Goddamn, wasn’t USA Up All Night the best? Seriously,

I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. In fact, I’ve apparently been thinking about it so much that I recently bought an old Gilbert Gottfried Up All Night press photo off eBay to frame and hang in my office. I wanted one with Rhonda Shear too, obviously, but couldn’t find a good shot of the both of them. So Gilbert gets the wall for now.

But the more I thought about why this nearly 40-year-old television show has been rattling around in my brain lately, the more I realized something: it never left. It actually stays in my head 24/7, rent-free and I even pay for the utilities, happily.

That’s really the only explanation. I don’t remember the names of most of my college professors. I couldn’t tell you what I learned in ninth-grade science. But I can still hear the Up All Night music— wailing 90s guitars and saxophone, btw— and I remember Gilbert Gottfried yelling at me from a giant box television at 1:00am, keeping me awake with his grating voice. I remember Rhonda Shear stretching “UP!” into the most important syllable in the English language. And I remember dozens of movies that, by any reasonable critical standard, I probably should have forgotten thirty years ago.

SO WHAT THE HELL WAS ‘USA UP ALL NIGHT’?

For those who weren’t there, USA Up All Night was a late-night weekend programming block that ran on USA Network from 1989 until 1998. Gilbert Gottfried hosted the Saturday-night edition from NYC, while Rhonda Shear took the Friday-night spot, initially broadcasting from Los Angeles. The basic formula was stupidly simple: take a bunch of B-movies, cult horror, ridiculous comedies, sexploitation flicks, and assorted cinematic garbage, then have Gilbert or Rhonda pop up between commercial breaks to do low-budget sketches and make jokes about whatever insanity you were watching. The block could run deep into the night, sometimes until around 5am.

And the movies were incredible. Not good…let’s make that distinction very, very clear. But incredible.

This was a place where some trash from Troma could coexist with a forgotten sex comedy to form a twisted double bill of raunchy weirdness. It was basically a curated streaming service for trash cinema before streaming services existed, except you couldn’t pick anything (really, part of the charm) and had to stay awake until the sun came up to see how the movie ended.

THE GREATEST SLEEPOVER PROGRAMMING EVER CREATED

For my friends and me, USA Up All Night was sleepover television. I have so many memories of sitting in somebody’s basement or living room in front of a giant CRT television, trying desperately to stay awake because some ridiculous movie was coming on next. There was something exciting about simply being awake that late. The adults were asleep and the house was dark, but you felt like you had somehow crossed over into a different version of television that belong only to you. IT was rebellious in a way.

As a kid approaching puberty at the height of Up All Night, the possibility that a movie might contain something vaguely sexual was reason enough to sit through virtually anything. It constantly aired these sleazy R-rated sex comedies where the entire premise seemed to promise that at any moment something forbidden might happen. Except this was basic cable, so nothing hardcore ever did.

So the movies were censored to absolute shit and the nudity disappeared, sometimes in really funny and awkward ways. Sex scenes were hacked apart and violence could get chopped up too. But it didn’t matter cuz we kept watching.

SOME OF THE MOVIES THAT LIVE IN MY HEAD

There are probably dozens of movies I first encountered through USA Up All Night, but a handful have become permanently attached to the show in my brain. I can’t even think about them without picturing the USA Network logo and hearing those bumpers.

BEACH FEVER (1987)

My dear friend Mike and I discovered this obscure masterpiece one night on Up All Night, and for reasons I can’t completely explain, it became part of my DNA.

Beach Fever stars none other than Kato Kaelin, years before he became one of the strangest pop-culture celebrities to emerge from the O.J. Simpson trial. He plays Chat Frederick IV in a plot involving a young Japanese man sent to America by his wealthy father to discover the ultimate pickup line. Eventually, a magical love-potion cologne enters the equation and everybody starts chasing after it. Because why not?

But what Mike and I really remembered were these three women who periodically appear and sing about what’s happening in the movie.

Yes, the movie basically has its own Greek chorus of beach-comedy singers popping up to musically explain the plot to you and I remember us absolutely losing our shit over this. It was exactly the kind of discovery Up All Night was built for.

How do you go to bed after that?

BEVERLY HILLS VAMP (1989)

Then there’s Beverly Hills Vamp, a low-budget effort about vampire hookers starring Eddie Deezen, which may be the most USA Up All Night sentence ever written.

It’s directed by Fred Olen Ray, a filmmaker whose career and USA Up All Night feel spiritually inseparable. These were movies made for the back shelves of video stores and the darkest corners of basic cable, where quality was negotiable but entertainment absolutely was not.

KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE (1988)

Unlike some of the garbage USA Up All Night introduced me to, Killer Klowns from Outer Space has gone on to become a legitimately beloved cult classic. The Chiodo Brothers’ wonderfully bizarre mix of alien invasion, killer clowns, and incredible practical effects has somehow only grown in popularity. Hell, you can walk into Spirit Halloween today and find the Klowns staring back at you.

But before the cult following, the merchandise, and the realization that Killer Klowns from Outer Space was actually pretty damn good, it was simply another bizarre movie Gilbert Gottfried and USA Up All Night dropped into my brain on a Saturday night.

And thirty-something years later, the fucking clowns are everywhere.

BACHELOR PARTY (1984)

Bachelor Party. Classic. Classic. Donkey does cocaine and goes nuts. Classic.

AND SO MANY MORE

Meatballs 3, Zapped, Chopping Mall, Shocker, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, Frankenhooker, Witch Academy, Bikini Summer, The Toxic Avenger, Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Evil Toons…. Yeeeeeesh the list goes on

So in the end, nobody was pretending these were masterpieces. Gilbert certainly wasn’t. Rhonda…hell no. But the whole presentation gave you permission to laugh at a bad movie while still genuinely loving it. Something could be cheap, stupid, horribly acted, completely ridiculous, and still be worth staying awake until 2am to watch. And that’s basically my entire philosophy toward cult movies today.

And I know I’m not alone. People who grew up watching Up All Night still talk about it specifically as the thing that introduced them to B-movies and shaped their taste in horror and trash cinema. More than 25 years after it disappeared, people are still hunting down old broadcasts and trading memories of movies they first discovered there.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been thinking about it so much lately. Nostalgia is really weird. Certain things from childhood fade completely, while some stupid television bumper you watched in 1993 apparently takes up permanent residence in your brain.

So thanks, USA Up All Night. Thank you Rhonda Shear, and thank you Gilbert Gottfried (RIP). You really fucked me up. In the best possible way.

Beverly Hills is a lovely place... at least aesthetically. Politically? Socially? Meh. But it is pretty damn nice looking over there. Palm-lined streets, insanely expensive homes, luxury cars, and a hit ‘90s TV show that permanently burned the zip code into our collective brains. It’s the version of Los Angeles the rest of the world imagines when they picture Southern California, and certainly not what most of LA or SoCal is actually like (thank god).

I drive through Beverly Hills fairly often. It’s actually one of the best ways to get to the west side of town without dealing with the freeway, so props to you, Beverly Hills, for that. Big shout-out to Carmelita Avenue. But while most people are probably admiring the architecture or wondering what it would be like to own one of those ridiculous mansions, my brain immediately goes somewhere else: I think about the horror movie Society.

Is that weird and a little fucked up? Absolutely. But once you’ve seen Brian Yuzna’s gloriously unhinged 1989 body horror classic, it’s surprisingly difficult to drive through Beverly Hills—or any wealthy neighborhood, for that matter—without wondering what’s happening behind those perfectly trimmed hedges. Somewhere inside one of those mansions, my brain is convinced rich people are doing... Society things.

If you know, you know.

Beverly Hills has a rich people problem

Bill Whitney is a wealthy Beverly Hills teenager who has everything going for him, at least that’s how it seems. Rich parents, a beautiful girlfriend, popularity, and a killer late-80s mullet; dude has it all. The only problem is he can’t shake the feeling that he doesn’t belong. His family acts strangely and seem to ignore him daily and his friends behave even stranger. Everyone around him seems to share some secret that he’s never been allowed in on.

As Bill digs deeper into the lives of his family and their wealthy social circle, he uncovers clues suggesting that something profoundly unnatural is happening beneath the polished surface of Beverly Hills. And boy, is something weird brewing, because that slow-building paranoia eventually detonates into one of the most unforgettable finales horror has ever produced.

Society also marked Brian Yuzna’s directorial debut after producing horror landmarks like Re-Animator, From Beyond and Dolls. And what a debut it is! He’d go on to direct wonderfully gooey classics like Bride of Re-Animator and Return of the Living Dead III, cementing himself as one of the undisputed kings of late-’80s and early-’90s direct to video horror. Dude is a king of the genre.

I’ve also had the pleasure of being in his preasence in the most glamorous way possible: standing next to him at a urinal during a screening of Silent Night, Deadly Night 5 here in Los Angeles. As ridiculous as that sounds, it was pretty awesome. He later hung around outside the theater, casually smoking a cigar, chatting with fans before the Q&A, and generally looking like the coolest guy in the building. Based on my extremely scientific sample size of one awkward bathroom encounter, Brian Yuzna seems like the greatest human ever.

Why Society Belongs on Every Horror Fan's Watchlist

The first half of Society is less a traditional horror movie than a slow-burning conspiracy thriller with a healthy dose of body horror simmering beneath the surface. For nearly an hour, it plays like a paranoid mystery with just enough bizarre moments to keep you constantly off balance. Bill catches glimpses of his sister’s body contorting in impossible ways, overhears conversations that don’t quite make sense, and his therapist repeatedly assures him he’ll make a wonderful “member of society” someday. Weird shit.

The performances are a huge reason the movie works so well. Nobody behaves like a normal human being. Bill’s family exudes an unsettling, almost incestuous level of affection for one another, conversations always seem just a little too rehearsed, and every smile feels like it’s hiding something sinister. Then there’s Bill’s frantic friend Blanchard, one of the great underappreciated goofy side character names, whose increasingly desperate warnings that “something big” is coming somehow make him seem both completely unhinged and like the only sane person in the movie.

And that final act? It’s gotta be one of the greatest showcases of practical body horror ever committed to film. You can simply say, “the shunting,” and horror nerds everywhere know exactly what you’re talking about (google it).

Flesh melts, bodies merge, and faces stretch, all brought to life by FX maestro Screaming Mad George. The sequence is equal parts grotesque, hilarious, and awe-inspiring, and it’s one of those rare horror set pieces that has transcended the movie itself.

But as epic as the shunting is, I almost love the first hour just as much. The slow burn is what makes the payoff work. You’re constantly trying to decipher whether the movie is dropping genuine clues or simply messing with you. And underneath all the goo is an incredibly mean satire about wealth, privilege, and the idea that the upper class literally feeds off everyone beneath them. It’s not exactly subtle, but subtlety was never the assignment.

The movie basically asks, “What if rich people really were different from the rest of us?” and then answers that question in the most Brian Yuzna way imaginable.

That Incredible VHS Box

Long before I ever watched Society, I’d already fallen in love with the VHS box. I mean, come on! It’s one of the greatest horror covers of the era.

I have one memory of that box that has stuck with me for decades. Sometime in the late ‘90s, my family was driving from Chicago back home to Cleveland when we stopped at a little video store that was selling off its VHS inventory. Sitting there on the shelf was Society for five dollars. I picked it up and stared at the cover, thinking about buying it. Then I put it back, which was an all-time Brandon mistake.

Today, an original VHS copy will set you back somewhere around a hundred bucks, which is, of course, exactly what I eventually paid because apparently my financial planning completely collapses whenever old horror tapes are involved.

Some horror movies age because they’re scary. Some age because they’re nostalgic. Society ages because absolutely nobody has had the courage—or possibly the insanity—to make another movie quite like it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go drive down Sunset Boulevard and definitely not think about what the rich people are doing behind those gates.

Or maybe a few weeks ago? A month? I dunna, I’m really confused. Will someone please tell me when the hell summer actually started?

Honestly, I live in Los Angeles, where the seasons are basically “slightly warm” and “slightly warmer,” so my internal calendar is completely broken. While putting this list together, I realized I should probably figure out when summer actually starts so this post could at least pretend to be timely. So I did what any responsible journalist would do: I Googled it. The internet informed me that summer begins on June 21st. Great. Perfect timing. Feeling very professional, I continued writing until I realized I’d actually Googled the summer solstice, which may or may not be the same thing depending on which website you’re reading and how much science you’re prepared to absorb on a Tuesday afternoon. By that point I was already halfway through the article, so I decided summer had officially started and pressed onward.

The point is, summer is here. It has apparently been here for at least a little while. And while a more organized person might have published a list of essential summer horror movies before the season started, logic has never really been my brand. So instead, here is a collection of horror movies filled with beaches, camps, fishing trips, road trips, carnivals, lakes, mosquitoes, sunburns, terrible decisions, and all the other things that make summer such a wonderful time to get murdered.

NOTE: Before anyone asks where Jaws, Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp, The Lost Boys, The Burning, Return of the Living Dead, Texas Chainsaw or any of the other Mount Rushmore summer horror movies are, let's establish a ground rule: I know they exist, I love them too, and they're probably better than most of the movies on this list. But the internet has already spent decades telling you to watch those films, and frankly, you don't need me to be the 8,472nd person explaining why a shark attacking beachgoers is effective cinema. So consider this the VHS-rental-store version of an essential/debatable summer horror list.

Blood Beach (1980)

My God... one of the best horror movie covers of all time. Seriously, if you grew up wandering the horror aisle of a video store, there’s a decent chance this box art burned itself into your brain before you ever saw a single frame of the movie. It’s just so hilarious.

And the premise is wonderfully stupid as well: something underneath the sand is eating people. That’s it. That’s the movie. Not a shark or backwoods killer in sight. So what makes Blood Beach unique is how perfectly it weaponizes one of summer’s happiest locations— the beach itself! Beaches are supposed to be relaxing, right? You’re supposed to be only worrying about sunburns or seagulls stealing your lunch because it’s the water that’s actually scary. But Blood Beach asks, “What if the sand itself wanted you dead?” and somehow stretches that concept into an entire feature with a a banger of a cover.

Mosquito (1994)

Now, I realize some of you may be questioning whether this belongs on a list of essential summer horror movies. To which I say: I grew up in Ohio and mosquitoes= summer. If you spent enough summers in the Midwest, there’s a good chance mosquitoes ruined at least a few perfect weather summer evenings for you. So Mosquito simply takes that universal annoyance and mutates those pesky little fuckers into the size of dogs to murder people.

This wonderfully sleazy direct-to-video creature feature follows a group of unfortunate people trapped in the woods after a swarm of giant mutated mosquitoes starts picking them off. The practical effects are gloriously gooey, the acting is exactly what you’d hope for from a mid-’90s VHS creature feature, and the movie never lets something like realism or plot get in the way of a good time.

It also features horror royalty in the form of Gunnar Hansen, better known as Leatherface himself from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Any movie that can boast giant killer mosquitoes and Leatherface automatically earns a few extra points in my book. Summer vibes, indeed.

Cheerleader Camp (1988)

It’s basically all in the title and cover art: a group of cheerleaders are heading to a summer training camp where, naturally, people start dying. And as you can imagine, the plot is largely beside the point. What matters is the camp atmosphere: cabins, campgrounds, counselors, pranks, and enough late-’80s energy to power an entire shopping mall.

For me, this one is pure video-store nostalgia. My friend Jordan and I rented this from Blockbuster sometime in the early 2000s, almost entirely because of the cover art. And honestly, can you blame us? We knew absolutely nothing about the movie. We just knew it was called Cheerleader Camp, people were probably going to get murdered, and that seemed like a perfectly reasonable way to spend an evening.

The movie also features none other than 70s heartthrob turned cautionary tale Leif Garrett, which somehow makes the whole thing feel even more like a bizarre time capsule.

And then there’s the rap sequence. Nuff said.

The Prey (1984)

If Friday the 13th and The Burning represent the sex/drugs/fun side of summer camp horror, The Prey represents the actual hiking and nature part. That’s because this under-the-radar early slasher is approximately 60% horror movie and 40% footage of forests, birds, squirrels, rivers, deer, trees, more trees, and occasionally even more trees. There are stretches where it genuinely feels like a National Geographic special accidentally wandered onto the set of a horror movie. The camera absolutely loves the outdoors, which, to be fair, are beautiful. But if you’re waiting for the body count to start, you’re going to get a surprisingly thorough tour of the local ecosystem first.

The movie follows a group of hikers venturing deep into the wilderness, only to discover they are very much not alone. Then the usual things murder stuff happens. And unlike many slashers of the era, The Prey doesn't exactly send you home with a smile. Without spoiling too much, it has a real downer of an ending that feels more grim and unsettling than triumphant. It's another reason the movie sticks with you between the endless wilderness and formulaic plot.

I vividly remember staring at that cover as a kid, because unlike a lot of horror movies of the era, the picture-less back of the box didn’t really give much away. Just mystery. Pure mystery. My imagination ran wild with visions of some unstoppable forest-dwelling nightmare. What terrors awaited inside? What unspeakable evil was hunting these campers? As it turns out, quite a bit of nature. Enough nature that at times it feels like the killer is competing for screen time with the local wildlife.

Blood Hook (1986)

Sometimes all summer horror needs is a fishing tournament. Enter Blood Hook, one of the strangest regional slashers of the VHS era and a movie that somehow manages to build an entire murder mystery around competitive fishing. It’s also distributed by Troma, if that tells ya something!

Set in a small Wisconsin lake town during a massive tournament, the film follows a group of visitors returning for the annual festivities, only to discover that somebody is using oversized fishing gear (!!!) to dispatch unsuspecting victims in increasingly ridiculous ways.

What makes Blood Hook such a great summer watch is the atmosphere. The movie is absolutely drenched in warm-weather Americana: lake houses, fishing docks, pontoon boats, beer-drinking locals, town festivals, and a whole lotta Midwestern energy.

Madman (1981)

If summer horror has a campfire-story division, Madman is its undisputed champion. Released in 1981, right in the middle of the early slasher boom, it’s one of those movies that horror fans know and respect, even if it never quite reached the mainstream recognition of Friday the 13th, The Burning, or Sleepaway Camp.

The movie kicks off exactly the way every great summer-camp horror movie should: a group of campers and counselors gathered around a fire listening to a spooky story. This time the legend concerns Madman Marz, a hulking backwoods killer who supposedly murdered his family and now roams the woods surrounding the camp. The rules are simple: don’t say his name above a whisper.

Naturally, somebody immediately yells it and the bodies start piling up.

And honestly, we need to take a moment to appreciate the name Madman Marz. It’s one of those names that sounds like it was invented by a twelve-year-old who had thirty seconds to create a horror villain. Jason Voorhees. Michael Myers. Freddy Krueger. Madman Marz. It’s ridiculous and I wouldn’t change a thing.

And while Madman may not have the reputation of some of its more famous contemporaries, it absolutely earns its place among the great camp slashers. This is one to check out (unironically).

The Funhouse (1981)

I’ll admit it: I went back and forth on whether The Funhouse belonged on this list. It’s not a beach movie and it’s not a camp movie. Nobody’s renting a lake house or getting attacked by fish. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I couldn’t leave it off. Because if you grew up in the ‘80s or ‘90s, carnivals were summer. County fairs, traveling midway rides, funnel cakes, sketchy games, and that weird feeling that the whole thing could be packed up and disappear overnight. That’s summer.

And few movies capture the dark side of that world better than The Funhouse.

Directed by horror legend Tobe Hooper, the film takes a seemingly innocent night at a traveling carnival and turns it into a neon-lit nightmare filled with creepy barkers, dark rides, greasy midway food, and one very unfortunate monster lurking behind the scenes. It feels like every county fair you’ve ever attended after the sun goes down and the families start heading home, leaving behind the growing sense that maybe you should’ve left twenty minutes ago.

For me, this one also carries a heavy dose of childhood trauma. The opening credits alone scared the hell out of me as a kid. Even now, revisiting it feels like stepping into a bad dream I vaguely remember having decades ago. There's something about The Funhouse that has always felt like a summer suburban nightmare where every corner seems to hide something unpleasant.

The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

Dubious summer slasher pick again? Too mainstream for this list of B squad films? Maybe…but you can’t deny this one is a sweaty, hot and very desert-y. Therefore, I think about summer when I watch it (which is rarely, ha. It’s a real bummer).

