1980s horror movies – Horror Ghouls

Child’s Play (1988)

Posted on October 4, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

Charles Lee Ray aka The Lakeshore Strangler is a serial killer who is fleeing from the police in Chicago. Police Detective Mike Norris is at his heels, and inside a toy store Norris manages to shoot him. Before dying from the gunshot wound, Ray invokes the power of Damballa, a serpent spirit in Haitian Voodoo, and asks to have his soul transferred into the “Good Guy“ doll nearby. A lightning strikes the building, and Ray now lies lifeless next to the doll. Looks like the serial killer’s murder spree has come to an end…unless perhaps the voodoo spell had some merit? Yeah, we know his spirit has been successfully transferred into the doll, of course we do.

Ray certainly chose his toy wisely, as the Good Guy talking dolls are very popular. And of course also expensive. Karen Barclay, a widow with a six year old son named Andy, struggles to save up money for one. Her friend from work suggests that she can buy a doll from a homeless peddler outside, who’s gotten his hands on one and sells it cheaply. Wonder why. Well, Karen decides to put her morals to the side for this little occasion in order to make her son happy. And of course Andy is over to moon, who is totally captivated by the doll who presents itself as Chucky. While all seems fine and well, the little boy Andy understands little about all the things the doll is saying to him. How could a little kid possibly know that his favorite toy is possessed by the soul of a dead serial killer? And Ray, now aka Chucky, isn’t too happy with his plastic body. He wants a new one…one made out of real flesh and blood.

Child’s Play is the 1988 killer doll film which doesn’t really need much presentation. We all know who Chucky is. The film was directed by Tom Holland, from a screenplay he co-wrote with Don Mancini and John Lafia. It was based on an original script by Mancini, which was first titled Batteries Not Included, then changed into Blood Buddy, and it was more a whodunit story which left the ending ambiguous as to whether it was the doll or the kid who killed people. Well, in the new script there’s no doubt from the very start that the doll is a serial killer, and a new horror star was thus born. The film has since spun several sequels, a reboot, a series, and tons of merchandise. Chucky, whether you like him or not, is one of the most iconic and popular horror film characters that just never seem to die.

The “Good Guy“ dolls were inspired by the actual My Buddy dolls by Hasbro, and you can definitely see the resemblance. In fact, Chucky’s name was originally Buddy in the script, which the writers decided to change into Chucky instead so they didn’t have to worry about Hasbro getting their lawyers involved. Better play it safe, buddy! And Chucky definitely is a blast to watch on screen, in all his practical glory. The doll was controlled by a whole team of nine puppeteers, led by Brock Winkless. Chucky’s mouth was moved via radio control, and in some scenes Chucky was also played by child actors. There’s no doubt that Chucky’s character is one filled with personality, a foul-mouthed killer doll who definitely slashed his place into the horror community, made at a perfect time when cheesiness could so easily fit into an otherwise serious story. Because yeah, the premise in Child’s Play is laughable and sounds schlocky as hell, but it all just, you know, works. The music for the film also fits really well with the electronic/orchestral mix. It was composed by Joseph Renzetti, using mostly electronic music with some orchestral elements. Originally Holland had planned for the film to have a fully orchestral score, but Renzetti thought the electronic soundtrack would be best.

Performances are overall pretty good, especially Brad Dourif who is voicing Chucky and delivers the perfect maniacal and sardonic performance. This, combined with the effects of the doll with its various facial expressions ironically makes Chucky looking more alive than many of the flesh ‘n blood slashers villains from other horror movies. Auditions for the film’s roles were held at the Hollywood United Methodist Church in 1987, where Tom Holland were quick to cast Chris Sarandon for the role of Detective Norris, as he had previously worked with him in his first feature film Fright Night (1985). As for Andy’s role, hundreds of kids were considered, and the role was given to Alex Vincent, despite the boy’s lack of acting experience compared to several of the other kids. The reason? Apparently their hearts melted a little when Alex pretended to forget his lines because he didn’t want to say any curse words in front of his mother. Aw. How cute and innocent. That being said, the performance does leave a little to be desired, especially when he’s supposed to be scared.

I think Child’s Play is a fun 80’s slasher psycho doll movie, one with that certain amount of charm that only the 80’s (and 90’s, for that matter) could produce. It’s cheesy and energetic, and Chucky and his foul-mouthed character is always fun to watch. I also liked the somewhat cheesy twist of involving the lesser known Voodoo spirit Damballa, rather than going for the usual satanic twist of making a deal with the devil.

Fun Fact: when the film was released, a crowd of worried people protested at the main entrance of MGM because they thought the film would “incite violence in children“, and wanted it to be banned. And it actually got banned in Finland for “excessive graphic violence“, a ban that was lifted in the early 2000’s.

