The Island of Dr. Strigoi

There just seems to be so many flicks I've missed out on. Here's yet another 80's flick I'm watching for the first time. I've seen the cover before but never around the time it was probably released.  Once again, and no I don't work for them (I wish), I watched this on Shudder. I know there's an Arrow Video blu-ray of this and it's on my wanted list for sure. Even more so now. Directed by Ed Hunt, this is a great addition to your 80's horror flick collection. It looked great on Shudder so I can only imagine how it must look on blu-ray. This has a definite vibe of Children of the Damned, and I'm not the first to say that. The child actors in this are really good. The characters of Debbie (Elizabeth Hoy), Curtis (Billy Jayne) and Steven (Andy Freeman) are basically child slashers. Their murder spree spares no one, not family or friends. Everyone is a target and any character seems to be on the chopping block. The killing starts with a young ...

This is another 80's flick I had never heard of before. It's an Ozsploitation slasher flick with some great actors in it. Filmed in New Zealand but set in Illinois, it can get confusing sometimes. Having seen Dead Alive\Brain Dead, I recognized the similarities in the houses and street setups, which are different than anything I've seen in Illinois. But that aside, it's not hard to maintain the illusion that the flick takes place in the states. Directed by Michael Laughlin (who also directed the 2nd flick, Strange Invaders , in what was supposed to be a trilogy), it's a pretty decent slasher. The flick opens with the mayor and his wife leaving for the evening with their son, screenwriter Bill Condon, is left home to study. He encounters a shadow in the hallway and is murdered. The sheriff, John Brady (Michael Murphy) speaks to the mayor about his "missing" son. At this point there's no evidence of a murder.  John's son Pete (Don Shor -...

While franchise flicks really aren't my favorites, I still enjoy them. They always go up and down in quality and everyone has their favorite installment of each character, be it Freddy, Jason, Michael or Chucky. And with different directors, often the flicks can have completely different tones. Some more serious with gore and a higher body count and the next flick will veer more towards a black comedy feel. Nightmare on Elm Street is the best example of this. Everyone seems to agree that the first and third are the best of the crop. From there, it gets ugly. Some only like those 2 and hate all the rest, some only like the original flicks and hate the newer one without England and some just enjoy them all and have favorites. I'm in the latter category. I don't hate the new one, yet it's not one I'm going to watch anytime soon. That being said, I like part 5. Is it close to the first 3? No. Does it make much sense? Not really. The plot goes in weird directions thro...

I love Italian horror flicks. I don't care how cheesy they are or how low budget they are. All I care about is the fun factor. And this little low budget gem from director Claudio Fragasso (Monster Dog, Troll 2, Zombie 3 and Robowar) and his wife, screenwriter Rossella Drudi, is super fun. The plot is nothing new, a voodoo priest unleashes zombies by opening a gate to hell. I just recently got this on blu-ray (shown above) and had been looking forward to viewing it ever since I saw it existed. This is an unofficial sequel to Zombi 2 & 3 (which themselves are unofficial Italian sequels to George Romero's Dawn of the Dead ). This seems to get mostly negative reviews from the critics, so I must be an exception. I found this to be a fun, yet cheesy as all hell, zombie flick. Like I said, the plot isn't very original. Scientists are doing experiments on an island to find out what happens "after death" and this infuriates a voodoo priest. He raises the dead...

This is my first attempt at a blog here, so I'm just posting one from my other blog for now. It's still a great flick and if you didn't see it before, here it is again. I love Hammer films. They introduced me to some of my favorite, and iconic, horror icons. The Evil of Frankenstein has one of them as it has the great Peter Cushing playing Baron Frankenstein, the most well known mad scientists who likes to re-animate corpse parts. This movie is more in line with the old Universal monster movie version of the creature and of Frankenstein's laboratory. I read it was an agreement between Hammer and Universal that let them recreate these. This is why the creature (played amazingly by Kiwi Kingston) has the flat head and why the lab looks like the old version. It's also why it doesn't follow the previous flick that Hammer produced, that being  The Revenge of Frankenstein (I've got to find that and re-watch and review it). This is another great performance...