Wes Craven’s sun-scorched nightmare follows the Carter family as they make the unfortunate decision to take a road trip through the Nevada desert, where they promptly become stranded and discover that they are very much not alone. And what follows is one of the grimiest horror films of the 1970s.

What makes the movie such a great summer watch is that the environment is every bit as hostile as the villains. You’ve got miles of blistering desert, broken-down vehicles, and the growing realization that help isn’t coming. The result is a movie that feels hot. Not metaphorically hot. Physically hot. The kind of movie that makes you reach for a glass of water halfway through.

Piranha (1982)

Another mainstream one, but one that doesn’t always get the props it deserves.

If Jaws made people afraid to go into the ocean, Piranha politely suggested they stay out of lakes, rivers, summer camps, and water parks too. Directed by a young Joe Dante and produced by Roger Corman, Piranha is one of the rare knockoffs that became a classic in its own right. The setup is beautifully simple: genetically engineered military piranha escape into a river system and begin making their way toward a series of summer recreation spots packed with unsuspecting swimmers.

What makes Piranha such a perfect summer horror movie is that it attacks every warm-weather activity imaginable. Kids at summer camp? In danger. Families on vacation? In danger. People enjoying a relaxing day on the water? Believe it or not, also in danger. The movie bounces from one summer destination to another, leaving tiny fish-shaped chaos in its wake.

And despite being made on a fraction of Jaws’ budget, Piranha never feels like a cheap imitation. Joe Dante injects the whole thing with humor, energy, and just enough self-awareness to keep it from taking itself too seriously.

Humanoids from the Deep (1980)

Nothing says summer quite like a small coastal town festival being interrupted by fish monsters.

Humanoids from the Deep is pure drive-in insanity from beginning to end. Boats, beaches, fireworks, fishing docks, seaside festivals, sea creatures, and enough Roger Corman energy to power an entire boardwalk. The movie follows a sleepy coastal community whose annual celebration is disrupted when a race of mutated fish-men starts emerging from the water and making everyone’s summer plans considerably worse.

And yes, this thing is absolutely loaded with the kind of sleaze that defined a certain corner of late-’70s and early-’80s exploitation cinema. The creatures don’t just kill people; much of the movie’s shock value comes from the fact that they’re driven by reproductive instincts, which leads to some genuinely uncomfortable and controversial sequences. It’s one of the reasons the film developed such a reputation over the years and even by Roger Corman standards, Humanoids from the Deep was pushing buttons.

What’s fascinating is that beneath all the monster mayhem and exploitation, there’s actually a surprisingly competent creature feature hiding in here. The fish-men themselves look great and the movie feels like summer: crowds gathering outdoors, boats in the harbor, fireworks overhead, people trying to enjoy themselves before mutant sea creatures inevitably ruin the occasion. Story of my life.

Three movies, three different flavors, and almost no meaningful continuity whatsoever. But what ties them together isn’t a story or a shared universe, it’s a great title. A glorious, perfect, video-store-shelf-ready title that you simply can’t deny the beauty of: The Slumber Party Massacre. That’s what hooked all of us in; A+ work from the guy whose job it was to sit in a dark room and come up with irresistible film monikers for ‘80s slasher movies. You see those words on a VHS box or poster and you already know what you’re getting. Or at least you think you do. But honestly? You pretty much get exactly that.

The original is a surprisingly clever slasher with roots in satire. The second turns into a rock-and-roll nightmare fever dream. And the third feels like an entirely unrelated slasher/thriller that somebody slapped the title onto at the last minute.

So obviously not every entry is great and not every entry even makes sense. But there are a lot of horror fans who grew up staring at these boxes on video store shelves and I’ve always had a soft spot for the franchise due to that. They’re all funny, weird, occasionally smart, usually ridiculous, and each one feels like a time capsule from a different corner of horror history.

Let’s fire up the power drill.

The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

The Smart One?

The original Slumber Party Massacre is probably the best movie in the series, although I’ll confess my dirty little secret right now and get that controversial shit out of the way: I actually have more fun with Part 2. But we’ll get there.

On the surface, this is exactly what the title promises: a group of high school girls gather for a slumber party while a killer stalks the neighborhood with a giant power drill, eventually turning an otherwise normal evening of ordering pizza and nude pillow fighting (you know, all the normal things you do at a sleepover) into a very unpleasant one. You’ve got the usual goodness here— drilling, killing, screaming and a body in the refrigerator— but what makes the movie stand out is how differently it’s constructed from many of its slasher contemporaries.

For starters, there isn’t really a mystery surrounding the killer at all. The guy doing all the slashing is an escaped mental patient named Russ Thorn, who isn’t hiding behind a silly mask or waiting for a shocking third-act reveal. The movie introduces him almost immediately and then lets you spend the rest of the runtime waiting for his inevitable arrival at said slumber party—and the ensuing massacre. I remember being very taken aback by this as a kid, almost confused. “Why is this fairly normal-looking middle-aged dude who resembles one of my dad’s poker buddies the main villain here, and why do I already know who he is?” Is there another twist here? Nope. But it’s a surprisingly effective choice that immediately separates the film from many of the “who’s the killer?” slashers that would follow.

So that’s kind of weird, but the real story behind The Slumber Party Massacre is even more fascinating. The screenplay was originally written by feminist author Rita Mae Brown under the title Don’t Open the Door as a parody of the booming slasher genre. Brown intentionally played with many of the clichés that had exploded after Halloween and Friday the 13th, exaggerating the voyeurism, sexuality, and absurd gender dynamics that had quickly become staples of the genre.

Then this thing eventually landed in the hands of our boy Roger Corman and newbie director Amy Holden Jones. And yes, it’s still kind of amazing that an exploitation movie called The Slumber Party Massacre was both written and directed by women in the early 1980s. Jones actually wasn’t originally a director at all, having built her reputation as an editor, but she reportedly convinced Corman to let her direct the project. Naturally, this being Roger Corman, there was one small catch: if they were going to make a slasher movie, they needed some exploitation. The result is a fascinating hybrid as Jones delivered the nudity, the kills, the giant drill, and everything audiences expected from an early-’80s horror movie, while some of Brown’s satirical DNA never completely disappeared.

That’s why The Slumber Party Massacre feels just a tad bit smarter and stranger than many of its peers. The giant drill is about as subtle as a brick tied to a firecracker through a window. The male characters often come off as clueless or intrusive and the movie occasionally seems aware of how ridiculous the entire setup is. Underneath all the blood and exploitation is a film that’s simultaneously embracing slasher conventions and gently poking fun at them, which was pretty rare in 1982. It’s not nearly as overt or self-aware as something contemporary like Scream, but the satire is definitely there if you’re looking for it.

So tie all of the above in a nice little package, give it an absolutely iconic title + poster art and that’s probably why people still talk about it. Four decades later, plenty of early-’80s slashers have faded into obscurity while The Slumber Party Massacre remains a horror staple and film still embraced about by fans and genre critics alike.

Slumber Party Massacre II (1987)

The Batshit One

While Slumber Party Massacre III would eventually abandon continuity altogether, Slumber Party Massacre II at least makes a token effort to connect itself to the original. The film follows Courtney Bates, the younger sister of Valerie from the first movie, who is still dealing with the trauma of the Russ Thorn murders several years later. Hoping for a little escape, Courtney heads off with a group of friends for a weekend getaway at a remote house, where they do exactly what teenagers in '80s horror movies are contractually obligated to do: play music, flirt, party, wander off alone, and make a series of increasingly questionable decisions. Unfortunately for them, Courtney's lingering trauma begins manifesting itself in the form of terrifying visions involving a supernatural rockabilly killer, and before long the line between nightmare and reality starts getting very blurry.

Director Deborah Brock inherited the franchise and, rather than simply remaking the first movie, transformed it into one of the strangest slasher sequels of the entire decade. What starts as a fairly standard cabin-in-the-woods setup quickly mutates into a neon-soaked fever dream infused with gloriously cheesy '80s music-video energy. The movie abandons most of the grounded tension of the original in favor of surreal imagery, dream logic, and one of the most bizarre villains ever to grace the slasher genre: a supernatural rockabilly drifter armed with a giant guitar-drill hybrid who sings, dances, and occasionally stops by to murder people.

And no, that’s not an AI created acid trip. That 100% pure Slumber Party Massacre 2. What a time to be alive.

So as you can see from the above, the killer himself is one of horror’s great unsung weirdos. He’s played by Atanas Ilitch (fun fact: Atanas is the son of billionaire Mike Ilitch of the Little Caesars/Detroit Red Wings family—I’d like to imagine production got a pretty sweet Little Caesars catering discount), and he’s essentially Elvis Presley by way of Freddy Krueger. The guy is absolutely hamming it up and I love everything about it so much.

The movie also leans heavily into music of the era in a way that still feels bizarre and amazingly dated today. Courtney and her friends have their own band, giving the film an excuse to drop in full-fledged music-video sequences.

There are stretches where Slumber Party Massacre II feels less like a slasher movie and more like someone accidentally spliced together a horror film, a rock video, and a bizarre series of dream vignettes. Also, it’s 77 minutes long! So if you hate it, the whole experience is over fairly quickly.

So yeah, this is my favorite of the series. But as you all know, I have a real fondness for movies that are incredibly stupid and wonderfully weird, so I can't guarantee I'm pointing you in the right direction here. What I can tell you is that it's totally my bag because it’s campy and scratches that “get a bunch of friends together and show them something that leaves everyone asking, ‘What the fuck did we just watch?’” itch that I seem to have on a regular basis.

Slumber Party Massacre III (1990)

The Forgotten One

Part 3 is kind of the oddball of the trilogy.

Gone are the connections to the previous films. Gone is Courtney. Gone is the rockabilly guitar-drill maniac. Gone, frankly, is most of the personality that tied the first two movies together.

Instead, we’re back to a more traditional slasher setup. The film follows a group of friends gathering at the home of a wealthy teenager, only to find themselves stalked by a drill-wielding killer. Unlike the original film, which practically introduces Russ Thorn before the opening credits have cooled down, Part III leans heavily into mystery. Bodies start piling up, suspicion shifts from character to character, and the movie spends much of its runtime trying to keep you guessing about who’s behind the murders.

What makes the movie interesting, though, is that it gradually reveals itself to be more of a psychological slasher than a straightforward body-count movie. Beneath all the drills, pool parties, and attractive people making questionable decisions is a surprisingly dark backstory involving childhood trauma, abuse, and repressed memories. It’s an unexpectedly heavy direction for a franchise that previously gave us a supernatural Elvis with a power-tool guitar, but it does give Part III its own strange identity.

But there’s also fun murder to be had! Someone gets impaled with a “For Sale” sign post, another character gets their legs cut off with a chainsaw, and plenty of people get drilled along the way.

So yes, it’s admittedly the weakest entry in the trilogy, but it’s also the first one I ever saw, which means nostalgia is doing some heavy lifting here. I vividly remember renting it from my local video store and eventually recording it onto another VHS tape (remember VCR-to-VCR dubbing?), making it the Slumber Party Massacre movie I knew best long before I’d seen the others. So I kinda dig it, but most others don’t.

And that's really the magic of the Slumber Party Massacre series. It's not a franchise built on continuity, mythology, or even a recurring villain. None of them are perfect, but all of them are memorable. Sometimes a horror franchise doesn’t need to be great. Sometimes it just needs a giant drill and a slumber party. The Slumber Party Massacre series has those in abundance.

That’s right, Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama. Duh. Isn’t that where your mind went too? Not The Monkey or some other respectable modern horror movie, but the 1988, 76-minute video store shelf classic known as Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama. Great. Glad we’re all on the same page.

So here we have another cautionary tale about wishes gone spectacularly wrong. Now, is it anywhere near as clever, polished, or competent as Obsession? Absolutely not. No sir. But Obsession also isn’t called Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama. And frankly, once you’ve named your movie Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, you’ve already accomplished something Obsession and its fancy $200 million box office never will: title immortality.

For me, Sorority Babes was one of those cable-TV staples that seemed to be on constantly throughout the early ‘90s. Whether it was USA Up All Night or a random late-night Cinemax slot, it always seemed to be lurking somewhere in the TV Guide. I don’t know if I ever watched it from beginning to end as a kid, but I absolutely knew the title. It lodged itself permanently in my brain long before I understood what a sorority was or why there was apparently a slimeball involved. Some movies become famous because they’re great. Some become famous because their title alone refuses to leave your head. This is very much the latter.

The plot is every bit as ridiculous as the title promises. A group of sorority pledges and fraternity goons break into a bowling alley after hours and accidentally unleash a wisecracking demonic imp trapped inside a magical trophy. The imp, voiced by a man named Dukey Flyswatter—which somehow feels even more made up than the plot itself—grants wishes with predictably disastrous results, leading to murder, mayhem, and a surprising amount of bowling-alley-based supernatural chaos.

Naturally, every wish goes spectacularly wrong. One character wishes for wealth and gets buried under a mountain of gold before getting murdered. Another wishes for the perfect woman and discovers that magical wish fulfillment comes with some very unfortunate fine print...in the form of murder. Another dreams of being crowned queen, only to learn that the imp has a very twisted interpretation of success. The movie basically runs on monkey’s-paw logic, with the imp taking every desire, finding the dumbest and most malicious way to grant it, and then sitting back to enjoy the chaos.

And at a breezy 76 minutes, the movie barely sticks around long enough for you to question any of its decisions—or whether you’re wasting your life watching it. It gets in, unleashes an imp, causes some problems, and gets out before the sun comes up.

Reasons This Movie Refuses to Die

A big part of what makes Sorority Babes so much fun is that it feels like a perfect snapshot of late-’80s B-movie culture. You’ve got the holy trinity of scream queens in Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens, and Michelle Bauer all showing up in the same movie, which is basically the horror equivalent of assembling an all-star team. You’ve also got arcade machines, sorority girls getting gratuitously spanked and a janitor played by legendary character actor George Buck Flower, who spends the movie delivering exposition and yelling at evil creatures with the kind of conviction usually reserved for Shakespeare. And somehow all of this was reportedly shot in about twelve days on a budget of roughly $90,000, which honestly makes the movie even more impressive. Obsession, eat your heart out with your outrageous $750,000 budget. For that kind of money, we could have made eight Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Ramas and still had enough left over for a magical trophy.

And the kills are exactly the kind of gloriously stupid nonsense you want from a movie with this title. People get clawed to death, someone gets turned into a demon minion that resembles the bride of Frankenstein, and at one point a victim’s head is literally used as a bowling ball. The movie never has the budget to pull off anything truly spectacular, but it compensates with enthusiasm, and and plenty of 1980s nudity and wacky hijinks.

And at the helm of this masterpiece, we have legendary(?) B-movie director David DeCoteau, one of the hardest-working men in low-budget cinema and a proud graduate of the Charles Band school of “just start filming and we’ll figure it out later.” DeCoteau’s filmography is absolutely staggering, with credits including Creepozoids, Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge, Beach Babes from Beyond, and approximately 7,000 other movies that appeared on late-night cable while you were supposed to be asleep. Few directors have embraced quantity quite like DeCoteau, who became famous for shooting quickly, cheaply, and often, sometimes making movies in what feels like the span of a long weekend. The results were not always great, and sometimes not even objectively watchable, but they were almost always interesting. Like Roger Corman before him, DeCoteau understood that B-movies aren’t about perfection, they’re about delivering exactly what the title on the VHS box promises. And when the title is Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, that’s a surprisingly high bar.

I still find myself busting out Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama every few years when I’ve got 70-something minutes to kill and want to spend them on something completely ridiculous. It’s not a masterpiece. It’s probably not even the best movie of its kind that includes the words sorority and babe in its title. But it has something a lot of objectively better movies don’t: personality.

It sits proudly in my collection, not just because of the movie itself, but because of what it represents. It’s one of those titles that haunted video store aisles, cable TV listings, and the brains of an entire generation of horror fans. Long before I knew what the movie was, I knew the title. Long before I understood the plot, I understood that this was something super weird. And decades later, that’s still what I love most about it. Sometimes a movie earns its place in horror history because it’s brilliant. Sometimes it earns it because it’s called Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, and honestly, that’s enough for me.

I’ve always had a real soft spot for movie ripoffs. Not the super cynical, eye-winking modern kind, but the glorious VHS-era variety where filmmakers saw a hit movie and immediately said, “We can absolutely make our own version of that… for about 4% of the budget.” Whether it was Roger Corman rushing Carnosaur out alongside Jurassic Park or studios like The Asylum building entire careers on questionably legal knockoffs, the ripoff has always been part of genre cinema’s weird ecosystem. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.

So after the seminal creature feature movie Gremlins exploded in 1984, Hollywood and the direct-to-video world immediately realized three things:

1. Tiny monsters sell.

2. Singular titles describing said tiny monsters make for excellent VHS marketing.

3. And perhaps most importantly, tiny monster movies can be very cheap to make, as long as you have an appetite for crap, mostly because rubber puppets work for significantly less money than actual actors.

The result was a gaggle of weird little creature features flooding VHS shelves throughout the late ’80s and early ’90s. Some were horror movies. Some were questionable kids movies. Some somehow tried to be both at the same time. Most involved puppets, slime, glowing eyes, and at least one scene where a suburban dad completely loses his mind.

Ghoulies (1985)

Ghoulies is actually a fascinating case because it wasn’t purely a rush out a copy after Gremlins becomes a hit situation. The movie was already in production (so they say) around the same time as Gremlins, but once Charles Band and Empire Pictures saw what Warner Bros. had on their hands, they absolutely pivoted the marketing + title to ride that tiny-monster wave for all it was worth. Warner Bros. even reportedly sued over the title similarity and lost.

And honestly, nobody understood shameless VHS-era marketing better than Charles Band, so kudos to him for this one. The legendary toilet poster—the Ghoulie popping out of the bowl—became one of the most iconic horror images of the entire decade, despite the movie itself barely featuring toilet attacks (or ghoulies) at all. Genius! The film itself is obviously much grimier and slower than Gremlins, but I’d argue is more popoular to a certain crowd (Brandon shamefully raises his hand).

Hobgoblins (1988)

And then we get to Hobgoblins, which is absolutely one of the most shameless Gremlins knockoffs ever made, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment. This thing has Mogwai energy pouring out of every frame, from the chaos creatures to the suburban creature-feature setup, except all of it has been filtered through an aggressively low-budget and completely campy lens.

The plot involves little creatures that manifest people’s fantasies then murder them, which is as stupid as it sounds and mostly results in confusing the audience through very odd and disjointed “dream sequences”. And the Hobgoblins themselves barely function as puppets— they look like abandoned Chuck E Cheese mascots made by a madman trying to ruin the reputation of Chuck E Cheese— and the movie seems to operate under the belief that having those “fantasies” be so integral to the plot gives the greenlight for nothing in the movie to make sense. And somehow, at least to m, every in Hobogoblins makes perfect sense.

Unlike some ripoffs that feel cynical, Hobgoblins feels like a bunch of people genuinely trying to make their own Gremlins with whatever money they found under the couch cushions. The result is one of the great cult creature features of the era, a movie so bizarrely awesome in its nonsense that it loops all the way back around to lovable. I absolutely adore this movie.

Munchie (1992)

Unlike Gremlins or even Critters, Munchie isn’t horror. It’s basically a hyperactive comedy about a lonely kid discovering a magical wisecracking creature named Munchie, voiced by Dom DeLuise, who “helps the family” by screaming one-liners and causing a barrage of nonstop chaos. The whole thing feels like an early 90s sugar rush captured on VHS.

It’s also directed by genre legend Jim Wynorski, one of the true kings of late-night cable insanity, which honestly tells you everything you need to know about the movie’s completely whacked-out tone. Mixing a guy famously enthusiastic about gratuitous cleavage with a children’s creature movie was always going to produce something deeply weird. And yes, it also happens to feature the film debut of Jennifer Love Hewitt, because everyone has to start somewhere, even if the movie is called Munchie.

But honestly, what I remember most is the VHS art, especially for the sequel Munchies (see they did, the Alien/Aliens thing), with one of the little creatures drinking a beer, smoking and peeking up a girl’s skirt like some tiny goblin pervert. That cover absolutely lived in video store aisles growing up, and like many movies in this era, the box art was doing at least 80% of the work.

