Original subtitles

Horror movies.

Mutilation, decapitation, torture.

Does that sound entertaining?

In the 80s, horror really dove into this gritty,

grimy, gross, horrific, psychotic exploration

of the chaotic maniac,

the questionably motivated murderer,

the individual who seemed to be after

nothing but a blood lust as punishment for promiscuity.

Or materialism.

Telling stories without really worrying too much

about justifying the horror that these villains

were imposing upon their victims

was exploited in a really wonderful way

by the filmmakers of the 80s.

I'm most interested in fear, the emotion of fear.

People pay to be scared, and when you think about it,

it's real ridiculous.

Underneath all of it were these cracks

in the veneer.

This place has a way of making us think

about the kind of future our young people will have.

Nationwide, we found that minor cases

of satanic activity light up the map.

It's 10 p.m.

Do you know where your children are?

It's very much, for me, the decade in which America

tells stories about itself.

There were hundreds and hundreds of horror films

produced in the 80s.

The essence of sex and violence.

It is the explosion

of that video rental market that fuels

the modern horror films.

There's something very sexually attractive to horror.

It's almost like you're attracted to the forbidden fruit.

Kids get the movies

from the horror section of the video store.

Most of the violent movies are rated R,

and aren't supposed to be seen

unless you're 17 years old.

My mom would have died

if she knew some of the stuff

I was bringing home and watching.

So many weird things in the movies of the 80s.

I was genuinely scared.

Maybe my imagination was too vivid.

It is a bit weird, isn't it?

Strange horror.

We just wanted to say things really fast and loud.

You know?

Everything was kind of over the top,

and we were at a party.

The 80s were a proving ground

for horror films to be commercially viable

as movies that also were not intellectually unrespectable.

We will not be showing you extreme violence

in these movies.

We've picked scenes that only suggest the violence.

We want to inform you, not offend you.

It's just as well we're not showing some of those scenes.

I think people would turn their sets off.

Yes.

I could watch 80s horror movies on a loop forever.

It's never enough.

Thrill me.

"Death Ship".

Your holiday in hell.

"Death Ship" is about a bunch of people

on a cruise liner that sinks,

and the survivors get onto this passing freighter

that turns out to be haunted by Nazi ghosts.

It's like it's running itself.

This old ship seems to have a life of its own.

The movie stars Richard Crenna and George Kennedy.

This is my ship, and I am the captain.

It was directed by Alvin Rakoff,

who primarily was a TV director.

And it was written by Jack Hill,

who was friends with Francis Ford Coppola.

They actually went to film school together.

And then afterwards, they went and worked

for Roger Corman on a movie called "The Terror".

"Death Ship" was a very early example of Canuxploitation,

which was something created by the Canadian government.

There was a tax break that allowed it to be easier

for Canadian filmmakers to make movies.

Thanks to Canuxploitation,

there were a lot more Canadian horror films that were made,

as long as they included Canadian actors and crew.

We commit her soul,

and we commit her body

to the deep!

No!

It's not a very bloody film,

but it's a very disgusting film.

It's blood!

It's blood!

Hold on!

There's moments in the film

where they discover what the ship is.

They're going through the bowels,

and they start opening drawers,

and they're finding gold teeth,

things that were leftover from tortured prisoners.

Still running.

And it makes the film a lot darker

than you would initially think.

Let's get the hell out of here!

Go!

Watching it now, it doesn't have as great an impact

as it would have back in 1980.

It hit harder back then.

Because that was so much closer to the Holocaust.

Something terrifying has happened

to the children.

Pray you never meet them.

So many of these movies have these idyllic beginnings.

It's like, look at this town,

look at these beautiful little white children on a bus.

They're singing.

They love their life, it's great.

There's a toxic plant, there's a leak,

and the leak is, like, leaking into the ground.

This yellow mist is coming off of this toxic stuff.

Then we cut to the kids.

♪ Jolly, we love everybody

And they all drive through this yellow mist.

So we know something bad is going to happen.

♪ Cheers to the bus driver, the bus driver ♪

The kids never come home from school.

They find the bus abandoned by a cemetery.

Convenient.

I just found the school bus,

about 100 yards from the Ghoul place.

Motor's still running,

but no Fred, no kids.

This idea of creepy kids is very pervasive.

It's universally scary, because you don't want

to fear your child.

Daddy!

You want to protect your children.

These evil kids are different, because they smile at you,

and they reach for you,

and it's very hard to not go to them.

And when children will kill you,

it's just terrifying.

Particularly if they're, like, void of a soul.

Evil kids are always gonna be scary.

Whoa.

Whatever did this Billy, got Harry too.

Then once it gets into the suspense part of the film,

I'm like, I know this music.

Mommy!

This is kind of the same exact score

as "Friday the 13th".

It had a lot of

without the ch-ch-ch, ah-ah-ah.

The score of this movie is by Harry Manfredini.

Of course, "Friday the 13th" came out in May of 1980,

and "The Children" came out in June.

Oh my god!

Daddy!

Harry Manfredini's score was more than the budget

for the actual filming of the movie.

Well, you get some violins and you make them scream.

I had more money to spend.

So, consequently it opens up way more choices.

There was a score by Jerry Goldsmith called "Coma"

where all the violins go

like that, and I go wow, that's cool.

That's effective.

And so I figured out how I would do that.

I'd be running from the kids, though.

I'll tell you that.

I'll tell you that and three quarters.

I'd be like, nope.

Joni!

No!

Kathy, don't!

Don't get got

by your child with an inexplicable manicure.

It is not your child.

Little Billy has left the building.

He gone.

"Prom Night"

If you're not back by midnight, you won't be coming home.

Slashers, a lot of times,

especially in 1980 as a reaction to "Halloween",

they weren't necessarily going very deep emotionally.

That real life horror of prom night

is what kind of sets it apart from a lot of different

slashers from that time.

Kill!

Kill!

The setup is so vicious that you really felt the atrocity

of what happened.

Six years later, it's prom night,

and somebody's gonna pay for that little girl who died.

As we go through the high school experience,

which everybody knows is just a form of torture.

Certain people try to rectify that experience.

All these people that had been carrying this secret

for so long, you can't hide stuff like that.

You just can't.

Not for long.

Not forever.

It's been a long time.

Tonight, it's my turn.

The suspense is great.

You know, the fact that it's a backwards whodunit,

because you know, we're trying to figure out

who's going to do it, the whole time.

How about a muffin?

No, cookie.

Like me better now?

There's always red herrings in the movie,

but then, of course, the killer starts picking them off,

one by one, like at the prom.

Kelly!

You've got Jamie Lee Curtis at her sassy best,

and I love her.

- I did it! - Oh, shut up!

She has this little 80s cut, this little flip thing,

which is everything that I needed in my life.

She is not Laurie Strode in this thing.

She's like a popular girl this time.

It's reminiscent of so many other influences.

"Carrie" is in there.

"Saturday Night Fever" is in there.

♪ The feeling's right

It's sort of this last bastion of disco culture.

♪ Tonight is the night

Jamie Lee Curtis was dancing her little booty off

in this movie, and I'm here for it.

One of the fun things about "Prom Night'

is that at the end, the song that's playing

is called "Love Me Til I Die".

♪ Love me til I die

♪ And keep me satisfied

Don't necessarily expect prom to be the best night

of your lives, because a lot of people could die.

- No! - Now!

This one, along with "Terror Train",

these were the movies that really solidified

Jamie Lee Curtis as a scream queen.

The big moment for me is the end,

and the reaction from Jamie Lee Curtis,

because she knows who's behind it all,

and it's a real traumatic moment.

♪ Imagine something deep inside ♪

Watching severed heads roll out on prom night

is pretty fun.

No!

He knows you're alone

And it's going to be for the very last time.

You know, sometimes our dogs of the week

are laughably bad.

This one borders on being evil.

Staten Island slasher.

Love a regional slasher.

This one you have Caitlin O'Heaney

playing a young bride-to-be

who's being stalked by a serial killer

right before her wedding.

And I like when a slasher just tells you

who the killer is at the beginning.

Here's Ray.

Ray.

This is the killer.

"He Knows You're Alone" is a 1980s slasher

directed by Armand Mastroianni.

He, of course, went on to direct other 80s entries,

like "The Clairvoyant", "The Supernaturals",

and "Cameron's Closet".

This one's a bit of an outlier

because it's actually a studio produced slasher.

MGMUA did it.

So it's got a little higher production value.

♪ It's the night again

It's got your garden variety slasher effects in there,

but there's a memorable head in a fish tank moment.

Tom Hanks' first movie.

America's favorite, Tom Hanks.

I stretched out an extra foot to make sure I'd trip you.

Why'd you do that?

Well, it seemed the best way to meet you.

Apparently, he was supposed to die in the film,

but they cut it because of how great

his performance was.

Horror movies and the roller coasters,

and the House of Horror ride-

I wanna go on that next!

You can face death without any real fear of dying.

Everyone loves Tom Hanks.

They're like, we can't fucking kill

this lovable, likable man.

He's a darling.

We're not gonna murder him.

It came without warning,

and now it's coming for you.

"Without Warning" is from the great Greydon Clark

and it doesn't get nearly the amount of praise it deserves.

It's got an amazing cast, with Jack Palance,

and Martin Landau, who at the time was mostly known

for "Space: 1999" and "Mission Impossible".

And he's playing this wild-haired conspiracy nut,

who's the only one who knows about the alien,

and no one believes him.

Look, I warned you!

When they start eating on you,

don't come to me for help,

because you ain't getting any.

You've got this gigantic alien

who's on earth to hunt humans.

It throws these little parasitic alien frisbees

that latch onto people.

The movie was shot by Dean Cundey,

who is the award-winning cinematographer of "The Thing",

as well as numerous other John Carpenter films.

In 1987 during a press tour, Arnold Schwarzenegger

stated that the movie "Without Warning"

was a direct influence on the movie "Predator".

It's done really well, and it's such a creepy-looking alien,

when I saw it when I was little,

it scared the hell out of me.

And who's in the costume?

Kevin Peter Hall, who was in the costume of the Predator.

The movie made its way to a company called Filmways,

who didn't want to release it.

They actually wanted to bury the film

Greydon Clark had to threaten to sue

in order to get the film released.

Knowing this was the creative spark for "Predator",

you should absolutely check it out,

especially if you love that film.

You can see the influence coming from here.

By the time they believe in him,

it will be too late.

"The Boogeyman".

Rated R.

In classic slasher tradition,

this movie starts with a prologue with children,

who are being traumatized in some way.

Its "Halloween" DNA is very present

out of the gate.

With the music, and its POV,

and sort of a voyeuristic thing,

looking at folks engaged in carnal frivolity.

What are you lookin' at?

They've walked in on their mom

making out with a fella

who then ties up the boy.

The boy's sister, she cuts him loose.

The boy goes on to kill the man who tied him up.

And he gets trapped in this mirror.

He is suddenly a supernatural presence in their lives.

I know he's here.

Who?

When I broke the mirror, I released him.

Lacy, he's dead!

There's a guy sitting in the car,

pricks him in the neck with a knife.

His girlfriend comes in through the passenger side

to, like, give him a kiss.

So they're skewered together,

and it's like a double-death scene.

I never seen a kiss this long.

That was kind of an amazing kill.

It gets very bizarre, only because it's like

three different things in one movie.

Like they were just kind of throwing everything at it

to see what stuck.

Let's just do all of it.

Let's make it a weird voyeuristic kinky slasher

supernatural exorcism cyborg demon thing.

Get away!

There's some unique stuff happening behind the scenes

on this one.

Susanna Love, and Nicholas Love,

actually brother and sister in real life,

playing siblings in the film.

Moreover, Susanna is the co-writer of the film,

and married to her writing partner

and the director of the film, Ulli Lommel.

An incredibly underrated director.

He's imaginative, he's different.

"Boogeyman" was a low budget film

that was incredibly successful,

and that's what really put Lommel over the edge.

The sequel is another interesting one,

because the "Boogeyman 2" predates the "Scream" franchise

in that in concerns a Hollywood production

trying to make a film about the events of the first film.

So it's very meta in that way,

and meta before there was a whole lot of meta going on.

Boogeyman!

"Christmas Evil".

The night he dropped in.

I just love horror set at Christmas.

And in the 80s, there's tons of it.

Christmas is a time when things are

supposed to be a certain way,

and horror films are all about subverting

what it is supposed to be.

And so Christmas and horror really go hand in hand.

Brandon Maggart plays a middle-aged man,

doesn't have any friends,

doesn't have a girlfriend, or anything like that.

Works at a toy factory,

and he likes Christmas a little bit too much

to the point where he starts to kill for Christmas.

I have superlative taste.

Merry Christmas!

"Christmas Evil" is a movie that usually gets

classified as a horror film,

but it's really more of a psychological character study

similar to "Taxi Driver", or something,

where you're just watching this lonely

socially isolated guy just start to crack.

Lewis Jackson was obsessed with Fassbender

and German expressionism at the time of making it.

What are you saying?

I'm gonna play my tune now.

Everybody'll dance.

You'll see.

And adding that art side to it

I believe gives it the more fantasy element,

and Christmas is based around magic and fantasy.

The look of the film is great.

Every scene of this movie glows of Christmas.

Merry Christmas everyone!

The holidays are hard for a lot of people.

Even if you are well-off, the holidays

are a very stressful period.

And "Christmas Evil" captures that.

Harry?

Merry Christmas, Frank!

It's so nightmarish and weird.

You see him tug on his beard and it doesn't move,

like it becomes a part of him,

like a horror version of Tim Allen's "The Santa Claus".

Are we seeing him become Santa Claus,

or is Harry seeing himself become Santa Claus?

Merry Christmas!

It's a movie that I think will surprise

a lot of people the first time they watch it,

especially the ending,

because that comes out of fucking nowhere.

Are we seeing what we're seeing

onscreen actually happening?

Or is this how Harry is dealing with it?

"Christmas Evil" was the title of the movie

that the distributor gave that Lewis Jackson

did not approve of, and actually didn't know

that it was called "Christmas Evil"

until he saw the trade when it was being re-released.

