Update for 23 January 2012...

We have been hard at work on a new issue, which will be Issue #11: The Cinema Wasteland Edition.  This will be out by the upcoming Cinema Wasteland Convention.  You can read more about that here... www.cinemawasteland.com    That is a great place to gather new readers.  Issue #11 will be much larger than the regular issues, approximately 10 to 30 pages.
I got an email from some guy claiming to be able to get this zine into "every major book outlet in the US".  All bullshit sensors immediately go into high gear because no such place exists for fanzines anymore, but I opted to let this play out.  I replied, with excitement, about how much I appreciated his help.  He wrote back and asked for my phone number so we could discuss this.  He called (from a blocked number) and informed me that his fee was one thousand dollars and that he knew it was a lot of money but if I wired him the money that day, Crimson Screens would be in "every major book outlet in the United States!"  I said, "well shit, how can I pass that up?  let me call my accountant.  What's your number so I can call you back?"  He has some excuses about being in and out of the office and how it would be easier to call me back when he had the time, "you know, time is money, I can't be waiting around for calls" (lol).  So I said, "give me an hour or two to get this figured out and call me back and i'll the get the info on where to wire it to".  That guy called 26 times!  I was born at night, but not last night....
There is a lot of solid video product coming out in February, so we will have reviews of all of that, plus other things we have aquired since issue #10.
A few people have written and asked about placing adds.  We will not be printing adds.  There is too little space to use it by printing adds for bootleg DVD companies.
Issue #11 will have two new contributors.
More updates soon....

Update for January 2012...

Hello! 

The two newest issues (#9 and #10) of Crimson Screens Fanzine are now available!  Would you like a copy?  If you do, then email me your address!!!
crimsonscreens@gmail.com

Update For The Last 3.5 Months...

Hello!

I haven't updated this is forever, but I have a couple good reasons...

There is a new issue, #9, of Crimson Screens available.  This one is four pages and is the same format as always.  It's a mixed issue, with a good mix of horror and obscure action titles.  I have been mailing them out on my free time and am about halfway through my mailing list.  If you aren't on my mailing list, then email me your address and you will be added.  Issues of Crimson Screens are free.  If you do a fanzine/newsletter/whatever, then let me know.  I love to help spread the word about other zines.
Also, work on the Crimson Screens Book is getting closer and closer to being complete.  I have added a couple other writers, so the perspective will be a little more varied.  There will also be chapters on long gone video stores and theaters from my area of the world (Cleveland/Northeast Ohio).  I will post updates on this as they happen.  Printing this thing will not be cheap, so hopefully there are no financial pitfalls that force me to dip into the savings for this.

There have been a ton of solid DVD releases in the last few months.  A few of them would be:

555- from Massacre Video- SOV horror from the late 80's about a mad slasher.  Known more for its box art than the actual movie itself, its a mixed bag of bad acting and extreme gore.  It's not the best movie, but it is watchable and certainly more entertaining than current DTV fare.

Don't Open Till Christmas- special edition DVD- remastered print of the great Christmas time slasher movie.  Unlike other similar movies, santa gets killed here instead of him doing the killing.  I have always enjoyed this one since the fun days of VHS and the presentation is superb.  With a lot of well done special features.

Bereavement- a prequel to Malevolence.  I hated this on the first viewing.  I guess I went into it thinking it would be something else.  The movie is very good, with some gore and a lot of suspense and demented characters.

Chromeskull: Laid To Rest 2- the original Laid To Rest was a surprise slasher hit.  This one kind of drops the ball by explaining too much and having some pretty dopey characters.  As in the other one, there is an abundance of gore.  It's all very well done too, with no CGI, that I can tell.  While not as great movie, you could certainly do worse.

Machete Maidens Unleashed- fantastic documentary about Filipino horror and exploitation movies.  You can't go wrong with this title.  Made by the same people who did the excellent Not Quite Hollywood movie.

The Exterminator- Blu Ray- my favorite exploitation movie, uncut, looks amazing and the commentary is a must hear.  The best release of 2012, imo.

