80sfear.com – gore, horror and sleaze from the 80s
January 25, 2010 by

Frightfest Glasgow 2010 – a quick preview

So, before normal service is resumed – and since I finally managed to get a ticket & accommodation booked – I thought I’d give my thoughts on the upcoming Frightfest Glasgow event at the end of February. This will be my first Glasgow event, and my first non-August Frightfest as well as my first ever trip to Scotland! So, lots to look forward to, but here’s the movies playing:

Frozen – the new movie from Adam Green, Frightfest regular and director of Hatchet. He’s actually taking a break from filming Hatchet 2 in order to promote this film, which should be fun. The film itself follows a group of people who wind up stranded on a ski lift when the resort shuts down with them still suspended in the air. Looks pretty good, though I have a few doubts about the actions of the characters during the short trailer we saw in August – hopefully it’ll be much better in context.

2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams – Tim Sullivan directs this sequel to his remake of H.G. Lewis’ Two Thousands Maniacs!, with Bill Moseley taking over from Robert Englund as the leader of a group of ghostly hicks looking for revenge over the civil war. The original 2001 Maniacs was gory, silly fun so I expect this to be more of the same. Should go down well with a hardcore crowd.

Stag Night – I don’t know too much about this, other than that the plot synopsis (people trapped in a subway being chased by underground killers) sounds a LOT like either Creep or 70s classic Death Line. Hopefully, it’ll be fun.

A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin – For some reason, despite the being a lot of hype surrounding recent DVD restorations, I’ve never gotten around to watching this 1971 Lucio Fulci giallo. It’s well respected and I’ve been watching quite a lot of giallo recently, so it should be good.

Amer – Again, one I’ve not heard too much about other than the fact that it’s supposedly a new French take on the classic 1970s Italian giallo style. I’ve enjoyed most of the major recent French genre movies, so hopefully this will be equally fun.

[REC] 2 – YES! I managed to miss this at the cinema despite living in Spain (I was in the US during its release :S ) so this will be a great watch on the big screen. Not sure what else to say other than I’m still excited about it despite having seen the trailer and the original many times and this should be the best way to see it.

Splice – Another movie I was glad to see announced, this is the new movie from Vincenzo Natali, the director of Cube. We saw a scene back in August that looked pretty good, and the CGI’s really respectable despite the low budget he normally works with. I’m hoping for another intelligent and complex plot surrounding the genetics themed storyline and hopefully a better performance from Adrien Brody than Dario Argento. The second is that it’s the first ever horror movie from Iceland! Should be a laugh if nothing else, and I’m sure we’ll down a few lagers or whatever either way…

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September 6, 2009 by

More free movies on YouTube

Maybe I’m just a little slow on the uptake, but here goes. Parallel to the recent announcement that YouTube will be trialling paid-for movie rentals in the near future, it came to my attention that they have a page here that lets you stream full movies for free. They’re of variable quality and have the usual idiotic regional restrictions attached, but there’s a wide and varied selection. Movies available to me currently include Slave Of The Cannibal God (a.k.a. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000TZJCNM?ie=UTF8&tag=80sfear-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000TZJCNM, where ex-Bond girl Ursula Andress gets stripped naked and smeared with the putrefied flesh of her long-dead husband), Pigs! (a rare grindhouse feature, covered in the excellent Nightmare USA book), Just Before Dawn, Ghost Galleon (the third movie in the Blind Dead series) and infamous “video nasty” Driller Killer, among the usual public domain titles like House On Haunted Hill and Attack of The Giant Leeches.

It’s worth checking out if you haven’t already, especially as it’s not clear whether this freebie service will continue once the paid-for rentals go live.

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July 23, 2009 by

Thoughts on the new Freddy Krueger

I’m of two minds about the upcoming remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street. On the one hand, the original is a bonafide classic of 80s horror cinema and something that’s held up extremely well with age. However, the franchise really is due for a new makeover, and Freddy deserves a return to his scary boogeyman roots rather than his stand-up comic routines in some of the later sequels. With Freddy vs. Jason‘s much talked-about sequel not appearing any time soon, I don’t see why a reboot is necessarily a bad thing.

(see more, plus pictures from the remake after the jump)

Read the rest of this entry »

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