But the film was called "Better Watch Out".

That's what he filmed it as, and that's what

he knew it as, and he still to this day

does not like the name "Christmas Evil".

♪ Merry Christmas

Fun fact.

Brandon Maggart would later go on

to become singer Fiona Apple's dad in real life,

proving once again that the apple

never falls far from the Christmas tree.

One of the big reasons that horror films

have remained so popular is that it is

a guaranteed way to make some money.

If you don't spend a hell of a lot of money on it,

there's gold in those hills.

There are people out there who are willing

to take a chance on any kind of horror movie.

And the video revolution came along,

and it changed everything.

Now this is a video tape recorder, or VTR,

actually sometimes they're called

video cassette recorders, or VCRs.

The ability to play a movie, or a show,

an entertainment, at whim, at will,

that did not exist prior to this home video revolution.

That's the thing that most people today,

where everything's accessible and fast,

don't realize that it was not like that.

Now, some of the best movies on television

aren't on television.

They're on SelectaVision.

Well, now it was instant gratification time.

400.

Set it today.

It was a whole world opened up to people.

Movies in the 50s and 60s, I mean,

you hoped that a Hammer film was gonna play

in your neighborhood, because if it didn't,

you weren't gonna see it for five years

until it went on television.

You largely couldn't see it at all,

or if you could, you had to see it chopped to pieces

on the 4:30 movie.

So when video appeared, it was like this dam broke.

There was this new distribution outlet

for these films that were able to be repackaged

and given a whole new lease of life,

or films that had only come out in their native country,

then all of a sudden, they had an outlet

in other territories.

"The Curse of the Devil".

The video tape revolution brought a new appreciation

for some of my films, especially "The Thing".

What really began video, like with the internet, was porn.

What's it like to become

one of football's cowgirls?

Debbie Does Dallas has all the answers.

I think the first VHS I ever bought

was a porn tape that cost, like, $80 back in the 70s.

How a lot of us consumed media at that time,

it impacted the way people made movies.

Especially the beginning of the VHS,

all the video stores were private

they're just pop-ups.

They had to buy product.

So they would go out and buy 5000 VHS's for their store.

What did they buy?

Sex and horror.

We cater to their demands.

Whatever, they tell us what they want,

and we try to get it.

And we have a large horror section,

and of course with real heavy nude releases.

We get a lot of films called B movies.

There's distributors who were feeding that pipeline,

and they needed somebody to make the movies.

Those movies, they became products.

They needed to fit a certain mold.

"Halloween" and "Friday the 13th".

These two films dominated the box office,

and then they dominated home video.

Once horror started doing well on video,

that's when everybody realized it very quickly.

The 80s began the period of crapola movies

made straight for video,

only to satisfy the insatiable VHS market.

It was just tons and tons of new horror movies

being made all the time,

especially the super low budget ones.

I think everybody with a camera and 10 bucks

made their own horror movies back then.

Companies, they were also buying cheaper films

that were independently made to put in stores.

And those were your direct to video days.

Shot on video brought the price of making a film

down to $50,000, $40,000, $30,000, and even less.

You could make a movie on Monday

and have it in the video store by Wednesday.

You didn't need a big studio.

You didn't need to go begging for someone to produce it.

You could just make your project

and put it out there on video,

which I did many, many, many times.

Hello darling, and welcome to another

fabulous Thriller Video.

Thriller Video.

We had a collection of horror movies

that were kind of old and tired and bad

that nobody wanted to see,

so I did my wraparound thing on them,

and we released them to video,

and they sold like hotcakes.

Now this one's in kind of a different vein,

jugular vein, that is.

There were more distribution companies

than you could count.

Jack Valenti, the head of the MPAA,

was whining that video cassettes

would destroy copyright law.

The studios wouldn't license their stuff.

They saw video as being a threat.

So there was open field for anybody who wanted

to start a company.

Charlie Band took advantage of it the most.

Charles Band was a pioneer in this time,

creating multiple labels, putting these films

in video stores.

This is a tough business,

but every business is challenging.

It was rental that made the thing explode

Come to the warehouse,

and rent the hit movies you want when you want them.

Around 1982 is when the video stores

started doing way, way better.

By 1985 there was around 12,000 video stores

in the United States.

You can now rent a video overnight,

and hire these great movies from only 99 cents.

Close to the late 80s, there was around 40,000 places

that were renting tapes, so this was a huge impact

for the horror genre, because people

were renting horror films.

Tapes around that time weren't $5.

They weren't $2.

They were typically 49.95 up to $100.

So if you had 40,000 stores buying at least one tape,

you were lining your pockets full of money.

And this was a million dollar industry.

And a lot of video labels had either one

to maybe 20 titles in their catalog,

but that's all they needed,

because it was millions of dollars

that they were making.

And then they started producing their own stuff,

giving filmmakers $50,000,

because they knew that they were gonna make millions

selling to video stores,

so it just revolutionized everything.

Troma became a staple of the home video market,

because we had accumulated about 60 movies.

We wanted to own our movies,

we wanted to own all the rights,

and we wanted to have a collection, have a library.

The theory behind Troma was to own your negatives.

Lloyd Kaufman, Charlie Band, and Roger Corman,

they were businessmen, but they were filmmakers.

Those core three are definitely a huge, huge reason

why the direct to video horror was so impactful and huge.

As the 80s started winding down,

like every business, it starts monopolizing.

By the 90s, you had Blockbuster reading scripts

to give so much shelf space.

Any time there's a new technology,

the majors, the oligopoly, the cartel,

throws a monkey wrench into it, tries to screw it up,

and then they take it over, which is what happened

with video cassette, Blockbuster put all the independents

out of business.

♪ Wow what a difference

♪ Blockbuster video

I've never seen 10,000 tapes in one store.

We can really, really thank the mom and pop stores

out there, because they carried the really interesting

innovative films that were out there during the 80s,

films that someone like Blockbuster wouldn't touch

with a 10 foot pole.

And Blockbuster sure didn't have that little room

with the fancy movies back there.

Today you can go out and make a movie for no money.

I mean, the world has changed dramatically.

It's still in the story you tell, if it's compelling,

I mean, whatever the medium is,

you need to be able to tell a story,

and put it together in a format that people,

whether they're gonna rent or buy or download

or view for free, find entertaining.

That part has not changed at all.

"Fear No Evil".

It'll scare the devil out of you.

"Fear No Evil" is thematically in the vein

of a lot of these films in the 1980s

where it's like a guy who gets picked on

has been underestimated.

Be careful who you pick on,

because he might be the Antichrist.

"Fear No Evil" is a hormonal overload.

I mean, come on.

High school's hard enough without the inconvenience

of demonic possession, right?

"Fear No Evil" is like if Damien from "The Omen"

was in high school, and was pretty gay.

"Fear No Evil" was really my coming of age story

in a lot of ways, and so all that angst,

all of that confusion is reflected in the film.

There's this scene in "Fear No Evil",

it's a locker room scene, which it's definitely the source

of a lot of anxiety for a lot of people.

This scene is like, ooh, very cringey.

Only the most uncomfortable high school

shower scene since "Carrie".

Plug it up!

Plug it up!

Tony goes in to kiss Andrew,

and then Andrew uses his special devil powers

to make the kiss last longer.

Like, that's his big revenge.

It's like, make the bully gayer.

It's Andrew who's compelling this,

but Tony's latent homosexuality,

I mean, he hates women, right?

This guy, this thug, Tony.

He's a bully, you know?

Lots of these bullies are, right?

They can't face their own sexuality,

and so they take it out on others in this manner.

Look, if you don't keep your mouth shut about this, right?

Guess where that was shot?

At my old junior high school.

First day of the shoot, what I do.

We go in there, we shoot this, the shower scene.

Get in there with all these naked guys in the shower,

they're kissing.

They didn't know anything about it, of course,

until the film was released.

Come on, come on!

I mean, it has a nice Gothic feel.

I wanted it to have a Hammer Horror feel.

The iconography.

I mean it's so frightening.

All the iconography surrounding Catholicism.

We raised, ultimately, 540,000 to make the picture.

We had no money to finish the film,

and I was concerned that if we got a bite

from a distributor, that that would be it.

I'd lose control of the picture.

Damn you!

Avco Embassy.

They were the boutique low budget horror distribution house.

They had control, total control, over the final cut,

but they made me make the edits

with an editor that was assigned to the picture,

and it was horrendous, because little by little

I saw it restructured, reorganized, chopped up.

The picture that at best works in fits and starts.

But what really kills me is I've read some things

about it being possibly homophobic.

It's anything but that, in my estimation.

I mean, it's a coming of age story, right?

The people that are particularly inclined

to love "Fear No Evil" are gay.

They consider it campy enough to have fun with,

or it genuinely moves them as to their own

coming out struggles.

Unlike "Jaws", where you're not safe in the water,

this one, you're not safe if you're on the beach.

"Blood Beach".

The tagline says it all.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water,

you can't get to it.

It's great to see John Saxon

from "A Nightmare on Elm Street",

and Burt Young, who's Paulie from "Rocky",

trying to solve this mystery.

He was foolish enough to lie down

on this particular beach.

Never would've happened in Chicago.

Yeah, one more remark like that out of your mouth,

Chicago's where you're gonna be.

It's a charming movie, and it has a real moody,

beachy feel, from the opening credits

with this lingering monster POV vision under the pier.

A $2 million union movie.

Jeffrey Bloom wrote and directed it.

The coolest guy of all time.

The way our monster that traveled through the sand,

we did this movie 10 years before "Tremors".

Please help!

Oh god!

Oh god!

What is happening?

Help!

That's me, and the effects guy

yanking those people under the sand.

We got a tractor out there on the beach

by the Santa Monica Pier,

and we dug a big pit, and we built a big

rubber membrane with a slit in it,

and he and I, down in the pit,

and when they are acting, and flailing around,

they are kicking like crazy.

And we are grabbing onto them like crazy,

yanking them under.

Ah, it was so much fun.

The monster didn't turn out that great.

The effects guy, bless his heart, did his best.

I know the director was not happy with it.

But, you know, like not showing the shark in "Jaws",

it worked to an advantage.

We built all these sets onstage at Culver City Studios,

where this monster lived, and it was all supposed to look

like Santa Monica Pier, and whatnot,

but I brought seaweed in my trunk

and threw the seaweed behind the stage.

Begins to take on the shape,

where it slept.

I think Smell-O-Vision is a very important part of sets.

You don't want it to smell like latex paint.

We want it to smell like whatever it's supposed

to smell like.

It really helped.

I ended up with the monster on my ranch,

where my nieces and nephews played in it for years

until it slowly withered away.

I saved its head in my monster collection.

But that's the sorry end of the "Blood Beach" monster.

It's also one of those lost movies.

It came out on VHS, and then that's it.

It's legendary for being caught in limbo,

rights-wise, and residual payment-wise.

Jeffrey Bloom, the director, told me,

I don't think he's ever made any money off the picture,

and he wrote and directed it.

It's really a mishmash of problems.

I'd love to see that reissued,

somehow, if somebody could untangle the issues

surrounding poor old "Blood Beach".

Oh, "The Hand".

Oh my god.

Michael Caine in "The Hand".

It could have been so not good,

because it's about an artist whose hand gets cut off,

and the hand goes around committing crimes

that he's trying not to commit.

The hand goes and does it.

Oliver Stone, he had gotten a lot of notice

with "Midnight Express".

And he thought "The Hand" was gonna be a major movie.

Made and released by a major studio,

but it had this really hopped up

kind of exploitation tone to it

that was very Corman.

It just was really intense and outrageous.

I rented it as a kid because I knew it dealt

with comic books, and like a phantom appendage.

So there's this guy on the verge of a nervous breakdown,

I guess, and he is a comic book artist,

like a famous, established comic book artist.

His marriage is on the rocks.

There's this scene,

as a kid, it was really horrific.

It's Michael Caine, you know, one of our greatest actors,

squirting blood all over the place.

Anybody who messes with Michael Caine

gets the hand.

Killing anybody that's standing in the way

of his mission.

Or is it?

He doesn't know if he's insane,

or there really is a disembodied hand chasing him.

Michael Caine's a terrific actor,

but he went through a period where he never saw

a paycheck he didn't like.

They call it the Michael Caine School of Acting,

you know, when you get a role, take it.

Even if the material isn't good, he delivered.

I think that at least you-

I think.

You should get out of here.

And it always elevated every movie he was in.

It's from a book called "The Lizard's Tail".

We struggled for many, many months

playing with that idea of what is the sound of the hand?

Does it breathe?

Is it just fingernail sounds when it's crawling?

Because whenever the hand approached,

we wanted to get into that sound design moment

of the universe, the sound universe changes.

And we brought in a team of trained actors

who would do group vocalizations,

but we had them do what we called Fellini-esque

vocalizations, so we did weird breathing patterns,

and free form screaming.

It's really, really cool stuff.

For a disembodied hand movie, it's quite well-written.

As I used to say in marketing the movie,

it's one of the best disembodied hand movies ever.

What happened to the hand?

Oh, mommy went to look for it.

But it ran away.

"Bloody Birthday".

A terrifying journey into the bizarre.

Will you get out alive?

Three kids are born at the same time in a hospital

during an eclipse.

It's a boy, Mrs. Taylor!

And for some reason, this has astrologically

made them evil.

When they get to be 10, they sort of go on killing spree.

It plays on the fear of how scary kids can be,

especially if they don't have the influence

of discipline, and adults.

Like that scene with the cake.

That's terrifying.

He's trying to make her think

that he's poisoning the cake.

The poison was just sitting on the counter.

I was putting it away.

You were not, you little liar!

That scene is so messed up,

because he knows what he's doing as a child,

and taking advantage of his seemingly innocence

for his own benefit.

Debbie, she's a horrible little child.

I just love her as a villain.

Can you and Timmy come over to babysit?

Sure.

What time do you want me to come over?

11 o'clock.

Okay.

My little sister is selling tickets

to watch me, you know, get naked.