I have thought about contacting people who made a lot of the original horror fanzines, to try and do a "collection book", which would be a collection of all of the issues.  I know this is a big task and I have already failed once at this, but I'm in a better position in life now to attempt this project, so if you are reading this and once published your own horror fanzine, please get in touch!

More soon!

Crimson Screens review on Lunchmeat VHS blog and more news!

Hello! 
A while back, I sent a  copy of #7 to Lunchmeat, not necessarily to review, but to read because they cover a lot of the same things that I do and we both have a love for VHS.  Luckily, they liked it and took the time to write some nice words about it on their blog.  You can read the blog here...  http://www.lunchmeatvhs.com/blog/vhs-action-flicks-get-some-love-in-crimson-screens/

Also, issue #8 is still available.  If you want a copy, just email me: crimsonscreens@gmail.com

I started work on a book that I will be publishing.  This whole writing thing has helped me through some hard time and recently it has been helping me through some health issues.  I have always been a fan of review books like the Psychotronic books, The Splatter Movie Review books, Terror On Tape and other similar titles, so I figured why not give something like that a try.  There will be a lot of reviews, but it won't be a straight review book.  I am going to include lots of stories that fit in with the movies I review.  I have some good stories about collecting, video stores, theatres and more.  I will post more info about this as the process progresses. 

Crimson Screens #8... Out Now!!!

Hello!  The newest issue of Crimson Screens is out now!  Issue #8 has reviews, opinions, more reviews and thoughts on collecting.  There is also a story about an old video store that I used to frequent.  Email me your address for a free issue: crimsonscreens@gmail.com

New issue of Crimson Screens.... Out Now!!!

Issue #7 of Crimson Screens is out now.  It's a bit longer than the usual newsletter format and it is still free. So if you would like a copy, get me your address and you will receive one.
It is the action issue, with a lot of reviews and talk about 80's action icons like Reb Brown, Michael Dudikoff and Steve James.
crimsonscreens@gmail.com

Quick Reviews...

Unfortunuately, work and real life obligations have been cutting into my movie time, so I haven;t too much time to spend on movies lately.  Luckily, things will be slowing down soon, so I will be back in action soon enough.  Until then...

Bad Girls Dormitory
This opens with a few scenes of various girls getting set up and arrested for prostitution and drugs.  I thought those scenes were well done, but the movie quickly loses steam.  The girls are sent to a juvenile detention center, where they fight, shower, eat and have sex with the guards.  There is a whole lot of nothing going on in this movie.  The acting is prety bad, but not unwatchably bad, if that makes sense.  Some of the guards suck too.  The guards in other women-in-prison movies are tough or memorable.  The ones here really can't even be convincingly creepy.  There is an eventual shoot out that end the movie, but it's a long wait for little to no pay off.  Pass on this and get director Tim Kincaid's far superior Riot On 42nd Street. 

Scream 4
The newest sequel of one of the most annoying and "hip" horror franchises.  Many years after the fact, the main character from the other movies returns home for a book signing and before you know it, someone is dressed up as the killer and killing off the cast.  I hated the others in this series and didn't care to see this, but it was playing at the drive in and if I was going to see it, it would certainly have to be at the drive in.  This was a pretty average movie.  There is no suspense and zero concern as to wether or not certain characters die.  I thought slasher movies were supposed to have cool gore set pieces, but apparently not.  We get run of the mill stabbing scenes and a brief glimpse of a dismeboweled person, but it's not enough to save this movie.  I hated how they go out of the way to use modern devices like webcams and texting.  What if she didn't reply to a text from the killer?  The movie would have ended 10 minutes in.  I wish she hadn't answered that text. 
Btw, Macauly Culkin's other brother looks creepy and someone should cast him in better roles than this. 

He Knows You're Alone
Very early entry slasher movie about someone who is killing off soon to be married women.  Unlike the movies that soon followed, this one focuses more on suspense and wonder than gore.  I say it work, as the movie was fast paces and creepy throughout.  This is very well acted.  Also, the ending wasn't a let down at all.  A slasher classic well worth seeking out. 