Critters (1986)

Critters is probably the most successful— if measured by sheer number of sequels— and polished of the post-Gremlins creature boom, even if it’s never quite been my personal favorite of the bunch. Where a lot of these movies leaned harder into attempts at horror or camp, Critters pushes things more into sci-fi territory, swapping mischievous little monsters for slobbery alien furballs with sharp teeth and intergalactic bounty hunters.

But credit where credit is due: the critters themselves are amazing creature designs, genuinely nasty little rolling nightmares that somehow still feel marketable enough to slap on VHS covers for decades. And while the OG film has a weird B-movie backbone that separates it a bit from the more obvious Gremlins clones, the sequels, in my opinion, get increasingly hit-or-miss as the series goes along.

Still, there’s no denying the franchise staying power here. Out of all the little creature knockoffs from this era, Critters probably built the biggest actual franchise footprint, spawning multiple sequels, a TV revival, and decades of cult fandom.

Troll (1986)

Troll is an interesting entry in the post-Gremlins creature boom because it’s less of a direct knockoff than something like Hobgoblins, but it absolutely feels like a movie that only got greenlit because Hollywood suddenly realized audiences would show up for mischievous little monsters, and trolls were up for the taking. And while everyone understandably talks about the completely unhinged Troll 2—which honestly deserves its own entire discussion on this substack, stay tuned—the original Troll is its own strange little fantasy-horror artifact.

The setup alone feels like peak 1980s weirdness: a troll invades an apartment complex and starts transforming tenants into mythical creatures and moss-covered fantasy forests. Somehow this thing also has Sonny Bono, a young Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and, years before J.K. Rowling, a kid literally named Harry Potter. That alone earns it a place in cult movie history.

Tonally, it’s this odd mix of dark fantasy, creature feature, kids movie, and low-budget horror, with a rubber monster, glowing magic effects, and that unmistakable Charles Band energy. It’s not quite as chaotic or campy as some of the more shameless Gremlins riffs, but it absolutely belongs in the same VHS creature-feature family tree.

Beasties (1989)

And then there’s Beasties, maybe the deepest cut and least-known movie in this whole little creature pile, and honestly one of the funniest examples of pure VHS-era marketing desperation. Because despite the title, this thing isn’t really much of a Gremlins knockoff at all. It’s barely even a “tiny creatures running around causing chaos” movie. The plot is more of a low-budget alien invasion setup involving murderous extraterrestrial creatures terrorizing a small town, all shot with that unmistakable “regional horror movie filmed near somebody’s uncle’s warehouse” energy.

But let’s be honest: nobody called this BEASTIES by accident. By 1989, the VHS creature boom was fully established, and someone absolutely realized that titles like Gremlins, Ghoulies, Hobgoblins, and now Beasties all sounded close enough to maybe confuse a kid wandering through the horror aisle. This is pure rental-store psychology at work. Slap a weird little monster on the box, add an “-ies” title, and hope somebody’s grandma rents the wrong movie.

The Gate (1987)

Yea, yea, get the pitchforks out….now I’m going to throw a bit of a curveball into this list with The Gate. Is it a full-on Gremlins knockoff? Not really. But once those tiny demon creatures start running around the house, you can definitely feel at least a little Gremlins DNA floating around in there. Kids battling little monsters, practical creature effects, suburban chaos, creatures that are somehow both kind of cute and deeply upsetting—it’s in the neighborhood, spiritually speaking.

But honestly, I’m mainly putting The Gate on here because The Gate is awesome and maybe I just wanted to rant about it here.

Unlike some of the more shameless VHS cash-ins on this list, this was an actual legitimate theatrical horror movie, and a really good one at that. It’s imaginative, surprisingly atmospheric, and perfectly taps into that very specific childhood fear of “what if the suburbs were secretly haunted?” Young Stephen Dorff is great in it, the effects still hold up incredibly well, and the whole movie has this earnest, adventurous energy that makes it endlessly rewatchable. It also occupies that perfect middle ground where it’s scary enough to mess with kids a little, but not so brutal that parents wouldn’t accidentally rent it.

So yes, to the hardcore Gate enthusiasts out there, I understand this is not technically a Gremlins ripoff in the strictest sense. I’m sorry. But it does have tiny monsters, suburban horror chaos, and strong 1980s creature-feature rental shelf energy, which is close enough for me. My list, my rules.

And honestly, that’s the beauty of the whole post-Gremlins creature boom—not every movie was good. Some became cult classics, some became punchlines, and some barely survived beyond the video store shelf they lived on. But all of them, in their own weird little way, helped define a very specific era of horror, one filled with rubber puppets, glowing eyes, practical effects slime, and filmmakers desperately trying to turn tiny monsters into the next big thing. And for those of us who grew up wandering the horror aisle, staring at those absurd VHS covers and wondering what kind of chaos waited inside, these movies were magic.

As part of the Scarestack Society’s “Spring of King”, a full-blown Stephen King movie marathon + writing sprint amongst a bunch of great movie writers across the stack rounded up by god tier connector , I went with Sleepwalkers—not because it’s the “best” King adaptation, but because it might be the most bonkers and batshit one that’s still a pretty good movie (sorry Maximum Overdrive and your glorious coke-fueled trailer, you are most definitely not a good movie). And that says a lot coming from the brain of this crazy-eyed maniac.

So while a lot of King adaptations lean heavy into dread, trauma, and (attempts at) prestige horror energy, Sleepwalkers just kind of shows up, meows loudly, throws some fake blood around and says, “What if we did a story about shape-shifting, energy-draining, mother-son cat creatures and made it weirdly sexy, comedically violent, and occasionally very dumb?” Well, I’m totally sold for a such a ridiculous and stupid concept! Where do I sign? Who do I kill? Nobody? Ok, cool.

My connection to Sleepwalkers actually goes back to when it first came out in 1992, even though I didn’t see it at the time. I was pretty young, but I vividly remember the marketing—the trailers, the posters, that whole early-90s theatrical push that made everything feel bigger and scarier at the time. This one and Leprechaun are weirdly linked in my brain, mostly because of that old preview guide channel—you know, the scrolling TV listings channel with the tiny trailer window looping at the top? The 90s, man…—and I can still picture flashes of Sleepwalkers running there, over and over. But at that point, I was locked into slashers and doing my early homework on mainstream fare like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween etc and anything outside of that comfortable realm just didn’t quite register yet. So Sleepwalkers kind of slipped through the cracks for me, sitting there as this strange, half-remembered thing from trailers and cable previews.

It wasn’t until a couple years later, once I started widening the scope of what I was watching, that I finally circled back to it, and when I did, it felt like discovering this bizarre little horror secret. And over time, it’s been genuinely fun to watch the movie find its audience, slowly evolving into a cult favorite as more people catch up to just how strange and wildly entertaining it really is. I mean, just look at the ridiculousness in this clip at the 3:10 mark:

A comical transformation that only primitive CGI in the 90s could love….and the world is a better place because of it.

The Plot

Sleepwalkers follows Charles Brady and his mother Mary, who roll into a quiet Indiana town posing as a normal mother-son duo, which they are very much not. They’re actually“sleepwalkers,” shape-shifting, energy-draining, incestuous cat-like creatures who survive by feeding on the life force of young women, and for reasons that feel both arbitrary and deeply funny, Charles has to enroll in high school to hunt. He quickly zeroes in on Tanya, a kind, slightly awkward girl who becomes the target of his increasingly aggressive and very weird courtship, complete with psychic influence. Meanwhile, the town starts to pick up on the fact that something isn’t right, especially as animals (specifically cats, their one true weakness and mortal enemy) begin reacting violently to Charles’ presence. From there, the movie escalates into a mix of seduction, supernatural feeding, small-town suspicion, and full-blown insanity, as Tanya and her allies slowly realize what they’re dealing with and the Bradys stop even pretending to be human. It all builds to a bonkers showdown involving cops, cats, and fire.

You got all that? Now back to the bad 90s CGI!!

Man, that hits hard.

“Wait… Stephen King actually wrote this?….this…..THISSSSS?”

Fun fact: This is one of the very few King movies (at the time) that’s an original screenplay and not an adaptation of any kind. That alone is completely wild and kinda hilarious that this campy madness is what he landed on.

Here we’ve got no safety net, just pure, unfiltered King. And you can feel it. This is what happens when there’s no fancy Hollywood writer who understands story beats, no editor and no adaptation process—it’s just every strange SK instinct making it all the way to the screen.

It’s actually kind of incredible, because while a lot of King adaptations get polished, reshaped, or elevated into something more “respectable,” this one feels like it came straight from the messy brain source. It may not be his only original screenplay (Maximum Overdrive says hello, again), but it might be the purest example of what happens when nobody tells him “Mr King….maybe don’t.” And honestly, thank god they didn’t.

Why Sleepwalkers Rules

The tone in Sleepwalkers is all over the place in the best way. One minute it’s playing like a straight horror movie, the next it’s veering into camp, then suddenly it’s throwing out moments that feel almost unintentionally hilarious. The performances of Brian Krause (Charles) and Mädchen Amick (Tanya. Also, I loved ya in Twin Peaks) match that weird energy—big, likable, and just heightened enough to make everything feel slightly off. But they sure look like a nice couple!

But screw the human cast, they really don’t matter because here we’ve got a cat protagonist named Clovis. Quick side note: Clovis is an elite cat name. Strong, distinguished, sounds like either a medieval king or a guy who fixes watches and quietly knows too much. We need more Clovises in the world.

Clovis is Tanya’s pet cat in Sleepwalkers, but “pet cat” wildly undersells his importance. He’s basically the movie’s furry early warning system and eventual MVP. He’s John McClane with whiskers. In the film’s mythology cats are the one true weakness of the sleepwalkers and they can sense them immediately + actually injure or kill them. So while the humans spend most of the movie slowly catching up to the fact that Charles and Mary are ancient shape-shifting cat monsters with an extremely uncomfortable family dynamic, Clovis figures it out almost instantly and hisses, attacks, and repeatedly tries to tell everyone, in cat language: “HEY! This dude ain’t right.”

And as the movie goes on, Clovis evolves from house pet to full-on action hero. He protects Tanya and becomes a major part of defeating the sleepwalkers.

Basically, imagine if Lassie realized the villain was an incest demon cat and immediately chose violence. That’s Clovis.

But goofy CGI that I’ve ranted on already aside, we also need to talk about what these “fully formed” sleepwalkers actually look like… When they shift into their true form, it’s less “terrifying ancient creature” and more “rubber suit you’d see at the back of a haunted house,” with these vaguely feline, sorta humanoid faces that never quite land on either. It’s that perfect early-90s in-between, where practical effects are still doing the heavy lifting but the design itself feels a lot half-baked, like they had a cool idea and then stopped one step short of fully refining it. In other words, I love it all.

And as if the movie wasn’t already operating on enough weird energy, Stephen King absolutely loaded the movie with cameos like he was assembling the horror Avengers. King himself pops up, of course, alongside horror royalty like Clive Barker, John Landis, Joe Dante, and Tobe Hooper, turning the whole thing into this bizarre little horror nerd “Hey! I know that guy” scavenger hunt.

Even Mark Hamill shows up, because apparently Luke Skywalker himself wandering through a movie about incestuous cat people wasn’t considered strange enough to cut.

Oh, and Ron Perlman is here and gets his fingers chewed off by cats. Naturally.

Sleepwalkers also gets massive bonus points for being one of the only movies in existence where someone gets murdered with an ear of corn…a half eaten ear of corn, at that. That’s right, an actual corn cob becomes a lethal weapon in a scene played with complete sincerity.

So thanks to this moment, somewhere in the history of horror props, right between chainsaws and machetes, sits one very determined ear of corn that absolutely earned its place in horror murder weapon history. Corn, we salute you for your murder service!

In all, Sleepwalkers is weird. Deeply weird. And that’s why I picked it (also because Pet Semetary 2 was already taken, that movie 100% slaps).

Because in a sea of King adaptations that are either chasing prestige or box office, this one stands out by just embracing its own bizarre identity. It’s messy and certainly not the crown jewel of Stephen King movies.

But it might be the one I’d throw on first.

If you liked this—or even if you didn’t—please check out all of the great pieces, past, present, and future, from the Scarestack Society during these Spring of King shenanigans:

5/1 It miniseries- Sahar Khan

5/2 Pet Semetary- JHong

5/3 Pet Semetary 2- Horror Hangouts

5/4 Cujo- Kyle Ryan

5/5 Creepshow- B-Movie Tea

5/6 The Outsider- Sean Mo

5/7 Gerald’s Game- H. H. Duke

5/8 The Mangler- Timothy Atkinson

5/9 Maximum Overdrive- Yanni Hamburger

5/10 Salem’s Lot 2024- Meat Head Media

5/11 Silver Bullet- George R. Galuschak

5/12 Creepshow 2- Thehumangaze

5/13 Carrie- Hellish Views - Harry Evans

5/14 Christine- Emma

5/15 Big Driver- Molly O’Blivion &

Stand By Me- Matt Cyr

5/16 The Shining- Jamie B.

5/17 The Long Walk- Decarceration

5/18 King Of Home Video- Jean-Pierre Diez

5/19 The Langoliers- Beverley’s Horror Corner

5/20 Sleepwalkers- Brandon Rae

5/21 The Running Man- Stevie Duffy

5/22 Misery- Skyla

5/23 The Night Flier- Bryan Wolford

5/24 The Shawshank Redemption- Genevieve Brock

5/25 Dreamcatcher- Kimberly B

5/26 The Mist- Cedric

5/27 The Dead Zone- Offscreenshaman

5/28 Cat’s Eye- Backyard Movie Critic & Graveyard Shift- Liam Palmer

5/29 Rose Red- Kristen (Blood,Blush ,& Guts) & Storm Of The Century- Adam Hunter

5/30 It Chapter 1- That Horror Lesbian

5/31 Dolores Claiborne- Kimberly Ramsawak & The Lawnmower Man- Mike smith

So here we are, about to dive into a film I’ve threatened to cover more than a few times. A movie that bottles that final stretch of late ’80s/early ’90s NYC chaos, a movie that just keeps piling on outrageous ideas (including the iconic title), a certified legend among genre fans… and yes, a movie with a talking VHS box.

The Science Behind This

At its core, Frankenhooker is a heartfelt love story—a deep, meaningful film akin to romantic classics like The Notebook or Titanic. Here, we’ve got a lovestruck med student named Jeffrey Franken who loses his fiancée Elizabeth in one of the most absurd accidents ever put on film—a remote controlled lawnmower gone rogue during a party—and decides the only logical response to this tragedy is to bring her back to life somehow. What follows is his very unhinged plan to build a new body using “spare parts,” which leads him straight into the NYC sex worker scene, where he recruits a group of women under the guise of a party and doses them with experimental super-crack (yes, that’s a thing here), and proceeds to harvest what’s left after things go predictably, explosively wrong (super-crack makes you explode, everyone knows that).

Back in his lab, Jeffrey pieces together the “perfect” body, reanimates Elizabeth, and ends up with something that’s equal parts Frankenstein monster and identity crisis, as she starts cycling through the personalities of the women she’s made from and goes ona rampage in midtown Manhattan. It’s part mad scientist story and part sleazy city odyssey.

It’s also very clearly a flawless movie plot on all fronts.

A Lifelong Condition

My original connection to Frankenhooker is pure video store nostalgia. I came up in the 90s boom, not the 80s, but this thing was still sitting there like a legend that never left the past decade—posters were still on the wall and that insane VHS cover was always staring you down from the horror section. It felt very forbidden. The title alone made it feel like contraband, something just a little too edgy for a kid wandering the aisles at Blockbuster, tucked away with a fat “Youth Restricted Viewing” sticker on the front. And at that point, I didn’t even realize it was a comedy; it just looked dangerous and grimy.

So once I finally got my hands on it, it stopped being this mysterious object on a shelf and turned into something personal, something I’d revisit over and over (including a screening at a Santa Monica theater 2 short years ago). And I think that’s why Frankenhooker hits so hard for a lot of people who grew up in that era—it’s not just the movie, it’s the mythology around it: the awesome cover, the restriction, the dirty curiosity, and the payoff, cuz the movie is a helluva lot of fun.

What’s there not to love?

First and foremost, I’ve always appreciated the bonkers sense of humor. This is a movie that understands exactly how ridiculous it is and never once tries to pretend otherwise. You’ve got Jeffrey wandering around with a remote-controlled brain setup like he’s demoing a science fair project, calmly explaining reanimation while everything around him spirals out of control. You’ve got the “super-crack” party, which escalates from awkward hangout to full-on body explosion showcase in seconds. And you’ve got the titular Frankenhooker herself roaming the streets with that hypnotic, glitched-out “Wanna date?” delivery, turning simple encounters into chaos, kissing people and triggering full-body detonations.

And it’s not just the big premise, it’s the constant stream of dumb, perfect little esoteric moments. Jeffrey casually screaming at a random Swedish guy, Frankenhooker aggressively slamming pretzels at a bar for no reason whatsoever, and then there’s Jeffrey’s drilling into his own head with a power drill.

Then you’ve got some amazing late 80s practical special effects, which are a huge part of the appeal of lots of the movies of the era. And layered on top of that are those incredible, not-quite-there optical effects—the lightning, the lab visuals—that give everything this slightly janky charm.

And as mentioned, the setting is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. This is that late ’80s/early ’90s Times Square New York, pre-cleanup, pre-sanitized, the version of the city that felt dangerous, sleazy, and endlessly fascinating. And that all ties directly into the fact that this is a Frank Henenlotter film, carrying that very specific New York exploitation DNA he built with Basket Case. The difference here is you can feel he’s got a little more money, a little more room to play, and it elevates everything just enough. The filmmaking is more confident, the set pieces are bigger, the effects more ambitious, but it still holds onto that scrappy, anything-goes spirit.

Performance-wise, it’s perfect casting across the board. James Lorinz as Jeffrey brings this oddly mellow, almost polite energy to a character who is doing completely insane things. When he’s not ranting and raving, he’s calmly assembling a human being out of spare parts like it’s a normal Tuesday evening in the suburbs. And then you have Patty Mullen, who goes in the exact opposite direction as the Frankenhooker: loud, jerky, contorting, and completely committed to yelling “Wanna date?” across clubs, subways, and street corners. And all of the oddball side characters along the way feel like perfect representations of the grimier, scummier side of NYC at the time.

Also, there’s the completely baffling, borderline mythological quote on the back of Frankenhooker: a pull quote attributed to Bill Murray…yes THAT Bill Murray, that reads, “If you only see one movie this year, it should be Frankenhooker.”

So why is Bill Murray endorsing this movie? Why is he staking his cinematic reputation on a film about reanimated sex workers and exploding bodies? Well, I guess we kinda know why…but the story behind it only makes it better. At the time, Murray was working on Quick Change, which was being edited in the same facility as Frankenhooker. He wandered in, saw some footage, and in a very Bill Murray move, tossed out that quote—half joking, half amused—and the filmmakers just… used it. No PR spin, no clarification, just straight to the VHS box, forever immortalized. And over time, it’s become part of the movie’s legend and one of those perfectly weird footnotes that somehow feels completely in line with everything else about it.

And so I say to you now, with all the seriousness this moment absolutely does not deserve, it is time to do your civic duty. If you are a fan of late ’80s/early ’90s cinema, of grimy New York exploitation, of horror that’s funny and comedy that’s a little unhinged, of Frankenstein stories that have completely lost the plot, then you owe it to yourself—and frankly, to the nation—to experience Frankenhooker. This is not a suggestion. This is a call to action. Stand up, locate a copy, press play, and bear witness to one of the most gloriously ridiculous films ever committed to tape. Because some movies entertain, some movies inspire, and some movies… involve reanimated body parts, super-crack, and a talking VHS box. And those are the movies that define us.