I was very young, it was one of my first years

as an actress.

So many actresses, especially at that time in the 80s,

that they had some sort of film

where they had to be naked or topless or something, right?

It wasn't that uncommon.

So I thought, okay.

I wasn't gonna, like, be topless in the audition.

So they said, well, we need to see your boobs.

And I'm like, why?

And they go, because what if you have

a weird boob or something?

So I took my top off in the room,

and I took a Polaroid.

And then they let the director look at it,

and they gave it back to me.

I don't know how other girls are cast

for topless things, but that's what happened to me.

And there's a little hole between the closet and her room,

and I look in there, and then they hit me in the eye

with an arrow, and that's how I die.

They're dragging my dead body around

for a big portion of it.

And that's depressing.

And at first I wouldn't talk about it,

but then I thought, really, who cares?

Right?

Even though honestly my son doesn't know about it,

and he's never seen it.

So.

Debbie?

What's wrong, Debbie?

"Bloody Birthday" wasn't well-received at all

when it came out, because of the fact that

these were evil kids.

People would get so offended

by all the sexual and violent situations placed in it,

but the kids were actually having a great time,

and they thought it was playtime,

and that was comforting to know,

because we wouldn't want them to be traumatized

at all by the experience.

Does anybody know what the word murder means?

Pray you're not invited.

If you get a great image on the cover,

that's half the battle.

And when you see that guy with his mouth open,

and the skewer, the shish kabob is going in,

like, I'm in.

And Melissa Sue Anderson, who is from

Little House on the Prairie.

This was gonna be her big moment as an adult,

playing a high school girl in a slasher flick.

This was more like the tail end

of the holiday murder movies,

so people were still taking it seriously.

They were like okay, we're gonna ride this wave.

This could be a massive hit,

so let's really, really go for it, you know?

It's about this group of kids at this elite school.

The killer is one of them, because every time

someone gets killed, it's like, oh it's you.

Virginia, who was kinda new to this group,

we slowly learn that she has these holes

in her memory.

And today I remembered.

Yes.

And tomorrow, you will remember more.

Even the-

Even the accident.

Her friends are like, they're disappearing

more than dying.

So she has all this trauma around her birthday,

which should be a moment of celebration.

Hi there.

Rudy!

Where have you been?

Who's doing the killing?

Is it her?

Because she's messed up?

Or is it not?

Lighten up!

You touch me again, I'm gonna fucking kill you!

And that's a very real, tangible,

real life fear, of having a part of your whole memory gone.

What happened before the accident?

You've got to try to remember.

The kills are great.

The gore is great.

There's some very good tense moments in it.

One of the classic kills from this movie.

We have Greg.

He's doing his weights, he's very strong.

Okay, that's it.

Holds the weight above his penis, and drops it.

Greg is dead.

From a weight to the peen.

Yup.

I panicked!

I came here, god I thought you'd help me!

So the ending of "Happy Birthday" to me

is what stuck with me

all my life, because it's crazy.

♪ Happy birthday to me

♪ Happy birthday to me

Pray for day.

"Hell Night".

One of my favorite things about "Hell Night'

is just being able to see Linda Blair

do something different.

Who's she?

Oh, that's one of the new pledges.

They call her Marty.

And it feels almost like,

what if Regan survives after "The Exorcist",

and she decides to go to college?

She's gonna go and be in a sorority,

and she's gonna have this normal life,

and she ends up stuck in this mansion

where it's like a weird, mutant offspring.

It feels really unusual compared to a lot

of the other sort of teen and 20-something centric

horror movies that were coming out in the early 1980s.

In 1850, Virgil Garth built this mansion

with the gold that was pouring out of his mines.

So they introduce this whole backstory

about Garth Manor, and this guy who kills his family,

like he kills his wife, and he has mutated kids.

And then Raymond Garth got a rope

and hung himself to death.

And then he hangs himself,

but two of the kids are missing.

It was like okay, we're gonna throw a couple sorority girls

and a couple fraternity brothers in a house overnight

and see what happens.

We'll see you four a dawn.

Just about six hours.

You have Peter Barton and Linda Blair,

and they're sort of hanging out,

and then you've got promiscuous gal,

and then the stoner surfer dude,

and they're gonna get together and have fun.

Hey!

And then it evolves into this whole

elaborate Gothic nightmare for them.

Peter Barton, he actually did get hurt during the film,

so there's a lot of the movie where you see him

limping around, but that was very real.

That wasn't because of what happened to his character.

No!

They couldn't stop filming,

so they just had to push forward,

and he basically had to work through an ankle injury

for like half the movie.

It's got some issues, but I think ultimately,

"Hell Night" really stands out

in comparison to a lot of other horror movies

that were coming out around the same time.

A gem I discovered on cable back in the 80s,

and that I push on people as often as I can

is "The Unseen".

The terror is unleashed.

No!

The horror is unequal.

"The Unseen".

"The Unseen" is about an all-woman news crew

who are covering a festival in Solvang California.

They screwed up, someone didn't make a hotel reservation.

They have nowhere to stay.

They hit up this museum where they find

the great Sydney Lassick, who offers them a place to stay.

It's, it's not the Ritz,

but it'll run a close second.

Sure.

That's great.

The leader of this news crew is Barbara Bach.

Of course, Mrs. Ringo Starr,

the Bond girl from "The Spy Who Loved Me".

It's remarkable.

I'm impressed.

Scat.

Get off there, Ralph.

Sydney Lassick is one of the great character actors

of the second half of the 20th century.

He was in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".

He was in "Alligator" as the pet store owner.

He is off the chain.

He is just going for it in this film.

Boo!

It's a delight to watch him just chew the scenery.

Don't concern yourself with that, Virginia.

Just get the room ready.

The secret sauce of "The Unseen"

is that it's very, very talented people

doing something very, very unsavory.

Sydney Lassick's wife in the film, Leila Goldoni,

and he have a couple of very intense scenes

about a secret that they have in their basement.

They could find out.

Don't worry, my dear.

No one will ever find out.

Junior in the film is this developmentally disabled

grown man wearing a diaper living in the basement.

I see you've met Junior.

Played by Flounder from "Animal House",

the late great Stephen Furst.

And you come to find out

he's accidentally killing these women

because he doesn't know his own strength.

"The Unseen" is, in a lot of ways,

not a defensible film.

Ingestion is not endorsement.

I enjoyed it despite how wrong it is.

Boo!

"The Prowler" is a stalk slasher plot

with a group of kids getting ready for a graduation party

and they're stalked and killed

by a mysterious killer in a GI outfit,

in Cape May, New Jersey.

There's a little historical thrill

to seeing Farley Granger from "Rope"

and "Strangers on a Train"

in an 80s slasher, as like the sheriff

with a mysterious past.

Just some deodorant.

No sweat.

Get it?

That keeps you on the edge of your seat.

You're just like, oh god, he's right there.

Oh god, ugh, you know?

It's Savini at his best, man.

The kills are fucking crazy, the gore is nuts.

Tom Savini did some of his best work in the film.

That kill scene in the swimming pool

goes on forever.

It's unbearable to watch.

Also one of the first exploding heads.

I don't think it was the first exploding head,

but it was one of them.

It was the first pairing of Savini and Zito,

who then went on to do "Friday the 13th" part four.

Zito, man, say what you want,

but he had a great eye for it.

Putting aside George Romero's relationship with Savini,

no director films Tom Savini's kills

better than Jo Zito.

And I think that that is front and center

of "The Prowler".

Not only how Savini has designed them,

but that the director has listened to Savini

in terms of how to present those things.

There's something so perverse about riffing

on the "Psycho" shower scene,

but with a pitchfork.

It's bright lights, nowhere to hide,

just in your face kills.

I was just following what they needed to happen

in the film.

I wasn't concerned with how they were shooting.

Joe Zito, we showed everything.

So there became an appeal for that.

I rode that appeal in the movies of the 80s.

For me, it's the guy with the hand over the mouth

and he's getting the bayonet in the head.

The way it's edited, and the way it's timed,

and it's just whites of the eyes.

It's grizzly, and it really, really works.

It's a magic trick, which Savini's always said

his effects are magic tricks,

but that one is like, bang on.

Indonesia produced an interesting horror film in the 80s

called "Mystics in Bali".

I'm surprised that a pretty girl like you

would be interested in learning black magic.

Well, I'm just curious.

It seems like a bit of a fever dream,

what happens in this film.

But essentially, it's about a woman

who wants to learn more about the mystical stuff

that happens in Indonesian culture.

You'll never forget this face.

And they're looking around for this mystic,

and what they see instead is a 50 foot tongue

coming out of the forest, which is incredible.

It's like a snake-like tongue.

And what happens is this tongue imprints words,

the name of the creatures, on her thigh,

and then things go from bad to worse

from that point, where this woman manifests

into this creature, but it's absolutely batshit.

I'm very interested in the mythology of this creature,

which is very much like a Manananggal,

because you see that across all different Asian cultures.

So she has the ability to split her body in half,

and the top half of her torso,

with all the entrails hanging out, can fly around,

and jump on people and kill them and eat them

while the bottom half kind of scuttles around the floor.

One of the most interesting scenes in this,

and kind of gross, is when this disembodied torso

goes between the legs of a pregnant woman,

and then basically eats her unborn baby.

It is nuts.

Then it goes up a level of nuttiness,

they call up the good version of this mystic,

and they have this big battle using magic and animation,

and it's very interesting.

The ultimate theme of "Mystics in Bali"

really is curiosity kills the cat,

because this woman wants to know information

that she has no right knowing.

This supernatural stuff is way too powerful

for a normal person, and I don't know why she thought

that she could control it, and harness it.

That particular transgression ends up

in the consequences that befalls them

and everyone around them.

Now police have been skeptical

of investigating these acts,

just as we are in reporting them,

but there's no question that something

is going on out there.

When we think about the 1980s,

we think about the Reagan era,

and a return to family values,

and there is something in the air

about the way that things should be.

There is sin and evil in the world,

and we're enjoined by scripture, and the lord Jesus

to oppose it with all our might.

Religious right somehow had moved into the mainstream.

Demand those parties and politicians

align themselves with the eternal values in this book,

and America will be forever

the greatest nation on this earth!

There was a lot of stuff in the ether

as far as satanic cults and the evangelicals.

Whether Satan exists is a matter of belief,

but we are certain that Satanism exists.

Their fears were sort of in the zeitgeist.

Could it be?

Satan!

Growing up in the 80s under the veil of the satanic panic,

you know, we were all convinced by the far right

that there were these cultists out there,

meddling with the dark arts to try and abduct us kids

and suck us into their covens to drink babies' blood

and perform witchcraft.

We were like, no, they're just cool scary movies.

I'll do that when I grow up

and I have a house of my own, thank you very much.

I dread going to these kinds of movies.

It really has become the most depressing part

of my job as a film critic.

And there we are, in total agreement.

In the UK and here in the US,

the census definitely clamped down

on what was allowed, what was acceptable content.

Half of American households

now have video cassette recorders,

and for many children, they're a ticket

to R-rated gore that the kids are too young

to see at the movies.

There were a lot of city people running around

saying oh, we can't have this stuff.

It's much too violent.

Well parents and psychologists are very concerned.

I have very vivid memories of the Video Nasty Panic.

I was probably nine or 10 years old

when it started to hit the news

that this filth was entering our homes,

and a lot of moral do-gooders and church people

and politicians started to talk about these movies,

saying that they were dangerous for society,

because anyone seeing them, it could cause them

to be scarred, and to go out and inflict harm on society.

Even today, if one is inclined to believe in Satanism,

it's a way to actually see the devil,

and perhaps be inspired.

I think people were really afraid

because they were told to be.

That was the beginning off the cult of fear

in this country.

I don't believe in censorship.

But I do believe that we parents and leaders

have a reason to be concerned.

It was such a simple use of religious moralism

that they cracked down on us in the 80s,

and in doing so, really resurrected

a lot of these archaic ideas about religious fundamentalism

that are so easy to use when you're trying

to manipulate large masses of people.

Sure, television should present life the way it is.

You can't tell somebody else they can't like it,

because you don't like it.

That kind of psychology is so unhealthy.

We needed the movies of 80s horror cinema

to release a little of that pent up steam.

And finally, music.

Which is found here in the neighborhood record store

under the category of heavy metal music.

There's a link between heavy metal and horror.

They're like some strange cousins.

They always have been.

♪ We're the dream warriors

In the "Nightmare on Elm Street" films,

the Dokken soundtrack is a classic.

The satanic message is clear,

both in the album covers, and in the lyrics,

which are reaching impressionable young minds.

It's question of content and values,

and parents need to tune in to their children's world.

Anytime there's any kind of a new wave of music,

there's always somebody who's gonna have a problem with it.

And the fact that you had Ozzy Osborne

supposedly biting off the heads of bats onstage and stuff,

that certainly threw people for a loop.

This is entertainment?

This is what our kids are looking at for entertainment?

Yes.

So in the height of "Satanic Panic"

as the most metal and punk rock thing to do

from the film community, is they did films

about rock and roll and Satan.

The times that we were living in,

it was a perfect tapestry for us to utilize

what was going on in the world as far as politics

and us making movies.

♪ Get down tonight

I was in school in the 80s,

and there was a concern among the whole caucus

of evangelicals that Dungeons and Dragons

was a satanic sort of thing.

A lot of people hear the phrase my sweet Satan.

♪ My sweet Satan

My sweet Satan.

The lyrics playing backwards and all that stuff.

It was kind of a hysteria,

which doesn't feel all that unfamiliar anymore.

It tells you how to close the gate.

Parents just didn't know it was the record companies

that were telling them that if you spin records backwards,

you'll hear Satan.

Literally one of the best ideas for record companies

to come up with in the history of music

was getting stupid people to believe that.

But they did conjure up Sammi Curr.

All a part of the plan.

All right.

In the 80s, we had a big controversy

with the lyrics, and parents being very concerned

about what their kids were listening to

in heavy metal with the pentagrams.

There were Senate hearings, and Congressional hearings,

that kind of thing, and a lot of the wives

of the politicians took up this cause

against heavy metal music.