Great White
This infamous Italian Jaws clone is definitely worth seeking out.  By Jaws clone, I mean the closet possible thing to remaking Jaws, even stealing lines, character motivations, scenes and ideas.  Upon release, the makers of Great White were promptly sued by Universal, assuring that this would never ever be released or distributed stateside.  The plot is almost exactly the same as Jaws, but despite being a shameless rip off, this is a very watchable movie.  The acting here is suprisingly adept and the pace is fast, with enough shark action to please fans of this type of movie.  The shark effects are pretty shoddy and lame but it doens't ruin the movie.  Worth a look! 

Update and some quick reviews...

Well, the last month or so has been incredibly busy and I haven't got to watch nearly as many movies as I would have liked to.  Luckily, last week slowed down a lot and I got to catch up, so you can read about that in a bit.  But first...
Cinema Wasteland was last weekend.  As usual, it was a great time.  They had a Cannibal Holocaust cast reunion, which was a big deal to many.  Stupid Robert Kerman was a cancel though.  William Forsythe was supposed to be there but he got casted in Boardwalk Empire, so he wasn't either.  That guy is a blast and I hope he shows up at future shows. 
I did pick up a lot of new movies.  You will be able to read about some of them in this update and in future updates. 
Nothing beats spending a weekend with like-minded individuals.  I am already looking forward to the next show, this coming fall. 

As I mentioned, I did pick up a lot of new titles at Cinema Wasteland.  There will be full reviews for select titles but for now...

Deadly Eyes- aka The Rats- this is a Canadian made movie about giant rats.  You see, a health inspector discovers that a corn shipment has been laced with steroids.  She demands that it be destroyed.  It does get destroyed, but not before rats eat it and grow to giant proportions!  The movie is off to a quick start with a baby being eaten by rats and other random peoeple being attacked.  About halfway through, the pace slows way down and the plot develops.  Just as things start to get boring, there are two fantastic set pieces that comprise the end, where the rats attack a movie theater packed with people and a subway station.  This was highly enjoyable and I recommend that you check it out. 

Blood Diner- a blend of dark humor and gore about two weirdo brothers who revive their dead uncle and open a diner where they kill people and collect parts of their victims and serve the left over peices to their customers.  This is one of the more well known, and remembered, late 80's gore comedies.  The plotline is completely ridiculous and the acting is terrible, but the movie has a lot of memorable gore and general wackiness that has helped it build a large following over the years.  I watched this numerous times on VHS long ago, but it didn't hold up to my memories of it.  It wasn't great, but is still worth a look if you haven't seen it. 

The Mutilator- another 80's slasher movie about a disgrunutled man who kills off a group of kids on their Fall Break.  There are some fantastic splatter setpieces here.  Someone is killed with an outboard motor, with blood spraying all over the place.  Someone else is killed with a pitchfork and pinned to a door.  And in a scene that makes women cringe, a woman is killed with a fishing gaffe up her... well, you know!  Haha!  The acting is pretty weak, but I think the actors did an OK job with what they had to work with.  There is minimal suspense too.  By the time this one came out, a lot of the suspense and mystery of the slasher genre had been completely replaced by out of control gore, which was good and bad (depends who you ask, I guess).  Eventually, we find out who the killer is and the final minutes are a full force assault of blood and gore, as the killer and the survivors battle it out.  The Mutilator was often remembered for it's VHS artwork and it's gore, and those are the two things that I would say to check it out for. 

The Creature From Black Lake- this is a great, mostly forgotten Bigfoot based movie from 1976.  Two students convince their anthropology professor to take them to the south to search for a Bigfoot.  The professor makes a point in saying how there is no record of a Bigfoot attacking a human being.  Well, that little speech of his is intercut with a scene of a Bigfoot attacking two trappers on a boat.  Haha!  Eventually the boys head south and meet up with people who have seen the Bigfoot.  This is a great movie.  It is rated PG, so don't come in expecting Night Of The Demon levels of Bigfoot gore.  There are some suspenseful moments of the Bigfoot watching people as they wander closer to him.  The acting is also solid, with all of the characters being believeable.  Even the actors who play the hillbillies are good, which is rare, because hillbillies are always over acted to the point of them being cartoonish.  Likeable characters and some solid suspense make this a definite recommend. 

