Tag: serial killers
Predating Full Moon releases like Killjoy by several years, Embalmer was one of the earliest of the "urban horror" films of the '90s. The movie brings to life a supposed urban legend of "Undertaker Zach", a killer so vicious that he inspired a Lizzie Borden-like hop scotch rhyme:
Tell you...
Some movies have to be seen to be believed, and while I wouldn't ordinarily recommend a film as bad as Ax 'Em, someone else must feel my pain. In fact, I think that every household in the world should own this movie so that the next time you see...
The antithesis of Part 3, the two black characters A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 -- Sheila (Toy Newkirk) and Roland (Ken Sagoes, pressing his luck by returning for the sequel) -- die, and fairly early on at that. Newkirk's demise does allow for one of Freddy's more memorable...
The answer to the titular question is most certainly "no," but while Do You Wanna Know a Secret is an utterly pitiful and derivative slasher whose main draw is Joey Lawrence going through some sort of Jean-Claude Van Damme phase, it actually has some interesting racial overtones. The story finds...
The Quiroz Brothers have unleashed a string of mediocre-at-best horror cheapies over the past few years, but I'll give them credit for one thing: each one has been better than the last. Of course, when you start out with Hood of the Living Dead, there's little place to go...
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...
This little independent thriller has only one black actor, but he's the featured star -- sort of the cinematic version of Simi Valley electing a black mayor. Jeff Hollins plays Carl, a stereotypically burnt-out ex-cop who's called back for "one last case." He'd quit the homicide beat after accidentally...
An above-average direct-to-video urban slasher, Cutthroat Alley is basically Scream in the 'Hood. It borrows liberally from the Wes Craven flick, but what it lacks in originality it makes up for in direction, writing and production value (everything's relative here, folks). The story is a cohesive whodunit with no...
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. That's the best way to approach Creepin', a low-budget, low-brow horror spoof along the lines of Scary Movie that isn't "good" so much as it is "not as bad as" 90% of other cheapie, direct-to-video horror films, particularly...
The first segment of this made-for-cable horror anthology from John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper, "The Gas Station," stands out not only as the best of the three tales, but also the only one relevant to this website (fancy that). This little chiller is notable as one of the very...
