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Next VHS off the pile was the 1988 slasher Party Line. I certainly recalled the coverbox, but never got to it back in the day because it was one of a SLEW of titles that almost seemed interchangeable. Let's pick up the phone and call! I hear it's private, confidential, one-on-one and discreet! Crazy sibling serial killers Seth (Leif Garrett) & Angelina (Greta Blackburn) cruise telephone chat lines for victims, while hothead detective Dan (Richard Hatch - the Battlestar one, not the gay Survivor one) remains one body behind. Party Line was amusing, but this was admittedly not top-tie ..read more

The next film in the Guide is perhaps one of the most recognized B-movies in existence, and yet one I had never seen - Joseph Green's 1962 movie The Brain That Wouldn't Die. I, and I am sure you, at least know the iconic image of actress Virginia Leith's head in a tray hooked up to various amounts of rigging and equipment. I feel I must have seen the MST3K episode at some point, but it was so long ago now, who knows? After his girlfriend Jan (Leith) is decapitated in a road accident, a maverick surgeon Dr. Cortner (Jason Evers) keeps her head alive using his new experimental transplant pro ..read more

The next VHS on the pile was Brian Thomas Jones' 1988 flick The Rejuvenator. This was a movie I'm kind of shocked I never got to because the coverbox was omnipresent during my youth. Let's see what I missed out on... A doctor (John MacKay) looking to reverse the aging process finds a willing test subject in wealthy over-the-hill actress Elizabeth Warren (Vivian Lanko, not the US Senator). As you would expect, things go awry. With experimental treatments really hitting the public eye in the eighties there were a glut of B-movies about mad scientist's work spiralling out of control. Howev ..read more

I just wanted to post about something really cool I discovered recently. I think a few sites wrote about this last year, but I didn't hear about until a friend of mine told me about a treasure trove of unproduced movie scripts over at archive.org. So legend has it that circa 1977, John Carpenter took a job writing a script for a project called Prometheus Crisis. This screenplay, which was later called Meltdown, is essentially "Halloween in a nuclear power plant". This script is fascinating for a few reasons. If you read it (you can find it here), you can see elements that would later ..read more

The next title in the Guide is one of the more infamous and possibly surprising I'd never seen up until this point; Ulli Lommel's The Boogeyman. I mean, I was aware of the coverbox of this and its 1982 sequel to be sure, but I guess it just slipped through the cracks for two reasons. First, there was the dull-as-dirt 2005 version that I probably incorrectly assumed was a remake, and second my actual introduction to Lommel was through his shit parade of direct-to-video serial killer flicks in the mid 2000s. Neither of these occurrences incentivized me to check out the original 1980 one until ..read more

Next up in the Guide was Don Keeslar's 1978 movie Bog. I had no previous knowledge of this movie, but wagered I knew what to expect, as everything by appearance screamed Z-grade. But hey, maybe I'd be lucky and get something orbiting the oeuvre of Don Dohler. An aquatic prehistoric beast is awoken by fisherman using dynamite and starts to pick off the townsfolk. Sadly, Bog was a bore. It kind of plays like a PG version of Humanoids From The Deep, where the beast is killing dudes and using the ladies to lay its eggs. Although, that is merely heresay, as absolutely none of it is onscreen ..read more

To all those who came here from the event or Storm Crow's FB page, welcome! I am Jay, one half of the horror trivia quizmasters and this is my humble blog. Here's the selected list of titles mentioned at the last event. Click on the titles to be redirected to their Imdb listing. Horror Trivia Night happens at Storm Crow Manor in Toronto. If you're in the area, come on down! Register here. If you're not local, we do occasionally stream the event on @ruemorguemag Instagram. Street Trash (1987) Cabin Fever (2002) Watcher (2022) The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)  House of the Long Shadow ..read more

As it turns out, I was unable to track down the 1972 version of Bluebeard so I'll have to circle back to that at a later date. In its stead, I moved onto Robert Wise's 1945 film The Body Snatcher. I'd never heard of it before reading of it in the Guide, but I had a good feeling. In 1830's Edinburgh, a doctor (Henry Daniell) and his new assistant (Russell Wade) look to shady cabman John Gray (Boris Karloff) to supply them with increasingly fresh cadavers for their medical experiments. Yeah, The Body Snatcher was a delight. I'm surprised people don't talk about this one more, because it is ..read more

Today's VHS is another Vestron title, this one from 1990, called simply, Fear. No, not the one where Marky Mark fingers Reese Witherspoon, or the one with the tree dude, but one I do recall from my video store days. I never partook, likely because it looked like a slew of other titles that were released around this time, but more on that later... Psychic Cayce (Ally Sheedy) uses her powers to help track down violent criminals, but things get dangerous when she crosses paths with a serial killer with the same gifts. Like last week's title Hider in the House, this movie was also a casualt ..read more