More soon...

Action Jackson...

Lately, I have been revisiting a lot of my old favorite action movies.  I have boxes of titles on VHS, lots of it purchased again on DVD.  It's easy to sit around and be all nostalgic about the glory days of VHS and the epic amount of time that I spent discovering movies.  I'd hate to be the type that sits around talking about how great the past was and how everything sucks now, but man, those were fun times. 
Action Jackson was always a VHS favorite of mine.  It's not as gritty or bloody as a lot of the action movies of the time.  In fact, some of it is pretty polished.  Fuck it though, it's a prime example of what we like here at Crimson Screens. 
Action Jackson (Carl Weathers) has been demoted to sergeant because of his escapades as a policeman in Detroit.  Now he has an easy desk job, given to him as a punishment for sending the lead bad guys (Craig T. Nelson- who always excells when he plays a shitbag) son to jail.  Action Jackson doesn't really even seem to mind his new job.  He stumbles onto a string of murders that tie in with the main bad guys business and thinks quickly spiral out of control.
Even though movie seems a bit polished, there is still a good amount of sleaze lurking beneath the surface.  There is a subplot about hookers who are strung out on heroin, a dirty hotel owner, lots of fist fights and a great car chase, where pretty much everything around the car chase gets blown up or destroyed. 
We eventually venture into the home of the Craig T. Nelson character and his butler is played by Nicholas Worth.  Nicholas Worth!  Don't Answer The Phone Nicholas Worth!  It's odd to see him as a quiet, subdued butler here, but it works and he adds a little touch of creepiness to the movie. 
Action Jackson was directed by Craig R. Baxley.  "Who is that?", you ask.  Well, look at this string of movies he directed... Action Jackson into I Come In Peace into Stone Cold.  WTF?!?!?!?!  That right there is a trifecta of solid action movies, all underrated.  A friend and I always talk about the greatness of I Come In Peace and how it is a lost action classic, which it is, and how it has been forgotten by time.  I wrote about Stone Cold earlier this month, it's gold too.  It boggles the mind that a director could direct three solid action movies and not be mentioned at the same time as the "big names" of that time period.  Fuck it though, you would be doing yourself a huge disservice by not checking out the movies mentioned in this post.  Craig R. Baxley also was a stunt coordinator on the A-Team TV series.  The A-Team was a great show, right?  I think it was.  I don't think I could ever sit down and watch an entire day of a season of the A-Team but it's great stuff four or five episodes at a time.  I recently watched an episode that had a guest role from Yaphet Kotto.  Nothing against the A-Team, which I love, but I had to stop watching after that episode and watch Truck Turner again.  Yaphet Kotto is at his best in that movie. 
Anyway, enough rambling, Action Jackson is a way above average action movie, filled with good acting, a great supporting cast and action scenes where no one is safe.  Highly recommended! 

Chain Of Command...

They don't make action stars like Michael Dudikoff anymore.  The man starred in many 80's and 90's action movies, many involving ninjas or the martial arts.  Yes, most of them were low budget but it is almost a non point.  Many of them were just as good, if not better, than the big screen offerings of the day.

Chain Of Command is about an "advisor" for an oil conglomerate.  The oil refinery that he works on is taken over by terrorists and almost everyone is killed.  He investigates a little bit and end up joining forces with bad guys who are against the terrorists.  Except the terrorists are really terrorists and the bad guys aren't even bad guys.  It's not as confusing as it sounds, I promise!

The movie offers a lot of shoot outs and minimal martial arts action.  There is a wild shoot out in a desert command center, which IMO, was the highlight of the movie.  There is some brief nipple but it's a body double and the scene it is involved in is pretty creepy.

Michael Dudikoff swears a lot in this one too.  I don't recall him ever swearing this much is any of his other movies.  When Michael Dudikoff says, "Get the fuck out of my way!", you get the fuck out of his way!