Director: Tom Holland
Writers: Don Mancini, John Lafia, Tom Holland
Country & year: USA, 1988
Actors: Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, Alex Vincent, Brad Dourif, Dinah Manoff, Tommy Swerdlow, Jack Colvin, Neil Giuntoli, Juan Ramírez, Alan Wilder
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094862/

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

Posted on October 2, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

In Hellbound: Hellraiser II, we shift our focus more on Kirsty (Ashley Laurence), the daughter we saw in the first film, after she’s been committed to a mental hospital because no one believes her story that her dad and stepmother were killed by a Pinhead and three S&M demons. Happy recovery. Yeah, you wish. Because her doctor, Dr. Channard, is a corrupt sadist (wow, what a shocker) who is interested in this mysterious puzzle box Kirsty is telling about. Warden takes one of the basement patients and places him on the bloody mattress where Julia died and gives him a razor so he can slice himself and the the maggots he sees crawling over his body. As he bleeds all over the mattress, Julia’s skinless body emerges, just like we saw with Frank in the first film, and kills the patient while the doctor is watching. She’s now reborn in full villain-mode. Congratulations.

Channard gets a mute girl, Tiffany, to solve the puzzle box, because she’s obsessed with puzzles. Pinhead and company show up, but instead of taking Tiffany, they take Channard, since he only used Tiffany to open the box for his own desires. Huh. Yes, there are rules here, but who would know. And since he’s already “corrupt” like a mofo, his suffering will be legendary, as Pinhead famously puts it.

Meanwhile, Kirsty sees a vision of a skinless ghoul with the text written in blood behind him on the wall: “please help me, I’m in Hell“. She believes that this is her dad, and when she gets the opportunity, she enters Hell to look for him and save his trapped soul, where she finds herself in an endless labyrinth. From here on, it’s mostly all about the nightmarish and surreal atmosphere that slides in a more what the fuck am I watching kind of movie. Kirsty goes from the one Hell scenario to the next, where she also stumbles upon Uncle Frank who lives through his own personal hell. And no, she never meets the Goblin King, unfortunately.

Hellraiser II is filled with cool ideas and some interesting concepts, such as seeing a quick backstory of Pinhead and how Cenobites are created. And like any birth, it sure looks painful. The one who gets a rebirth is the corrupt doctor, and his monster design is, well, something else. His fingers look like snakes/tentacles with razors and is a way more interesting villain than Uncle Frank ever was. The look of the Hell labyrinth was inspired by the Day and Night woodcut by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher and gives the film a bigger scope than the cramped attic we were stuck in the first film. The gore and prosthetic effects are both first-class and imaginative with even some use of stop-motion. Movie expert Roger Ebert was, of course, not impressed and called out the effect maker (Bob Keen) as a “perverted man“ while giving the film a half-star.

This sequel is not written nor directed by Clive Barker, but instead he worked as a producer and was heavily involved with the story and further concepts that he hadn’t the time or budget to expand in the first film. After Barker got burned-out, the direction job went to Tony Randel, who worked as an editor on the first film while the script was written by Peter Atkins (who later wrote the next two Hellraiser films and Wishmaster). Hellraiser II lands relatively successfully as a direct continuation with some inventive set-pieces, a dose of Lovecraftian, more lore, and of course, more gore.

Director: Tony Randel
Writer: Peter Atkins
Country & year: UK/USA, 1988
Actors: Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, Kenneth Cranham, mogen Boorman, Sean Chapman, William Hope, Doug Bradley, Barbie Wilde, Simon Bamford, Nicholas Vince
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095294/

Hellraiser (1987)

Posted on October 1, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

I must say I felt a little ripped-off (no pun intended) after watching Hellraiser on VHS for the first time back in the ’90s. You have Pinhead on the cover, looking straight through your sorry soul while grinding his teeth, and he’s barely in the movie. Instead, we have Uncle Frank, a random slimeball who gets his flesh ripped apart with hooks and chains when he opens a mysterious puzzle box he bought at an antique shop in Marrocco — but will eventually return, with a boner, thanks to a cheating wife.

Everyone who solves the puzzle box opens a portal to Hell, of some sort, and out comes The Hell Priest himself, aka Pinhead (Doug Bradley) with his three Cenobites, Spencer, Chatter and Butterball, ready to fulfill your deepest desires. But the thing is, those who are “corrupt“ will die a gruesome, painful death (all politicians should be handed a puzzle box each, I would say). Then we have the husband/wife Larry and Julia who moves into the house Frank lived in, a shithole filled with cockroaches. But the worst thing is that Frank’s remains/corpse rots under the attic floor. After Larry cuts himself in a nasty way, his blood drips through the floor and onto the remains of Frank. He then reemerges as a skinless corpse, like a red skeleton from Castlevania.

