October keeps on rolling guys and as the weather cools, the leaves fall, the air is filling with that Haddonfield magic as you can almost hear a John Carpenter theme ringing in your head as walk down the quiet back streets in your neighbourhead. All that being said let’s see what goodies the old video store is bringing your way this week…
From “as exciting and audacious an opening as you’re likely to find” (Flick Attack) to “one of the creepiest conclusions in all of horror” (Splatter Critic), it remains among the most chilling Ozploitation shockers of the ’80s: When a séance warns Alison (Joanne Samuel of MAD MAX) not to return home for her 19th birthday, it unlocks an occult conspiracy of fear, violence and demonic deliverance.
Takashi Miike’s audacious horror about a widower who stages a mock audition in order to meet a new partner only to become infatuated with a woman who is not what she seems to be. Ryo Ishibashi, Eihi Shiina, 1999.
Released in the wake of The Exorcist and The Omen, Audrey Rose is an intelligent, heartfelt drama that approaches its subject with an open mind and seriousness of intent that caught many off guard but typifies Wise’s previous genre forays. Sensitively played by a sterling cast at the top of their game, this underseen gem deserves a place on the shelf of any fan of classic horror.
A young woman inherits a run-down pub and discovers a dark secret within its basement – Baghead – a shape-shifting creature that will let you speak to lost loved ones, but not without consequence. Freya Allan, Jeremy Irvine, Ruby Barker, Alberto Corredor.
Down-and-out writer Henry Chinaski (Mickey Rourke) spends his nights drinking and picking brawls at a dingy Los Angeles watering hole. One night Henry spies a kindred spirit in pretty barfly Wanda (Faye Dunaway) and, despite warning signs that she may be unfaithful, shacks up with the woman. When Henry’s fears are confirmed by Wanda’s infidelity with bartender Eddie (Frank Stallone), he begins an affair of his own with wealthy publisher Tully Sorenson (Alice Krige).
Jake Scully (Craig Wasson), an unemployed actor, is asked to house-sit a luxurious hillside apartment. The home offers Jake a telescopic peek into the bedroom of Gloria Revelle (Deborah Shelton), who performs nightly. When Jake discovers another man is also spying on Gloria, he begins an obsessive surveillance of her. Soon a grisly murder leads him into the world of adult film where he meets, Holly Body (Melanie Griffith), who is a key to the crime.
Intriguing action film written by John Carpenter which apparently acted as a template for the later Die Hard about double crossing thieves and a supercar. Tommy Lee Jones, Linda Hamilton. 1986.
Get ready for two of the most shocking and controversial films from the golden age of 70s exploitation cinema: Bonnie’s Kids / Centerfold Girls
When a mysterious beast ravages the countryside, two unlikely heroes are called in to fight the evil. The only way they can save the land from this unspeakable terror is to face their greatest fears, unearth a dark power and reveal a deadly secret.
Classic British horror film about a professor’s turmoil as he confronts his wife’s hidden powers, leading to a terrifying supernatural conflict. Peter Wyngarde, Janet Blair, Sidney Hayers, 1962.
One of the sleaziest & trashiest Canadian films of the 70’s! A dopey couple find themselves in an isolated small town inhabited by the “blood-hungry honeys” of the title. Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Ivan Reitman, 1973.
Hong Kong action comedy about a skilled acrobat who flees town after accidentally injuring a socialite. He joins a soccer team, showcasing impossible ball stunts. Yuen Biao, 1983.
Lee Tong (Yuen Biao, Dreadnaught) is a young farmer who has grown up in an isolated rural community. When an indiscretion lands him in hot water, he leaves his home in the countryside and heads for the big city – where he meets Suen (Cheung Kwok-keung, Eastern Condors), a street footballer who recognises Tong’s talent for soccer and encourages him to try out for a pro team.
In 1960, a young woman named Christine enters St. Francis Boarding School for Girls and murders the resident nuns. Four decades later, college students head to the long-abandoned building one night to tag it with their fraternity letters, little knowing that rumors of the place being haunted are true. Stir in a band of unlikely Satanists, and the table is set for a feast of demonic infestation!
A young widower returns to his hometown to search for answers to his wife’s murder, which may be linked to the ghost of a deceased ventriloquist. Ryan Kwanten, Amber Valletta, Donnie Wahlberg, James Wan, 2007.
When a woman learns of an immortality treatment, she sees it as a way to outdo her long-time rival but things don’t go as planned. Meryl Streep, Bruce Willis, Goldie Hawn, Robert Zemeckis, 1992.