You’ve got an original film with one of the most infamous, brain-breaking endings in horror history, a twist that still gets talked about decades later, for better or worse (already a legendary and difficult feat). Then, instead of chasing that same tone, the series swerves hard into comedy and somehow makes that work too, turning the sequels into their own brand of cult classics that people still really dig (not an easy changeup to pull). And just when you think it’s settled into that groove, it goes full franchise brain rot and attempts the dreaded “let’s recapture the magic decades later” move (pretty common, unfort). Oh yea, and there’s also a completely “lost” and unfinished film, a sequel that was assembled from scraps that also got a very limited release (just plain weird) It’s a series that hits every peak and every valley—shock, reinvention, camp, collapse—and somehow remains fascinating the entire way through.

My experience with seeing the franchise was also completely out of order, which honestly shaped how confusing, and eventually fascinating, it became to me. The first one I ever saw was Part III, so my introduction to Sleepaway Camp was pure comedy, chaos, and Angela cracking jokes and puns while murdering people with tent spikes and firecrackers. Meanwhile, I’d heard through pre-internet, word-of-mouth legend that the original had one of the scariest endings of all time, which made the tonal disconnect of Part III even more bizarre to my 12 year old brain.

Then I watched Part II, mainly because my quest to snag Part 1 had failed, and things started to click a little more as I began to understand the campy, comedic angle the series had settled into. But that only made the mythology of the first one even stranger in my head.

Then I finally watched the original, and sure enough, it got me. Even knowing the final reveal, it’s the presentation—the frozen expression, the sound, the sheer unnaturalness of it—that still lands. It’s genuinely one of horror’s most unsettling endings.

And then, many, many moons later, I watched the final one almost as a joke with my friend Matt in New York, probably on some terrible streaming service, and… yeah, that one speaks for itself.

So all of that nonsense said, let’s go to camp and murder some counselors.

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

The original Sleepaway Camp plays like a pretty standard summer camp slasher… until it very much doesn’t.

The setup is simple enough: a shy, withdrawn kid named Angela is sent to Camp Arawak with her cousin Ricky, a place where the counselors are weirdly hostile and very creepy to the children in a way that feels less like “authority” and more like “lawsuit waiting to happen”. From there, people start dying: a cook gets scalded, a camper gets drowned, someone meets a beehive in a toilet, and yes—there’s a curling iron incident that somehow manages to be both deeply uncomfortable and burned into horror history forever.

But what really makes this one stand out isn’t the plot or even the mystery, it’s the vibe. The movie is wayyyyyy off in a lot of ways. The performances are strange, the dialogue is stilted or amplified in a way that feels almost alien, and there’s an undercurrent of mean-spiritedness that never really lets you fully relax. The kids are also played by actual of age kids, which makes the deaths a lot more off putting than your typical Friday the 13th clones.

And then there are the characters orbiting around Angela, who somehow make the whole thing feel even more surreal. Her aunt—delivered in a performance that feels like it drifted in from a completely different movie—is one of the most bizarre figures in horror, full stop.

You’ve also got Robert Earl Jones (yes, Darth Vader’s father) showing up, adding this strange bit of cinematic lineage to a movie that otherwise feels like it exists completely outside of Hollywood gravity.

Also, this buffed guy in his super short shorts.

And there’s this bizarre title card to open the movie

Meanwhile, Angela’s cousin Ricky might be one of the most aggressively nasty and whiny “protector” characters in slasher history, a kid who escalates every situation straight to DEFCON 1 with a level of hostility that’s almost as disturbing as it is impressive.

And then there’s the massive elephant in the room— the ending. That very very famous ending where it turns out Angela is discovered to be biologically male, standing there on the beach, unmoving with her face frozen, holding the severed head of another camper in one of the most jarring final images and infamous twist endings in horror history. As a kid in the 90s, it hit like a lightning bolt and I was terrified. As an adult, it’s a lot more complicated and raises questions about identity, exploitation, and what exactly the movie is trying to say—or if it even knows. It’s shocking, unforgettable, and undeniably effective, but it also doesn’t land the same way today. It still lingers though, in a way very few horror endings do.

Highlights:

• Still one of the most memorable and horrific endings in horror history

• Weird, dreamlike tone that sets it apart from other slashers

• Unintentionally hilarious performances that become part of the charm (including Aunt Martha, a character you cannot fully explain, only experienced)

• Gnarly, mean-spirited kills that go further than expected

Lowlights:

• Awkward performances (sometimes working against the movie, sometimes accidentally elevating it)

• Slow at times

• That ending… depending on how you view it now

• If you don’t like to see actual kids of a young age die, this ain’t for you
  

Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988)

And then the franchise says: “That was kind of bleak and fairly unpleasant experience… also, it’s the late 80s and we discovered cocaine! Cocaine is awesome Woohoo! What if we made this next one fun?”

Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers throws out almost everything that made the first movie feel like a cursed object and replaces it with something louder and way more self-aware. Angela is back, now played by Pamela Springsteen—yes, Bruce Springsteen’s sister—and she’s no longer a quiet, unsettling presence. She’s a full-blown slasher villain with corny punchlines and a completely out of wack moral code.

The plot is basically Angela running a camp and murdering “bad” campers—kids who swear, have sex, do drugs, or just generally fail her very specific, deeply unhinged definition of good behavior. This time, it’s less about suspense and more about watching Angela creatively eliminate people while tossing off one-liners like she’s auditioning for a horror-themed amateur stand-up show at the Comedy Cellar.

And the kills? Oh, they’re so dumb in the best possible way. We’re talking strangulation via guitar strings, human barbecues, and someone getting murdered in a toilet. The body count is sky-high, to the point where it becomes almost comedic, and by the end, it genuinely feels like everyone at this camp has been wiped off the map.

Tonally, this is a complete 180 from part one. There’s no lingering dread and no strange, off-putting atmosphere. This is bright, silly, and intentionally funny. The acting is wooden across the board, but here it actually works in the movie’s favor—it adds to the camp (no pun avoided) and gives everything that slightly off, made-for-nowhere quality.

And honestly? It works for me. Not in the same way as the original, but as its own thing and is a blast. It’s shorter, faster, louder, and way more interested in entertaining you moment-to-moment than unsettling you. Angela, as reimagined here, is legitimately fun to watch as equal parts slasher villain and sarcastic camp counselor who just happens to solve problems with murder.

There’s also something quietly delightful about the idea that Bruce Springsteen has, at some point, been aware of this movie. Maybe he’s seen it, maybe he hasn’t, maybe he had to muster up the energy to say “Great job sis!”, but the possibility alone adds a weird little layer of joy to the whole thing.

Highlights:

• Pamela Springsteen absolutely owning the role, turning Angela into a full personality

• Wild, ridiculous kills and a massive body count that borders on parody
  Self-aware tone that embraces the absurdity

• That iconic VHS cover (not Pamela Springsteen, btw)

• The happy camper song

Lowlights:

• Loses all the eerie, uncomfortable weirdness of the original and feels less a total genre pivot into horror-comedy chaos

• Wooden, campy acting that won’t work for everyone

• Humor that’s hit-or-miss depending on your tolerance for cheese

Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (1989)

And then the franchise says: “Boy, that was fun…but, man, this cocaine is starting to wear off and make me really tired. But “Oh shit!”, I gotta be at work in 15 minutes”

Sleepaway Camp III basically takes everything from the second movie and tries to crank it up, but also somehow feels cheaper, faster, and just a little more worn down. And there’s a reason for that, it was shot immediately after Part II, with the same crew rolling straight into production. No reset, no recharge, just “alright, new camp, let’s do this all over again.” And can practically see on screen that everyone’s just running on fumes and craft services coffee.

Angela is still running the show, still played by Pamela Springsteen, still delivering kills and sarcastic commentary like the homicidal camp counselor we’ve all come to know and love. The tone is firmly locked into horror-comedy now, no ambiguity left—it’s not trying to scare you, it’s trying to entertain you with just how ridiculous it can get.

The plot is thinner this time—Angela infiltrates yet another camp setup and continues her extremely specific moral crusade—but the movie barely pretends to care about narrative. It’s now 100% about the comedy bits and the kills.

And those kills? Peak late-80s “what do we have lying around?” creativity. A firecracker to the head! Someone accidentally snorting bleach instead of cocaine! A tree-based arm-ripping situation?!?!? and one unlucky camper gets yanked up a flagpole and dropped like a human potato sack.

The campers themselves are even more exaggerated this time around and the acting leans fully into that wooden, heightened style, which again works if you’re on the movie’s wavelength, and absolutely doesn’t if you’re not. There’s also this underlying sense that the movie is trying to outdo Part II without quite having the same spark, like it’s repeating the joke but slightly louder.

Still, as a piece of late-80s horror excess, it’s hard not to have a good time with it.

Highlights:

• Fully embraces its identity as a slasher comedy with zero hesitation

• Ridiculous, memorable kills that feel pulled from a grab bag of chaos

• Angela as a fully locked-in character, equal parts killer and commentator

• That scrappy, shot-back-to-back energy that gives it a weird “I’ve been here before” production charm

Lowlights:

• Even further removed from anything that made the original unsettling

• Feels rushed and slightly worn out compared to Part II

• Characters are basically cartoons waiting for their turn

• The formula starts to feel repetitive, like the series is looping itself

Sleepaway Camp IV: The Survivor (2012… kind of)

And then… we get this.

Sleepaway Camp IV isn’t really a movie in the traditional sense. It’s a reconstruction—a patchwork assembled decades later using leftover footage from an abandoned sequel shot in 1992, mixed with newly shot material to try and create something resembling a narrative. And, SURPRISE! None of it works one bit.

The plot, such as it is, follows a survivor recounting past events, but it mostly serves as a framework to stitch together random scenes already shot. It’s all very disjointed and confusing.

This is what happens when a franchise doesn’t just run out of ideas—it runs out of money and footage to work with. It’s less a sequel and more a curiosity, something for completists rather than anyone looking for a satisfying continuation.

Highlights:

• Interesting as a “lost film” artifact

• Gives hardcore fans something to poke at

Lowlights:

• Barely functions as a coherent movie

• Feels incomplete (because it literally is)

Return to Sleepaway Camp (2008)

And then, years later, after the franchise had been quietly sitting in VHS bins and late-night cable reruns, the internet got involved and someone decided it was time to go back.

Return to Sleepaway Camp is the long-delayed follow-up that tries to reconnect with the original Sleepaway Camp, skipping Parts II and III entirely, as if those ridiculous fever dreams never happened. It arrives squarely in that mid-2000s era where cult horror was being rediscovered online, dissected, memed, and inevitably… revived.

On paper, it sounds promising: original director Robert Hiltzik returns, the film leans into character callbacks, and there’s a quasi attempt to recapture the tone of the first movie. In reality, it feels like a strange time capsule of crappy 2000s era horror within a production that never quite finds its footing.

The setup brings us back to camp, but this time the focus is on a group of aggressively unlikable campers, led by a protagonist (???) whose defining trait is yelling “Your ass stinks” at basically everyone, over and over again, like the movie is daring you to laugh through repetition alone. So instead of the uncomfortable, eerie energy of the original—or even the dumb fun of Parts II and III—you get something that just feels mean and grating without the payoff.

The kills are there, technically, but they lack the creativity or punch of the earlier films and rely on bad CGI. And visually, it feels cheap—not in that charming, regional-horror way, but in a “we didn’t quite have the resources or the plan” kind of way.

Tonally, it’s trying to juggle everything—callbacks to the original, flashes of gross-out humor, a little bit of mystery—but nothing really clicks. It’s not scary, it’s not especially funny, and it doesn’t have that accidental weirdness that made the first film linger in your brain.

And then there’s the ending. An attempt to bring Angela back into the fold, to tie things together and give fans something, but it lands with a thud. Instead of shocking or memorable, it feels rushed and undercooked.

There’s something almost admirable about the attempt. You can see the intention to tap into the cult love, to revisit something that had found a second life years later. But it also feels like a product of that exact moment—when nostalgia and early internet fandom started driving revivals that didn’t always have a clear creative reason to exist.

And yeah… it’s a movie. It definitely got made. And if you’re a fan of the series, you’ll probably watch it out of curiosity, obligation, or sheer completionist instinct. But it’s hard to argue that it earns its place alongside the others.

Highlights:

• The novelty of returning with a ton of the original characters

• A few scattered nods and callbacks for longtime fans

• The sheer curiosity factor of “they made another one of these?”

Lowlights:

• Deeply unlikable characters, led by an aggressively annoying protagonist

• Cheap production without the charm of any of the OG 3

• An ending that tries to connect the dots and completely misses

Final Thoughts

What makes the Sleepaway Camp series so fascinating is how completely it reinvents itself—and not always for the better...but maybe it actually is for the better?

But even with all that inconsistency, there’s something undeniably charming about the whole franchise. It’s messy, it’s uneven, it makes some wild choices, but it’s never boring.

And that first movie? Still weird as hell. Still unforgettable.

First off, is this a movie that you, my astute reader, have actually heard of? If you have, you’re awesome and we can absolutely be some level of immediate friends. Not “go on vacation to Cabo and enjoy an all inclusive resort together where we’re only taking time off from each other to sleep” friends, but definitely “let’s grab a coffee and talk weird VHS horror” friends (I prefer the latter anyway).

Second, much like our dear friend Spookies, this is a low-budget ’80s horror movie with script ambition that far exceeded its budget, and it comes with a troubled production story that I absolutely need to celebrate somehow.

On a personal note, I bought this back in the day based solely on the nonsensical title/bizarre cover art and ended up really enjoying it as a teen. It was weird, random, and full of enormous potential. But it was also, again like the disasterpiece Spookies, totally disjointed, something I clocked even as an ignorant kid in a pre-internet world where you couldn’t just Google “what the hell happened here?”

Since then, it’s grown into a full-on cult oddity for a mix of very good and very questionable reasons, all of which we’ll get into. So welcome to the wild, weird world of a horror flick that absolutely deserves a spot on your radar...even if it’s a total clusterfuck!

The Plot

The plot, as best as I can piece together, is that a group of teenagers in San Francisco (can’t think of many horror flicks that take place in SF, so immediate kudos for that) discover that a gang of… things—Neon Maniacs, I presume—are living under the Golden Gate Bridge and occasionally popping out to brutally murder people for reasons that are never fully explained. These Maniacs look like the village people raided a Spirit Halloween—you’ve got a samurai, a biker, a caveman, a cowboy, a weird goblin dude, and a handful of others who feel like rejected action figures from a toy line that never happened. Our heroes attempt to stop them, learn that water kills them, and then the movie just kind of sprints through a finale and ends in an extremely abrupt and confusing way.

Backstory

Before Neon Maniacs became the beautifully broken mess we know today, it actually started as a pretty high-concept idea: instead of one killer or one monster, you build an entire gang of them, each with a distinct look and vibe. And that could lead to action figures, trading cards, T-shirts etc. It was kinda ahead of the curve in the merch before movie ethos.

The script came from Mark Patrick Carducci, who leaned into the idea of urban monsters hiding just beneath the surface of everyday life (hence the Golden Gate bridge setting for their home, but he originally wanted the Brooklyn bridge). And in that original script, there was supposed to be a clearer mythology, more defined rules, and an actual explanation for what these Maniacs were and why they existed—an intention you can sorta, kinda feel in the finished film, even if most of it never fully made it to the screen. But we’ll get there.

The movie ultimately landed in the hands of Joseph Mangine, a cinematographer by trade who stepped into the director’s chair for this one. And that kind of tracks when you watch it, as there are moments where the film looks really cool, but it doesn’t quite stick the landing for most of it.

Still, the ambition is undeniable, which is what makes everything that happened during production so frustrating.

So… What Went Wrong?

The easiest and shortest answer: money, time, and a whole lot of people bailing mid-shoot.

Like a lot of mid-’80s independent horror, Neon Maniacs was operating on a tight budget and at some point during production, that budget started to fall apart. Funding issues slowed things down and checks weren’t clearing, which meant the shoot stretched longer than intended, which in turn created a ripple effect where cast and crew availability became a problem. Also, a whole lot of people just quit because sometimes people like to get paid for, ya know, working and stuff.

One of the strangest and most telling artifacts of this is right there in the credits. If you look closely, several of the Neon Maniacs are credited to multiple performers. That’s certainly not some creative choice—it’s a sure sign of a production that had to keep swapping people in and out just to keep things moving. Actors left, replacements came in, and the film just kept pushing forward, stitching itself together in real time much like the monsters it was trying to portray which actually adds to the weird, disjointed feel of the movie itself.

A Script They Never Finished Filming

So yea, because of said budget problem, the film is littered with obvious script gaps. It opens with this bizarre tarot card setup, like we’re about to get some kind of mythology or rules to this world, and then—poof—it never comes back. Gone. From there, the Maniacs simply exist, popping out of nowhere (yes, including a very random mythology involving them emerging from what looks like a bread truck??? But this is never explained) and attacking people with zero context. No origin, no logic, nd no connective tissue tying any of this together.

But the real head-scratcher comes during the climax at the Battle of the Bands, when, in the middle of hiding from murderous monsters and watching their friends get viciously murdered, our two leads decide it’s the perfect time to hook up. And then—poof—the Maniacs just kind of… leave. No explanation and no final showdown. If you squint, you can reverse-engineer the logic and guess that maybe they were hunting a virgin, and once the final girl isn’t one anymore, the threat is over. But here’s the problem: the movie never actually tells you that. So instead of feeling like some twisted horror rule, it just plays like a completely random, wildly inappropriate decision followed by the monsters politely clocking out for the night.

It also sounds like large chunks of footage were either cut, lost, or never properly finished on set, depending on which version of the story you believe. Entire narrative threads that were meant to connect the movie simply vanished. That’s why the Maniacs themselves feel so cool but so unexplained—you’re seeing the shell of a much bigger idea that never got completed.

The ending just… happens

And of course, we have to talk about that ending. Or lack of one. Imagine a movie where the main antagonists are still very much alive and have just killed a character, and then we cut to our heroes in a car talking about stopping them. You’d think we’re gearing up for an exciting third act, right? Nope. Instead, we get some Golden Gate Bridge B-roll and—boom—credits. What the actual hell? It’s baffling.

There’s no big narrative resolution, no real sense of closure—it just kind of wraps things up as quickly as possible and calls it a day. While there isn’t a single clean, documented explanation for it, everything about the production points to the same conclusion: they hit a wall, financially and logistically, and had to finish the movie with whatever they had left.

The final edit is a structural mess

And all of that chaos ultimately shows up in the final edit, which is where Neon Maniacs really reveals itself as a goopey mess. When you combine missing scenes, half-baked ideas, and a production that clearly ran out of time and money, you end up with a movie that feels like it was hastily assembled rather than finished. There are setups with no payoff, characters who just quietly disappear, and story threads that feel like they were supposed to matter but got left behind somewhere along the way. The constant swapping of actors, the trimmed or missing footage, and the general “just get it done” energy all bleed into the edit, creating something that never quite finds a rhythm. It’s choppy, disjointed, and often feels like you’re watching a rough cut that somehow made it to VHS shelves.

Honorable mention:

Then there are the logic gaps. The biggest one? Water kills the Neon Maniacs… and yet they live under the Golden Gate Bridge, surrounded by water, seemingly emerging from that exact environment like it’s their cozy little home base. So the one thing that destroys them is also the thing they hang out next to 24/7. Great idea, guys!

And before I completely bury this thing, I do have to say—despite all of that chaos, Neon Maniacs has a ton of charm and some genuinely absurd, memorable moments. There’s a completely out-of-place credits theme song that sounds like it wandered in from an episode of Doogie Howser, M.D., which only adds to the weird tonal soup of the whole experience.

And I absolutely love a movie that takes a very obvious 25-year-old, throws a backward hat and some “cool kid clothes” on them, and confidently passes them off as a precocious 14-year-old. No attempt to hide it, just pure “trust us, this is a teenager” energy.

Neon Maniacs, never change.

The creature design is legitimately great too—you can tell where the budget actually went, because the Maniacs themselves are the coolest part of the movie. There’s also a standout park massacre early on that’s surprisingly effective, and a subway chase/fight sequence that feels way more ambitious than anything this budget should’ve allowed. That scene especially stuck with me as a kid. And for a fun little bit of trivia, Wishmaster himself, Andrew Divoff, pops up here as one of the Maniacs in his first film role, which is kind of amazing considering where he’d end up.