And then it gets interesting: No, Pinhead doesn’t show up, but hear this — it appears that Julia and Frank had a wild affair (!) and was fucking like there was no tomorrow. The original cut of Hellraiser actually had so much fucking, or “erotism“ to put it in more polite English, that it got an X-rating. And Frank must really have a Master Cock from Fuck Forest and the erection like a grade A pornstar from Dimension XXX, because Julia will do everything to fix this boring loser, even if she has to walk over dead people. So if they’re ever gonna fuck again like they were teenagers, Julia has to lure men to the attic so Frank can feed on their flesh and blood. The poor individual who gets trapped in the crossfire is David’s teenage daughter Kirsty, who already has a strained relationship with her stepmother Julia. If Frank wasn’t already the villain, Julia is probably even worse, and the evil Disney stepmother-looks certainly suit her.

Trivia: Lance Henriksen was first offered to play the role of Frank, but turned it down. This was in his golden era when he still had the luxury to choose n’ pick roles. He later signed up for one of the shitty straight-to-DVD sequels, Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005). Isn’t that funny. Clare Higgings, who portrays the evil stepmother, has never seen the whole film since she hates horror movies, and already after the first ten minutes of its premiere she walked out. She still signed on to be in the sequel, which is way more gory.

Hellraiser is Clive Barker’s creation, from top to toe, his demon baby, based on his own novel The Hellbound Heart. And can you actually believe that the working title for the film was Sadomasochists from Beyond the Grave? Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. The unique look of Pinhead and the Cenobites was inspired by Punk fashion, Catholicism, African fetish sculptures, and by Barker’s visits to the S&M clubs in New York and Amsterdam (mixed by some drug-induced fewer nightmares, if I have to guess).

The limited budget really shows, especially with the animated lightening sparks, which was already dated back then. Clive Barker and some “Greek guy“ (according to Barker himself) made it by hand over a drunk weekend, and…well, that’s good to know. Then there’s the “engineer“ monster that could be something from Dead Space or the later Resident Evil games. And while it looks cool by design, they had no clue how to utilize it and clashes with the dead-serious tone.

Where the movie shines is the practical/gore-effects, and the attic resurrection scene of Frank is a classic moment by itself. The dusty isolated atmosphere in Frank’s house, where we spend most of our time, is filthy and grimy and reeks of bad vibes, cheap perfume and god knows what else. The prosthetic makeup-designs of especially the three Cenobites are flawless and they still look terrifying and intimidating which blends perfectly in with the atmosphere. The main plot itself, with the two sleazy lovebirds, is something I never cared much for. More Pinhead and Cenobites, please.

That said, Hellraiser is an entertaining ’80s gore film with a tasteful blend of horror, S&M and even some nasty torture porn that still manages to rip some new assholes. And it also made a completely unknown British actor, Doug Bradley, into a horror icon as Pinhead, for better and worse.

Writer and director: Clive Barker
Country & year: UK, 1987
Actors: Andrew Robinson, Clare Higgins, Ashley Laurence, Sean Chapman, Oliver Smith, Doug Bradley, Nicholas Vince, Simon Bamford, Grace Kirby
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093177/

The Spider Labyrinth (1988)

Posted on September 22, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

An American researcher named Alan Whitmore is sent to Budapest in order to check out what has happened to Professor Roth who seems to have gone awol. Once arriving in Budapest, Alan meets the attractive guide Genevieve, who takes him to meet the professor. The professor’s wife leads him inside to what appears to be a paranoid and nervous man, someone who may have found out more than he ought to have. Alan plans for a revisit later, only to find that the professor has now been murdered, hanging from the ceiling in a rope that is…laced with cobwebs? Strange…and creepy as hell. Alan, wants the help of his guide Genevieve who is very eager to offer it (and who is not the least bit suspicious at all, of course). He wanders around the streets of Budapest, and sometimes encounter strange locals who aren’t the most welcoming. And more people keep dying. He’s trapped in a web of murder and strange incidents, all seemingly related to some kind of old spider God and a cult worshipping it.

The Spider Labyrinth (Italian title: Il nido del ragno) is an Italian horror film from 1988, directed by Gianfranco Giagni in his feature film debut. And this obscure little film, which was very hard to come by until the recent years, is an oddball that combines giallo with cosmic horror and creature feature. And spiders, mostly of the fun, jittery stop-motion kind.

The Spider Labyrinth is one of those movies where everything surrounding the protagonist just always feels off. I mean, you do of course have the straight-forward key points in the plot, like the pretty love-interest lady who seems to be overtly friendly and is definitely very, very sus. And the paranoid professor who happens to die before revealing something important, and stuff like that. But it’s also the overall scenery and setting, where the protagonist is walking through suspiciously empty streets. There’s more atmosphere than logic, and this makes the entire movie feel a little dream-like. With the old deity-worshipping cult, the movie definitely goes for a bit of a cosmic horror/Lovecraftian vibe as well.