The one glaring error I noticed about this movie was the casting decision for the main bad guy.  He overacts throughout.  Sometimes he is calm and a suave killer and other times he is a sweaty, leering weirdo, which is normally a great thing, but it doesn't work here.  The showdown at the end between the two leads is well done, especially the part with the axe, but his overacting takes away form the movie as a whole.  You know, he reminds me of a poorly done version of Hans Gruber from Die Hard.

Despite the low budget and the hammy acting from the lead bad guy, the movie is still worth a watch or two and is one of the last solid efforts from the amazing Cannon.  Check it out!

Stone Cold...

Brian Bosworth plays a policeman who doesn't play by the rules.  He is already suspended before he fucks up a few guys who are trying to rob a supermarket.  He gets put on extra super bad suspension then and is, kind of, blackmailed by the FBI to go undercover and try to bust a motorcycle gang.  He infiltrates the motorcycle gang with minimal effort.  Soon enough he is eyeballing the leaders girlfriend.  Throw in a major "jail break" scheme and we have an action classic on our hands! 

There is really no reason why this movie flopped at theatres when it was released.  The movie has everything that an action movie needs to suceed.  Let's investigate...

- While Brian Bosworth isn't a great actor, he does a solid job as a wisecracking, sarcastic lead. 

- The movie has solid bad guys.  We get Lance Henriksen as the gangs leader.  Lance Henriksen doesn't fuck up movies, he makes them great.  He plays his role differently, definitely bad ass but with a little jokester thrown in.  We also get William Forsythe as his right hand man.  He fucks up everyone in his way and has a great motorcycle chase/shootout with Brian Bosworth.  When William Forsythe is on, he is on, and he is on here. 

- Whoever plays the girlfriend of Lance Henriksen's character (way too lazy to look it up) is a mega babe.  I'll have to see if she is in any other movies.  Let's check...  Ok, her name is Arabella Holzbog.  It looks like she is in Carnosaur 2.  I'll have to check that out.  It looks like she is in a couple episodes of Red Shoe Diaries, so maybe there is some tit action somewhere, I don't know, I'll have to look into that when I'm not at work!  Anyway, Arabella Holzbog, major babe!  There are a decent amount of boobs on display here, so it's got that too. 

- The ending.  The action throughout the movie is great, fist fights, shoot outs and motorcycle chases.  Well, the end battle goes in every direction, with excellent gun fights and lots of blood.  It must really be seen to be believed.  It's almost silly how over the top it is, but I couldn't help but love it because of how the action/violence level flies into the stratosphere.  A completely grand way to end a great movie. 

This is easily purchased on DVD for less than $10 and it worth three times that.  Highly recommended!!!

Cyborg... an awful, awful, awful, awful movie...

Cyborg is a post apocalyptic action movie from 1989.  It is about a fighter who is payed to take a Cyborg across the country, where her knowledge will be used to better humanity.  Unfortunately, the cyborg is kidnapped by a ruthless gang and it is up to the fighter to rescue her. 
This is an early starring vehicle for Jean Claude Van Damme, who had been and would be in, much better movies.  The plot here never advances past my description of it.  It's simply one chase scene or fight scene after another.  That might sound like a recipe for success but it is not here.  The fight scenes are awkwardly staged and aren't very exciting at all. 
The acting is terrible too, especially from the lead bad buy.  All he does is yell.  His fighting skills suck too.  He seems stuck in slow, lumbering giant mode, even though he really isn't a lumbering giant.  He definitely drags the movie down a lot. 
Cyborg features the one thing that can ruin any movie.  A miniscule plot that runs its course after an hour, except the movie still have thirty minutes left in it.  Fuck, I was suffering towards the end.  The fact that I found this enjoyable when it was a frequent Saturday afternoon movie, makes it even harder to watch now.  Maybe the commercial breaks every ten minutes or so broke up the movie enough that I didn't notice the lack of quality.  Who knows? 
I do know now that the movie was an effort to sit through. 
Fun fact: Cannon Films, who released Cyborg, had initially planned on making Masters Of The Universe 2 and Spider Man.  Both of those films were not made but the set and preproduction had been completed, so Cannon was in a scramble to save some money.  The script for Cyborg was created in a weekend and utilized the sets made for the two aformentioned movies. 
Anyway, Cyborg... avoid! 