It’s not that Neon Maniacs doesn’t make sense. It’s that it feels like you’re watching the remains of a version of the movie that did make sense at one point, and honestly, that’s what makes it fascinating. Because buried under all the confusion, you can see glimpses of a genuinely fun, weird, creative horror movie trying to break through. You just never quite get the full picture.

For more info on this oddity, check out the excellent podcast hosted by director Stephen Scarlata here that covers the movie, fandom and BTS drama. And yes, someone did a whole podcast on this madness! What a time to be alive

You see, the real fucked-up fun comes from the moments where filmmakers look at Mary Shelley’s story and say, “What if we took this idea—the one about someone building life from parts they probably shouldn’t be messing with—and absolutely broke it in whatever exploitative way we can?” Suddenly it’s not just a stitched-together monster, it’s whatever deranged version of “creation” a wacky filmmaker can dream up.

So in honor of yet another classy, awards-friendly take on the material, let’s celebrate the opposite energy: the weirdest and sleaziest Frankenstein variations ever put on screen.

Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein (1973)

Fun/embarrassing personal story: the first time I ever heard the name “Andy Warhol” was because of this movie. Not because I was some ignorant child from Ohio (I most certainly was), but because one of my earliest childhood discoveries was flipping through a 1993 film guide in, like, third grade, and stumbling across a review of this thing, which described it as a campy, blood-soaked ode to the source material. That stuck with me. Then, years later, as I became a slightly more cultured young man, I discovered the other thing Warhol did—you know, the whole global cultural icon thing—and realized he basically had nothing to do with this movie. Marketing, babayyyy!!

Anyway, Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein—again, name very strategically slapped on to help sell tickets—is the “what if Frankenstein was horny, European, and absolutely drenched in fake blood” version. The late (and amazingly great) Udo Kier plays Baron Frankenstein as a completely unhinged aristocrat obsessed with creating the perfect man and woman, which leads to scenes involving stitched-together body parts and some truly wild surgical sequences that feel equal parts art film and weird fever dream.

This one has it all: Severed limbs, exaggerated gore, and bizarre scenery chewing performances. And if this particular flavor of chaos is your thing, don’t worry, they basically ran it back with Andy Warhol’s Dracula right after (name also slapped on for marketing purposes).

Frankenhooker (1990)

One of the all-time great “you had me at the title” movies. Honestly, I’m not even going to get too deep into this one because it absolutely deserves its own 5,000-word essay at some point. Maybe 20,000. The true cinematic greats earn that kind of treatment.

From exploitation legend Frank Henenlotter, Frankenhooker gives us a grieving med student who decides to rebuild his dead fiancée—who was tragically (and hilariously) chopped up in a remote controlled lawnmower accident—using body parts from sex workers. Naturally, this leads to a Frankenstein story powered by exploding hookers who explode because they smoke some “super crack” and a grimy, unmistakable sleazy slice of late-’80s New York City that most films couldn’t replicate if they tried.

But yeah… I love this movie with all of my heart and shamelessly spent a few hundred bucks to get the talking box VHS above. This film is 100% Criterion to me. More on this at another time.

Blackenstein (1973)

Blaxploitation meets Frankenstein, and it is exactly as weird as that mashup suggests.

A Vietnam vet loses his limbs in combat and returns home to his fiancée, who’s willing to try anything to make him whole again. Enter Dr. Stein, who uses an experimental regeneration serum to rebuild him into a superhuman figure. Our guy then turns into a towering, fur-covered monster with a taste for violence, and suddenly the quiet domestic recovery story turns into a full-on rampage through the neighborhood.

It’s rough around the edges, and very much a product of its time, but honestly, the behind-the-scenes story might be more compelling than the movie itself. Writer/Producer Frank R. Saletri was murdered in 1982 in Los Angeles in a case that was never solved, which adds a genuinely eerie footnote to the film’s legacy.

Bride of Re-Animator (1990)

This sequel to 1985’s stone-cold classic Re-Animator takes the concept and cranks it up by having Herbert West and Dan Cain continue their deeply irresponsible experiments with reanimation, eventually deciding that what the world really needs is a stitched-together “bride” made from assorted spare parts. As they continue playing god with all the confidence of men who have learned absolutely nothing, the movie spirals into a grotesque mess of body horror, black comedy, and mad-scientist arrogance.

This one was also pure forbidden fruit for me as a kid. Slapped with that glorious “UNRATED” label, which in the early ’90s might as well have meant “absolutely illegal for children,” it instantly became something I had to see. I distinctly remember conning my grandma into buying it for me at the mall when I was, like, 11 years old, which in hindsight feels like a wildly irresponsible move on both of our parts. But that just added to the magic.

Lady Frankenstein (1971)

This time, it’s Victor’s daughter taking over the family business after dear old dad bites it, and she wastes absolutely no time getting to work.

What makes this one fun is how quickly it abandons any pretense of being a proper gothic horror film and leans into full-on Euro-trash chaos. It’s trashy and is a perfect example of taking the Frankenstein blueprint and immediately steering it into a ditch.

Doctor Gore (1973)

Y’all might not be familiar with the good Dr. Gore, and honestly, there’s a reason for that. This is true bottom-of-the-barrel VHS horror. The kind of dusty tape that sat untouched on the back shelf of a video store, daring you to be dumb enough to rent it (I was).

Directed by and starring J.G. “Pat” Patterson, a collaborator of Herschell Gordon Lewis, this is basically a low-rent Frankenstein-by-way-of-Frankenhooker situation. A grieving doctor tries to build the perfect woman out of spare parts, succeeds, and then immediately loses control of the situation when she starts living her own life. Cue jealousy, murder, regret, and a general sense that none of this was thought through by the doc.

But honestly, the movie itself is only half the appeal. The real magic is in how unbelievably janky everything is. Boom mics sneaking into frame, bizarre synth music, wooden acting, a hunchback assistant who might as well have wandered in from another movie entirely, and dialogue that feels like it was written on a napkin five minutes before shooting. It barely delivers on the “extreme gore” the VHS box promises, but it absolutely delivers on unintentional comedy.

Frankenweenie (1984 / 2012)

Ok, not TOO bizarre, but here we are.

Tim Burton, in his first real movie, takes the Frankenstein blueprint and makes it a lot more… poochy??!? A young kid loses his beloved dog and decides to bring him back to life using science and a questionable garage lab setup that would absolutely get shut down immediately in the real world. It’s somehow both adorable and mildly disturbing, which is kind of Burton’s whole deal. One moment you’re watching a sweet story about love and loss, but also… a child is reanimating a corpse? In also a Disney movie; incredible.

I’ve got a very specific memory of catching this on the early ’90s Disney Channel and just being completely locked in by how weird it felt compared to everything else on there. It didn’t behave like a normal “kids movie” and had this off-kilter, slightly creepy energy that made it feel like you were getting away with watching something you maybe weren’t supposed to (a feeling I was very much into at the time).

And of course, decades later, we got the full remake, which is totally serviceable but there’s something about that original live-action version that hits different.

Monstrosity (1987)

Andy Milligan— the true bottom-of-the-barrel Staten Island auteur, one day I’ll do a whole deep dive on the man— somehow made his way out to Los Angeles in the ’80s and decided to take a swing at his own Frankenstein riff. And yeah… it goes about as well as you’d expect a $100 movie to go.

Here, a group of complete knuckleheads piece together a hulking creature from human and animal parts and send it out to do their dirty work. It’s Frankenstein stripped down to its most basic, questionable instinct: build a thing, point it at your problems, and hope it doesn’t come back to ruin your life. Spoiler, it does.

Like most of Milligan’s work, the movie is drenched in sleaze and feels like it’s crawling through the absolute underbelly of LA. Cheap sets, grimy vibes, weird performances, and a general sense that everything is just slightly off in a way that makes you feel like you need a shower afterward.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

We all know this one, and the Frankenstein DNA is right there in the open: creation, control, and things getting out of hand very quickly. And let’s be honest, Dr. Frank-N-Furter is basically Victor Frankenstein with way more confidence and way better outfits.

Is it horror? Nah. But I’m including it anyway because the influence is massive, and honestly, it’s one of the most fun things you can throw on around Halloween when you want something spooky-adjacent that leans way more fun/funny than scary.

So in all, Frankenstein has always been less about the monster and more about the impulse to create something we don’t fully understand. And while the prestige versions will keep trying to win awards, these grimier takes are the ones that really capture the spirit of the idea.

Because if you’re going to play god… you might as well get a little weird with it.

These movies are not masterpieces. Not even close. Oh God, no…the words masterpiece and Leprechaun probably shouldn’t appear in the same sentence. But they are loud, completely unserious, and anchored by Warwick Davis absolutely committing to the bit as a rhyming, gold-obsessed murder goblin. It’s a franchise that never pretends to be classy and constantly escalates its own insanity as the movies go on, which is exactly why I have a deep appreciation for most of them.

So in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I figured it was time to do the sensible thing and rank the Leprechaun flicks.

But before the ranking, a quick note: the franchise really exists in two timelines.

The Warwick Davis era: the original run from the 90s that slowly loses its mind in the best possible way.

The reboot attempts: the modern entries—Origins and Leprechaun Returns— that try to take things way more seriously and miss the point entirely. They’re not very good to my understanding and since I’m a Davis purist, I’m only only talking about the original slate of films. Sorry, Hornswoggle

6. Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood (2003)

This one lands at the bottom mostly because it feels like the franchise finally ran out of gas—which, yes, I know is a crazy thing to say after all the jump the shark moments this series had already been through up to this point. But by now, the “Leprechaun in the hood” concept had already been done three years earlier, so doing it again feels less like a bold/hilarious idea and more like someone trying desperately to replicate what worked about the headline-grabbing original In the Hood flick. And that original was basically successful because the concept itself was so random and ridiculous at the time that people watched it for the spectacle, not necessarily the content.

Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood follows a group of friends who discover a stash of gold coins while cleaning up a construction site. Unfortunately for them, the gold belongs to the Leprechaun, who has been patiently waiting centuries for someone foolish enough to steal it. Once the coins start getting spent around the neighborhood, Lep begins tracking them down one by one, reclaiming his treasure in the most violent ways possible.

Shockingly, the main problem isn’t just the recycled premise, it’s that everything feels cheaper and flatter than Lep’s first trip to the hood. The humor doesn’t land as well, the side characters are less memorable, and the kills lack the creative flair that made some of the earlier entries fun. However, he does murder someone with a bong.

Warwick Davis still shows up and gives it his all, because the man is a legend, but the movie around him feels tired. When a franchise that once sent its villain to Vegas and outer space suddenly feels low-energy, that’s usually a sign the magic pot of gold has finally run dry.

It’s not unwatchable, but it’s the one entry where the series’ chaotic charm starts to fade a bit.

5. Leprechaun (1993)

Here’s where my ranking might surprise some people: the original Leprechaun lands near the bottom for me, and I’m not ashamed of it.

Now before the pitchforks come out, yes, I get it. It’s the original. Yes, I know Jennifer Aniston is in it. That’s a great trivia fact. But let’s be honest with each other for a second. This movie is kind of… boring.

And I think some fans are lying to themselves about how much they actually enjoy it. Nostalgia is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Because if you strip away the “it started the franchise” argument and the Jennifer Aniston novelty, what you’re left with is a pretty slow creature feature that hasn’t yet figured out how ridiculous it should be.

So I’m genuinely asking the fans of this movie: come talk to me. Explain it. Convince me. Tell me why this deserves to rank higher than the bottom. Because every time I revisit it, I keep thinking the same thing: Man, this series didn’t really get fun until the sequels showed up and let the Leprechaun start acting like the dumb little rhyming goblin we all actually came for.

And that’s my hill to die on.

Yes, here are flashes of the insanity to come— the pogo stick kill is genuinely goofy and feels like the franchise briefly understanding what kind of movie it should be— but for me, it never quite reaches the level of fun the sequels eventually hit.

Still, you have to give credit where credit’s due. It launched the series, introduced Warwick Davis’ delightfully committed performance, and set the table for all the ridiculousness that followed.

4. Leprechaun in the Hood (2000)

Before the internet turned everything ridiculous into instant viral content, Leprechaun in the Hood basically functioned as early analog virality. You kind of had to be there to understand, but I vividly remember my friends and I seeing the VHS box or hearing someone casually mention the premise and just losing our minds. Wait… the Leprechaun… is in the hood? And Ice-T is in it?

It felt like a movie that existed purely as a punchline and word spread the old-fashioned way: video store aisles, school hallways, and friends saying “You won’t believe this movie exists.” I distinctly remember seeing the VHS box and thinking: “This can’t be real.” And of course that meant it had to be rented immediately.

The plot revolves around a struggling rap trio who stumble upon the Leprechaun’s magical flute and pot of gold, which of course leads to greed, supernatural chaos, and Warwick Davis popping up to reclaim his treasure while rhyming threats and murdering people. Ice-T shows up as a shady music producer, there’s magic involved, and the Leprechaun literally raps at one point (see above). It’s the kind of movie that feels like a dare.

Is it messy and cheap? Absolutely. Is it a little problematic through a modern lens? Also yes. But it’s hard to deny that the movie has energy. It leans completely into the absurdity of the premise instead of trying to play things straight.

It may not be good in any traditional sense, but it’s memorable, weirdly entertaining, and very much a product of its moment.

3. Leprechaun 4: In Space (1997)

Yes, I know. Ranking Leprechaun 4: In Space this high might sound insane, but you gotta hear me out.

When this came out in the later ’90s, I remember thinking the franchise had officially jumped the shark. Leprechaun 3 dropping the little guy in Las Vegas actually made a weird kind of sense, it felt like an evolution that was as grounded as a movie called Leprechaun could be. But space? Space felt like the moment where the producers just threw up their hands and said, “Alright, screw it. Send that little bastard to wherever as long as the checks clear.”

At the time, I hated it. It was too ridiculous, too cheap-looking, and way too absurd even for a franchise about a murderous Leprechaun. But as an adult, I’ve learned to appreciate what they were actually doing here, which was stop pretending this was horror and lean all the way into campy sci-fi comedy.

The production is hilariously low-budget. Space has almost never looked cheaper. The sets look like they were built in a community theater basement. And yet… it’s kind of amazing.

There’s a goofy confidence to the whole thing. The movie knows it’s ridiculous and just commits to the bit. Warwick Davis is still clearly having fun, the kills are super bizarre, and the overall vibe is pure late-90s direct-to-video chaos.

It’s also the moment where the producers clearly ran out of logical places to send the Leprechaun. After space, where else could he possibly go? Well… the hood…but we already talked about that.

2. Leprechaun 2 (1994)

I’ve always had a weird fondness for Leprechaun 2, and I think a lot of it comes down to a very specific 90s memory involving the market for direct-to-video movies.

You see, Lep 2 was one of the first times I walked into a video store, saw a sequel to a popular movie sitting on the shelf, and had absolutely no idea how it had gotten there. I distinctly remember staring at the VHS box thinking, Wait… when did this come out? I don’t remember seeing a trailer. I don’t remember seeing a poster in the theater. How does this exist? I know the first Leprechaun, but is this real?

Of course, this was pre-internet, and at that age I didn’t fully understand the concept of direct-to-video movies. So to me it felt like the film had just magically appeared overnight. One year after the original, boom—there it was on the shelf waiting to be rented. Mystery solved and my weekend rental was secured. But that moment stuck with me as lesson in studio greed and cheap cash ins and it all started with this flick.

But nostalgia aside, Leprechaun 2 is a far more fun movie than the original. This is where the franchise starts loosening its tie and leaning into the weirdness, with the Leprechaun is running around Los Angeles searching for a bride and acting delightfully terrible.

You’ve got death by cappuccino machine, Clint Howard randomly showing up and a guy getting his head mangled because he mistakes a fan for a pair of boobs. It’s chaotic, bizarre, and increasingly aware that the premise itself is ridiculous.

And that’s why it works a helluva a lot more than the last time we saw Lep.

1. Leprechaun 3 (1995)

And then there’s Leprechaun 3, which in my opinion is the best movie in the series. And judging by a lot of rankings out there, I’m not exactly alone in that opinion.

For starters, it’s probably the most competently made film in the franchise. It moves quickly and dropping a ridiculous character like the Leprechaun into a ridiculous city like Las Vegas is exactly the right move. The whole movie runs on greed, gambling, and bad decisions, which fits the Leprechaun mythology surprisingly well.

And the kills are some of the goofiest in the entire franchise: you’ve got someone essentially exploding thanks to extreme magical plastic surgery, a magician getting sawed in half during a performance and someone gets electrocuted by a sec robot. It’s just a parade of absurdity.

This is also Warwick Davis at his most hammy and charming. He’s clearly having the time of his life chewing scenery and delivering rhyming threats like he’s starring in some twisted Irish fairy-tale cabaret.

To me, Leprechaun 3 hits the perfect balance of ridiculousness and entertainment. It fully embraces the franchise’s silliness without completely flying off the rails into meme territory just yet, which, as we know, will absolutely happen later. It’s the sweet spot.

And it’s also kind of a rare thing: the third movie in a horror franchise actually being the best one. Props to you, Leprechaun. Way to break the mold.

In all, the Leprechaun movies are messy and very dumb, but they’re also a perfect snapshot of 90s horror’s willingness to get weird. They never pretend to be prestige horror and never try to be taken too seriously, constantly leaning into the madness and escalating the joke. And honestly? There’s something very admirable and entertaining about that.

So this St. Patrick’s Day, skip the crowds at the bar and revisit one of horror’s strangest little franchises. Just remember one rule: Don’t touch the gold.

When the great, mighty, and powerful asked me which Friday the 13th film I wanted to claim for this glorious Scarestack Society (a lovable bunch of horror movie writers) celebration of the iconic series, my answer was immediate and enthusiastic: “Part 5,” I typed without skipping a beat.

And he seemed very surprised. Maybe a “LOL. Why?” was thrown in there. And honestly, I don’t blame him.

You see, I’m a big Friday fan. Super duper Friday fan, actually, so he had asked me fairly early in the process of getting peoples top choices, and it seemed like I had my pick of the litter. So: Do I take the easy route and rock out with the fan favorites like Part 4 or 6? Go OG with Parts 1 or 2? Dissect the first appearance of the mask + the crappy eye-popping 3D in Part 3? Maybe dive into the interesting oddballs like Jason X or Jason Goes to Hell? Or do I want to take this party to Vancouver…I mean Manhattan?

Nah, man. That’s not how I roll.

The reality is, I’ve always loved Part 5, long considered not only a very bad entry in the series, but an insulting one to fans. A true franchise black sheep, cited on almost every list of horror misfires. So I wanted the challenge; I craved it. And honestly, I have a deep place in my heart for this one. So let me tell you why this frustrating and supremely awkward entry is actually pretty amazing.

The Backstory

“They killed Jason, right? I mean, nobody survives a machete blow to the head from the Feld-dog… right?” That was pretty much the sentiment of every moviegoer after Part 4 wrapped, which, by the way, to twist the knife even further, was called The Final Chapter.

But here’s the problem: The Final Chapter did gangbusters at the box office, and Paramount, who was making very good money off these cheap Friday flicks, really liked money. So a “logic be damned, go fucking figure it out” sequel was greenlit, and they proceeded to do exactly that—go fucking figure it out.

The solution? Call it A New Beginning, turn it into a whodunnit, and hire a director best known for pornography to bring the vision to life. I’ve also read there was a healthy amount of cocaine on set. What could possibly go wrong?

The Plot

Our boy Tommy Jarvis is now a brooding teen sent to a woodland halfway house for “troubled youth,” which apparently means “place horny, emotionally unstable 80s stereotypes in a cabin and hope for the best.” Then, because this is a Friday movie, people start getting hacked up by a hockey-masked figure. Bodies drop, nudity happens and rain pours. The usual Crystal Lake shenanigans.

Except plot twist: it’s not Jason. It’s a random paramedic named Roy, a dude who’s in the movie for like 30 seconds btw, who after witnessing the death of his son thinks: “You know what would fix this mess? Becoming Jason.” So we get faux-Jason, complete with slightly different mask markings and deeply questionable motivation.

So yea, it ain’t even Jason doing the killing, it’s Roy… you know, ROY!, which pissed off a lot of fans. But we’ll get there

Now let’s start to talk about why Part 5 deserves your respect.