Many of the filming locations are gorgeous to look at, and the practical effects are fun. The puppet and stop motion effects have the needed charm. I also like the strange witchy spider-like vampire woman, whom we see murdering people every now and then, but most of all I was intrigued by the small, black ball that always appears right before someone gets murdered. It makes an icky squelching sound when hitting the floor, and always adds to the already weird, uncanny atmosphere of the whole film. What’s inside those balls, you might wonder? Well, you can take a guess.

The Spider Labyrinth is a bizarre little Italian occult monster flick, heavily relying on its surreal visual style and building up to a totally crazy ending. As mentioned it was for a long time very hard to find, but a few years ago Severin Films picked it up and released it on Blu-ray and DVD. The movie can also now be found on streaming in some places, including Tubi.

Director: Gianfranco Giagni
Writers: Riccardo Aragno, Tonino Cervi, Cesare Frugoni, Gianfranco Manfredi
Original title: Il nido del ragno
Country & year: Italy, 1988
Actors: Roland Wybenga, Paola Rinaldi, Margareta von Krauss, Claudia Muzii, William Berger, Stéphane Audran, Valeriano Santinelli, Massimiliano Pavone
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095728/

Demonwarp (1988)

Posted on August 21, 2026August 21, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

Dad Bill (George Kennedy) and daughter Julie are having a wholesome time in a forest summer house playing board games. Suddenly, they hear some growling outside the front door before a hideous-looking Bigfoot creature storms in and kills Julie. The monster drags her body outside, only with some few lousy scratch marks on her face, while Bill lies knocked out on the floor.

Then we get introduced to our group of teens, played by actors in their mid-twenties, who’s about to spend some summer party time in the house we saw earlier. Bill suddenly shows up with a rifle to warn those damn kids that this place is dangerous! They, of course, don’t believe him, because why should they. But Bill is no bullshitter and sets the record straight as he says:

― There’s a thousand stories about this place… ghosts, and UFO’s, and monsters, and Bigfoot, you name it! They’re all bullshit. I know what’s real. What’s real is what happened to me and Julie, and nobody’s going to tell me any different. Now, if you’ve got any brains between the two of you, you’ll get in that truck and get the hell out of here right now. This place is dangerous!

Oki-doki-mister. Anyway… the first night sets in, we have a cheesy soft-core sex scene, one of the girls is taking a shower, and surprise, surprise: Bigfoot comes in, wreaks some havoc, and kills one of them before he leaves. Next morning the rest of the group head out to the woods to find the main road. Good luck and don’t take any pissing breaks. As schlocky as the film is, I have to give some props to the monster design, made by John Carl Buechler, that is moons apart from the Mick Jagger Bigfoot from Night of the Demon (1980).

But then we also have some side-plots with two young women, Betsy and Tara, who eventually get topless, and a… birdwatcher, only to have some more bodycounts. Fun trivia: One of the topless women, Tara, is Georges Kennedy’s daughter, Shannon Kennedy, who was cast because he wouldn’t be in the film unless his daughter got a small role, and this is the only role she ever played. Better than nothing, as we say. And then zombies, of all things, start to show up. Just what you expected, right? So, where does this thing actually go, you may ask? Oh, it certainly goes somewhere, that I can say for sure, haha…

Look, here’s the thing: the best way to watch Demonwarp is to know little to nothing beforehand. Because as the film progressed, we went into the film’s page on IMDb, scrolled through some of the screenshots, just to be sure if we actually saw the right movie. And, well, haha, we did. The majority of the film is a standard, micro budget almost Z-level monster schlock where the Bigfoot monster is chasing boobs in the local woods, whereas the last thirty minutes is where I’d guess that a drunk and delirious Lucio Fulci came to the set and finished the film. Crazy, retarded fun stuff to watch with pizza and Jack Daniel’s.

Director: Emmett Alston
Writers: John Carl Buechler, Jim Bertges, Bruce Akiyama
Country & year: USA, 1988
Actors: George Kennedy, David Michael O’Neill, Pamela Gilbert, Billy Jayne, Hank Stratton, Colleen McDermott, Michelle Bauer, Shannon Kennedy Sullivan, John Durbin, Jill Marin
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094998/

Jaws 3-D (1983)

Posted on July 31, 2026July 31, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

It’s been some years since the great white sharks terrorized Amity Island, and the son of police chief Brody (Mike) has now grown up and works as a chief engineer at SeaWorld Orlando together with his girlfriend Kathryn, who is a biologist. The park’s main attractions are the new underwater tunnels, which allows people a great view of the undersea life. Sounds fun, right? Well, not so much when a great white shark manages to enter while the park’s lagoon gates are stuck open. No one knows yet, of course, but the park’s dolphins shows signs of distress and are afraid of going out into the lagoon. The first victim is the mechanic who dives into the water to repair the gates, and while the shark has started its feasting, Mike and his girlfriend are not aware of any dangers.

