kevin catches her and admits to digging her body up and bringing her back to his house. He tells her that they are getting married. Anne is horrified. Kevin turns on her.

She pushes the body and it forces Kevin out of the window. He isn't dead though and he carries Laura's body back into the house. Anne runs back to the school. Kevin is there. They fight and he chases her. She finds the dead students. Kevin gets impaled on a spike and he dies. Anne leaves the town after her ordeal. This was a fun slasher with a little bit of gore. I liked that it was a mystery also and there were lots of suspects. The characters were generic, but I don't think that it matters much. I liked this movie. It is an entertaining 80's slasher and I recommend it to fans of the genre. I will give it a 5/10.

Edge of the Axe Movie Review

Trailer here.

Edge of the Axe is a 1989 horror movie directed by Jose Ramon and starring Barton Faulks and Christina Marie Lane.

The film opens with a woman being killed at the carwash. Cut to a woman who is alone in her house. She has a farm with pigs. She finds a pigs head in her bed. Her husband goes to the Sheriff about it but he isn't interested. A man called Gerald(Faulks) and Richard(Page Moseley), an exterminator,are going to investigate a bad smell coming from the cellar in a bar. They go down and they find the remains of a local woman. The cops come and take her away. The Sheriff doesn't seem too worried about it. He says that Paddock is a quiet town. Gerald meets a girl called Lillian(Lane) and she likes computers, just like Gerald. A local woman is murdered and her body is found on train tracks. The Sheriff thinks that it was an accident at first. He asks questions around town and he talks to a man called Broderick who slept with the dead woman.

Gerald gives Lillian his computer. Another woman meets her end. Gerald has a list of the murdered women on his computer. The lady who has a pig farm gets killed and one her pig's heads is put in her bed. Richard is with a woman called Susan on the lake when they discover a severed head. The killer is after another local woman and the Sheriff has no clues. Lillian tells Gerald about a cousin of hers called Charlie. She pushed him off a swing when they were children and he was brain damaged afterwards.

He ended up in a mental institution but he was released. Lillian worries that he will come and get revenge on her. She looks for information on him. She wonders if he might be the one killing women in Paddock.

Richard's wife, Laura, is the next to meet the killer. Lillian is home alone and she hears noises. It turns out that Gerald is there. She accuses him of being the killer. He turns it around and says that she is the one who was hit on the head as a child and who was in a psychiatric hospital. She denies it and the two end up fighting. She has an axe and she tries to kill him. he chases her and they run outside where the cops are pulling up. They see Gerald chasing her and they shoot him dead. Lillian makes out that she is a victim and they believe her. They pin the murders on Gerald as Lillian smiles...

This was an entertaining film. It wasn't as good as I had hoped but there were some good moments.

I thought that it would be better. There are some twists and turns but the ending wasn't great. I liked it but it is a middle of the road slasher, in my opinion. I will give it a 5/10.

The Last Slumber Party Movie Review

Trailer here.

The Last Slumber Party is a 1988 horror movie directed by Stephen Tyler and starring nobody you would know.

A man dresses up as a doctor and he kills a teenager. The cops come. A group of teens want to have a party. They want to have it at Linda's house. Cut to the killer doctor who murders a nurse at a mental institution. Linda's dad is a doctor. The party is in full swing. Some boys show up. Linda's dad has to work at night at the hospital so the teens are alone. The killer doctor is wandering around Linda's house.  The guys are going to scare the girls. One of them climbs up the window and the doctor kills him. The killer makes his way through the teens.

Linda's mother tells the teens that they have to go to bed. There is some weird dream scene that makes no sense. One of the girls, Chris wakes during the night. She wakes the others. Someone is calling the house. It is the dad. Bodies are turning up all over the house. Linda gets stabbed. Chris finds two guys dead and she wanders around the house while the killer follows her. You would think that she would head for the door, but no, she just wanders around. She does get a knife, though. She doesn't call the cops or go for help. She stabs one of the guys by mistake, but it doesn't seem to worry her too much. The killer doctor comes along with his eyes bulging, looking all menacing and crazy. Chris goes back to get another knife. WHAT!!! She actually starts to wander around again. I think this girl needs to die for being so stupid.