♪ Rock and roll

♪ Rocking

"Trick or Treat", there's a scene where Sammi Curr

is testifying against what's supposed to be the PMRC.

If you were a parent,

would you want your kid growing up around rock music?

Rock musicians?

I mean, with that kind of values?

And he basically tells him to go get fucked.

You cannot legislate morality.

- The teenage daughter- - We will bring you down!

And that's the way I was with my heroes.

That's the way my fans are with me

when I'm telling the establishment

to go fuck themselves, you know?

There will always be a need for a platform

to give people hope in a sea of hopelessness.

I carried an M16 and you,

you carry that, that, that guitar!

What they came up with was a warning system

on the albums.

They wanted to rate them, like rated R,

and things like that, but they ended up

with just sort of a warning label.

But the album sold better when they had

the warning label on them.

♪ We're not gonna take it

To me, horror and the discovery of horror,

you start finding these voices outside of the mainstream,

who are willing to push a lot of boundaries

and question a lot of the establishment,

and scaring the crack out of all the PTA moms

and school superintendents and Cub Scout leaders

that were trying to make sure we all fit

right into the mold that they wanted us to.

God!

God is dead!

- Hail Satan! - Satan lives!

It's an ever-perpetual cycle

that the entire human experience centers itself around,

that events are out of control.

There has to be something that can set it right.

And there are many people who will seize on anything.

They want a solution.

They want deliverance.

We fall for everything.

I recall that being the most ridiculous waste of time.

It's been heading in that direction for a long time.

Now we're totally divided as a country.

And it's crap like that that does it.

"Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker".

Rated R.

Starts Friday at a theater near you.

"Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker".

I mean, that's an incredible title.

That movie should have done really well.

"Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker"

is another of the Video Nasties.

So this is the cover that I saw on the shelf

when I saw it in around 1983.

And it is Susan Tyrrell covered in blood.

The kind of thing that I would have rented.

I'm gonna get that scholarship if I can!

I'm going away to school, and no one's gonna stop me!

Not even you!

"Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker" is about a kid

who wants to go off to college, and an aunt

who doesn't want him to.

And the murder that she goes to

to keep him there.

Everybody's so obsessed with the sex life

of a 17-year-old.

I was thinking, um,

can I invite Julia over for my birthday dinner?

Julia again?

Sounds serious.

That's probably the most real life part of this movie,

is everybody trying to figure out if this kid's gay.

Do you like girls, Ms. Roberts?

God, you're a pig.

"Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker"

is about people trying to out you.

So tell me.

Are you two making love?

I am not going to answer that.

The kind of twisted perversity of the movie

is like really interesting, I think.

It's cheesy, but it's also queasy.

You're just kinda like, is she trying to fuck him?

This is making me uncomfortable.

Ooh.

You're so cute.

It dealt with incest.

It dealt with repressed sexuality.

Homicidal tendencies.

I mean, this is like Tennessee Williams pathos

that we're dealing with in this really messed up film

where these people gave these

really disturbing performances.

Will Asher seemed like an odd choice to me,

having come from being creator of Bewitched,

and having directed I Love Lucy,

but he had a way with actors,

and he really brought in some great performances

in that film.

♪ Billy's got a girlfriend, Billy ♪

Billy, don't do that.

That's disgusting.

It's kind of a tour de force

mad over the top performance

by Susan Tyrrell.

The only thing that's wrong

is that you are in my house.

Now get out of here!

Get out!

I just-

Get out of here!

I just want-

Where is her Oscar for "Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker"?

Retroactively give it to her.

What do you think you're doing?

This performance is like the performance

of the 1980s.

A new girlfriend.

Susan Tyrrell is just getting more and more crazy

as the movie goes on.

Just a pleasure to watch.

It also has Bill Paxton in it, by the way,

who's kind of playing a bully character,

very similar to the character he plays

in "Weird Science".

He was supposed to be the lead originally

but they ended up going with someone

who was then more famous.

Some of us think we're better than others.

Some of us are better than others.

Paxton was so gung ho at the beginning of his career

that he would come to the cutting room.

He was the guy who really wanted to learn

about the whole movie making process,

and he went on to have such a great career,

and was gone way too soon.

I believe that you and Phil Brody

were having a lovers quarrel.

It has these queer themes, it plays on gay panic,

but in 1983 when it's re-released

as Night Warning, it's released into a world

that sees gay characters a little bit differently.

Keep it limp like

AIDS, by 1983,

it was referred to as Gay Plague, and Gay Cancer.

And that's what people were afraid of at the time.

Do you know that homosexuals

are very, very sick?

Do you know that, Billy?

Coach Flanders is not sick!

I don't know if I'll ever watch it again

for the rest of my life, but I'm glad I saw it

when I was a kid.

Probably made me into the weirdo that I am today.

I don't know.

"Parasite".

The first futuristic monster movie in 3D.

"Parasite 3D" was a Charlie Band movie.

And Stan Winston created the Parasite effects for us.

Low budget.

We gotta do something.

Notable for Demi Moore making her film debut.

Tell me where it is!

Go to hell!

It was set in a post nuclear world,

and there's this character who develops this parasite.

When it reproduces, it will cast millions

of microscopic spores into the air.

It grows over the course of the film,

and it gets into people,

and absorbs them from within,

and eventually it turns into this

big toothy creature.

Stan Winston, Stan did my very first movie

in the early 70s called "Mansion of the Doom",

and later on did "Parasite".

And Stan became super successful,

and I couldn't afford him, even though we stayed close

til almost the end of his life, which was way too soon.

"Parasite" was one of the first 3D movies in 20 years.

It did really well, relative to a small movie.

I was hooked with the gimmickry of 3D.

Why was that cool for a while?

Well, 'cause it was another dimension,

and it was something you couldn't really see at home.

Unless there's trickery or stuff that comes at you,

and you're having fun with the three dimensions,

to me it's not worth it.

I remember it being pretty schlocky,

but the parasite effects were pretty cool,

and the 3D was pretty cool.

In terms of pantheon of Stan Winston projects,

it's not the one he's most proud of.

"Madman".

There is no escape.

I really love "Madman".

He was a farmer with this family,

wife and two children.

He was an evil man.

I have a "Madman" poster on my wall.

He walked into his bedroom

with an ax in his hand and chopped his sleeping wife.

It was kind of a "Sleepaway Camp" movie,

that I think fell under the radar a little bit.

His name is Mars.

Madman Mars.

Oh no, Madman Mars is coming upon us

at the campsite, but it was just like,

you loved it for the feel, the energy,

the New York vibe.

You know, Betsy.

I don't have many women friends,

and I think you're one of them.

Oh, I am.

Hey, give me your number in the city.

It's like, they're in the woods!

They're gonna get killed!

You just love that the Madman was coming,

and you didn't know who he was gonna kill.

We used to watch it all the time.

My friends would laugh.

Most of them were giggling, like ooh!

You know.

I couldn't even eat.

And the blood, and the effects.

It just all looked so real to me, and scared me.

"Madman" always looked like a big furry suit to me.

He was in a shadow, but he looked kind of furry.

And I was like oh, he's kinda cute.

I'm friends with Gary Sales.

He was really taken by surprise

with the success of the film.

With a lot of the 80s films,

there were no real boundaries.

They were just done, like let's push the envelope.

Let's have fun, not to intentionally hurt anyone,

but just because we're batshit crazy,

and we're making a horror movie,

and I think movies like "Madman" just went for it.

They were like, let's just kind of,

you know, get a monster.

Have him running around killing people, and woo-hoo!

And it's just simple, but so fantastic.

It's like silly and great, all tied into one.

Fans of Gothic horror

will not be disappointed.

Jackie Karen inherits this rural estate,

and on the rural estate is a retirement home

full of elderly patients,

and there are mysterious deaths happening.

Bit of a murder mystery, because someone

is committing these crimes,

and you're not sure who

among these cast of characters it is.

Are there ghosts?

Are there supernatural elements at play?

Because it feels like you're in this dream.

It's kind of that moment between asleep and awake.

Jackie discovers her mother's childhood diary in the film.

Lights going on and off,

taps left running.

It comes to pass that the things in the diary

start to happen to her within the plot of the film,

which is all leading up to this revelation

that her late aunt might not be as late

as she was led to believe.

What's that?

Didn't die.

There are some horrific images in this.

It's a man drowned in the bathtub.

And he's just like bloated.

It's tragic, but it's also very scary.

Something that just like sticks in your mind.

"Next of Kin" was written and directed

by Tony Williams.

In this film, you can see a lot of horror DNA.

You can see some Clouzot,

you see "Les Diabolique" in there.

You can see some Fulci in there.

Any time somebody gets it in the eyeballs.

Linda!

Oh, it's rest home horror,

which is very cool, but it's very Gothic,

and it's what we might call today slow burn horror.

It's got that nice Australian unhinged energy to it.

Australian horror from the 80s

doesn't get a lot of love,

but when there's a nice example of it,

like "Next of Kin", it's fun to revisit.

"Amityville Horror", big boogeyman story

on the east coast in the 70s.

True crime, kid shotguns his parents, and his siblings,

and he claims demonic possession was part of it.

It gets turned into a book.

It eventually gets made into a movie

with James Brolin and Margot Kidder.

To this day you see those windows, "Amityville Horror".

Three years later, they're making

"Amityville 2: The Possession",

which is essentially the "true story"

of the kid killing his family.

- "Amityville -The Possession".

"Amityville: The Possession".

It has to do with possession,

but mainly it's about incest.

Take off your nightgown.

What?

This prequel is loosely based on the DeFeo murders,

but the names have been changed.

Everything seems quite idyllic.

It's a nice little lovely family,

until it's not.

The dad's a fucking asshole.

He's abusive to everybody in the family.

- Think you're funny? - What are you doing?

Huh?

You can't hit him-

Burt Young is maybe the scuzziest dad in horror.

Please, don't hit that child.

Listen, this isn't your business, you hear that?

We've got a teenage son and a teenage daughter.

They've got a real weird dynamic right off the get-go,

and it's one of those things where you're questioning,

is it supposed to be like that?

Maybe the actors were just having

a little too much chemistry

for brother and sister.

Until the brother gets possessed,

and then gets it on with his sister,

who is not possessed, so I don't really know

what her excuse was.

Playing the young daughter is Diane Franklin

from "Last American Virgin", "Better Off Dead",

real apple pie, America's sweetheart type stuff.

And if you wanna watch her have sex with her brother,

"Amityville II" is the film for you.

This skin-crawling incest that happens in the film

was actually cut down from what was in the original cut,

and it was apparently a lot more graphic.

"Amityville II: The Possession"

was directed by Italian director, Damiano Damiani.

Written by Tommy Lee Wallace.

Best known for "Halloween 3: Season of the Witch".

And he co-wrote this with Dardano Sacchetti

who often worked with Lucio Fulci.

This one actually does have really wonderful effects.

I mean, it's just like 80s to the core.

Bladder effects, like as the brother

is becoming more and more possessed,

neck is just pulsing, or his head will be pulsing.

My favorite moment in "Amityville II: The Possession",

there's this part where the camera

kind of goes overhead, when he's like,

I guess the demon is really going into his body.

"Amityville: The Possession", and "Amityville"

the original first film are two totally separate entities.

The tone is not the same.

The first one is just straight up scary.

The second one has kinds of all these weird

other tones in it.

You wanted it!

You feel very uncomfortable for different reasons.

Look at them.

They're pathetic animals.

They'd be better off if you killed them.

The second one is just like fuck it,

let's go off the rails.

We're gonna loosely use this title,

and then just go way off into left field over here.

And it's for that extra bit of sickening material,

and there's lots of it in this picture,

that's the reason that "Amityville II: The Possession"

makes my list as one of the worst films of the year.

That no one would ever forget the girls

in "The House On Sorority Row".

That mystical world of the sorority fraternity culture,

in the 80s, all films were pointing us

towards that's where you're going.

If it's not "Revenge of the Nerds",

it's "The House on Sorority Row".

I wanna thank you for helping me

become what I am today.

Wasted.

And then it's like, what crazy debauchery

is gonna happen within the walls

of that sorority house?

And how will we be punished

for indulging in that debauchery?

You filth!

Evil house mother.

The house mother to end all house mothers.

Is killed accidentally

by sorority girls,

and revenge ensues.

I got my start "House on Sorority Row".

I'd just come out of theater school.

I think we got paid $50 a day.

We worked really hard, you know.

We shot night for night for weeks.

So we were like zombies during the day.

The director, he kept a firm hand

without ever being an asshole, to be honest.

Which is saying a lot for a first endeavor.

Everyone else is wearing a cute frock,

and I'm wearing these ugly beige pants

and this sweater, and I had to run around

in that stupid outfit, and put it on everyday.

And I did not feel like I looked terrific.

She's alive.

We put her back in the pool,

and she was still alive!

He also colored my hair brown,

because of course, smart good girls have brown hair.

Me being the good girl, the one who stays in the house

while her friends are being murdered left and right.

That always makes me giggle.

Would you not run away?

Are you gonna go roaming around in this house

looking for clues?

But I was drugged, so I do have that to defend me.

Just a mild sedative.

It definitely had a style

that a lot of low budget films really don't have.

"The House on Sorority Row" ended up being

one of those movies that became

a bit of a cult fan favorite.

As much as I like to say it's all because it's great film,

I think some of it is, you know, fun

in that it's a little bit over the top,

and when you think that's part of the appeal of the genre.

I never thought I'd be talking about it.

You know, I'm 63.

I was 23.

Wow.

But I have no regrets whatsoever.

It was fun.

As an actor watching films,

I certainly dial into performances.

I sort of learned my craft by doing.

I had taken dance lessons,

and so I started out doing theater.

♪ Lady Godiva

The first television project I did was Maude.

And it was a four camera sitcom

that we filmed like a play.

So stop asking who I was out with,

what we had for dinner,

and did we go all the way.

And then my next real film education

came when I did "Someone's Watching Me"

for John Carpenter.

I played, I believe, the first lesbian woman

in a television film.