When it becomes clear the mechanic has gone missing, they use a submarine to look for his body, and encounters a great white instead…but it’s not a big one, and they find it’s just a juvenile. In order to get more publicity for the park, it’s decided that this shark should be captured, which of course goes to hell pretty quickly and the shark dies. There’s a reason great whites can’t survive in captivity, and that’s due to their need for continuous movement in order to breathe and stay alive, plus they are known for being under extreme stress in captivity and also refuse to eat. Those creatures are born to be free, period. Then when the corpse of the missing guy is discovered, they realize that he was attacked by a much larger shark than the one they captured (and caused the death of). Out there somewhere is Mommy shark, and we are of course in for more body counts.

Jaws 3-D from 1983, also known as Jaws 3, is the third film in the Jaws franchise. It was directed by Joe Alves. And yeah…this is arguably not really a good movie, but as far as shark movies overall go it’s fairly decent to give a watch, and maybe have some laughs at the same time due to the silly and extremely outdated 3D effects. Yes, it’s one of those 3D-glasses movies where several scenes are designed for these effects, and like most movies utilizing this it looks more laughable than fascinating. Getting some of the actors from the previous movie was also a no-go, as Roy Scheider (who played Police Chief Martin Brody) just laughed at the concept of Jaws 3-D and made it apparent he couldn’t have been talked into doing it. Dennis Quaid, who plays Mike Brody in this film, admitted that he was aggressively using cocaine during the filming and was high “in every frame“. That being said, I think the actors overall did well enough with what they had to play along with.

In many ways it was a good decision to move away from yet another story centered around Amity Island, but while the second installment of the film series kind of tried to keep some of the ominous vibes from the first, we here go into pure B-schlock territory. And I guess you can say that a setting of a marine park works pretty well for something like this, with the goofy vibe and all. Just like in the previous movies, we must not forget to also add in some corporate greed that puts everyone in danger, of course!

Some of the highlights are of course the clunky effects which are made even more laughable in the 3D setting, with the glass-breaking scene being the most hilarious one. How could we go from the outright scary and sinister vibe from the first movie, to this ludicrous schlock..? Well, that’s the power of sequels made from popular movies. In one attempt after the other to recreate some of the magic from the first, we end up getting something that strays further and further from the original’s qualities. Kind of makes me wonder what a Jaws movie would look like if it was re-created inside the Backrooms.

Overall, though, Jaws 3-D is a fun watch when seeing it with the right expectations. Despite getting mostly negative reception and even multiple Golden Raspberry Awards, Worst Picture, Worst Director and Worst Supporting Actor awards, it still managed to become a commercial success. Later on came Jaws: The Revenge in 1987, which kind of pretends that this movie never happened and gives the shark a pure “revenge“ motive. I think it’s fair to say that the Jaws franchise ended with this third installment.

Director: Joe Alves
Writers: Richard Matheson, Carl Gottlieb, Guerdon Trueblood
Country & year: USA, 1983
Actors: Dennis Quaid, Bess Armstrong, Simon MacCorkindale, Louis Gossett Jr., John Putch, Lea Thompson, P.H. Moriarty, Dan Blasko, Liz Morris, Lisa Maurer, Harry Grant, Andy Hansen
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085750/

Alligator (1980)

Posted on July 17, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

We’re in the year 1968, and we see a teenage girl who has gotten herself a baby alligator. Sounds like the perfect pet, right? At least the girl loves the little thing. Her parents, though, are not quite as thrilled. After finding alligator-poo on his clothes, the father flushes the poor baby alligator down the toilet, in agreement with the mother while they plot finding some excuse when their daughter gets back home. A-holes. Well, that’s not the end of baby gator, of course.

Fast forward 12 years later to 1980, body parts are exiting the sewers and getting police detective David Madison involved, a slightly world-weary “tired of all this bullshit“ guy who is still struggling with the the loss of his partner in a botched case in St. Louis, which has given him a reputation of being extremely unlucky for whoever should be assigned as his new partner. And David once again proves to be a “partner-killer“ when the rookie cop Kelly willingly goes with him to check out the sewers, and becomes a gator snack. Oops. David’s still got a long way to go if he wants to beat Chuck Steel out of that department, though.