Reason #1: If You Treat Part 5 Like a Dark Campy Comedy, Filled with Oddball Weirdos, It Absolutely Delivers

If you walk into Part 5 expecting prestige horror, or even Friday the 13th type horror, you’re going to have a bad time. If you walk into it like it’s a weird, unhinged 1985 slasher comedy populated by lunatics? You’re going to have a blast. Because this movie might have the most memorable cast of random weirdos and silly comedy bits in the entire Friday franchise.

The residents include a guy who stutters constantly, but is also kind of a sleazeball, a horny couple who exist purely to have sex a lot, and a redneck mother-son duo who feel like they were imported from a different, much worse vaudeville inspired movie.

You’ve got the big dude Joey who is deeply committed to chocolate bars as a personality trait and ends up hacked to pieces for the crime of loving candy way too much and wanting to share. He’s also the reason our boy Roy becomes Jason (Joey was his son)

You’ve got Demon, dressed to the nines as if we were a reject extra from a Whodini music video, who eats too many enchiladas, sprints to the outhouse yelling, “Those damn enchiladas!!” serenades his girlfriend post-dump with a goofy-ass duet from inside the stall, and then gets absolutely wrecked by Jason right after the song ends.

Cinema.

Then there’s a parade of random side characters: a set of greaser twins who look like off-brand Fonzie knockoffs who somehow time-traveled in from a completely different decade, and a jittery, coke-fueled paramedic trying to score with a waitress between emergency calls. Even the guy playing Tommy is so intensely self-serious in his method acting that it borders on unintentional comedy, like he thinks he’s in a prestige psychological drama while everyone else is in a sleazy slasher.

And then there’s Reggie the Reckless, the franchise’s most enthusiastic hype man, who somehow survives this parade of madness with pure optimism and energy.

The whole thing feels less like a grounded horror film and more like someone let David Lynch direct a Friday the 13th entry after a couple beers and some bad dreams. The characters are heightened and very strange. They talk and act like no human beings actually talk and act. And that’s exactly why it works.

Reason #2: An Impressive Body Count

Say what you want about Part 5, but this movie understands one sacred slasher commandment: people must die, and they must die pretty often.

The kills aren’t particularly bloody in this one, this ain’t Savini-level goo, but the frequency is pretty impressive. It feels like every five to seven minutes someone gets stabbed, slashed, or macheted into next week. Sometimes you barely have time to learn a character’s name before they’re poked in the gut. Most of the time they don’t even have a name!

Random twin greasers? Why the hell are you here?…nevermind: Dead.
Gas station attendant you met 30 seconds ago? Dead.
Dude passing through for no reason other that he wants to clean out the chicken coop? Also dead.

This movie operates like it’s working off a strict production memo that reads: “Every few script pages, somebody must perish.” and for a long stretch, it held the highest body count of the franchise at 21. So, at least it’s got that going for it.

Reason #3: The Kills Get a Little Weird

Now, the blood might not be cranked to eleven, but the creativity? That’s where A New Beginning earns some moderate respect in my book, because at least it tries to do something different with a few of its murders compared to past entries.

You’ve got a flare shoved straight into a mouth, axes to the face, and then there’s the leather strap wrapped around a head and tightened until skull meets physics.

Also, some garden shears straight to the eyes? A classic.

And let’s not forget the motorcycle decapitation. Watching this hillbilly biker dude get clotheslined off a bike by a well-placed blade is exactly the kind of ridiculousness that makes this entry memorable.

The movie may not bathe the screen in gore, but it refuses to be boring with some of its violence.

Reason #4: This Dance Rules

Everyone loves to give Crispin Glover’s dance in Part 4 all the props, and sure, it’s iconic: the flailing arms, the off-beat head bobbing and the chaotic white-boy rhythm. An 80s masterclass in ridiculousness. We get it.

But I’m here to say something bold: the real essential Friday the 13th dance sequence lives in Part 5 and belongs to the new-wave goth character Violet, who takes “the robot” to bold, weird, and frankly mesmerizing new heights.

Also, speaking of amazing physical feats, this WWE style bodyslam courtesy of teenage Jarvis also rules quite a bit.

Reason #5: Who Honestly Cares If It’s Not the “Real” Jason? And I say that as a Friday superfan

Let’s address the elephant-sized machete in the room.

The biggest knock against Part 5 is always the same: “It’s not really Jason.” And yes, in the final five minutes, the mask comes off and we learn we’ve been watching copycat Jason, and it’s ROY! The fandom collectively gasps. Betrayal! Outrage! How dare they! And yes, I agree that it’s really stupid.

But here’s my question: who really gives a shit?

For 98 percent of this movie, Jason Vorhees is doing Jason Vorhees things. He’s walking slowly in the woods. He’s stabbing people. He’s getting rained on dramatically. He’s silently looming. It functions exactly like a normal Friday the 13th entry until the last handful of minutes.

And let’s not pretend this franchise is some airtight mythology machine that follows any type of logic. Jason drowns but doesn’t drown. He’s afraid of water until he’s casually swimming in it in every film. He gets macheted to death then gets resurrected by lightning. He turns into a weird sewer child in Jason Takes Manhattan. Every death is nonsense. Every resurrection is nonsense. That’s part of the charm.

So why is this the line? Why is a copycat twist suddenly the unforgivable sin in a franchise built entirely on absurd logic and a “we’re mainly here for the camper kills” mentality?

Laugh it off. Enjoy the ride. For the overwhelming majority of the runtime, you’re getting a classic, dumb, chaotic Friday movie, even if this one is a little dumber.

And I say all of this as someone who considers Friday the 13th my top franchise of the big horror three, so don’t kill me. I love this series to death and I’m a student of it. I watch these movies, all of them, regularly. Which is exactly why I can say this: the twist isn’t the problem. The problem is taking it too seriously.

So there’s my reasoning. Is the movie perfect? Fuck no. Teenage Tommy Jarvis is joyless in it, most of the kills are bloodless, and the camera lingers around at times like a cheap porno flick. It’s pure nonsense.

But you know what? It’s my kind of nonsense, and maybe it should be your type of nonsense too.

Enjoy the the 13th, Friday fans

#JusticeForPart5 #RoyForPresident

If you want more Friday madness, check out the lineup of fellow Scarestackers below covering the whole series:

The Scarestack Society’s 13 Days Of Jason:

3/1 Friday The 13th (2009 Remake)- Skyla

3/2 Freddy vs Jason- Kristen (Blood, Blush, and Guts)

3/3 Jason X- Molly O’Blivion

3/4 Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday- George R. Galuschak (Abandoned Places)

3/5 Friday The 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan- Sean Mo (Mo’s Movie Malpractice)

3/6 Friday The 13th: The New Blood- Kyle (Horrorble Writer)

3/7 Friday The 13th: Jason Lives- Jamie B. (Reel Focus)

3/8 Friday The 13th: The New Beginning- Brandon Rae (Tales From The Tape)

3/9 Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter- Horror Hangouts

3/10 Friday The 13th Part 3- B-Movie Tea

3/11 Friday The 13th Part 2- Hellish Views - Harry Evans

3/12 Friday The 13th Full Series Home Video Overview- Jean-Pierre Diez (Habitual Cinema)

3/13 Friday The 13th (1980)- Kimberly Ramsawak (Horror Concierge)

Also, big props to for the wonderful banner

I was there, man. I was there.

’Twas the winter of ’96 and a little movie called Scream took the box office by storm. My 7th grade self had read about it in Entertainment Weekly, my personal pop culture internet of the time, so my friend and I rolled the dice and took the subway downtown to catch a screening at the Tower City mall (the dopest mall in Cleveland, Ohio at the time). I remember doing all of that very clearly. What I don’t remember is how we actually got in to see it as a very much underage duo who looked every bit the part. A generous usher? A ticket to another movie? Two dudes on top of each other and a trenchocat? I genuinely have no idea, but it seemed the r-rated movie gods were on our side that day and we were in.

Though I’d already been a horror nut, seeing Scream on the big screen was electric, mostly because I was in middle school and thought it was the coolest/hippest thing ever made. Two killers? “Whatttt??” Killing off the poster girl in the first scene? “You don’t say.” Quippy dialogue. “Yes, please.” Death via garage door! “Never have I ever….” Twelve-year-old mind officially blown, especially because 90s horror of the time had pretty much flatlined. It felt different, even to my brain that couldn’t fully understand what different was. Then Scream became a major phenomenon, and late-’90s horror was never the same.

I don’t need to recap its history here, that’s really boring and you know about it, and I don’t need to convince you of its importance. Scream gets its flowers constantly, even if I’m personally not the biggest fan of the sequels. But what really fascinates me from the era is what came next: as the ’90s marched on, the knockoffs flooded in. That, to me, is one of the most interesting immediatate and “of the time” legacies Scream left behind.

So today, in celebration of the new movie dropping, I’m doing the completely sane thing and ignoring the franchise itself but diving into the imitators of the era. Because from 1997 to about 2001, every horror movie suddenly had the same poster…the same meta dialogue…the same almost nu metal soundtracks…the same glossy teens…the same attempts at creating an iconic mask…the same “gotcha” reveal.

Let’s talk about the era of post-Scream copycats of the time.

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

The obvious one, the first one (perhaps…I think?) and maybe the purest example. If Scream reinvented the slasher, I Know What You Did Last Summer, or IKWYDLS because that title is long as fuck, sent it to the beach and gave it a silly raincoat. Oh, and lookie here, Kevin Williamson picked up the pen again and we get our first (and certainly not last, get used to that marketing tactic) appearence of ‘From the creator of Scream’ on the poster.

In IKWYDLS, you’ve got the mysterious killer, the friend group with a secret, the slow unraveling of guilt, and dialogue that sounds like it was polished by a WB executive. It’s pure post-Scream formula, and yet? It kind of works when you pair all that with the coastal gloom and teen star power of the era: Gellar, Phillippe, Hewitt, the whole TRL lineup.

It was a solid slasher that kept the momentum going which I remember enjoying at the time, but I also recall starting to see the cracks in the formula and yearning for something more twisted and inventive like Scream had been.

And of course, we quickly got a sequel a year later, featuring a rather unpleasant and dreadlocked Jack Black performance. Which, frankly, might be the scariest and most twisted thing in either movie (or any movie?).

Disturbing Behavior (1998)

It’s not technically a slasher, but it absolutely smells like post-Scream studio horror. Attractive, sarcastic teens plucked from the young adult world? Check. A central mystery built around “which one of us is the problem?” Check. A marketing campaign that made it look much cooler and scarier than it actually is? Huge check.

Instead of a masked killer, we get brainwashing, conformity, and the terrifying idea that your classmates might suddenly become clean-cut, emotionally balanced overachievers (oh the horror!). You can basically feel the late-90s MTV/Scream aesthetic pulsing through every scene.

Halloween H20 (1998)

Hell, even the hallowed Halloween franchise got the post-Scream treatment, and it makes perfect sense because H20 had writing contributions from Scream scribe Kevin Williamson. Suddenly the marketing pivoted from “Michael Myers and a giant knife front and center on the poster” to “look at this extremely photogenic young cast!” The tone shifted, to say the least.

H20 feels like Halloween filtered through a late-’90s teen drama lens. It’s more self-aware, more dialogue-driven, and more concerned with trauma and relationships than pure atmospheric dread. Jamie Lee Curtis returning as Laurie Strode gives it legitimacy, but the supporting cast seems like they all wandered in from Dawson’s Creek (which one of them did).

Still, people love H20 to this day, and even though I’m not one of them, I get it. But man, that terrible CGI mask scene.

The Faculty (1998)

Okay, this one cheats a bit. It’s technically sci-fi horror, but make no mistake — it’s absolutely riding the Scream wave (thanks again to Mr. Kevin Williamson). I mean, LOOK AT THAT DAMN POSTER!

Here we’ve got hyper-aware teens and fast, sarcastic dialogue and the “who’s infected?” paranoia functioning like a masked killer mystery. But instead of a slasher, we get body-snatching alien teachers, which somehow feels more refreshing than another whodunit of the time. Directed with real style by Robert Rodriguez and leaning hard into its B-movie roots, it took the post-Scream tone and injected it with alien goo. And honestly? It’s still a pretty solid and fun watch.

Phantoms (1998)

Phantoms gets lumped in here solely because I find it hilarious that the marketing department clearly went, “Oh shit, we have another mediocre Dean Koontz film adaptation. How do we save this mess?” and scrambled to Scream-ify the poster in hopes of tricking youngins into seeing what is, at best, a pretty bland not-quite-horror movie.

Everyone’s wearing black, brooding, hunky, and looking very serious. But hey, they got Rose McGowan, and I’m honestly shocked they didn’t slap “From someone who starred in Scream” somewhere beneath the title.

Also, yes, Affleck was the bomb in it. Actually, no he wasn’t. The movie sucks.

Urban Legend (1998)

This is what happens when you take the Scream blueprint, throw in some Tara Reid and get a little cuter with the concept. Here, the killer isn’t just masked, but every murder they commit is a literal urban legend reenactment. This is what we from the 90s would call “high concept horror” of the time.

Fun idea aside, it’s ultimately formulaic to its bones: suspicious friend group, red herrings stacked like Jenga blocks, and a third-act reveal that’s less shocking than soap opera. It’s not subtle and it’s not very scary, but it is the exact flavor of post-Scream studio slasher that continued to define the era.

Cherry Falls (2000)

We’re officially out of the 90s and here’s where things get a little weird. Cherry Falls one took the post-Scream meta-ness and cranked it sideways having the killer target virgins. It’s unique, more self-aware and way more subversive than most of its peers.

And yet, it still fits the mold: attractive ensemble, glossy lighting, whodunit structure, and a climactic reveal that tries very hard to shock you. But it feels like the end of the wave with the formula stretched thin, trying to say something new while still wearing the same late-’90s horror costume.

Valentine (2001)

By 2001, the formula had curdled, and Valentine feels like the genre totally running on fumes. The hook here is simple and done before: grown adults being punished for middle-school cruelty.

We got the old standards that I’ve beaten to death in this very article: a masked killer glossy cast and slow-burn whodunit structure. But you can feel the exhaustion setting in. Valentine is a bit darker, sleazier, and more mean-spirited than its predecessors. Still, it belongs to the lineage and has Scream’s DNA splattered all over it.

So yes, the knockoffs were fun, weird, and ultimately pretty exhausting. But it was a great time to be alive as a horror fan, the dawning of a new era unfolding right before our eyes. Also, how much fucking money did Williamson print between 96-98? Unreal run from that guy.

To tie this all together, here’s a totally random story about Scream 2 coming out. Winter of ’97 and my friends and I were STOKED. We’d somehow gotten past the ticketing situation opening weekend, again, no memory of how, and sat down buzzing with excitement. Those giggles of excitement, or maybe just the sight of four obvious 13-year-olds in an R-rated screening, didn’t sit well with a nearby patron who promptly alerted management and we were ushered out before the first proper stabbing even happened.

Devastating. The shame only got worse when, by Monday, everyone in eighth grade was loudly announcing who the killers were before we even had a chance to attempt another viewing. So my theatrical luck didn’t extend past the original, which is maybe that’s why I don’t love the Scream franchise as much as I probably should. The scars, the PTSD and the trauma of that fateful snowy Saturday afternoon in 97. Who knows.

\

To back up a bit, I’ve got a solid four person crew of hardcore horror fans here in Los Angeles, grown humans with jobs, families, responsibilities, and all that adult shit, who get together once a month to act like 14 year olds sneaking r-rated movies and drinking soda at a sleepover again. We eat stuffed-crust pizza, crack dumb jokes, and watch two types of horror flicks: 1) bad classics we can laugh at and enjoy, fueled entirely by nostalgia, or 2) attempts to find new indie gems buried somewhere on streaming platforms, which is a whole other story.

But this past month, inspired by an wholly unnecessary rant I went on a while back about how dog shit awful the movie Freddy’s Dead is, we abandoned our usual programming and built a viewing challenge that was simple and cruel: take the generally accepted worst entry from each of the three major slasher franchises (Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th, naturally) and binge them all in one single night. No cherry-picking. No mercy.

The ultimate lineup we landed on was truly brutal, a murderers’ row of franchise rock bottoms: Halloween Resurrection, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, and Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday. Our mission was to answer one question: which of these franchises lowest points hit rock bottom the hardest?

Does this sound fun? To some weirdos and masochists it probably sounds delightful, but true horror heads know how hard these movies are to sit through individually and VERY few understand how punishing it is to watch all three back-to-back in a single night. We now know what that pain feels like…and it hurts quite a bit.

It was a long night. A hilarious night. Stuffed crust was involved. It was the kind of night where the warm glow of ’80s horror officially died on screen in real time, and the corpses of once-mighty horror titans let the ’90s and early 2000s drain away any remaining charisma or scariness. Let’s explore the results of this awful, completely unnecessary science experiment.

Halloween Resurrection (2002): Death by early 2000s quips and really bad technology

Let’s start with the most recent offender and the film in a very maligned and confusing franchise that most deem the worst (you’re off the hook this time, Mr. Rob Zombie). Halloween Resurrection feels like a movie that desperately wanted to be “current” without understanding anything about what made Halloween work in the first place. It unceremoniously opens by killing off Jamie Lee Curtis in a way that feels rushed and narratively pointless, like ripping off a Band-Aid just to get it out of the way. And Jamie Lee ain’t no band-aid; show some respect to the queen of Halloween!

From there, we’re dropped into a bizarre early-2000s nightmare involving live-streaming webcams, reality-TV energy, and characters who speak exclusively in horny sarcasm. Michael Myers is less an unstoppable shape and more a dude wandering around a content house with a C- mask. And then there’s Busta Rhymes, a character filled with exaggerated Kung Fu moves and preachy speeches about TV violence. This one isn’t so much scary or funny as it is exhausting and you can feel the franchise chasing post Scream trends instead of the fear that put Halloween on the map.

It’s all pretty bad, but bad in kind of in a good way and definitely not the worst way to kick the evening off. A breezy 90 minutes, it’s the perfect “chips and dip” movie before the stuffed-crust pizza arrived, which makes sense cuz we were eating a lot of chips and dip during our viewing. We also laughed… a lot… mainly at Busta Rhymes and especially at the ridiculous B-plot where the protagonist engages in some hilariously primitive early-2000s texting with a doofy online suitor to track where Michael is in the house.

It certainly sucks, but is it the lowest of the low? I dunna yet, the night is early. Let’s keep torturing ourselves.

Freddy’s Dead: The one that turned Freddy into a Looney Tune’s character

Freddy’s Dead got me into this mess, and I blame it for this entire night of bad decision making. Fuck you, Freddy’s Dead. But you know what? Let’s keep an open mind here. Maybe my memory was playing tricks on me. Maybe that anger was misguided. Maybe, when sandwiched between Resurrection and Goes to Hell, I’d finally see the light and realize that Freddy’s Dead is a misunderstood masterpiece of dark comedy. Maybe?!?!?!??!??!

So FD had everything going for it in the room: the pizza had arrived and you’d think that gooey cheesy deliciousness would’ve eased any pain. However, this movie is such a full-on identity collapse that I’m not sure any type of pleasure, even stuffed crust, would help.

Freddy Krueger, once a genuinely terrifying figure, is now reduced to a Looney Tunes character mugging and winking for the camera every minute. The movie leans hard into comedy, but not clever comedy, just annoying early 90s noise. Video game murder sequences, Wizard of Oz references and one-liners stacked on top of one-liners until nothing lands. The fear is gone. The menace is gone. What’s left is a cartoon that doesn’t even understand why it’s supposed to be funny.

Lisa Zane’s performance is rough and you’ve got Rosanne and Tom Arnold in a bizarre cameo. The kills, there’s only three in this, feel like lazy punchlines instead of the surreal creative threats Elm Street is known for. Watching it now, you can practically see the franchise waving a white flag.

So yea, Freddy’s Dead still definitely holds up…as a total piece of shit.

Jason Goes to Hell: A Friday the 13th Movie Without Jason

Curveball here: Jason X, you’re off the hook, and let me tell you why before we dive into this much-maligned flick. Jason X is essentially a cheap, campy comedy, and it knows exactly what it is. Watch it through that lens and it’s a blast. There’s no pretension, just a goofy attempt to keep the franchise breathing while it waits for Freddy vs. Jason. I actually love Jason X.