And he had written a fantastic scene

in which her sexuality is revealed.

Who's he?

She.

And we did it, and John came up to me

and he said that was great, that was perfect.

Do less.

Don't worry.

You're not my type.

I'm not worried.

And it was the proverbial light bulb going off.

Oh, because it's film,

because it's not theater.

Do less.

Now, especially something like "Creepshow",

which was George Romero,

which was such an outrageous character,

which was George saying no, you can be bigger!

You can be bigger, you can be bigger.

That was like, wait a minute, wait a minute.

I just spent the last three years learning to do less.

I mean, where would you be without me to take care of you?

The important thing about approaching a character

like Billy in "Creepshow", who everybody will watch

the movie and say oh, she's just a bitch.

When was the last time you got it up, Henry?

Huh?

When was the last time you were a man in our bed?

She's the most horrible, and she needed to be

so that everybody would cheer when Henry

arranged for her demise.

Don't you ever touch me again!

As an actor, you don't play I'm a bitch.

You explore whatever it is that made her

the way she was.

She's incredibly disappointed

in the way her life turned out.

Henry, goddammit!

How many times have I told you

to lock the goddam door?

You have to understand what it is

that drives the behavior.

At least Henry has me to take care of him,

don't you, dear?

I didn't see a lot of films growing up,

but I do remember something called "Donovan's Brain".

I don't know that I had ever seen a horror film

besides "Donovan's Brain", until John invited me

to the screening of "Halloween".

I had just done The Tonight Show earlier that day,

and announced on Johnny Carson

that John and I were engaged.

And then I went to the screening of "Halloween".

By the end of that film, I suspect that he was

black and blue, because I kept going, oh my god!

Oh my god!

I was like, oh, oh!

Oh my, oh!

You know?

It's the first horror film I'd ever seen.

It was at that point that Tom Atkins,

who is also at the screening,

leaned over to me and said Addy,

I'm not sure you should marry this guy.

We cannot let Adrienne marry this guy.

There's something wrong with him.

He makes this kind of movie.

But she married him,

and they had a lovely child together, Cody.

Well, stay up with me.

And I'll figure out some way to keep you occupied.

When John first had me read the script for "The Fog",

I was pretty involved in social issues.

"Coming Home" was a huge hit,

and "The China Syndrome" was a huge hit.

And I read it, and it was like,

uh, this is a horror film.

This is not about women's rights.

It's not about abortion.

But, I mean, I loved the character and everything,

and of course, since, it's one of the things

that I am most proud of doing.

The one piece of merchandise that I really love,

"The Fog" action figure.

I think that's a marvelous piece of merchandising.

None of us knew in the 80s

that the work we were doing,

"Escape From New York", or "The Fog", or "Creepshow',

would be as viable today.

The career of an actor, when it works,

is a wonderful career.

"Xtro".

Some extraterrestrials aren't friendly.

From New Line Cinema.

Rated R.

Roger begins with a horror film called "Xtro".

That's X-T-R-O.

Remember that spelling, remember that name.

So, "Xtro" is about an alien that kills people,

but it's also the cliche of the disturbed kid

with the powers, and evil clowns, too.

It's kind of everything.

I'd say it's very confusing

slightly surrealistic movie,

and I'm not really sure what it's about.

So a father gets abducted by aliens.

The wife thinks that he ran off with another woman.

The alien impregnates somebody.

Then the woman gives birth to a human child,

and it turns out to be the father,

who's been abducted and reborn.

I'm told that it's about abandonment.

Some very smart critic told me that.

And I just hung onto that word every since then.

I can't remember a thing until today.

I saw Tony in the streets, so-

You want to come home.

Like it was.

I think what makes marketable film

of any kind is being unusual.

Bob Shaye, who's the head of New Line,

and who started New Line,

I think Bob Shaye wanted to have his own "Phantasm".

We just wanted to shock people,

and make our little horror film,

and we wanted to have good acting and so on,

so you've got this rather uneasy business,

between all these little Shakespearean actors,

and all this nonsense that they've got to talk.

You'll be able to do lots of things.

Don't be frightened.

Use it when you need it.

The best part in "Xtro",

there's this creepy alien effect

where it's a person doing one of those

backwards spider walks.

The prosthetic is put on backwards,

so it looks very unsettling.

He's walking backwards with his back to the ground

on all fours, but with his stomach sticking up

to the sky, and the head of the creature on backwards,

which was absolute misery for him,

because it was cold, and we were having him

walking through swamps, and things like that.

A civilization develops enough intelligence

to come all the way to Earth from another star,

and then they don't have enough sense

to not stand in the middle of the road

when a car is coming.

When it came to this birth scene,

which, I think nobody understood

except me and the special effects guys.

We had to have a thing with the false floor,

and all this sort of thing, and trap doors, and whatnot.

We did a lot of it in one take.

As much of it as we could in one take.

All sorts of nasty kind of afterbirth stuff.

And then we had the umbilical cord,

that we made out of spaghetti, actually.

And he had to bite through that.

We were astonished we got it.

No, I wasn't a bit worried about it going too far.

I was worried about it not going far enough.

Bob, god bless him, was always more for having

more weird things going on.

He said hey, you gotta have a panther in there,

jumping out at someone.

Something like that.

He wanted his panther.

And he got it.

It's as if they're so pretentious

that they're trying to make some kind of

a philosophical statement.

It was garbage.

It was offensive.

Garbage is the operative word.

With little films like these,

the audience knows it's a low budget film.

They know right away.

They can sniff it from the first frame.

And they tend to be more forgiving.

That was just at the start of home video.

And I remember the first week that we came out,

we beat "Poltergeist", if you can believe that,

in the VHS ratings.

It grew legs, and it just ran off.

It absolutely killed in the home video market.

Amazing.

"Curtains".

The ultimate nightmare.

Canadian horror movie.

When you come from Canada, you don't really realize

that the movies are from Canada.

Like Rush.

You don't think of it as Canada's best band.

They're just a great band.

And what's the difference?

I mean, they're more friendly?

It kind of just blends in with the American ones.

"Curtains" is about a bunch of actresses

who go to a director's mansion to audition for a role.

Red flag.

And there is a killer on the loose.

And they're all also competing for a part.

It gets messy.

An actress named Samantha commits herself to a psych ward.

She's trying to, like, be the part.

And then the director fucking leaves her there

and goes to a mansion to hang out with five other

younger, hotter actresses,

while a killer in a hag mask goes after them.

It has these "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" vibes,

just because there is that element in the beginning

of the older actress who gets left in a psych ward,

and has to escape to get revenge.

What are you gonna do now?

What I love about the film

is it knows that Striker, the director, is a creep.

Now seduce me.

No words.

You can make sounds if you like.

The horror in "Curtains" for me

is the way that Jonathan Striker treats the women.

He forces two women to seduce each other,

and she's topless, and you can just tell

the women are not into it,

but they just do it because it's requested of them.

He preys on them, ends up sleeping with them.

Almost like an allegory on the industry.

And there's that great scene in the frozen pond,

where the one actress is skating away from the killer

with this doll in her hand,

and the killer's got the mask on

with this side, like raises it,

Fucking insane, and it's all in slow-mo,

and it's the weirdest mask you've ever seen.

You don't know if it's a woman or not.

It makes you fear the daylight,

and the emptiness in what can happen when you're alone

in a seemingly safe space.

Originally, they wanted to create a banshee creature,

but they didn't move forward with it.

"Curtains" has a very interesting kind of tone.

That's because it was actually directed

by two different people.

It feels almost very slow, and very mood building,

and then in some scenes, it's very slash 'em up,

and darkly lit, that it feels like an art house slasher.

"Curtains" is for people who like dolls

and ice skating, and old witch masks.

That has me written all over it.

So I'm sold.

"Hell of the Living Dead".

Also known as "Night of the Zombies",

originally titled "Virus".

But known in England as "Zombie Creeping Flesh".

This is the VHS tape, and a perfect example

of the lurid artwork that I would see

on the shelves of a video shop

and think that movie is for me.

There's a lab in Papua New Guinea

that has a chemical that accidentally gets released

that turns pretty much everybody into zombies.

And you follow this group of people

that travel around the globe

trying to stop this grand conspiracy.

Or maybe you just get eaten.

This is an Italian film that was dubbed in English.

It was directed by Bruno Mattei,

under the pseudonym Vincent Dawn.

If you're familiar with his work,

you know the dubbing is pretty terrible,

but that just adds to the awesomeness of it.

And we liked each other.

We'd be in the sack together by now.

That's your opinion.

Bruno Mattei was the copycat of Lucio Fulci.

"Hell of the Living Dead" came about in the wake

of the success of Fulci's "Zombie",

so essentially he was making an Italian zombie movie

which was shot in Spain,

but using the tropes that Fulci had come up with

on the back of ripping off George Romero.

Set to the scores of Goblin,

but none of the score was actually scored for this movie.

They used the soundtrack from "Contamination"

and "Dawn of the Dead" by Goblin,

and scored this movie with those scores.

Father.

Father.

What's wrong with you?

When the pandemic hit really hard,

of course I couldn't stop making movies.

The idea of "Corona Zombies" was these ditzy girls,

they turn a movie on that was the footage

from "Hell of the Living Dead", with all this

very funny clever new dialogue.

We have just received shocking video

of what is believed to be ground zero of the virus.

It was much like "What's Up Tiger Lily?"

Is that one of the corona zombies?

Shh.

"Hell of the Living Dead", it's very ahead

of its time, and it's very much against

man infecting the earth with pollution.

And that is what's causing the outbreak.

But it's also full of Fulci-esque rotting zombies

and gore and splatter,

and eyes being poked out,

and guts being poked out.

This movie is entirely enjoyable

from beginning to end.

It was the first example where I realized

that the Video Nasties panic was nonsense.

Father help me.

"Possession" is a film about a couple

whose marriage is deteriorating fast.

What do you expect of me?

Look what you're doing!

Mark and Anna, you can see that they are

extremely unhappy with each other.

They're screaming at each other.

Isabelle Adjani is incredible.

But especially in the subway scene.

And it's so disturbing.

One of the most effective scenes

of showing somebody just completely losing themselves.

Sam Neill as Mark in this film

is a very anxious character.

Cinematography really communicates

his inner feelings.

He's also very paranoid about Anna.

Their whole relationship together

is extremely hard to watch.

You know what this is for?

The lies!

Then you have to add much more.

They're very codependent, and very bad for each other.

The dramatic elements are really what drives the movie,

but then you have, it turns into this creature feature.

My god.

He made love to me all night.

She actually in this movie has sex with this monster,

which was created by Carlo Rambaldi,

who most people know is the person

who created E.T. for Steven Spielberg.

I can't believe that they talked her

into doing that entire scene.

And it looks so realistic.

"Possession" is the epitome of relationship horror.

That feeling of how it is to all out of love

with someone you care about.

Those moments of desperation and loss

are so heartbreaking.

It's a lot to take in.

It's waiting to see who will die first.

That is a movie that deserved all the Oscar love,

because it really took a lot of risks,

but it did a lot of profound things as well.

"Devil Fetus" was made by a bunch of first time filmmakers

that got a hold of themselves some iconic actors.

And it's crazy.

The special effects are insane.

A woman buys a vase.

The vase has a demon.

He crawls out, and he has sex with her

and impregnates her.

And that's the devil fetus title.

Everybody dies around her in miraculous ways.

That antique shop has a lot to answer for.

Like, I hope she kept the receipt.

It's a very weird movie.

What is cool about it is these special effects,

and it has so much 80s charm.

You have this animated thunder and lightning

coming out of people's hands,

you have them flying across things, and floating heads.

The martial arts in this is incredible, actually.

That's one of the biggest selling points.

There's all kinds of things happening

in this movie that's hard to explain.

To us it might seem like a fever dream,

but to the people who were involved in the culture,

they may know all of these things from childhood.

Very few category three films were cut,

and this one was.

It has to deal with gore and the assault

that happens in the film.

Cat three goes to 11.

You know?

It's a little bit higher than 10 and NC-17,

but it's not quite X.

Which, X-rated films were rated Cat three as well.

You think the film's going this way,

and then it goes in a different direction.

That's what's unique about "Devil Fetus".

It has the most epic last five minutes

of any movie you'll ever see.

"Eyes of Fire".

The secret is sleeping in the trees.

"Eyes of Fire" is a weird one,

because it's set in the 1700s,

and it concerns a preacher who is accused of adultery,

and is banished from town.

And he and his family find themselves

in the woods beset by spirits of Native Americans.

God damn them!

"Eyes of Fire" is an American folk horror movie.

This valley is where the lost blood gathers.

It's the home of the devil.

If you believe in it.

This film is entirely unique,

shot by a photographer called Avery Crounse.

I don't believe he'd made a feature film before this,

and he's only made a couple since.

It is a very photogenic folk horror movie

shot in the woods.

As opposed to the meat and potato slasher stuff

of the 80s, there's a lot of surreal imagery,

and surreal moments, faces in trees,

just weird hallucinogenic moments

that don't feel of a piece with the 80s, necessarily,

which in itself makes it exciting.

This is what makes it really unique and stick out.

Folk horror is a very broad subgenre,

but it had a real moment in the 60s and 70s,

and was primarily a British thing,

so the fact that you're seeing a folk horror film,

A, in the 80s, and B, set in America,

was a bit unusual.

It was independently produced by Avery Crounse.

He basically moved on.

He didn't particularly connect with the film industry.

We went to great effort to find him

so that we could include "Eyes of Fire"

in our All the Haunts Be Ours folk horror box set.

He basically still owned the movie.

He had the negative in a storage unit,

and it had been sitting there since the 80s, basically.

Had not been scanned since.

I can see again.

He sent it here so that we could scan it here

at Severin office, and he even had a previous version

called "Crying Blue Sky", which was longer,

and we were able to scan that and include that as well.

So the reason it had been out of distribution

was just because he was out of the business

and had not been traceable since.

Don't worry, my child.

Luckily we were able to get it.

"Boarding House".

Rated R.

"Boarding House".