David, with two recently lost partners, missing locals, and also mysterious dog carcasses appearing in the sewers, finds himself in search of more than just a giant alligator. He teams up with herpetologist Marisa Kendall, who (surprise, surprise!) actually happens to be the baby alligator girl from the opening scene, and they develop some kind of (rather uninteresting) romance. To top it all David’s also got the problem of a receding hairline, which seems to be a big issue for both him a lots of other people for some reason. Apparently is was the actor himself, Robert Forster, who insisted on adding these jokes on behalf of his real-life thinning hair.

So, here we have the creature feature film Alligator from 1980, directed by Lewis Teague (who also made Cat’s Eye) from a screenplay by John Sayles. It was produced independently and released by Group 1 Films, and became somewhat of a box office flop in North America, but became more successful in other territories, and of course, have garnered a cult following since. Now, you might have heard about the “alligators in sewers“ urban legend, based on how people allegedly flushed alligators down the toilets. Yes, they sold these as pets back in the day, with people buying them and probably thinking they looked so cute as babies, and freaking out once they realized that they actually grow…you know, like babies usually do. In 1967 alligators were listed as an endangered species which stopped the sales, but the myths and legends about giant gators surviving in the sewers lived on, and inspired this movie.

And yes, this is a B-horror movie through and through, but as far as creature feature flicks go this one does at least give us a good amount of actual creature scenes. And it really tries to go all the way, and you don’t have to wait ages before something starts happening. Sewer workers are chomped up, a kid gets eaten after falling into a swimming pool, a wedding reception is totally wrecked (don’t worry, those people were just a bunch of rich, arrogant and not-quite-innocent douchebags anyway) with the latter being the most fun scene of them all. The effects are pretty solid, mixing many good old-school practical effects with an actual real-life alligator. The name of the real-life alligator was Morris, and he starred in several other films aside from this one. Last year he passed away from old age at his longtime home, the Colorado Gator Farm. R.I.P. big guy.

Overall, Alligator is one of those creature features that delivers the goods without too much dilly-dallying or uninteresting subplots. There’s a lot of fun to be had here with a campy and solid charm, combining the creature horror with some humor and action.

A direct-to-video sequel called Alligator II: The Mutation was released in 1991, but that one’s got jack shit to do with the original.

Director: Lewis Teague
Writers: John Sayles, Frank Ray Perilli
Country & year: USA, 1980
Actors: Robert Forster, Robin Riker, Michael V. Gazzo, Dean Jagger, Sydney Lassick, Jack Carter, Perry Lang, Henry Silva, Bart Braverman, Morris
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080354/

Communion (1989)

Posted on May 22, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

I am you. And you are me. And we are here Yo. I am the dreamer and you are the dream. Deez nuts.

Whitley Strieber woke up on a December night in 1985 in a little room surrounded by what he calls “nightmare creatures“. A needle was put into the side of his head and he was raped by a machine. He then woke up, again, this time in his bed, as if he just had a wild fewer dream after eating too many mushrooms. Happens to us all. Although Strieber had already, at the time, reached success as a horror writer with The Wolfen and The Hunger (both made into films), his nonfiction Communion: A True Story, based on his bizarre abduction experience, would be the bestseller. The book was released in 1987 and was adapted two years later to the silver screen by schlock filmmaker Philippe Mora from a script by Whitley Strieber himself. Christopher Walken was cast to play Strieber. What could go wrong?

Well, from the get-go, Strieber already acts like an eccentric and unpredictable goofball, and maybe the last person you’d believe was kidnapped by aliens in track pants. No I’m not kidding. Strieber lives in a New York apartment with his wife and son where he writes his books while wearing a wolf mask and cowboy boots with no pants, like the best writers do. Where he hides the cocaine is no one’s business. Whitley’s nightmares starts during a weekend at a remote cabin far in the woods where a bright light shines over the area. No one can explain what happens, and after they head back to New York, Whitley acts more strange and erratic, as if he wasn’t already. After he sees visions and snaps at a Halloween party, Whitley’s wife, Anne, is concerned about his mental state and their marriage, and sends him to a psychiatrist to do some hypnotic regression therapy. And, well, get ready for something really special, where we get to see funny-looking aliens and creatures that could be from the puppet warehouse of Charles Band.

Yes, this is what you could call a weird-ass movie. Whitley Strieber had a friendship with Philippe Mora that went way back to the 1960s, but it would soon be clear that they weren’t much on the same page after all. Mora focused way more on Strieber’s mental collapse, as if he was just gone ko-ko while he tried to balance a normal family life as a frustrated writer. And he didn’t like that, and was not a fan of how Christopher Walken portrayed him. Can’t really blame him, even though Christopher Walken is the highlight here. The film plays more as a humiliation ritual for Strieber, if not a parody of American UFOlogy, where he only comes across like a super pretentious nutcase where even Fox Mulder would roll his eyes. Or maybe that’s just the price for having the director of Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf to make your biopic about getting ass played by aliens.