The killer finds her and holds up his scalpel and stares at it. How scary. Chris looks at her knife too. Is it a duel??? She stabs the doctor and doesn't seem too bothered. Suddenly, she falls, for NO REASON.

Linda's dad returns home. The killer doc is carrying bodies around the house. The dad gets a call about a psychiatric patient who has escaped. He has to go back to the hospital. Chris is alive. She continues wandering around. Linda's dad gets murdered.  Linda's dad is floating in the pool. Chris gets killed(finally). Oh, yes. It is a dream. WHAT. It turns out that it has been a dream, but oh no, then the phone rings and Linda finds out that there is an escaped patient wandering around. She goes outside and the killer doc slips inside the house. He gets Linda. There is a scream as the doctor holds up his scalpel.

What to say about this. Hmm. It was bad, really bad. The story was stupid. A lot of things made no sense. Why was that girl wandering around the house when she could have run off. There were so many stupid things happening and then it is all a dream. Silly. It was all over the place. The acting was terrible. It is just a mess, totally. Avoid. I will give it a 2/10.

He Knows You're Alone Movie Review

Trailer here.

He Knows You're Alone is a 1980 horror movie directed by Armand Mastroianni and starring Caitlin O'Heaney, Elizabeth Kemp, Don Scardino and Dana Barron.

The film begins with a girl being murdered in a cinema by a killer called Ray. She was due to be married soon. Her killer escapes. He has already killed a girl on her wedding day. Cut to Amy(O'Heaney), who is also a bride to be. Her fiancée is going away on a bachelors weekend. Ray is following her and he sees her with her fiancée. Amy is a little nervous. She has a feeling that she is being watched. She bumps into a friend called Marvin(Scardino), who also happens to be her ex boyfriend. He doesn't think that she should marry her fiancée, Phil. Amy is in a dress shop trying on her dress when she thinks that someone is in there with her. It is Marvin. He wants to meet her. The killer stabs the shop owner later.  He follows Amy home where her friends have arranged a surprise party for her.

Detective Len Gamble(Lewis Arlt) is after Ray. His fiancée was the girl in the wedding dress that Ray killed. He wants Ray and he is obsessed with the case. The killer murders one of Amy's friends who was having an affair with a professor. He also kills the professor. Amy thinks that she sees someone outside. She tells Marvin, but there is nobody there. Len visits the bridal shop where the owner was killed. He finds Amy's name on her dress. Amy goes for a run alone. The killer is following her. Len thinks that Amy is going to be the next victim. Amy and her friends go to a fairground. Amy sees the killer following her. Phil calls Amy but she doesn't answer the phone. Amy tells her friend Nancy(Kemp) that she saw someone after her. Nancy is the killer's next victim.

Amy returns home and she finds Nancy's head in her fish tank. The killer shows himself and he chases her. She gets out and she runs to the morgue where Marvin works. She tells him what is happening.

 He goes to see if the killer is around. Len is at Amy's house and he calls the station. They tell him that Amy has called them and told them about the killer. He goes to the morgue and he finds the killer chasing Amy. He shoots him but he ends up getting stabbed. Ray comes for Amy. She manages to stab his arm and lock him in a closet . She and Marvin escape as the police come in. The movie ends with Amy on her wedding day. She is marrying Marvin, not Phil. Phil shows up and she screams, suggesting that history will repeat itself.

This was a good slasher film. I liked it a lot. It is not mentioned when people talk about eighties slashers but it is worth a watch for slasher fans. It also features Tom Hanks in a very minor part. This is his first movie role! So, this film is not the most original one out there, but it is better than a lot of slasher movies that I have seen from this year. I recommend it. I will give it a 6/10.