It was a movie that didn't do well

that has gained a cult following through the years.

John Wintergate, and his wife Kalassu,

I believe they're a little drunk,

and they watched a horror film at home,

and they both have the idea

of we can do that.

An interview John Wintergate was watching

where George Lucas stated that video is the future.

He got this idea it was easy to make a movie on video.

You buy a video camera for a few hundred dollars,

and you buy some blank tapes, and you shoot a movie.

What is that?

It's apple juice.

Oh my god.

You didn't have to say that.

They decided to make a horror comedy.

They made the first big shot on video movie.

But Wintergate and Kalassu

wrote, directed, starred in this film,

did the music for it as well.

They were both musicians.

The husband and wife, making something different.

When people watch the movie, it's like wow,

this movie's crazy.

It's doing all these sorts of things

that don't relate to one another.

I'm preparing the Thorazine

for Mr. Ratchet's shock therapy.

Well, that's 'cause it's heavily cut,

and that horror comedy ended up being

two hours and 30 minutes long.

The distributors did not like that.

They told to recut the movie into what we got

with "Boarding House", which is an hour and a half

of a crazy, bizarre movie.

They cut out all the comedy in the movie,

and tried to cut it as a serious horror film.

I think that explains a lot of the weirdness

in "Boarding House".

Watch.

This was the first, and probably only,

wide release of a shot on video movie

to screen and theaters,

because he blew up 35 millimeter prints,

which was very costly.

"Blood Cult" is sometimes considered

the first shot on video film, but it is not.

"Blood Cult" was the first shot on video movie

made for the video market on home video.

"Blood Cult".

The first movie made especially for the home video market.

"Boarding House" paved the way for shot on video.

Filmmakers took notice that you could buy a video camera,

or borrow your parents', because they probably have one,

and then start shooting movies with your friends.

That kick started the shot on video boom.

You are trespassing.

This is my house!

Throughout the 80s, Asia were making

all of these horror films that didn't really get

much seen across the world,

but they were producing some incredible stuff,

from interesting places.

I grew up in a half Asian household.

My mum is from Philippines.

She made sure I was aware that monsters

and ghosts and creatures are real.

Asian horror just really gets under your skin.

The first time I was exposed to Asian horror movies

was when the whole boom came with "The Ring", "Ju-on".

"The Grudge".

That opened a whole new world for me.

I just thought, okay this is the stuff of my nightmares.

I think that Japanese people don't care as much

in the realism.

It's more deep symbolism,

and much more thought out inner mental things,

rather than just the coherent storytelling.

That is more important to me.

Their points of reference for what's scary

are often very different.

A lot of western horror, there's a Judeo-Christian

sort of root to it.

And their fears and their preoccupations,

and their boogeymen come from a different place.

And it's exciting to see that cultural difference,

exciting to see what scares people

in a culture that's not your own.

I was very attracted to the Asian flow

of movies coming in that are about dreamscapes,

that are about ghosts, anything like that,

that gets me off in a way that is both scary

and not as uncomfortable as seeing a lot of blood.

My favorite Japanese horror movie from the 80s

by far is "Sweet Home" because it's so, so, so nuts.

At the same time, Capcom released a game version,

which is almost better than the actual film.

It's also the influence for "Resident Evil" as well.

"Resident Evil".

So Kiyoshi Kurosawa, he's the director of "Sweet Home".

And he went on to do some of the best

Japanese horror movies of the late 90s

and early 2000s.

If it wasn't for him leading the way

making Japanese movies that could potentially appeal

to a Western audience, you wouldn't have had

this J-horror explosion.

When you mention 80s Asian horror,

a lot of people think of "House" from Japan,

although that one's from 1977.

If you watch Japanese horror,

if you watch something from Thailand,

if you watch something from South Korea,

you're going to get a different experience

from each of those.

South Korea's horror movement that happened

just after J-horror explosion has been incredible.

South Korea, Indonesia, and the Philippines

kind of came into their own regarding horror

a little bit later.

In terms of horror that's commercially viable

in the Western world.

In the Philippines, there's actually a lot of horror.

It's very sad that I can not count on one hand

how many cross over to America.

One of the best places for Asian horror,

especially out of the 80s, was China.

A lot of it was based on the mythology.

We see demons, vampires, ghosts, poltergeists,

a lot of witches, a lot of wizards as well.

Some movies you should definitely check out

are "Kung Fu Zombie", "Human Lanterns",

"Seeding of a Ghost", and "Witch from Nepal"

with Chow Yun-Fat.

We know the Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest

as the purveyors of incredible martial arts movies,

but they also dip their toe in a lot of horror as well.

Asian horror cinema,

I like vampire movies for that.

Scary things that there is a story of how they got scary.

The way they present their monsters

is just so fundamentally different

than how the Western stereotype of a vampire

is just completely blown up in an Asian film.

I'm completely obsessed by the "Mr. Vampire" movies.

I'd never seen Jiangshi vampires before.

I was mesmerized by how comedic they were.

They hop.

When you watch "Mr. Vampire",

you see why people are scared of them,

because they are relentless,

and you have to know all of the tricks

in order to defeat them.

"The Jitters" is an unusual film.

Plus "The Jitters" was directed by John Fasano

and not a Chinese guy.

There's a little bit lost in translation.

It played fast and loose with Chinese mythology

quite a lot.

Someone thought that since they're so popular

over there, we'd make an American version

of these movies, and see how that does.

I got him!

I'm uncomfortable with the movie now,

because there's a lot of racial stereotypes in there,

at the time, I didn't really think was a big deal,

but it is.

Understanding horror explored through the lens

of other cultures, it's an important thing,

and it's a cool thing.

Different cultures have all these different kinds

of mythologies to draw from,

and there's just this endless well of stories

that we can build upon.

When you're talking about Asian horror now,

people are looking at it from a broader perspective

because they've been able to watch these movies.

Whereas in the 80s, a lot of them were available,

but they just never really made it outside of their markets.

Asian horror was somewhat inaccessible

to a lot of us in the 80s.

Video stores didn't carry a lot of it,

and it's only after J-horror came up after the fact

that then suddenly we're retroactively going back

into these catalogs and finding these titles

that were not on our radar in the 80s.

In a way that's kind of cool,

because then that's a bucket of 80s horror

that we can go back and look for now.

School was hell, but vacation was murder.

"The Mutilator".

It was originally titled "Fall Break",

but the filmmakers apparently felt "The Mutilator"

was a much more user friendly title.

Four days of R and R at the beach.

I'm in.

Sounds good to me.

I got a bad feeling about this.

College kids on their fall break,

and they get picked off one by one.

I'm coming to get you!

By different use of power tools,

and home repair tools.

One of the friends, his dad hates him

because he blames him for the death of his mother.

Just like this angry dad who hates his son

and is gonna take it out on him and his friends.

"The Mutilator" is one of those that tries

to present as a comedy, but isn't sure it wants

to be a comedy, and you're not sure

if you're supposed to be laughing at a lot of it.

Looks like the party's over for this joker.

Oh.

Yeah.

My dad ran over him with a ski boat.

It's dancing to the beat of its own drum.

What's wrong with the water?

It looks like it's been loaded down with chlorine.

Will that hurt you?

No, in fact it probably prevents herpes.

The art for "The Mutilator" has this tagline

that says by sword, by pick, by ax, bye-bye.

Catchy title, catchy tagline,

and some eye-grabbing art.

The more extreme the exploitation level is,

the more likely a teen is gonna rent that.

And that's the idea.

And that's why we love these movies

so much to this day.

My first film in America,

which is absolutely adored doing, was "Maniac",

and I got to work with my lovely Joe Spinell again,

who I first met in "Star Crash".

People connect with Joe Spinell.

He is a compelling actor to watch.

I loved working with Joe because he was

such a brilliant actor, and a sweet, dear person.

"The Last Horror Film" is about New York cab driver

who's obsessed with Caroline Munroe,

and he follows her to the Cannes Film Festival

where a serial killer is on the loose.

It was called "The Last Horror Film",

and then they called it "Fanatic" after that.

This film was an unofficial followup to "Maniac".

I got talent, ma!

I'm gonna be a great director someday!

Don't yell at your mother!

It's great to see Joe Spinell

and Caroline Munroe together,

and I think the pairing is fantastic.

Who is it?

We were an odd couple.

We were, weren't we?

Jana Bates is going to star in my next movie.

It's all set.

I'm producing and directing.

Vinny, are you sure you're making a movie?

He was wonderful in that film.

Very quirky, very quirky.

And my character, she was spooked by Joe,

because Joe had an obsession for this actress, Jana Bates.

Who are you?

Get out.

I thought we'd just have a drink

and talk about the film.

You'll be absolutely perfect in it.

It was directed by David Winters,

who was in "West Side Story",

and sure enough, they just showed up in Cannes,

and started shooting this movie,

so there's a lot of run and gun footage

of the Cannes Film Festival.

One of the first guerrilla films

to be made there, for sure.

And I had to run along the Croisette in a towel.

They were all lined up, real people,

to see Jack Nicholson, Leslie Caron,

go on the red carpet.

They said Caroline, you're just gonna have to run

along the red carpet.

I said what, I've got a towel on.

They said that's okay, just do your own thing.

Please!

Hot damn, that's Jana Bates!

"The Last Horror Film" is not as gory as "Maniac"

but it does have a good amount of kills in it.

There's a lot of meta elements.

There's one bit where Joe Spinell's in a cinema

watching a new horror movie,

and he actually is eating his popcorn,

and starts throwing up

because it's too gross, too disgusting.

It's questioning horror movies

because "Maniac" got a lot of backlash

because of how misogynistic it was.

Now tell us why you're such a failure, Vinny.

I'm a genius.

Jana Bates is going to star in my movie.

She loves me!

It's a very bizarre film.

So I would think the ultimate theme

for "The Last Horror Film" or "The Fanatic"

would have to be obsession.

Obsessive love.

He loved her.

Or he loved what he saw of her onscreen.

But he didn't know her.

Could you move your head a little to the right

in this space?

Perfect, just perfect.

I always think it's really interesting

when the protagonist of a horror film,

especially in this period, is a guy,

because usually we associate the 80s

as the time where final girls came into full force.

"Mutant".

"Mutant", originally released

as "Night Shadows" theatrically.

It turned up on VHS as "Mutant".

The two very capable leads are Wings Hauser

and Lee Montgomery.

Our car broke down and we just need a place to stay.

We'll be gone first thing in the morning, I promise.

They end up in a dead end town

because their car messed up.

They go to the local bar,

and instantly these locals beat them up,

rough them up.

Oh no!

They end up being patched up by the local doctor.

And they start to get their first inklings

that something is wrong in this town,

that people are going missing.

This is toxic waste infecting a small community

and turning them into zombies.

This mutation somehow causes

an increasing need for blood.

Just so many zombies.

They're all over the place.

It was obviously inspired by George Romero.

And you see this in a lot of films,

like "Return of the Living Dead",

and you see it in a lot of the Troma films.

Toxic waste was a big thing in the 80s.

I like my zombies to be serious.

They definitely got the vibe of what made

those movies so much fun.

No!

The effects are kind of hokey,

because when these zombies approach you,

and they touch you, which ultimately turns you

into a zombie, all this steam comes off you,

almost like they're pressing a shirt,

like a big life sized iron.

Jack?

But there's one real cool sequence

where you just know there's gonna be a zombie.

You just know it.

And then she slowly goes over to him,

slowly pulls out the covers.

These locals just inherently hate other people.

Some secrets should remain secret,

and the way you do that is by keeping

all the outsiders away.

"The New York Ripper" is a very violent giallo

made by Lucio Fulci after he'd already made

"Zombie Flesh Eaters", "The Beyond",

and "House by the Cemetery".

Fulci was kind of riding high at this point

in his career.

"Zombie" was a huge success internationally

by the standards of Italian exploitation movies.

He went on and decided to make a thriller.

About a ripper in New York.

During this time, a lot of Italian filmmakers

would come to the US and shoot establishing footage,

and that's all tied into how Italian filmmakers

were trying to make their films seem American.

The killer in the film has a Donald Duck

kind of quacking voice.

Said he called back.

Sounded just like a duck.

Like a duck?

Which adds to the element of the bizarre

of this movie, and I think it shows Fulci's

sense of humor as well.

There's a fair amount of sleaze in the movie

as well, and nudity.

There's a very famous sequence in the film

where an actress is tied to a bed,

and essentially gets razor bladed

in the eye and in the nipple,

and it's extremely graphic and close up,

but it has that ocular violence

that Fulci had become famous for,

and he was trying to outdo, it seems,

in every movie that he did.

It definitely pushed the boundaries

of what was acceptable.

This film made sure that in England,

if you were found with a copy,

you were definitely having it seized,

and you would probably be arrested.

Like a duck?

Quack, quack, quack.

Just like that.

"The Initiation".

The ceremony that will never die,

as long as new blood is pledged.

I rented that movie the very first time,

because I loved Daphne Zuniga in "Spaceballs",

and it was right when Melrose Place was hitting.

And we've got a girl in a sorority,

she's being hazed.

Her character, Kelly, is having these nightmares,

so she actually goes through a sleep study

trying to figure out the reason

behind her nightmares.

It's fairly common for the subconscious mind

to fictionalize certain emotional states.

There's a woman committing adultery

with another guy.

A little girl comes in and catches them,

starts stabbing the crap out of somebody,

and then the guy goes on fire,

and she can't remember what happens.

I was in a coma for three months,

and they kept me in this private hospital in Chicago.

When I came out of it, I had no memory.

Her father, who's played by Clu Gulager,

owns this big shopping building,

and she's tasked with breaking in

and stealing a night porter's outfits.

Course, a lot of bad things happen.

It is a movie that takes a little time

to get going, but once they get into that mall,

there's some really fun kills.

You're finding bodies all over the place

The security guard is a bummer.

There's so many wacky out there things in the 80s,

where I guess they just tried things

more than we do now.

You know, it takes some leaps and bounds.

Spoiler alert, there's a twist at the end.

Peter!

And you're left sitting there like,

wait, what is going on?