Christopher Walken got complete freedom to do whatever he wanted with the role and improvise whenever he felt like it. And his performance here can be described as schizophrenic at best. He shows his real reaction by laughing because of how funny the aliens looked. Director Mora kept it in the film as he thought it made it more disturbing. And we laugh as much with him as at him. The scenes with the aliens are pure comedy and bizarro hour where you have the classic cinematic moment of close encounters of the fourth kind, which on paper should be terrifying, traumatic and disturbing but, well…not here. Christopher Walken doesn’t even try to look scared, even when he’s about to get analprobed where he randomly says It looks like you’re gonna sing White Christmas. Yeah, sure. Bruh. Whatever. And if dancing with aliens wasn’t enough, he also sees himself cosplaying as Gomez Addams. Weird, Weird, to quote R. Zegler. Communion is open to endless interpretations, if you even manage to take this seriously.

Director: Philippe Mora
Writer: Whitley Strieber
Country & year: UK/Australia/USA, 1989
Actors: Christopher Walken, Lindsay Crouse, Frances Sternhagen, Andreas Katsulas, Terri Hanauer, Joel Carlson, John Dennis Johnston, DeeDee Rescher, Aileen Fitzpatrick, R.J. Miller
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097100/

The Dead Next Door (1989)

Posted on January 20, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

You could say that this obscure little schlocky zombieflick takes place somewhere between Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, where the dead roams in the midst of the zombie apocalypse, all shot with a Super-8 camera on a microbudget. Some years after the outbreak, we’re in Virginia where a group of soldiers from the “Zombie Squad“ are on a mission to take down a pack in some farmhouse. The squad is led by Raimi, played by the Temu version of Bruce Campbell. And no, your ears aren’t playing tricks on you — the actor (Pete Ferry) is actually dubbed by Bruce Campbell for some reason. Anyway: it isn’t until now that they learn the fact that it isn’t enough to shoot the zombies in the head, or even chop it off with a machete.

— Damn things! Look at it! Why won’t they DIE?! The thing’s head’s off its body fo Christ’s sakes! Doesn’t it know that?!

When one of the soldiers grabs his gun which lies next to a zombie’s severed head, he gets two of his fingers bitten off. And when you’re that dumb, you deserve it. Since there’s no cure yet, the squad has not much other choice than to leave him there. Goodbye soldier, thanks for your service, and God bless. While Dr. Moulsson is working on a serum that can wipe out the zombie virus, the Zombie Squad gets sent to Akron, Ohio to search for the ingredients. Instead they get in trouble with a crazy cult leader named Jim Jones. And he’s even wearing dark glasses. Not subtle at all. And this Jones guy views the zombies as God’s punishment to the humanity. Fred Phelps from Westboro Baptist Church would give a big Amen to that.

Dumb dialogues, amateur acting, campy action and lots of gore n’ delicious fun practical effects is what’s on the menu from this grainy-looking cheesefest. Nothing more, nothing less. The Dead Next Door is written, directed, produced, edited and scored by J.R. Bookwalter, an amateur filmmaker who just loves to make Z-grade backyard-style horror movies, I guess. That said, it’s a little impressive that he managed to film some quick shots of zombies walking the National Mall and near The White House in Washington DC. Hardcore guerrilla filmmaking. He’s also buddy with Sam Raimi, who’s listed as an executive producer under the pseudonym of “The Master Cylinder“. Raimi actually spat his earnings from Evil Dead II (1987) into this. If it was worth it, who knows, but what do you have friends for.

The film can be found next door to Alice, Tubi.

Writer and director: J.R. Bookwalter
Also known as: Mondo Zombie
Country & year: USA, 1989
Actors: Pete Ferry, Bogdan Pecic, Michael Grossi, Jolie Jackunas, Robert Kokai, Floyd Ewing Jr., Roger Graham, Maria Markovic, Jon Killough, Scott Spiegel
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094962/

Possession (1981)

Posted on January 13, 2026January 13, 2026 by HorrorGhouls

We’re in West Berlin during the Cold War era, and a man named Mark returns home after having completed one of his spy missions. Instead of a warm welcome, however, he discovers that his wife, Anna, is ready for a separation and has also started seeing another man. Yay…welcome home. While this is a situation that would make most people lose their minds a little, it appears that both Mark and Anna have lost more than a few marbles already. Prepare for the most unhinged scream-battles and erratic behavior. To top it all, they’ve got a young son named Bob, who has to listen to all their bullshit.