Swinging spinster Agatha Jackson and her young sidekick Donna come to the home of a well-to-do businessman whose family is out of town on his birthday. They seduce him and he drops them at the bus terminal. Sometimes afterward they return and overpower him, tie him up and gag him, psychologically torture him and trash his house.
A group of people are trapped in an elevator and the Devil is mysteriously amongst them. Chris Messina, Logan Marshall-Green, Jenny O’Hara, John Erick Dowdle, 2010.
Salvatore “Sal” Fragione (Danny Aiello) is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local, Buggin’ Out (Giancarlo Esposito), becomes upset when he sees that the pizzeria’s Wall of Fame exhibits only Italian actors. Buggin’ Out believes a pizzeria in a black neighborhood should showcase black actors, but Sal disagrees. The wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to Buggin’ Out and to other people in the neighborhood, and tensions rise.
Double Feature Of Part 1 and 2
When the San Francisco Giants pay centerfielder Bobby Rayburn (Wesley Snipes) $40 million to lead their team to the World Series, no one is happier or more supportive than #1 fan Gil Renard (Robert DeNiro). So, when Rayburn becomes mired in the worst slump of his career, the obsessed Renard decides to stop at nothing to help his idol regain his former glory . . . not even murder.
This French Sci-Fi classic is a bizarre and beautifully animated futuristic story on a faraway planet, where blue giants rule and oppressed humanoids rebel against the machine-like leaders. René Laloux (1973)
Award winning awesomely ultraviolent and sleazy Moby Dick homage about a ruthless vigilante who stops at nothing to track down a depraved serial killer. In the same vein as Hobo With a Shotgun. Directed by Winnipeg film collective Astron-6. 2011.
When 16-year-old Nicole Walker (Reese Witherspoon) meets 23-year-old David McCall (Mark Wahlberg) at a Seattle nightclub, she falls in love. David is exciting and charming, and despite the wide age gap, he wins over Nicole’s family — except for her workaholic father, Steven (William Petersen), who’s suspicious of David from the start. His concerns are realized when David turns out to be a violent sociopath who sees Nicole as his possession, and her family home a fortress to be invaded.
Embattled corporation Everything Except Shoes, or E.E.S., hires celebrity Ricky Coogin (Alex Winter) to serve as its spokesperson amid a spate of reports that the company uses a toxic substance in the products it manufactures. Ricky travels to South America to dispel the rumors, but instead he stumbles upon an oddball amusement park run by the demented Elijah C. Skuggs (Randy Quaid). It turns out that Skuggs is using the substance in E.E.S. products to turn humans into grotesque mutants.
Six of the world’s scariest psychopaths escape from a local Asylum and proceed to unleash terror on the unsuspecting crowd of a Halloween Funhouse whose themed mazes are inspired by their various reigns of terror. Andy Palmer (2015)
The Trilogy In One Blu Ray Set
THE GREAT ESCAPE II, THE UNTOLD STORY starring Christopher Reeve, as Major John Dodge, with Judd Hirsch and Donald Pleasence, examines the WWII story of allied prisoners recaptured and executed by the German Gestapo after a failed escape attempt, the search and capture of Stalag III officials responsiblefor the murders, and their eventual conviction at the War Crimes Court in Hamburg, 1947.
Takashi Miike’s follow up to his Great Yokai War has the peace-loving spirits return to stop an angry demon from destroying Tokyo. 2021.
Brothers Dai and Kei are summoned by peace-loving spirits to stop an angry demon from destroying Tokyo. When they become separated, Kei’s mission is to save his brother and restore harmony between human and spirit worlds. From legendary director Takashi Miike.
Includes Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy: TOTALLY FUCKED UP / DOOM GENERATION / NOWHERE
A terrified toy salesman is mysteriously attacked. At the hospital, he babbles and clutches the year’s most popular Halloween costume, an eerie pumpkin mask. Suddenly, Doctor Daniel Challis (Tom Atkins, The Fog, Night Of The Creeps) finds himself thrust into a terrifying Halloween nightmare. Working with the salesman’s daughter, Ellie, Daniel traces the mask to the Silver Shamrock Novelties company and its founder, Conal Cochran (Dan O’Herlihy, RoboCop).
He butchered 16 people trying to get to his sister. He was shot and incinerated, but still the entity that Dr. Sam Loomis (the legendary Donald Pleasence) calls “Evil on two legs” would not die. Tonight, Michael Myers has come home again … to kill! This time, Michael returns to Haddonfield for Jamie Lloyd (Danielle Harris, 2009’s Halloween II, The Last Boy Scout) – the orphaned daughter of Laurie Strode – and her babysitter Rachel (Ellie Cornell, Halloween 5: The Revenge Of Michael Myers, House Of The Dead). Can Loomis stop Michael before the unholy slaughter reaches his innocent young niece?