So with that rant out of the way, the night is getting late and we finally hit Jason Goes to Hell, a movie that makes the bold, baffling choice to barely include Jason Voorhees at all. Instead, we get body swapping, magical rules, random mythology dumps, and a music score and tone that scream early 90s confusion. This isn’t just the franchise jumping the shark. It’s taking a space jump over it.

However, the kills are gooey and violent (especially in the unrated cut), and there’s at least some mean-spirited energy left in the tank. The film was helmed by a 23-year-old first time director, and it certainly shows. The ambition is there, but so is the production, dialogue and plot chaos. It feels like a young filmmaker trying to reinvent a legacy franchise without fully understanding why it worked in the first place.

However, despite it all, I’ve always had a special place in my heart for this one because it’s the Friday the 13th that came out when I was a kid and fully aware of how cool Jason Voorhees was. Seeing it became an obsession. I remember finally renting it, being beyond pumped, and then sitting there completely confused by what I was watching. While it’s not a bad movie per se, it’s certainly a lost one, and one that would’ve massively benefited from not being part of the franchise at all. Still, Jason goes to Hell remains a strong black sheep of the genre.

So… Which One Was the Worst?

By the end of the night, our verdict was clear. Halloween Resurrection is embarrassing. Jason Goes to Hell is misguided. But….drumroll please…. Freddy’s Dead is no doubt the worst of the worst. It’s the moment a once-great horror icon fully abandoned fear in favor of desperate comedy, and the result is not just bad but painful and cringey to watch.

Honestly, what really pushes Freddy’s Dead over the edge is the last ten minutes, when they awkwardly shoehorn 3D into the mix. It fails hard on home video and, trust me, it fails just as hard in the theater (I’ve seen it). The movie literally has the main character put on a cheap pair of paper 3D glasses to signal the audience to do the same. It’s not clever. It’s not fun. It’s 100% embarrassing.

So yea, I’m calling it. Sorry Fred Heads who dig the movie. But nonetheless, the common thread across all three is obvious: these movies live in the early 90s and early 2000s, eras where horror was deeply confused about what it wanted to be. The grit, simplicity, and menace of the 80s had evaporated. What replaced it was irony, gimmicks, and franchises that no longer trusted the foundations that made them great.

When it wrapped, my friends around me sat there misty-eyed over the films Jackson had spent the better part of a decade bringing to life. But all I could picture were killer puppets with machine guns. That was my Peter Jackson; that’s the dude I came up on. Not the now very famous director jogging through New Zealand hillsides with hobbits, which I’m sure is kind of awesome too, just not “killer puppets with machine guns” level awesome.

Fast-forward to now and we’ve got obsessive, lovingly crafted Beatles documentaries, and I’m still sitting here thinking, “Yeah… this is still not my Peter Jackson.” Which, in retrospect, says more weird things about me than it does about him. Relax, Brandon, it’ll be ok...

So diving into his first few films isn’t some deep-cut revelation for horror fans, as plenty of people know about Jackson’s splatter origins. But we’re here to revisit them anyway, because that early era is a fascinating snapshot of a wildly inventive filmmaker throwing every ounce of creativity, gore, and bad taste (see what I did there?) he had at the screen.

BAD TASTE (1987): The one that kicked it all off

Bad Taste is Peter Jackson’s calling card, a scrappy, alien-invasion splatter comedy about a group of government agents investigating a small New Zealand town that’s been overrun by extraterrestrials harvesting humans for intergalactic fast food. The plot barely matters beyond giving Jackson an excuse to blow people apart and murder things in increasingly ridiculous ways. The uncensored cover, featuring one finger strategically missing, is also much better

And the production story is just as unhinged as the movie itself. Bad Taste was famously shot almost entirely on weekends over the course of several years, with Jackson and his friends doing literally everything themselves. He built props in his spare time, begged favors, and created alien masks using his mother’s oven. It’s DIY filmmaking in its purest form, and the kind of movie that feels like you’re watching a dollar get stretched until it screams and pukes all over itself

And yes, Jackson is in it. Not just in some lame Hitchcockian cameo, but in full, committed, blood-soaked glory, playing two roles. At one point he’s running around with literal brain matter dripping out of his head like it’s no big deal, a visual gag that perfectly sums up his early sensibilities and sense of humor.

Bad Taste is a lot of fun, but more importantly, it sets the tone for everything that follows. It has excellent special effects + weird camera work and the blend of absurd humor, extreme violence, and cartoon physics that would become Jackson’s splatter signature. This isn’t horror meant to scare you, it’s horror meant to make you laugh and gasp at the same time. Also, they blow up a sheep with a grenade launcher.

Fun fact: I have this wonderful memory of watching Dead Alive in my youth (more on that later) and then obsessively trying to track down the OG Bad Taste, which was incredibly difficult to find in the 1990s since it wasn’t widely distributed. Then, one magical evening, I randomly spotted it in the TV Guide (yes, that!) scheduled to air at 3 a.m. on some random independent film channel.

I immediately went into reconnaissance mode, setting my VCR to record it and going to sleep full of anxiety that my one shot would slip away thanks to some technical failure. The next morning, I nervously checked the tape to see if it worked. It did. And that’s how I finally saw it. Small victories for a 90s kid.

MEET THE FEEBLES (1989)—The One That Probably Scared the Muppets’ Legal Team

If Bad Taste announced Peter Jackson as a splatter lunatic, Meet the Feebles is where he looked directly at children’s television, smiled politely, then said “fuck you” and set it on fire. On paper, it’s a backstage musical satire about a puppet variety show in the vein of The Muppet Show. In execution, it’s a full-scale demolition of that concept, exposing the Feebles as drug-addled, violent, deeply unhappy performers spiraling through rehearsals, personal breakdowns, and absolute moral rot. In other words, it’s pretty amazing and definitely worth your time if you’re reading this substack.

Like Bad Taste, the production itself was almost as wild as the final product. Meet the Feebles took years to complete, largely because Jackson and his small crew were building nearly everything from scratch. The puppets weren’t just hand puppets tossed together for a gag, they were fully articulated creations with complex mechanics, replacement parts, and custom rigs that allowed for exaggerated movement, musical choreography, and some truly unholy behavior. Sets were constructed and rebuilt multiple times, musical numbers were staged like full Broadway productions, and Jackson reportedly sunk an enormous amount of time and personal energy into getting it all right, even as the scope ballooned far beyond what anyone sane would attempt with puppets.

Though it wasn’t a smash hit, what really made Meet the Feebles super infamous was the shock factor. This wasn’t just puppets swearing for novelty value. Jackson goes all in on depicting addiction, the AIDS crisis, exploitation, violence, and deeply uncomfortable adult behavior, often delivered through upbeat songs and cheerful staging.

More than anything, Meet the Feebles proves how fearless Jackson was in this era. He wasn’t just making gross movies; he was actively attacking sacred pop culture institutions with a weird, smirky grin on his face.

But back to my VCR recording Bad Taste story for a sec— here’s the part of that story I conveniently left out, a sad plot twist if you will: What I didn’t tell you is that Meet the Feebles was scheduled to air immediately after Bad Taste at around 5 a.m., and my plan was to record both like I was pulling off some kind of sacred VHS heist. And for a brief, beautiful moment, it worked. I got Bad Taste in full. But halfway through Meet the Feebles, my VCR betrayed me. The tape stopped. No warning. No mercy. I woke up to a half-recorded puppet nightmare and a deep sense of loss. It would take me years to finally see the rest of the movie, all because of one technical fumble and the cruel, unreliable nature of 90s home recording technology. Screw setting VCRs to record, man. Truly of the villains of my childhood.

BRAINDEAD aka DEAD ALIVE (1992)— The one where someone kicks ass for Lord

This one means a lot to me. Dead Alive was one of the first movies I ever blindly bought on VHS, purely on vibes. I was a kid wandering around a Coconuts Music store in the 90s (remember that place?) saw that absolutely unhinged cover, flipped it over, read a back-of-the-box promise of ‘insane gore,’ and thought“This seems about right.”. I had no idea what Dead Alive even meant at the time, nor do I still, but it didn’t matter as it became an instant favorite among me and my friends. We laughed ourselves stupid at the sheer absurdity of it all, especially that final, lawnmower-fueled twenty minutes of pure splatter chaos. It was the movie that fully locked in my love for horror, comedy, and gore all smashed together into one glorious, messy package.

Plot-wise, it’s simple. A shy mama’s boy named Lionel accidentally triggers a zombie outbreak after his overbearing mother gets bitten by a cursed rat-monkey at the zoo. What follows is a rapid descent into undead mayhem, social awkwardness, and escalating bodily destruction, all contained mostly within a single suburban home.

What really sets Dead Alive apart is that this is the moment where Jackson’s splatter instincts meet a bigger budget and sharper craftsmanship. The effects are more ambitious, the pacing is tighter, and the comedy lands with confidence. This wasn’t just some scrappy weekend project anymore. It was a fully realized vision of how far cartoonish gore could be pushed while still being joyous and inventive. And in a way, it also feels like the end of something because Jackson pivots after this and the splatter era closes. Which is great for cinema history, sure, but for those of us who grew up rewinding this tape with friends and losing our minds over lawnmowers and entrails, Dead Alive will always feel like the peak.

So yea, maybe we’ll never get another lawn mower decapitation or puppet singing about sodomy? And that kinda sucks. Unlike someone like Sam Raimi, Jackson’s splatter phase feels like a closed chapter, an era that ended and may never really came back. And honestly? I’d kill to see him crack a head open one more time.

And to link this all back to that cold dark Oscar’s night in 2004— During his Best Picture acceptance speech at the 2004 academy awards, Jackson joked that both Meet the Feebles and Bad Taste had been "wisely overlooked by the Academy”. Man, he gets it too. Maybe I’m not so weird after all.

Remember the “horror” (strong air quotes) movie Ghoulies? Yes, yes, of course you do. Those lovable little rubber scamps that haunted video-store aisles throughout the 80s and 90s featuring one of the most jarringly awesome covers in the history of horror marketing.

You don’t? First off, that’s a real bummer, and I’m not sure we can be friends. We can hang out for brief periods of time, but true friendship (you know, going on vacations together and stuff) isn’t really on the table. Maybe we could grab a coffee or something, but nothing more…. ok, ok, let me at least refresh your memory.

“Infamous” is one of the first words that comes to mind when I see this cover. Also: very, very silly. Also: apparently terrifying to some people. But at the end of the day, someone is absolutely going to see the word Ghoulies, check the toilet in the photo, and think, “I’m in.” And with a cover like that, you picture a world of mischievous imps crawling out of toilets left and right. Maybe they attack people mid-poop? Hilarious. Maybe they use toilets as some kind of demonic teleportation system around an apartment complex? You’ve got my attention. However, all of these assumptions are actually very, very wrong.

You see, the original Ghoulies and its success was a product of incredible marketing by Charles Band himself, the head of Vestron and Full Moon, and the undisputed king of selling you something that only sometimes delivers on the promise. But hey, that’s the job when you’re running one of the biggest B-movie studios in the world. And while I hate to be a Debbie Downer here, Ghoulies is not what you see on the cover. It’s actually a fairly straightforward, kinda boring, occult movie that barely features any actual Ghoulies and originally had nothing to do with toilets at all. That singular toilet scene in the movie (about 6 seconds) was actually added in via reshoots once the studio realized they hit marketing gold with the cover concept and didn’t want to piss off the fans too badly.

This issue did get course-corrected a bit with the far superior Ghoulies II. There are more Ghoulies, the action is cranked up, and yes, there’s finally some toilet-adjacent nonsense. Lesson learned.

But for me, the Ghoulie mythology doesn’t truly begin until Ghoulies III. And then it pretty much dies immediately after with Ghoulies IV. Still, Ghoulies III is peak silliness, peak entertainment, and peak Ghoulie. This is the one you show someone who says, “I think I need some extra Ghoulie in my life.” So yes, I love everything about this movie and want to tell you why.

Ghoulies III marks a weird but important turning point in the franchise’s history. By the time this one rolled around in 1991, the series had fully migrated out of Charles Band’s Vestron ecosystem or any theatrical ambitions. Budgets were leaner, expectations were lower, and the new regime leaned hard into what worked: silliness and a self-aware embrace of the absurd. In many ways, Ghoulies III feels like the franchise finally accepting its fate and thriving because of it.

THE PLOT

The plot is entirely in the title, which I love more than I can properly express. Why should I ever have to think beyond a movie’s title to understand what’s happening? Isn’t life complicated enough already? How many times have I stared at some fancy, cryptically ambiguous pretentious title like Bugonia (or whatever) and spent hours trying to decode it and its “deep” connection to the movie? Not my jam anymore. I want everything in life to work super smoothly and be as literal as this.

So yes, here we have: 1) Ghoulies and 2) They Go to College plus 3) it is indeed the 3rd film in the franchise. Put it all together and it’s Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College. I fucking love that. It’s also the late 80s, so you can already picture exactly how this is going to play out, and you are 100% correct: Parties. Frats. Pranks. Chasing babes. Beer, and, crucially, Ghoulies. That’s basically the entire syllabus. But fine, I’ll elaborate, slightly.

The Ghoulies get conjured from a magical toilet thanks to a comic book and some light occult dabbling, because of course they do. From there, they wreak havoc across campus, turning frat wars into supernatural slapstick, sabotaging parties, terrorizing rival houses, and generally acting like tiny demonic mascots for bad decisions. It’s basically Animal House with toilet demons.

THE GHOULIES THEMSELVES

This time around there are three of them, and they’re basically the Three Stooges, complete with nyuk-nyuk energy, bonks on the head, and cartoon stars flying through the air when they knock each other out (which is true, there are stars). They bicker, they squabble, they physically abuse one another for laughs, and, most jarringly, they talk in this one. It’s weird and a little unsettling, but also kind of hilarious.

You’ve got the cat-like Ghoulie, all mangy fur and sharp teeth, the dumb one who starts fights and instantly regrets every life choice that led him there (Our Curly). Then there’s the short, gremlin-looking one with the big attitude, constantly mouthing off and clearly positioning himself as the dominant leader of the group (he’s basically Moe). And finally, there’s the lankier, doofier Ghoulie, the walking middle ground of the trio, usually caught in the crossfire and occasionally taking the brunt of the slapstick punishment.

THE TALENT INVOLVED

Ghoulies Go to College also sticks out because, against all odds, it’s quietly stacked with people who absolutely did not need to be here… and yet, here they are. First up is John Carl Buechler, the late great monster maestro who didn’t just direct this thing but literally created the Ghoulies in the first place. This is the same guy who directed Friday the 13th Part VII, unleashed Troll on an unsuspecting public, and handled effects on a murderers’ row of 80s horror classics. If anyone was qualified to guide toilet demons through a frat war, it was Buechler.

Then there’s Matthew Lillard, yes, that Matthew Lillard, showing up years before Scream and Scooby-Doo, as a mild mannered character named Stork.

It gets even stranger. Jason Scott Lee pops up here before becoming Bruce Lee in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story and playing Mowgli in Disney’s The Jungle Book. That’s a career arc that starts with toilet demons and somehow ends at Disney royalty. Marcia Wallace, best known as the immortal voice of Edna Krabappel on The Simpsons, brings her unmistakable sarcastic energy to campus, while genre legend Kevin McCarthy shows up as the crusty dean, fresh off decades of classics like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Gremlins 2, and InnerSpace.

Oh, and Kane Hodder, Jason Vorhees himself, is here in a cameo role as “guy who comically falls into mop bucket then goes down the stairs in said mop bucket causing campus mayhem”.

WHY IT RULES

So if you’re not sold yet (you should be) let me get into some specifics:

It leans really hard into late-80s college nonsense.
This thing is basically a checklist of late-80s and early-90s campus stereotypes, and it checks every box with pride. Frat wars, prank culture, dumb authority figures, endless beer, and students who appear to have no classes whatsoever.

This bomb scene is pure cartoon perfection.
There’s a moment involving a giant, bouncing, Acme-ass cartoon bomb rolling downhill while a guy stares at it and yells, “Bomb!” like he just wandered out of a Road Runner short. He then explodes while riding a golf cart. No notes. This is the exact point where the movie fully transcends reality and becomes something beautiful.

Yes, there is a plunger death.
A woman gets killed in the shower…via a plunger. I don’t need to explain this further. The movie doesn’t either.

The Ghoulies get drunk.
At one point, the Ghoulies slam beers like they’re pledging a frat, get visibly wasted, and are then buried under a collapsing avalanche of empty cans. It’s poetry in motion.

The Ghoulies murder someone with their own tongue
There is also a scene involving a tongue doing things tongues should absolutely not be doing. Wrapping. Tangling. Existing far longer than seems medically possible. It’s gross, weird, and exactly the kind of moment that makes you sit up and say, “Ghoulies, take my money!”

Yanking
Everyone in this movie refers to “pranking” as “yanking”. It’s very weird. So bizarre that somebody made a supercut of all the times somebody says “yank” which last for over 3 minutes. Magical.

So there you have it. Ghoulies Go to College is a movie I truly, deeply love, and it should be a staple of anyone’s bad-movie night rotation. It’s endlessly entertaining, relentlessly stupid in the best way, and impossible to watch without smiling. You don’t need to care about the Ghoulies franchise, you don’t need to be a Full Moon devotee, and you definitely don’t need any context from the previous films. I fire this one up more than most movies on my shelf because it always delivers exactly what it promises: chaos, comfort, and pure VHS-era joy.

So yeah, I get it, the big boy holidays are technically behind us and I should shut up about it all. But with a fresh year staring us down and my planning already in motion, it felt like the perfect time to help you make them better. So I did something completely reasonable: I mapped every possible holiday to a top-tier VHS-era horror movie from my collection, so you can start prepping some very intentional “get me the hell away from my family, friends, or spouse” fun for every major 2026 public milestone.

VALENTINE’S DAY — My Bloody Valentine

One of the early slashers that helped define the era, this Canadian classic turns romance sour with a mining disaster and a killer who truly understands that love + a pick axe actually hurts (and scars). The murders are nasty and the filmmaking is far more confident than it needs to be for a movie of this ilk, so forget the cheesy 2009 3D remake entirely, light some candles and enjoy romantic moments such as a human heart being boiled inside a pot of hot dogs.

Major props to the Great White North for quietly delivering one of the best holiday horror flicks ever (and bless that wonderful title for also inspiring the name for one of the raddest bands of all time).

ST. PATRICK’S DAY — Leprechaun 3

Like a grown man wildly drunk on green beer and Irish car bombs at an overcrowded bar at 9am, St.Patrick’s Day deserves a horror movie that’s equally stupid, loud, and dangerously chaotic. And Leprechaun 3, the one where he yucks it up through Las Vegas, absolutely understands the assignment. It also remains the best Leprechaun movie in the entire franchise, period. Not gonna budge on that one. Sorry, leprechaun in Space.

Honorable Mentions: Any of the Lep films. But again, this one is top of the pops.

EASTER — Critters 2: The Main Course

The bench is pretty thin, but this moment totally carries the holiday.

APRIL FOOL’S DAY — Slaughter High

Ah ha! You thought I’d take the easy route here and go with April Fool’s Day and its iconic VHS cover. Do you even know me? Absolutely not. No sir. Not my bag. That would be far too obvious (and honestly, I’ve never been a fan of that one, great cover tho). Instead, the honor goes to a glorious UK-based slasher, very much disguised as American thanks to some impressively fake accents, about an April Fool’s prank gone wrong and a class reunion that turns into a massacre. The kills are creative (a dude’s stomach explodes from drinking a battery acid laced beer) and the synth score absolutely rips. Plus, the whole thing is powered by a petty revenge plot led by a nerd named Marty, fully committing to a pretty sweet jester’s cap as the fashion choice for murdering his former classmates. Been a big fan of this one since childhood, and it’s a high recommend for anyone seeking a really good ’80s slasher, holiday or not.