The Unholy...

I frequently think back to the glory days of VHS.  Obviously, you can tell that from reading this blog.  One title that caught my eye at the video store was The Unholy.  The box design had a cool black and red theme, with a demon, complete with an evil, glimmering eye, in the background.  One look at that and it was a must rent!  The store that I frequented at the time had a big poster for the movie on the front window, so even if you missed the VHS box, you certainly weren't missing the front window. 
The Unholy is about a demon who murders sinners in the act of sinning.  This sends their souls to hell.  A priest discovers this and must stop the demon.  This falls firmly into the genre of religious horror, which has been done better and worse in the past.  The movie has a lot going for it.  The acting is way above par.  They managed to grab some legit fantastic actors like Ned Beatty (who is great in everything that he is in) and Hal Holbrook.  The rest of the cast is good too and the solid acting really helps raise the quality of the movie, especially since the script can get real silly in spots. 
There is also a lot of practical gore, which also adds energy to the film.  I remember a gory still in an issue of Fangoria, featuring an eviscerated man hanging upside down on a cross.  That was definitely a memorable picture and moment in the movie! 
The movie does run out of steam towards the end and seems a bit overlong, but this fact doesn't ruin the movie.  In fact, the ending achieves a cool level of absurd ridiculousness that isn't really done in movies anymore.  It's so over the top and silly, that it's hard to be like, "that's retarded, I hate this!"  It was more like, "what the fuck, that is retarded, I love it!" 
Anyway, The Unholy is a lost 80's horror movie with a religious twist that I think is worth a watch or two. 

Midnight Movie...

One of my all time favorite places for horror movies to take place is a movie theatre.  I think the general theatre atmosphere can only add to a movie, especially if it is supposed to be scary, exciting or both.  The majority of Midnight Movie takes place in an old movie theatre.  The cool old style ones, with only a few screens, a small concession stand and the hallway leading to the different screens.  So already this movie had a lot going for it, imo. 
The movie is about a rare screening of a horror movie.  Well the director/star of the movie has been locked away in an insane asylum, but of course, he escapes on the eve of the showing.  Well the movie plays and soon enough, characters from the audience start dying on the screen.  It seems that the hulking killer from the movie can skip between the screen and real life. 
In addition to the setting, the movie has a other things going for it.  The first is a couple of likable characters.  One of them is fairly amusing even, and has all the good lines.  Since this is a slasher movie, we need well executed gore effects.  This movie delivers a couple of those.  I didn't think they were anything mind blowing, but they were certainly well done.  A couple of the death scenes fall flat, but thats par for the course. 
The design of the killer was pretty cool too.  And I'll commend the movie for taking time to develop the characters before the killing starts. 
It's not all good though.  A few parts of the movie are dull.  This is especially notable once the cat and mouse games start.  You know, the killer has been chasing people around for a while, and you glance at the clock and there is still twenty minutes left.  Hmmmm, not a good sign.  The movie opens and contiues with a great pace but things progressivly slow down as the movie continues.  I'm not saying that it's bad, because its worth a viewing or two, but had the initial energy been maintaing throughout the entire movie, I would have been much happier about the end results. 

Dolly Dearest...

A family moves to Mexico because the father has purchased a toy factory that makes world famous toys.  He gets there to find a dilapidated factory, but fuck it, they already movied into an amazing house with maids and lots of space.  He gives his daughter one of the leftover dolls and before you can say 'Child's Play rip off', his daughter is bonding with the animated doll.  You see, this doll has been possessed by a Mayan spirit which was released from its tomb by a snoopy archaeologist.  Fun fun fun.  Soon enough, the daughter is having spastic fits whenever she is around a priest and mumbling ancient language curse words. 
The whole movie is a play off of Child's Play, but it is pretty well done.  There are a couple good scares and the doll animatronics are ok for the time.  Denise Crosby looked hot from time to time, but here she didn't quite pull it off.  Maybe it was the sweaty locations, but something seemed off with her. 
There is scattered gore, but none of it is over the top or abusrd or anything like that. 
This came out in a time when all the big horror franchises has already faltered and people were scrambling to find a new horror hero.  Well, it wasn't Dolly Dearest. 
That said, the movie isn't unwatchable but it's also far from great. 

