Tag: 1980s
The artsy-fartsy title of In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro obscures what is in fact a rampaging animal-fest that should more accurately be called Night of the Primates, or perhaps Red-Assed Terror. The plot boils down to two words: killer baboons. It's a fictionalized account of a true-life 1984 African...
The little train wreck that could, Black Devil Doll from Hell has gained a level of underground infamy in horror circles, thanks to its ridiculously low production values and scandalous content. It was filmed -- or rather, "videoed" -- in 1984, long before digital video cameras made low-budget, shot-on-video...
Ah, the '80s. How could anyone forget the wacky trends of the era: Izod shirts, Rubiks Cubes, ALF and, of course, voodoo. How fondly I recall Saturday nights with the family gathered around the campfire, Grandpa gutting a virgin, Aunt Martha leading the zombies in a three-part round of...
In the hindsight of DVD release-dom, James Earl Jones receives top-billing in this cast of C-grade stars, but as for the movie itself, he’s relegated to supporting status to Martin "Cobra Kai" Kove of Karate Kid fame and Lydia "Too Close for Comfort" Cornell. Why do Darth Vader like...
This cheesy '80s monster movie stands out for two reasons: 1) It's directed by Tim Kincaid, who helmed the famously awful Robot Holocaust, which was parodied on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (He previously directed gay porn. Look it up.), and 2) It one of the rare horror films of...
The third of the three tales in this Stephen King-George Romero-penned anthology, "The Hitchhiker," is probably the most memorable (although the blob thingee in "The Raft" isn't bad) and features black character actor Tom Wright as the, um...oh yeah, hitchhiker. He's accidentally run over by a philandering woman (Lois...
Day of the Dead is generally considered the lesser (lessest?) of George Romero's "Dead trilogy" -- which technically is now up to six films -- and with good reason. While not a bad movie, its pace is about that of a Romero zombie. Until the last 15 minutes of the...
S. Torriano Berry, director of the early "urban horror" film The Embalmer and member of the Black Horror Movie Hall of Fame, had previously written and directed an African-American Twilight Zone of sorts in the mid-'80s, entitled The Black Beyond. While I don't think it was seen on TV...
One of the most energetic, entertaining and Hollywood-friendly films of the '70s/'80s Italian horror Renaissance, Demons is also one of the few to feature major black roles, in this case a pimp (Bobby Rhodes) and a hooker (the redundantly named Geretta Geretta). How refreshing! It's good to know that...
From Jesus Franco, sleazy horror icon and dubiously talented nutcase, the man who brought you Diamonds of Kilimandjaro (which used some of the same cast, including Aline Mess as a perpetually topless cannibal priestess), comes Devil Hunter, a film that manages to tap into race exploitation, sex exploitation, cannibal...