Because Hell would not have him, Michael Myers survived the mine explosion thought to have killed him. One year later, his traumatised young niece Jamie (Danielle Harris, Rob Zombie’s Halloween) is horrified to discover she has a telepathic bond with her evil uncle … and that Uncle Michael is on his way back to Haddonfield. But Dr. Loomis (the legendary Donald Pleasence) has a new plan to destroy The Boogey Man in his childhood home using Jamie as bait. Tonight, the carnage begins again: Michael Myers is back with a vengeance! Ellie Cornell and Beau Starr return for this hit sequel that features grisly gore by K.N.B. EFX Group (The Walking Dead, Army Of Darkness).
Based on his own novella The Hellbound Heart, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser sees Larry (Andrew Robinson) and his wife Julia (Clare Higgins) move into their new home, unaware that something evil lurks beneath the floorboards of the dilapidated house – something that wants human blood…
In five audacious episodes, failed architect and arch-sociopath Jack recounts the elaborately orchestrated murders—each, as he views them, a towering work of art—that define his “career” as a serial killer. Mixing pitch black humor, transcendent surrealism, and renegade musings on everything from history to architecture to cinema, von Trier fashions a radical, blazingly personal inquiry into violence, art, and the twin acts of creation and destruction.
In rural Southern Italy, an emotionally disturbed young woman – “a damn near perfect performance” (Rock! Shock! Pop!) by Daliah Lavi of THE WHIP AND THE BODY – turns to witchcraft to curse her former lover. But is her increasingly alarming behavior due to obsession or possession? Frank Wolff (ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST) co-stars in this still-potent 1963 shocker.
With the disappearance of hack horror writer Sutter Cane, all Hell is breaking loose…literally! Author Cane, it seems, has a knack for description that really brings his evil creepy-crawlies to life.
Insurance investigator John Trent is sent to investigate Cane’s mysterious vanishing act and ends up in the sleepy little East Coast town of Hobb’s End. The fact that this town exists as a figment of Cane’s twisted imagination is only the beginning of Trent’s problems.
Four juvenile delinquents and their caretakers encounter bloodthirsty villagers during a team-building exercise in Yorkshire, England.
When three shipwrecked sailors land on an abandoned island that has four sole residents, one of the men starts to question what happened. He soon finds himself in a fight to save his own life while trying to uncover the truth and escape.
Mankind can no longer reproduce because of gene manipulation aimed at making life longer. The clones ruling the bottomless underworld may have become fertile. Parton is selected to go on a mission through a subterranean labyrinth crawling with monsters to secure humanity’s future.
Once upon a time, the James Brothers, Odessa (Dave Larsen) and Kyle (David Gunn, VAMPIRE JOURNALS), murdered their parents in their own beds. Now they’ve escaped from Death Row and are on the run on a stormy night, looking for a place to hide out. They invade a home, and things get violently out of hand as the James boys find there are even more surprises waiting in the basement!
Three stories revolve around a man who tries to take control of his own life, a policeman whose wife seems like a different person, and a woman who searches for someone with a special ability.
All 8 of the indefatigable Leprechaun series! He’s been to outer space and back to the hood, but will he ever find his gold?
FBI Agent Lee Harker is assigned to an unsolved serial killer case that takes an unexpected turn, revealing evidence of the occult. Harker discovers a personal connection to the killer and must stop him before he strikes again.
Gruesome stop-motion fever dream produced, written, directed, designed and largely animated by legendary visual effects maestro Phil Tippett off and on for roughly 30 years. Alex Cox, Niketa Roman, Satish Ratakonda, Phil Tippett, 2021.
Flicker Alley, in partnership with Universal Pictures, are proud to present Universal Picture s new 4K restoration of the 1928 silent classic, The Man Who Laughs, accompanied by a newly recorded orchestral score by the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra. Based on the novel by Victor Hugo, the story centers on the extraordinary adventures of Conrad Veidt s Gwynplaine, whose wide and mirthless grin inspired DC Comics legendary Batman villain, the Joker.
Ti West’s final film in his trilogy starring Mia Goth, blends 1980s horror and B-movie nostalgia with a sharp commentary on fame and desire, featuring stylish, era-specific details and a standout cast. Giancarlo Esposito, Kevin Bacon, Bobby Cannavale,
It’s Halloween! The gates of Hull House have creaked open once again and Angela (Amelia Kinkade) is waiting for her treats. When a group of rambunctious teens take refuge in the foreboding funeral home to escape the law, they soon realize their grave error. Packed with thrills, chills, and bloody spills, Night Of The Demons 3 is a party to die for!