Creature...

This title immediately grabbed my attention due to its cool box art, the black alien in an outer space setting.  I had seen pieces of this on Saturday afternoon TV but I had never seen the entire thing.  It seemed to be a common movie at the time, since most rental stores of the day had a copy of it.  In the 90's, when many video rental stores were closing, I bought a copy of it from the epic Movie World who were, unfortunately a casualty of Blockbuster.  They always cut the VHS boxes to fit them into the white clamshell boxes that they rented, so the collector value of titles from that legendary store are pretty low, unless you find someone who just has to have a certain title.  Creature was always in the science fiction section of that store, but a lot of other great titles were, as well. 
Anyway, the movie is mostly about an alien offing people aboard a space ship.  You see, they are on a rescue mission.  They encounter a rogue scientist, who is the highlight of the movie.  He is played by Klaus Kinski, who is pretty much wacked out in any role he plays.  Another highlight of the movie is the tremendous gore.  There is a lot of alien related violence.  A lot of the aliens victims come back as zombies, so there is a lot of action in regards to that, as well.  My favorite setpiece was the alien biting off a female characters head, blood splashing everywhere and then the head plops to the ground.  It's a classic 80's gore scene, completely over the top and in your face. 
As of now, Creature isn't readily available on DVD.  There is a cheap public domain copy that shouldn't run you over $10.  The quality is ok, but the colors are real soft, especially in scenes that take place in the light.  I own two copies on VHS and they both look at least the same as the DVD.  The movie doesn't cost you a lot if you track it down on DVD or VHS and is very worth checking out. 

Sorority House Massacre...

I remember, at the height of the home video boom, going to stores and selecting movies based off of the box art.  There were so many titles that promised gold and delivered shit, yet they were big renters due to their superb cover art.  Microwave Massacre comes to mind when I think of that situation.  In hindsight, I was a young boy, so basically any box promising bloodshed and tits was going to be a hit and I did base many many many many movie rentals off of box art with a big titted babe on the cover.  Sorority House Massacre was one of those rentals.  I was already a slasher movie fan, and the cover art for this fed into all of my interests.  It was a picture of a girl in a sexy outfit and there was a silhouette of a guy with a knife looking through the window at her.  Haha!  It's classic VHS cover art.  I don't remember specifically, but the girl on the cover might not have even been in the movie.  Back then, that was a common occurance, pictures of people on the cover who weren't even in the movie. 
Through all my years of movie watching and collecting I have never seen a VHS of this besides the time that I rented it.  It is on DVD now though.  I often read reviews of this where people completely confuse it with Slumber Party Massacre.  I think later sequels of that movie are tied into the sequel to this movie, so I think that is where the confusion comes from. 
As a slasher movie, this one is ok.  The set up is about a group of girl who are having a party at a house and one of the girls is psychically linked to events that had happened in the house in the past.  The first half of this is pretty cool.  They have a lot of shots of the girl and the killer having similar behavior and the girl even mimicing his behavior.  I thought those shots were great and added a lot to the movie.  In fact, I say that added to the creepiness factor, something which a lot of similar movies of the time were lacking.  Of course, the killer eventually shows up and it falls in place with standard slasher fare. 
I like the fact that the film makers tried to do something a little different with this and although it does turn into a generic slasher movie, I say it is still worth a watch. 

The Hollywood Strangler Meets The Skid Row Slasher...