Now, if you thought this was just a regular drama-thriller about a couple going mad during a divorce, don’t worry: you’ll be traveling down more than one rabbithole during the movie’s screentime. As we follow Mark’s first falling-down episode resulting in him having a long drinking spree, he returns to find their young son Bob alone in the apartment eating jam from the fridge, and everything is a mess. According to the child, he’s been alone for days! Yep, the poor kid should’ve been placed in foster care a long time ago. Instead, Mark decides to become the primary caregiver since his soon-to-be ex-wife appears to be so busy fucking around that she can’t even watch over her own child. Mark even decides to visit her so-called loverboy Heinrich, a sleazy, flamboyant new-age dude who lives with his old mom and claims to love everyone. Alright then…Mark decides to show him the “love“ of his own fist before leaving, and then goes home to Anna and gives her a beating too. Did I mention at this point that Bob should’ve been placed in foster care a long time ago..? Jesus Christ…and here’s a not-so-fun fact: the scene with Bob being alone was actually directly inspired by the director’s own divorce where he found his five year old son alone in the apartment with jam smeared all over this face, as his ex-wife had left him alone for several hours.

Now, if you thought at this point that this movie is a thriller with a fucked-up love triangle involving some fucked up people, you’d be wrong again. Because Anna still has her secrets, and not even loverboy Heinrich has a clue what she’s up to most of the time. Mark decides to hire a private detective to find out where Anna is going, and at an address located in a derelict apartment building she’s having another secret…one that looks like it escaped the set of some kind of Lovecraftian sci-fi horror movie and got itself tangled up in a messed-up relationship drama instead.

Possession is a psychological horror drama film from 1981, directed by Andrzej Żuławski and co-written with Frederic Tuten. It was an international co-production between France and West Germany, filmed in West Berlin in 1980. Żuławski’s idea for the film came during his own divorce, which was apparently a very painful one, and he was in a deep depression while working on the script. And yeah…it’s easy to see that a lot of the scenes must indeed be inspired by a difficult breakup, where a life is shattered into pieces and family relations are forever changed. There’s also some metaphors regarding the Cold War-era West Berlin, with the wall still present and we see it a lot during this film, providing an excellent symbol of how something once connected is now completely separated. You could probably not choose a better location for a split-up movie like this.

Possession is without a doubt one of those movies where you’ll often find yourself questioning what actually happens, and what is the result of the character’s shattered mind. And there’s no doubt that the performances here are really out of this world, with so much unhinged insanity that even Jack’s performance in The Shining is rivaled. Mark (played by Sam Neill) and Anna (played by Isabelle Adjani) are doing these performances so well that I can easily imagine that they would have been completely exhausted afterwards. Apparently, it was in fact very emotionally exhausting for Adjani, and during an interview she admitted that it had taken her “several years to recover“ from her performance in the film. It was even rumored that she had an attempted suicide after the filming was over, something Żuławski later confirmed to be true. Yikes! And while Sam Neill didn’t have too much lasting trauma from the experience, he said that I think I only just escaped that film with my sanity barely intact…

Naturally, it didn’t take long after its release until the movie got banned in the UK as one of those beloved video nasties, and in the US it was heavily edited as an 81-minute version (the original version is 2 hours and 4 minutes). It also didn’t get very positive reception, but has later gained a cult following.

While this movie’s most famous scene is “that subway scene“, I’d have to say that I think there are a lot of “that scene“ moments here. Carlo Rambaldi, an Italian special effects artists who also made the animatronic head in Alien, assisted in the creation of the creature that’s featured in the film which does of course look pretty great, and while I already knew about the creature/monster before watching the film, I was really not prepared for all the frenzied hysteria that is all over the place! If I were to even try making a summarized version of all the craziness and metaphors (both the obvious ones and the ones I perceived) I’d probably be writing about this movie until next year. Possession is one of those rare movies that do not only have a story about mad people, the film itself actually feels mad! We’re all mad here, as the Cheshire cat would’ve said. So I’ll stop here, and simply say that If you want something unpredictable and totally nuts, give this one a watch!

End note: Possession is a movie that was a rare thing to come across in the time after its release, at least in its uncut form. It wasn’t until much later that you could get your hands on it. It’s gotten several DVD and Blu-ray releases, and is also available now on several streaming sites. In 2024 there was also an Indonesian remake of the film called Possession: Kerasukan, and there’s also been talk about an American remake with Parker Finn (Smile and Smile 2) as the director.

Director: Andrzej Zulawski
Writers: Andrzej Zulawski, Frederic Tuten
Country & year: France/West Germany, 1981
Actors: Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Margit Carstensen, Heinz Bennent, Johanna Hofer, Carl Duering, Shaun Lawton, Michael Hogben, Maximilian Rüthlein, Thomas Frey, Leslie Malton, Gerd Neubert
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082933/