Honorable Mentions: April Fools Day, Killer Party

MOTHER’S DAY — Mother’s Day

A grimy classic from the Troma library, directed by Charles Kaufman, brother of Troma president/human mascot Lloyd Kaufman, this one centers on a killer mother who commands her two demented sons to torture and murder a group of friends on vacation. It has a pretty gnarly machete decapitation, a TV getting slammed on one of the sons heads and death via suffocation from fake plastic boobs (?!?!?). So ya, it’s all pretty mean and unapologetically exploitative, but there’s enough meat on the bone here to warrant a watch, a remake and a small cult following (who apparently really enjoy watching people being suffocated via fake plastic boobs?!?).

If you want a lighter and less Troma-esque experience, go fire up John Waters’ Serial Mom.

FATHER’S DAY — Creepshow

Specifically the ‘Father’s Day’ segment, where a vengeful dad returns from the grave demanding cake. Like, he demands cake a lot throughout this, and you will not forget that “Where’s my cake!” line. It will be burned into your soul forever through sheer repetition. It might also make you want some cake? Or maybe it’ll do the opposite and cake will completely disgust you? We’ve digressed…

And if horror anthologies aren’t your thing, there are plenty of killer dad flicks to choose from (The Shining, The Stepfather, Frailty, etc.).

FOURTH OF JULY — Uncle Sam

I already did a whole piece on Fourth of July horror, but Uncle Sam comes out the winner IMO. It gives us a murderous, resurrected patriot stalking suburban America wrapped head to toe in red, white, and blue, turning backyard barbecues and fireworks into a full-blown nightmare. Here, we’ve got Isaac Hayes, an absolutely incredible lenticular VHS cover, and one of the all-time great VHS box taglines, all wrapped up in that mid 90s direct to video horror charm.

Honorable Mentions: Jaws, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Frogs, Silver Bullet, Return of the Living Dead

MARDI GRAS — Mardi Gras Massacre

One of the earlier slashers to grab a holiday and run with it, this follows a masked killer prowling New Orleans during Mardi Gras and murdering women as part of an occult ritual explained through clumsy flashbacks and bad exposition. Most of the movie is stalking, abrupt violence and really dated dance sequences, all unfolding while the city is mid-celebration and nobody seems especially alarmed. Ahh the 70s! What a time to be alive.

Honorable Mention: Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh

HALLOWEEN — Hack O Lantern

There are a million obvious choices for Halloween, and Halloween is my all-time favorite/forever holiday watch, but skipping the easy pick felt a helluva lot more fun here. Instead, here’s a bizarre curveball: Hack-O-Lantern, a movie that somehow brings us a murderous grandfather, rad heavy metal montages, and plot twists that involve incest and satanic cults. I first saw this at around 3am during an all-night horror marathon and nearly lost my mind because it’s so silly and insanely weird. Not “good” in the traditional sense (it’s called Hack-O-Lantern, for fuck’s sake) but a very, very high recommendation for peak Halloween chaos and fans of “so bad, it’s good”.

Honorable Mentions: Trick or Treat, All the Halloween flicks, Hell Night, The Midnight Hour, Dark Night of the Demons, The Barn, All Hallows’ Eve, Trick r treat…the list goes on

THANKSGIVING — Blood Rage

Like the Fourth, I already hooked y’all up with the two Thanksgiving classics of the era, but Blood Rage gets the edge. The plot centers on twin brothers and a childhood murder that comes back to haunt an already dysfunctional family right as Thanksgiving dinner is being prepared. It perfectly captures the stress and tension of the holiday and has rightfully earned its cult status due to solid gore and hilariously bad catch phrases.

But please— please, I’m begging you— don’t sleep on Home Sweet Home either. Fire them both up and experience the Thanksgiving double feature you were put on this earth to experience.

Honorable Mention: Home Sweet Home, Thankskilling

CHRISTMAS — Christmas Evil

As you might know, I love Silent Night, Deadly Night and honestly appreciate the sequels a tad bit more (except Part 3), but Christmas Evil is operating on a completely different wavelength. This isn’t a Santa slasher in the traditional sense, which confused me as a child given the title and way the film was marketed on VHS, it’s a bleak, slow-burn character study about mental illness and slowly coming apart under the weight of Christmas trauma. It also has a strange, dreamlike quality in the way it’s shot and captures the quiet madness of the season in a way that feels uncomfortably real, making it one of the most effective and unsettling holiday horror films ever made.

Side note: I saw a midnight screening of this a few years ago with my friend Ted, and we looked around the theater and spotted a dude who looked exactly like Ted. I mean, alarmingly identical. Truly unsettling, like that Jesse Eisenberg movie scenario, some potential “don’t run into your past or future self” Back to the Future–type shit. We played it cool and kept our distance, but anytime this movie comes up, I still find myself asking: whatever happened to Doppelgänger Ted?

Honorable Mentions: Black Christmas, Christmas Evil, Silent Night, Deadly Night series Don’t Open Till Christmas, To All a Goodnight, Elves…shit, too many to name

NEW YEAR’S EVE — Bloody New Year

I know the champagne is finished and we’re all New Year’d out at this point, ya ya ya. But I say it’s still worth planning to watch a movie 12 months ahead of time. Why? Cuz why not; that’s not stupid at all. Here, A New Year’s party turns into a rotting, time-warped nightmare where the celebration never resets and everyone’s doomed. It perfectly captures that “fresh start” optimism curdling into dread, plus it’s grimy, weird, and deeply of the era in all the right ways.

Honorable Mentions: New Year’s Evil, Terror Train

So there it is folks. Plan ahead, plan smart and thank me later (especially for Hack-o-lantern).

“Garbage Day”, “Garbage Day”, “Garbage Day”!!! There, I said it. We got it out of the way. “Garbage Day”! Damn it, I said it again. Sorry. Phew. That actually felt… weirdly relieving, like finally sneezing after it’s been stuck in your nose for 52 minutes. Now we can move on. I think….You still with me? Excellent. “Garbage D...” NO. Focus. Focus….resist.

Like a surprisingly multifaceted rock n roll star who secretly has a doctorate in astrophysics (I’m looking at you, Brian May from Queen), Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 is actually many more things than what you think it is. One of those things is “Garbage Day”, obviously, but let’s not let that define this adventure so early just yet. We’ll get there, I promise.

So today, I’m a nerdy tape-head on a real mission. Today, I want to show you and the rest of the world that SND2 is so much more than the shallow, memeified façade of “Garbage Day!” Because Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 is bigger, stranger, dumber, funnier, and way more unhinged than one line could ever capture…although, let’s be honest, it’s also very much that one line. I know— it’s all so very complicated, I get it, and I’m truly sorry for that.

To get straight to the point, I love this movie. I love its vibe, I love the weird little nuances baked into every stiff line delivery, I love its bizarre place in horror history. And honestly, I love how obsessed I used to be with the original Silent Night, Deadly Night, chasing it for many years as a young whippersnapper like it was some forbidden relic until I finally conned a friend’s parents into renting it during a sixth-grade theme-park trip. But, ya wanna know the true cosmic twist of fate? The real love I was seeking and yearning for was actually Part 2. Sorry, original SNDN, you’ll always have a very special place in my heart but your insane sequel is the one that truly swept me off my feet. Let’s see why.

It’s the greatest 2-for-1 experience in cinematic history

I cannot overstate this: Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 gives you the entire original movie in its first half. Not a recap. Not a highlight reel. THE WHOLE DAMN MOVIE, condensed! Even the totally random boring shit.

We’re talking roughly 40 minutes (!!!) of pure Silent Night, Deadly Night stitched directly into the film like a cinematic buy-one-get-one-free coupon. You literally do not need to see the original because Part 2 hands it to you as a Xmas bonus gift basket.

It’s truly the most economical storytelling in film history. Why watch two movies when you can watch one movie that contains both movies? I mean, that’s a pretty solid deal right? Just think of the time you save! Time you could spend reading a book, calling your family, or watching another trashy holiday slasher (I’d suggest Elves; Dan Haggerty is the man!).

In a content-efficiency-obsessed era that already has way too many things to watch, SNDN2 was decades ahead of the curve. That said, I still recommend watching Part One in its entirety, if only for the hilariously, wayyyyy out-of-place wholesome montage sequence. Sadly, the sequel does not regurgitate this two-minute slice of heaven.

The kills are beautifully stupid

Say what you want about SNDN2 cheating in the runtime department, but Ricky’s murder spree is ridiculous and borderline slapstick. We’ve got:

A car battery electrocution: nothing says “holiday spirit” like jump-starting the human skull of a blonde-haired preppy weirdo and watching his eyeball explode.

A comical movie-theater strangulation: It’s like a fucking looney tunes cartoon, complete with flailing legs and popcorn flying everywhere. And in a moment of pure meta chaos, Ricky and his girlfriend are literally watching the original Silent Night, Deadly Night in the theater, a movie we’ve already watched multiple times via flashbacks in this movie. Am I taking crazy pills?

A dude that gets run-over multiple times: Ricky doesn’t just hit a guy with a car… he fully commits to the bit. He circles back. He reverses, rinse and repeat. Many times. It’s so awesomely stupid.

The umbrella kill: The crown jewel of the flick. In a moment of Mary Poppins gone mad, Ricky stabs a man with an umbrella and then opens it up inside him??? Is this physically possible?

And as if that weren’t enough, remember: you get every damn kill from Part 1 as a bonus! All of them! Again, this is all very economical.

This stare down

And then there’s the legendary stare-down between Ricky and a security guard, a scene that plays out like two mannequins challenging each other to a blinking contest. They lock eyes for what feels like seven full minutes, neither speaking, neither moving, both radiating the energy of men who forgot their lines but refused to break character. It’s pure cinema. Hitchcock wished he could build tension like this.

The production story

How did this madness happen? The studio basically wanted a cheap cash-grab: “Hey, take the original, recut it, maybe add a few new scenes, and boom, we’ve got a sequel.” Easy peezy dollars in the pocket. But editor/horror movie savior from the heaven’s above Lee Harry had other ideas. Instead of delivering a glorified clip show, he convinced the producers to let him actually make a new (I use that word very loosely here) movie. And then, with almost no money and a mandate to recycle as much footage as humanly possible, he went out and shot about 40–50 minutes of fresh material, hacked it onto the original like a cinematic Frankenstein, and created the bizarre, wonderful, half-recap/half-sequel mutant we know today. Which, in all honesty, is still kinda a glorified clip show.

So SNDN 2 wasn’t supposed to become a cult classic, it was actually meant to become a budget-saving spreadsheet victory. But Harry swung for the fences anyway, and somehow that ambition gave us Ricky, the eyebrow acting, the kills, and…yes, Garbage Day. Shit…I said it. But we’ll get there, I promise.

Eric Mutha-Fuckin Freeman

Eric Freeman is the secret sauce that makes Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 unforgettable. His eyebrows alone deserve their own billing, twitching and slicing through scenes like sentient punctuation. Please watch every second of this man in action.

Between the crisp sweaters, the perfectly sculpted hair, and his unexpectedly buff physique, he looks like he wandered in from a completely different movie (or daytime soap opera medical drama, more fittingly) and decided to completely dominate this one instead. His line deliveries swing wildly between menacing, hilarious, and “has this man ever spoken to another human before,” which absolutely becomes the film’s greatest strength.

Then, after giving one of the most bizarrely magnetic performances in horror history, Freeman vanished for decades, adding to the mythology, only to return years later fully embracing his cult-icon status. He didn’t just play Ricky, he is the movie, the chaos, and the reason this sequel lives on.

God bless you, Eric Freeman.

OK— finally we’re there folks, I told you we’d come around at some point…

Garbage Day! There, I said it, are you happy?!??

Okay. We made it. What a long, strange trip it’s been. But admit it- you’ve had some fun, right? We’ve been responsible and we’ve shown restraint. We’ve danced around it politely like adults who know exactly what’s coming, but refuse to say it out loud. And now there’s nowhere left to run.

So let’s address the very large, very loud, very meme-shaped elephant in the room:
Garbage Day. If you already know it, welcome back, old friend. If you don’t know it… first of all, I envy you. Second of all, it’s about to change your life for roughly twenty seconds.

When I first saw Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 back in the pre-internet, pre-meme 90s, that moment hit me like divine stupidity shot straight from the VHS gods. Even as a 13-year-old, I couldn’t quite put my finger on why that over-the-top moment felt so special. I vividly remember turning to my buddy and saying, “Was that as weird as I thought it was?” I was astounded and bewildered, but nothing could have prepared me for how that clip would go on to haunt me, and countless others, for the rest of our lives.

Then, about ten years later, as YouTube was being born and creators started resurfacing and parodying the clip endlessly, I realized this wasn’t just a bizarre little thrill I carried alone for a decade. This was much bigger than me. The world had found Ricky, and Ricky had now found the world. That ten-second explosion of eyebrow acting and unhinged confidence became one of the earliest viral horror memes and its impact on horror culture is massive: it transformed a forgotten sequel into a cult classic, turned Freeman into a legend, and helped establish the now-sacred tradition of celebrating bad horror through the lens of ridiculousness. Garbage Day isn’t just a scene; it’s a shared cultural moment.

So in the end, Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 remains one of those rare, beautiful accidents of horror cinema: a film stitched together out of leftovers, elevated by a legendary performance, and immortalized by a meme that refused to die. It shouldn’t work, yet it absolutely does, and that’s why it’s still such a joy to revisit every holiday season.

If you enjoyed this, you’ll also enjoy all the amazing Christmas horror pieces, past and future, from my fellow Scarestackers via the schedule below. Thanks again for the invite, You= the man!

12/1 Silent Night Deadly Night 3: Kyle (Horrorble Writer)

12/2 The Nightmare Before Christmas: Abandoned Places

12/3 Silent Night Deadly Night: Molly O’Blivion

12/4 Anna And The Apocalypse: H. H. Duke

12/5 Terrifier 3: Meat Head Media

12/6 The Advent Calendar: Sahar Writes

12/7 Silent Night Deadly Night 4: Stephen Duffy

12/8 Violent Night: @robopulp

12/9 The Lodge: Offscreenshaman

12/10 Mean One: Beverley’s Horror Corner

12/11 Silent Night: Skyla

12/12 It’s A Wonderful Knife: Thehumangaze

12/13 A Christmas Horror Story: Mike Duffy

12/14 Deadly Games/Dial Code Santa Claus: Hellish Views - Harry Evans

12/15 Black Christmas (2006): Blood, Blush, and Guts

12/16 Krampus: POP! Goes My Brain

12/17 Elves

12/18 Santa Jaws: Sean Mo

12/19 Better Watch Out: Habitual Cinema

12/20 Rare Exports: The Macabre Tavern

12/21 Christmas Bloody Christmas: Horror Hangouts

12/22 Silent Night Deadly Night 2: Brandon Rae

12/23 Gremlins: B-Movie Tea

12/24 Black Christmas (2019): That Horror Lesbian

12/25 Black Christmas: Horror Concierge

Look, not every December horror movie experience needs a red suit, a romantic subplot, or an insufferable Christmas jingle. Sometimes you just want a movie that makes you feel cold. Like, literally cold. Like “there’s a shitload of snow outside and I’d rather really be inside” cold. So when it came time to compile a few December watch picks, I decided to think outside the box and skip the usual holiday fare — plus the whole gang doing Scarestack’s 25 Days of Slays has you covered all month — and instead jump into a few horror tapes that capture the icy, bleak, snow-filled vibes many folks are living in right now. So none of those jingles (sorry), no elves (my bad), and no holiday cheer whatsoever. Just subzero terror and the cinematic equivalent of frostbite biting you in the face.

The Thing

If there’s a single film that defines winter horror, it’s The Thing. This isn’t just a movie set in the cold, it’s a movie where the cold is basically the main character. Which makes sense because Antarctica, am I right? The wind never stops howling, the snow never stops swallowing everything, and the isolation is so thick you could cut it with a flamethrower. Carpenter turns winter into a psychological weapon. The paranoia only works because escape is impossible and freezing to death is the best-case scenario. Add in the legendary practical effects, the mistrust between every character, and Kurt Russell’s super cool beard, and you have the quintessential winter nightmare. It is the film that makes you put on a sweater halfway through, not just from the cold but out of emotional support for the poor bastards trapped in it.

The Shining

No movie makes winter feel like a slow, creeping mental breakdown quite like The Shining. The Overlook doesn’t just get cold, it turns into a giant, beautifully decorated freezer designed specifically to ruin the Torrance family’s lives. The real magic is how the weather quietly bullies Jack into madness; you can practically see his sanity slipping on the ice outside. And as we all know, he ends up frozen solid in the hedge maze like some kind of deranged human popsicle.

Iced

Now for Iced, a documentary about how I like my coffee (I keed! I keed!).

What we have in this beautiful piece of late 80s slasher trash is the first and possibly only horror movie set at a ski resort. It sounds absurd, but honestly, it totally makes sense. Ski resorts already have everything a slasher needs: isolation, questionable outerwear, snow goggles to mask the killer’s identity, and plenty of sharp objects lying around to dispatch people in strange and awkward ways. The movie follows a bunch of 80s hot-tub enthusiasts who reunite at a luxury mountain lodge, only to be picked off by a masked skier with a taste for revenge and winter sports equipment. The kills are as ridiculous as you’d hope, the snow is plentiful, and the vibe is pure “of its time” gold. It is a movie that fully commits to the bit, proving once and for all that if you stick a slasher in enough powder and neon ski jackets, magic can happen.

Shredder (2001)

If Iced is the ski-slasher no one asked for (but everyone should experience), Shredder is its chaotic snowboarding cousin. You know the cool one who shows up wearing baggy pants, has frosted tips, and swears by crappy pop-punk. You know the type. Set at an abandoned ski lodge, the film follows a crew of aggressively 2001 snowboarders who care more about landing sick tricks than recognizing the very obvious masked killer stalking them. The kills are goofy, and the soundtrack sounds like every band Warped Tour rejected. But the snow? Everywhere. Every frame is frosted (kinda like dem tips!). It is Iced’s dumber, louder, slightly more self-aware spirit animal.

Misery (1990)

The second Paul Sheldon’s car skids off that icy road, the universe basically shrugs and says, “Congrats, buddy, you live with Annie Wilkes now. Good luck to you, sir!” From that moment forward, the snow stops behaving like weather and starts acting like Annie’s unpaid intern. It shuts down every escape route, muffles every scream, and piles up outside the windows like nature itself is rooting Annie on, waving tiny frozen pom-poms. It doesn’t matter that Paul is a best-selling author or that literally anyone might be looking for him; winter is fully committed to making sure no one gets within miles of that house.

Curtains (1983)

Like Black Christmas, Curtains is one of those Canadian chillers that feels super cold even when nothing particularly cold is happening. The setup alone is pure genre gold: a group of actresses competing for a coveted film role retreat to a remote mansion, only to be stalked by a killer wearing one of the creepiest masks in slasher history. But it’s the ice-skating scene that cements Curtains as a winter essential, a surreal, dreamlike sequence on a frozen pond that plays like a nightmare version of a figure-skating competition. The movie may be a bit uneven, but its snowy atmosphere really adds to the vibe.

Ravenous (1999)

Set in a remote 19th-century military outpost buried under blankets of snow, Ravenous follows a disgraced soldier sent to the edge of civilization, only to stumble into a rescue mission that turns into a very messy lesson in cannibalistic folklore. The movie weaponizes winter by turning the frontier cold into a slow, creeping hunger, the kind that gnaws at your bones long before the actual cannibalism kicks in. The blizzards, barren landscapes, and crushing isolation amplify every moment until the whole film feels like a nightmare campfire story that keeps getting darker every time someone adds a log. It is cold, it is weird, and it is definitely one of a kind.

Winterbeast (1992)

Winter Beast is one of those movies where explaining the plot feels like a disservice to the experience. Yes, it technically takes place in the winter (the title isn’t lying), and yes, there is a “beast,” but that barely scratches the surface of whatever unhinged cosmic energy this movie is operating on. The story involves a park ranger, a cursed mountain lodge, and stop-motion creatures that look like they escaped from public-access television. But I’m not diving deep here, because Winter Beast is so gloriously batshit insane it deserves its own dedicated post. In fact, consider this your teaser trailer…coming soon: a full breakdown of one of the strangest, most wonderfully broken winter horror films ever committed to VHS. You’ll thank me later.

And that wraps up the unofficial Frostbite Film Festival. Watch a few of these back-to-back and you’ll start checking your windows for drafts and your driveway for killers on skis. Stay frosty out there.