All 7 Elm Streets!
After Anna (Isabelle Adjani) reveals to her husband, Mark (Sam Neill), that she is having an affair, she leaves him and their son. Mark is devastated, and seeks out Heinrich (Heinz Bennent), the man who cuckolded him, only to receive a beating. After a series of violent confrontations between Mark and Anna, Mark hires a private investigator to follow her. Anna descends into madness, and it’s soon clear that she is hiding a much bigger secret — one that is both inexplicable and shocking.
Beloved cult horror about a group of teens who inadvertently kill the child of a backwoods witch who unleashes a monstrous demon called Pumpkinhead to exact her revenge. Lance Henriksen, Jeff East, Stan Winston, 1988
Rare German hippie film about a man who is picked up by his ex girlfriend who lives a commune lifestyle with other attractive women, who kill the men in their lives after 5 days. Uschi Obermaier, Marquard Bohm, Sylvia Kekulé, Rudolf Thome, 1970.
Rhymes for Young Ghouls Red Crow MigMaq reservation, 1976: By government decree, every Indian child under the age of 16 must attend residential school. However, fifteen year-old Aila, (Devery Jacobs, The Blanketing) sells enough dope to pay her way out of the school. But when her drug money is stolen, her only options are to run or fight and MigMaq dont run. Bonus features include behind-the-scenes characters, behind-the-scenes stories, and behind-the-scenes extra Jeffs World with director Jeff Barnaby. Blu-ray comes with English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired.
A truck driver builds a special, eight-ton truck to help get revenge against the rednecks who killed his family and raped his girlfriend. Don Michael Paul, Lawrence Dane, Ned Beatty, Lisa Howard, Steven Hilliard Stern, 1987.
A kung-fu artist (Samo Hung) gets help from a sorcerer when he battles zombies in an abandoned temple.
Jerry Blake (Terry O’Quinn, ABC’s Lost) is a man obsessed with having the perfect “American Dream” life—including the house with the white picket fence in the suburbs, complete with an adoring wife and loving children. He believes he’s found it when he marries Susan Maine and becomes the stepfather to Susan’s 16-year-old daughter, Stephanie. But Stephanie gets an uneasy feeling when she is around Jerry with his “Father Knows Best” attitude—she can see that there is a darker side behind his cheerful exterior…Could she just be going through the typical teenager rebellion against her new stepfather, or could he be the same man who brutally murdered his family just one year earlier?
While researching violence, Ángela stumbles upon a snuff video of a girl being tortured to death. She soon discovers that the girl is a former student from her school.
Blood, guts and guns are the new normal in the new police state! In the near future, the Tokyo Police Corporation wages a blood-splattered war with the Engineers, a genetically modified group of super-criminals. These mutant mobsters can bio-fuse and surgically implant weapons into their anatomy, turning self-mutilation and body modification into a lethal form of performance art. Meet Ruka, the daughter of a brutally slain police officer, the Corporation s deadliest Engineer Hunter. With cold-blooded efficiency, she slices and dices her way through the crime world and discovers a lair that operates as the underworld s freakish fetish club! But no amount of fear can deter Ruka from fulfilling her sworn duty and avenging her father’s death. Stars J-Horror icon Eihi Shiina (Miike s Audition) and Directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura, the special effects visionary behind The Machine Girl. Audio options: English dubbed or Japanese language with English subtitles. Warning: Graphic violence and gore!
Yacht passengers encounter mysterious weather conditions that force them to jump onto another ship, only to have the odd havoc increase.
Two of the most mind-bending tales of taoist magic ever committed to film: Taoism Drunkard and Young Taoism Fighter!
Directed by and starring Yuen Cheung-yan, Taoism Drunkard follows a man with a love for wine who accidentally damages a sacred statue. Then, in The Young Taoism Fighter, a practitioner of taoist kung fu manages to separate his soul from his body before teaming up with a vengeful young woman to take on a sinister sorcerer (Kwan Chung) and the evil leader of a rival kung fu school (Yen Shi-kwan).
THE FINAL CUT! A righteous police officer investigates the disappearance of a young girl on an island inhabited by a cult of pagans. Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland, Ingrid Pitt.
Not wanting to live in the shadows any longer, Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Owl and Tigger take their fight to the town of Ashdown, leaving a bloody trail of death and mayhem in their wake.
A man who was abducted by aliens returns to his family three years later, but his presence affects them negatively. Harry Bromley Davenport (1982)
4K edition of Jonathan Glazer’s Academy Award-winning masterpiece starring Sandra Huller and Christian Friedel. HIghly limited.
And there we go guys. See ya later this week!