You have to rationalize it to yourself

so that you can move on and finish

the rest of the movie.

It's a total shock at the end.

I've never seen anything like that

before in my life.

The more I think about it, the more I think

they just wanted to blow our minds.

Scared the shit out of them!

The only reason that they would set horror movies

on holidays is that they had no marketing budget.

So it was a way to get attention from the press.

Most decisions made in the 80s

were strictly financial decisions.

A present from the people

who brought you "Friday the 13th"

now comes "Don't Open Till Christmas".

"Don't Open Till Christmas" is a real curio,

a slasher film set in the UK

about a killer who goes around

killing people in Santa suits.

It's almost like Fulci directed this.

It's so grimy and slimy,

and as soon as you step foot into an alley,

you're dead meat.

The reason for the serial killer killing Santa Claus

is obviously some trauma from when he was a kid.

And you see this in a flashback streaked dream,

and he's just been, for all these years,

hellbent on getting revenge on Santa.

The department store, you have this big, fat,

Santa Claus guy, who's going around

and leering at all the girls.

And as soon as he gets to the toilets,

you know what's gonna happen.

And it's just blood squirting everywhere.

He gets his apt punishment.

Caroline Munroe turns up in this film as well,

which was a surprise.

She's like a dancer in a club.

Man, that woman is beautiful.

If you blink, you're gonna miss me in it.

George Dugdale, my husband,

he did the effects on "Don't Open Till Christmas".

They got the Piccadilly Theater in London.

I went in for about two hours,

on the thing, and I wiggled about the stage,

and kind of sang "Warrior of Love".

Basically, that's my bit in it.

♪ I'm the warrior of love

♪ Yes I am

Father Christmas appears, and the trapdoor,

just as I'm mid-sing, and so I react to him,

the Father Christmas dead.

Maybe they just needed a bit of a filler.

Maybe they thought, oh we've got five minutes to spare.

Bang her in.

♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah

A lot of Santas die in this film,

so if you are into horror movies

for the festive body count, then this is the one.

There's a party going on!

Look, there's no party here, mate.

I wasn't allowed to watch horror movies

or sci-fi movies when I was little.

Because I was too sensitive.

I was older when I saw "The Exorcist".

That was the most frightening movie I've ever seen.

I felt it could really happen.

This study of the human psyche

has always been prevalent in my work,

and in why I want to work.

My whole method is the less I know

what's gonna happen, the more alive in the moment I am.

The most memorable scene in "The Hills Have Eyes"

with Wes was when I had to work with the tarantula.

They assured me that it couldn't hurt me.

Afterwards, I found out that oh yeah, it could've.

And I said Wes, I'm scared.

And he said, will you trust me,

that I will make sure that everything is handled

so that you're safe?

And that's just who Wes was.

You did.

To me, "The Howling" was the battle of good and evil,

which goes on within all of us.

There was so much in "The Howling"

that elevated that film, because of Joe Dante.

Joe brings more of who he is into his films,

because Joe is very funny.

And he always finds a way

to bring that humor,

even if it's dark humor,

into his projects.

"Cujo" was always about what a mother would do

for her child.

It was never a horror film to me.

It was a statement of how far a mother would go

to keep her kid safe.

It's not a monster, it's just a doggie.

I've heard from so many people,

I watched it when I was younger,

and it was a horror film.

I watch it now after I have kids,

it's a whole different film.

My father was a severe alcoholic.

So for most practical purposes, I had a single mom.

And she was a strong mom.

And I had a strong grandma that helped raise me.

So I had some really good personal material

to call on.

There were nine dogs that played Cujo.

Two black labs that could fit in a dog suit

if we needed it, and a stuntman in the dog suit.

The dogs were all trained to go after toys,

and we had to tie their tails down with fish wire,

because they were having so much fun.

Stephen King is the sweetest, kinda shy,

very gentle man.

When he came on the set of "Cujo",

I went, where does it come from?

And he just started laughing.

After "E.T.", I was plagued with mother parts.

It's not that I don't want to play mothers,

I just want to play everything.

Dear god, I probably have 800 roles

of every kind of mom.

Psycho mom, sweet mom, drugged mom,

killer mom, hooker mom.

Everything!

No!

No, no!

It was almost like poetry to me, "Shadow Play".

And I wanted desperately to work with Cloris Leachman.

I had to do that very artsy dream nude scene,

and my husband was not happy about that.

I don't think I've ever told this story before.

He called me, and he said

if you do that scene tomorrow,

I think we're done.

I said Chris, don't make me make that choice.

We got my therapist on the phone at three a.m.

in the morning, and we worked it out

that what was really bothering him

was that he would have to wait all those months

wondering what happened.

And if the director would agree to show him the dailies,

he would be okay.

Now, this is pretty funny coming from a guy

who had a huge naked love scene in "The Howling",

and he expected me to be just fine with it,

thank you very much.

But, you know.

That's a man for you.

Rubin Galindo Jr.

He's awesome!

Rubin has an amazing lineup of movies,

and he really made a stamp in the 80s.

Rubin,

The difference between the Mexican horror films,

and international horror films,

we like to mix a little bit of spirituality,

and to let some things to the unknown.

We don't tend to try to explain.

My dad did Luchador films,

with monsters films.

"El Santo Contra Los Asesinos De Ostros Mundos".

The saint against killers from other worlds.

It's beautiful.

Michael Jackson's "Thriller".

That struck me hard,

and then one day, my dad told me,

would you think it's a good idea

to make a film like Michael Jackson's "Thriller"?

I said, yes!

It's a great idea!

I wanna do that!

It's a bunch of teenagers,

they wanna have fun in Halloween.

They go to the morgue, they steal a corpse,

and they pretend to do a demonic ritual.

They woke up the demon inside, Devlon,

who was a killer.

And all of the sudden, Michael Jackson's "Thriller".

Pops out of the tombs.

I felt very compromised with the budget.

I had a hard time.

The lousiest effect of all

is when the guy that was taking a leak,

Alonso Garcia, finds the girl lying all dead

with blood all over her,

and then there is a flying ax

that hits him in the face.

You could see that the ax had a metal pole.

I wasn't looking through the camera,

because I was playing the ax.

I think that's the charm.

It's kind of looking at a kitsch art,

when you see a horror film

that was done with such a low budget,

it's looking at like an Ed Wood film.

The only guy that believes in the film

is the director.

It's hard to say what kind of influence

Stephen King had on movies,

because of so many directors attempted

so many different kinds of film, it's hard to say.

It depends on how well done they are.

I know Stephen King loves "Cujo".

Stephen King's "Cat's Eye".

Capitalizing on the popularity of "Creepshow',

and Stephen King in general,

the studios decided they should make

another horror anthology,

and that's how we got "Cat's Eye".

"Cat's Eye" is by Lewis Teague.

He'd done "Cujo" at the time.

It is also co-produced by Milton Subotsky,

who was kind of the king of anthology horror.

He's the guy who produced Tales From the Crypt,

and Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, and Asylum.

"Cat's Eye" is three stories,

two of which are taken from Stephen King's

short story book, "Night Shift".

Watch for the "Cujo" and "Christine" references

in the beginning.

The first segment is called "Quitters Incorporated",

and it stars James Woods as a guy who's trying

to quit smoking, and the problem is what they do

to get you to quit smoking is incredibly extreme.

The second segment is "The Ledge".

This is about a rich guy played

by Kenneth McMillan,

who discovers that Robert Hayes

has been sleeping with his wife.

He tells him that if he makes it

all the way around the building on this ledge,

that he can leave and take his wife.

Boogie, boogie, boogie!

You bastard!

I just wanna keep you on your toes!

The third story was more or less

how the whole thing came about.

Producer Dino De Laurentiis contacted Stephen King

and told him he wanted him to write a story

specifically for Drew Barrymore,

because they had just worked together on "Firestarter".

He wrote the script in less than 24 hours.

Help me!

The movie's tied together with this cat, The General,

who's on his way to try to protect Drew Barrymore

from a troll that's living in her walls.

The troll's trying to kill the little girl

by stealing her breath while she sleeps.

Carlo Rambaldi created the creature,

and it is very realistic.

The troll was a little person in a suit.

They're doing puppetry, they're doing forced perspective.

It's fantastic.

The movie actually is in the Guinness Book of World Records

for making the world's largest bed,

and the world's largest pillows.

I love how the record player comes into play

with this segment.

Watch out!

Anthologies are kinda hit or miss,

but with this, I think all three segments are strong,

with the last one, "The General", being the strongest.

Anytime you have a movie where a cat is a hero,

I am in.

"Phenomena", from Dario Argento

is another sort of wildly weird movie in itself.

When I first saw it, I actually saw it

as "The Creepers" version.

There's actually three versions of the film.

"Phenomena" follows Jennifer Connelly,

who's a young student studying abroad,

who basically has a psychic connection

with bugs, of all things,

and she comes across Donald Pleasant,

who's an entomologist that works with bugs

in a means to help solve crimes.

It is just like, is Argento kind of of woke up one day,

and was picking motifs out of a hat,

and was like, here's "Phenomena",

but yet somehow it all works,

and I think a lot of credit is due

to Jennifer Connolly's performance.

Don't touch it!

Stop yelling!

It's a bee!

I know.

It won't hurt me.

Insects never hurt me.

Donald Pleasant is always a welcome addition

to any cast.

You're in a position to do extraordinary things

with that gift of yours.

Daria Nicolodi, who had worked so many times with Argento.

It's one of the first instances

I can remember her being a villain in a movie.

And she's so great in it.

Inga is the chimpanzee,

who is the assistant to McGreggor in the movie.

And she is a delight.

Early on in the movie, there's a point

where she's playing with a scalpel,

and he's like, Inga.

I don't want you ever,

I don't want you ever, ever playing with this again.

That moment has a payoff in the end that I won't ruin.

But Inga actually becomes your favorite part of the movie.

The "Phenomena" soundtrack is a lot of fun,

because it marries contemporary music of that time,

especially heavy metal music,

with these traditional score from Goblin.

It's really interesting that it's specifically

in "Phenomena" that Argento would use heavy metal music

in these weird ways that shouldn't work, and yet it does.

♪ The smell of resigned leather ♪

♪ The sticky iron mask

♪ As you cut and thrust

♪ And parried at the fencing

Particularly during the kill scenes.

It actually heightens the tensions,

in those scenes in particular,

and makes them play in a very different way

than I think you see contemporary music

played in American horror.

What you love is the feeling

when you're stomping out life.

"The Doctor and the Devils".

"The Doctor and the Devils",

this is a classic British Gothic horror story.

Quite lavish, quite beautiful to look at.

What now would they be doing for a living, lovey?

Grave robbers.

It's definitely one that seems to be missed

off a lot of lists of best British horror films.

Before we disturbed his sleep.

It's crawling with maggots.

I need fresh subjects.

Specimens that I can teach with.

This is, in fact, a decent movie

with a great cast, and a good story.

And I believe that that end

justifies any means.

And it stars some amazing British actors and actresses.

Dr. Rock needs fresh bodies.

Could we pay them, sir?

Only half.

Julien Sands, Jonathan Pryce, Stephen Rea and Twiggy.

It was amazing to see Timothy Dalton in it.

We're scientists, not moralists.

I need bodies.

They're not called Burke and Hare,

but they're kind of analogs of Burke and Hare.

Quiet as death tonight.

Praise be the Lord.

For those that don't know, Burke and Hare

is the story of two grave robbers

who used to steal dead bodies.

And it's a true story.

Steal dead bodies and sell them for profit.

And when the dead bodies run out,

they start killing actual alive people,

and selling them on.

Quite the benefactors, the dead.

Their story kind of spins out on the head a little bit.

Put them out of their misery, Mr. Fallon!

That's what the major said to me.

Pryce, quite unhinged in the characters he does play,

and he looks evil, as well.

Fresh, Broom.

Fresh as new moon here.

This film was directed by Freddie Francis,

who you may know made his start

with Amicus and Hammer,

doing some great Gothic horror for them.

And this is kind of a continuation of that.

And you can see a lot of the things he learned

with Amicus and Hammer,

the kind of level of detail in the period pieces,

in the architecture, in the costumes.

And that kind of Gothic horror,

where you don't necessarily need to see the killing.

Fresh bodies, fresh bodies, fresh bodies.

You may just see a shadow on the wall,

or the aftermath, just that beautiful girl's

blood on her mouth.

The ultimate message in "The Doctor and the Devils"

is if you want something done, do it yourself.

But it's really well-done,

and I was actually surprised how well this holds up.

This city has a heart of goodness.

And the bowels of squalor.

For a good time, call-

"Transylvania 6-5000".

Is good, huh?

"Transylvania 6-5000" is an incredibly underrated

horror comedy, or should I say comedy horror,

from the 80s.

It's got a lot of really fun moments.

And the whole movie just has this uplifting

jovial feeling to it.

Ah, Radu.

Yes, master?

Everybody involved looks like they're having

an absolute blast.

You've got Ed Begley Jr., Jeff Goldblum.

Every time I give you-

Two reporters from a rag newspaper

are headed to Transylvania to try to find Frankenstein.

So I'm counting on you guys for a Frankenstein story.

I'm sorry, you're counting on us for a what story?

My favorite part is when they first arrive

in Transylvania, and they ask a point blank question,

hey, where can we find Frankenstein.

Frankenstein, you know Frankenstein don't you?

Frankenstein?

Yes, the monster.

Ah.

Instead of just laughing them off,

they drag it off and humiliate them.

And then they get the mayor to come out,

played by Jeffrey Jones,

and with the straightest face possible,

says gentlemen, we're in Transylvania.

Don't you want to ask us about Dracula?

And then just bursts out laughing.

I've got Godzilla in the back room.

I like it, it's a good one.

How about the Blob?

It wouldn't be much of a monster movie

without the monsters actually showing up.

You got the mummy, a Frankenstein monster,

a werewolf who looks like Chewbacca.

Geena Davis as a vampire.

And then there's Kramer, Michael Richards,

playing an Igor type.

Is good, huh?

