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Killer Klowns from Outer Space
: essential video:What's completely and utterly baffling about Killer Klowns is not the plot--that's rather tidily summed up by the title--but the fact that it got made at all. According to the filmmakers, (the Chiodo brothers: Charles, Edward, and Stephen) all it took to convince the studio was a one-page treatment and a picture of a clown holding a gun. It boggles the mind. Anyway, some killer Klowns descend from outer space and start wrapping their hapless victims in cotton candy for later consumption. Debbie and Mike suspect something's amiss, but who will ...
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Island of Lost Souls
: :When you've got Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi, how can you go wrong? Shipwreck victim Edward Parker (Richard Arlen) is stranded on an island run by the mysterious Dr. Moreau (Laughton). Moreau is hospitable enough, but the jungle is full of menacing shapes--and what about those ominous references to the House of Pain? Parker gradually learns of Moreau's unholy experiments and worries that he'll never escape. Though it has aged a bit, Island of Lost Souls is surprisingly spine-tingling, particularly the horrifying climax. Light and shadows are used especially well--occasionally, Moreau speaks with his ...
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Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice
: :When you've got Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi, how can you go wrong? Shipwreck victim Edward Parker (Richard Arlen) is stranded on an island run by the mysterious Dr. Moreau (Laughton). Moreau is hospitable enough, but the jungle is full of menacing shapes--and what about those ominous references to the House of Pain? Parker gradually learns of Moreau's unholy experiments and worries that he'll never escape. Though it has aged a bit, Island of Lost Souls is surprisingly spine-tingling, particularly the horrifying climax. Light and shadows are used especially well--occasionally, Moreau speaks with his ...
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Bad Taste
: :Could a title be any more direct? New Zealand maverick Peter Jackson made a splash (well, more of a splatter) with this film debut, a slapstick gross-out comedy about an alien fast-food franchise that turns a small town into a cheap source of meat. All that stands in the extraterrestrials' way is the Alien Investigation Defense Service (yes, it's a tasteless gag), a bunch of would-be Rambos who take on the aliens with axes, rocket launchers, and chainsaws. Jackson mines vomit jokes, dismembered corpses, and brain-spattering gore for over-the-top laughs and succeeds with ...
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Dawn of the Dead
: :George Romero's 1978 follow-up to his classic Night of the Living Dead is quite terrifying and gory (those zombies do like the taste of living flesh). But in its own way, it is just as comically satiric as the first film in its take on contemporary values. This time, we follow the fortunes of four people who lock themselves inside a shopping mall to get away from the marauding dead and who then immerse themselves in unabashed consumerism, taking what they want from an array of clothing and jewelry shops, making gourmet meals, ...
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Mistress Frankenstein
: :George Romero's 1978 follow-up to his classic Night of the Living Dead is quite terrifying and gory (those zombies do like the taste of living flesh). But in its own way, it is just as comically satiric as the first film in its take on contemporary values. This time, we follow the fortunes of four people who lock themselves inside a shopping mall to get away from the marauding dead and who then immerse themselves in unabashed consumerism, taking what they want from an array of clothing and jewelry shops, making gourmet meals, ...
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Fly (1950)
:Description:A brilliant scientist (Al 'David' Hedison) becomes obsessed with perfecting a device that can transmit matter from one location to another. Successful in his initial tests, he decides to experiment using a human being¿himself. But an ordinary house fly also makes the journey with him, and when they emerge at the other end, both creatures have been terribly changed. This is the chilling story of a man fighting to retain his humanity, and a desperate woman's attempt to save the man she loves. Vincent Price and Patricia Owens co-star. :A dashing scientist's foolhardy ...
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The Hunger
: :Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie are rich, beautiful, and oh-so chic as denizens of the night. Dressed in sleek outfits and stylish sunglasses, they haunt rock & roll clubs on the prowl for young blood, whom they bring home to their impossibly luxurious mansion for a late-night snack. Being a vampire never looked more sexy, but there's a price: Bowie starts to age so fast he wrinkles up in the waiting room of a doctor's (Susan Sarandon) office. The agelessly elegant Deneuve, evoking Delphine Seyrig's Countess Bathory from Daughters of Darkness, is perfectly ...
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Texas Chainsaw Massacre
: essential video:This sensational, extremely influential, 1974 low-budget horror movie directed by Tobe Hooper (Poltergeist, Lifeforce, Salem's Lot), may be notorious for its title, but it's also a damn fine piece of moviemaking. And it's blood-curdling scary, too. Loosely based on the true crimes of Ed Gein (also a partial inspiration for Psycho), the original Jeffrey Dahmer, Texas Chainsaw Massacre follows a group of teenagers who pick up a hitchhiker and wind up in a backwoods horror chamber where they're held captive, tortured, chopped up, and impaled on meat hooks by a demented ...
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Night of Living Dead (1968) (B&W)
: essential video:We can hardly imagine how shocking this film was when it first broke into the film scene in 1968. There's never been anything quite like it again, though there have been numerous pale imitations. Part of the terror lies in the fact that it is shot in such a raw and unadorned fashion that it feels like a home movie, and is all the more authentic because of that. It draws us into its world gradually, content to establish a merely spooky atmosphere before leading us through a horrifically logical progression ...
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