Is funny!

Wearing funny goggles,

riding a mechanical animal in a closet,

and slipping on banana peels.

Look, it's a beautiful day today!

Whoa!

- Hey, hey! - Oh!

Are you okay?

This one would make for a wonderful double feature

with "Saturday the 14th".

They both have the same kind of sophomoric humor.

And fun creature effects.

"Guinea Pig: Devil's Experiment".

This is a found footage movie

in the faux documentary style.

It has title cards, has an end card,

it's separated into acts, almost.

It is about three guys abusing this woman

in sequentially horrible ways.

And is absolutely gruesome.

And really effective, because it's done in a way

where it does feel the closest you'll see

to seeing a snuff movie.

It was made by Satoru Ogura,

who wrote and directed it in 1985.

And the effects are inventive,

but it's not something you can just sit down

with a packet of crisps and eat it,

because you'll be so grossed out.

It's a really interesting movie

that I wouldn't recommend to too many people,

but I will say, the sequels get more and more

and more interesting.

I am absolutely obsessed

by "Guinea Pig 5: Mermaid in a Manhole".

That movie manages to keep the grossness,

but add a really heartfelt story in it.

In the first one, there was absolutely no redemption

for these characters.

But in the later ones, they give the characters

a little bit more layers to them.

But they're still doing the wrong things.

Women still end up dying,

people still end up being tortured,

and even in my favorite moment in "The Manhole",

he thinks he's doing the right thing

by saving this mermaid in the sewer,

but he is effectively taken her out of her home,

and is slowly killing her for the sake of art.

These "Guinea Pig" movies are kind of notorious

as being the precursors to torture porn.

Things like "Hostel", things like that.

And I don't really see that type of movie

coming back again, because I think it was

really surrounding VHS, and the ability to share

horrific images with people,

which you can do at the touch of a button

with the internet now,

but back then, the feeling of having something

that you shouldn't have, a snuff movie,

and passing that around, is really the reason

why there's so many "Guinea Pig" movies,

and that's why also the "Faces of Death" movies

in the western world were so popular.

Spielberg once said to me

I would love to make a really vicious horror movie.

You wouldn't believe some of the dark ideas I have

that would probably challenge Cronenberg

as far as going the distance in shocking stuff.

But I can't do that because of who I am.

That was when he was best known

for "E.T." and "Poltergeist",

and more family friendly stuff.

He felt that that put him in a box

that didn't allow him to go to the other distance.

The most impactful horror films

will always come from some guy

in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of friends

who've made a movie, and it's really cool,

and is a huge success.

As soon as you have a committee involved

in making a horror film, it never works.

It's not a committee.

It's a singular vision.

Too many bones.

When you have one person with one clear vision,

that comes through in the final product.

So it's an important thing that there is a director

that sees it through from start to finish.

The lower the budget, the more creative

a filmmaker can get to realize their vision.

You just have to keep everything in perspective.

We're making movies.

We're doing what we love.

I said I think my ears are gonna explode.

I think that's really an important part

of being a filmmaker.

I wanted to affect something.

And that at the tenacity of the finish.

That's the whole thing.

Most people quit when things get rough.

And they always get rough.

Really the best directors I've ever worked with,

they hire the right people.

And they trust their talent.

When I think about the three great directors

that I've worked with, the ones that come to mind

are John Carpenter, George Romero, and Wes Craven.

They have a bunch of things in common.

They all knew exactly what they wanted.

And all three of them kept a very calm,

very supportive set, a very happy set.

Playing mind games, that's not the way

those three men directed.

Cut.

Prints, thank you.

I would argue that John Carpenter

was probably the most underrated

great American filmmaker ever.

And he's not probably largely viewed that way

by people who should view him that way.

He's certainly very revered by most people

who like horror, but he's much more

than a horror filmmaker.

Cronenberg, because he was headier,

I think got more due, and more acceptance

by the snobbier film community.

The relationship between humanity and physicality

is something that Cronenberg explores a lot,

whether it's "eXistenZ", or "Rabid", or "Shivers".

"The Fly".

He regurgitates on his food, it liquefies,

and then he sucks it back up.

It's a theme that he would come back to a lot

Oh my god.

John Carpenter's biggest influence on 1980s horror

was "Halloween" from 1978.

That really kicked off the slasher boom.

And paved the way for so many copycats after.

His legacy is that the genre was taken seriously,

and he wanted to give the audience,

not just a thrill, but just show how movie making

can be an experience.

♪ Just the two of us

I didn't watch as many horror films

as I should have during the 80s

because I was so busy.

But I remember a lot of the movies I saw in the 70s,

"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" being a big one.

I loved that movie.

Tobe was a close friend.

Really upset by the passing of Tobe.

A very sweet man.

Really wonderful guy.

He made the cinematic experience for moviegoers

a lot more brutal I think than they were used to.

The two greatest movies that Tobe Hooper made,

"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", and "Poltergeist",

were both used against him to say well,

he didn't direct one, and the other one is crap.

And so he struggled his whole life

to become more accepted as a director.

I feel like every movie Wes Craven makes

was like a statement piece, was groundbreaking,

wasn't like oh, here's a horror movie.

It was like, this has changed the face

of what we're watching today.

He was making films and having a blast.

He was very kind of, in the New York intellectual scene.

Night and day different,

were Wes Craven's movies and who he was.

George Romero, for someone who made

such really creepy, disturbing films,

he was such a bear.

Just a cuddly, sweet, delightful presence.

My god.

George was a master, and he was always ahead of his time.

That's what was so remarkable about George's films.

They get better and better with age.

Dario Argento, he was consistently impressive

as a filmmaker, right up to and including "Two Evil Eyes".

What's special about Dario

is his operatic style of filmmaking.

He revels in murder.

He has a fetish for creating

these amazing murder set pieces.

Steward Gordon was a provocateur.

He liked to make movies that really provoked a reaction.

Stewart was the king of the party.

He made sure that everything was big and bold and body.

He has a different personality

with pretty much every movie he does.

"Dagon" has a different personality.

"Dolls" has a different personality.

"Stuck" has a different personality.

"Castle Freak", everything's a little different.

Kathryn Bigelow, in my estimation,

Mary Lambert, they broke the mold a little bit.

They were very bold.

I think they knew they were gonna be able

to find advocacy within the studio system.

I think they had that confidence.

And that confidence radiates from those products.

Fasten your fucking seatbelt!

It was very, very difficult for women directors

to either put together a film themselves,

or to get a job directing any film.

Well come on, baby!

Light my fire.

Now it's opened a lot more.

But we have a lot to ground to make up.

It was bad.

We're not as far along as we should be.

Let's just put it that way.

We have to get to a point

where women are not labeled

as female filmmaker, or like me,

Mexican-Canadian, blah-blah-blah, filmmaker.

Like, you can have all the labels.

My last name's already long enough.

I just want us to be recognized as a good filmmaker,

and it's taken all this time to finally get here.

But it's our responsibility as storytellers

to challenge audiences, and to challenge studios

to accept that.

Welcome to our house!

Puta!

We'll keep working hard.

And we'll keep challenging everybody

that watches our movies to accept it.

The Puttermans finally got themselves

a pet, but they never even had a chance to give it a name.

"TerrorVision".

"TerrorVision" was one of the movies we made

during those amazing three years or so

at Empire Studios in Rome, Italy.

That's when that, you know you conceive something,

you have a great poster,

and then it morphs into something entirely different.

It was originally gonna be a straight up horror movie

that this monster comes out of the TV

and eats the family.

But Ted had this kind of strange dark humor, and-

Whoa!

I just kind of pondered

how to make a monster coming out

of a satellite dish, have some kind of social commentary.

You must heed my warning!

Its appetite is insatiable!

Its curiosity is boundless!

I had to capture this moment of the 80s

about the overwhelming garbage of television.

Channel 69, Pops.

Stanley!

Man, it exploded into this technicolor kind of wildness.

Look out!

To the film's credit, or maybe its detriment,

I don't know, I made these characters

that are sort of really reprehensible.

My parents wanna meet you.

Oh, whoa.

What a drag.

I wanted our monster in "TerrorVision", Hungry Beast,

to be a sympathetic character.

Well, he's just a pet who really couldn't help

that he was hungry.

John Buechler and his crew

were kind of like the Charlie go-to makeup effects people.

John just looked at me like I was completely insane.

Once we found the basic design,

John threw himself into it

and created this character that is just like

the most doofus-y looking monster

that you could imagine.

No!

It was big and heavy and hot inside,

and required five or six puppeteers

just to make him work,

and shipping him over to Italy

must have been just ridiculously expensive.

♪ TerrorVision

That main title theme is just so perfect.

Sets the time period of the movie,

sets the tone of the movie.

We talked to Frank Zappa about doing the score.

Then I talked to The Cramps.

But The Fibonaccis, the quirky quality of their music

was perfect for the main title song.

♪ TerrorVision

My favorite sequence of "TerrorVision"

is the creature is sitting in the big hot tub

watching "Earth Versus Flying Saucers" on TV,

and laughing uproariously as flying saucers

smash into the monuments.

The kids come in and try to kill it.

That little sequence there, to me,

kind of captures the chaos and the humor.

Sis!

I was so pleased that it came out

as well as it did.

And then when it went into the theaters

for its one week run,

it was a fucking disaster.

Nobody came.

The reviews just hated it.

Man, this is the dumbest movie I ever saw!

What a bunch of crud.

But over the years, it's been really satisfying

to see how it became kind of like a

let's get stoned and watch this film,

and that's like kind of what it was intended to be.

I'm really happy that it's kinda reached as many people

as it has.

In "Rats: Notte di Terrore", which is

"Rats: Night of Terror", ragtag band of survivors

after the last apocalypse are searching for food and water

in a no man's land.

They would find evolution has taken

a pretty nasty turn.

This is a really low budget movie,

and it's the first movie where I'm a lead.

It was only a gag.

Listen up.

Gags we don't need.

Any more and I'll blow your fucking brains out.

Get it?

They actually had cast my roommate at the time

to play my role.

Completely different type, American girl.

She's got red hair.

Completely different girl.

The budget was so low, she goes I'm not doing that.

Somehow I guess they heard I would.

Oh my god!

I won't even tell you

what I got paid per week.

That's how low it was.

They were paying you by week.

Not Diana, no!

The script was in Italian.

But I did my role in English.

And then that movie, everyone with the exception

of maybe two people, could speak English.

And then everyone else would be dubbed around it.

You made a bet with me and you lost, Chocolate.

You know it.

Put it on my bill.

Tonight I don't feel like it.

Now here's a fun thing about the set.

It's actually Sergio Leone's

old America from "One Upon a Time in America".

All the saloons, and all the stores they're going in.

It's the same set.

Mere weeks before, De Niro was in town,

and he was everywhere.

You could see him anywhere, and they were doing that.

And then we got to use the set.

Here's where my four-legged friend came from.

Look.

There's a whole nest of the sweet little things.

We don't have any actual rats in the movie.

We have lab mice.

Because only lab mice have the red eyes.

They dyed all of their hair.

It was a different time, a different era.

I wouldn't say that all of them were treated

the way we would do it now,

but we weren't going around

stomping on them, or anything.

And as you see the movie, there's real no CGI.

You can tell we got rubber rats

on the roller, you know?

The movie was so low budget,

they recycled the dead ones

to throw on us in the other scenes.

I've been on some smelly sets before.

But you've never been on a set

that's been housing a garbage can that big

of dead rats.

Suddenly they're gassed, and they die.

And in the most feminine faint in history,

I kind of faint like this.

It was a good beginning.

If you haven't seen the movie before,

pay great attention to the last scene.

And if you have seen the movie before,

here's the hint.

That's a split scene.

And I played both characters.

The terror starts the moment you stop

for "The Hitcher".

It's a straightforward thriller

that grips you and never lets go.

Tobe Hooper used to say horror films

are the new westerns.

Their mythology is all about trying to reconcile

the evil within oneself, the evil within a society,

the evil of a certain act,

with those who want to correct it, fix it,

fight it, avenge it.

Don't you know who he is?

You got the wrong man, Lyle.

The monster in the film is not a guy in a mask,

but he is exactly like Jason, Leatherface, Michael Meyers.

He's simply hitching a ride in the rain.

And this horrific story ensues.

You wanna know what happens to an eyeball

when it gets punctured?

The movie truly only has three characters,

and I love that economy.

It has C. Thomas Howell, Jennifer Jason Leigh,

and Rutger Hauer.

He's one of the scariest human beings

on the fucking planet.

His presence fills the screen.

That gun is empty.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Yeah?

It's a film about being paranoid,

and knowing something really bad is happening,

but nobody will believe you.

Jesus!

Oh my god.

He put that there!

He put that there!

To this day, when I'm eating fries,

I always look at the fry that I'm eating.

He's eating, and he gets there, and it's a finger,

and you're like, fuck!

It's a finger!

They've got the girlfriend connected,

chained up between the two trucks.

Do something!

If we shoot him, his foot is gonna come

off that clutch, and that truck is gonna roll!

And he just looks at C. Thomas Howell,

and there's that moment of, is he gonna let her go?

TriStar released "The Hitcher",

and they were a little skittish about the script stuff,

is because in 1984, the last horror movie they released

was "Silent Night Deadly Night".

And that only had a two week run,

and it was protested out of theaters.

So taking a chance on a movie like "The Hitcher",

they saw this script, and they were like

remove the slasher elements.

Figure it out.

"The Hitcher" was in that crossover period

where things were starting to get

a little bit less splattery.

Style, that 80s video style,

was starting to permeate thrillers.

Directed by Robert Harmon,

written by Eric Red,

who also wrote "Near Dark",

which is another example of that stylized

horror movie making.

Where are you from?

Disneyland.

The late great Rutger Hauer.

I could do a complete dissertation

on just how fucking unappreciated he was.

No!

He could have been the head of every horror family ever.

You useless waste.

So good.

Something fantastic in the 1980s

happened where they were like

"Gremlins", "Critters", "Ghoulies".

There are tiny creatures, they are going to take over,

and I'm into it.