Long before, over a decade before, there was anything called DVD's, we had VHS tapes.  VHS tapes were expensive.  Priced to rent movies sometimes cost as much as $80 for one copy!  Eventually, companies figured out that they could make much more money if titles were priced to sell.  Then, you could always find titles from $14.99 to $39.99, sometimes a little more even.  Of course there would always be "cut out bins" at any places that sold or rented VHS.  These were often titles that no one rented and the stores would sell them for recoup some of their losses.  Over the years, I got stacks of good movies in those bins.  Stores that only sold titles, often had a section of very low priced titles, stuff they wanted to get rid of in a hurry or titles that came "thrown in" with distributors bigger titles.  There was a K-Mart that was near my house.  It is still there today, run down and sad looking compared to the other mega store companies that flourish today.  That K-Mart always had a great low priced VHS section.  I found many great video oddities there, Rana: The Legend Of Shadow Lake, Barbarian Queen, Ironmaster and more.  Some days I would go up there was a bit of money and get three or four movies and waste away a day watching them.  One of the titles that always stuck out was The Hollywood Strangler Meets The Skid Row Slasher.  It was in the bin foreeeeeeever.  Years passed and it was still there.  No one wanted that poor movie.  The fact that pallets of movies had come and gone and that movie was still there always interested me.  The box had a pretty average design and the pictures on the back were nothing to make you want to rent it, much less buy it.  Any information I could find on it, this was long before you could look up anything and everything on the internet, said that it was a terrible movie.  Fuck it, that was a recommendation to me!  So the next time I was at that store, I got it...
There is a photographer in Hollywood.  He takes pictures of girls and ends up strangling them.  Then, he meets a girl, who happens to be spending her free time knifing people in Hollywood.  The two spend the rest of the movies going about their business until they meet.  They seemingly fall in love but that doesn't work out too well. 
This movie was filmed without dialogue.  The director (Ray Dennis Steckler- hiding under the name Wolfgang Schmidt) was notorious for filming on the cheap.  Distributors insisted that it would be impossible to sell a silent movie so he added music and narration, in place of dialogue.  I don't think dialogue would have helped much though.  The pace is very slow and there are scenes that drag on forever.  Occasional action and nudity pick up the pace, only briefly, quick to return to boredom.  Some of the narration is poorly recorded and it frequently sounds like the person talking is mumbling.  Probably not the best idea, since there is no dialogue. 
I thought it was odd how there are no sub plots.  Usually in movies like this, there are bumbling police trying to figure out what is going on.  Not here though.  The one thing that this movie has going for it is that it dwells on two sleazy people and don't concern itself with anything else.  I think doing so gives the movie a gross feeling that movies can't convey anymore.  That's not to say that it's good, or even worth watching, because 99% of people won't make it through this. 
This has been relased on DVD with an optional commentary by Joe Bob Briggs that is really funny.  I say watch it with the commentary on.  Borrow or rent, be wary of buying. 

New Year's Evil...

There is this TV show and they are showing a New Year's Eve marathon and they have a countdown for each time zone that changes to the new year.  Apparently, this show is huge.  What we see of this show is musical numbers and monologues and they all pretty much suck.  Then a killer shows up and starts offing people for each time change.  Then he calls the show and plays the recorded murders over the phone.  The concept is cool, but the execution is weak. 
The main failure of the movie, imo, is that they show the killer's face way too soon.  That took away all of the mystery and excitement out of finding out who he is.  The killer isn't that scary either.  Maybe a little bit weird, obviously, but far from scary.  It's also a let down that there isn't anything cool about the killer.  Maybe they tried to go for the "this can be anyone, even the guy next to you!" route, but it doesn't work.  At the end of The Burning, you see Cropsy, and you are like, "Damn!!!"  You see the killer in this and you are like, "oh".  Also, none of the kills are very inventive either. 
I can think of a lot worse movies than this one but there are also a lot better ones.  A late entry slasher letdown from Cannon. 

Video Castle and The Outing...

One of the main places that I discovered horror movies was a place called Video Castle.  It was on Vine Street in Willowick Ohio.  That town is about 20 minutes east of Cleveland.  It's where I grew up.  Video Castle is long gone.  The place where it was at is now a License Bureau.  I still remember the big Video Castle sign, giant white letters and a red background.  The place was smaller, with wire racks of movies along the walls and jutting out from the walls and forming mini aisles.  This was long before any of the giant movie rentals places existed.  When you came in the front door, the horror section was to your right.  I still remember certain titles, Microwave Massacre, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Re-Animator, the Howling, Slumber Party Massacre, Sleepaway Camp, The Outing, etc.  Video Castle always displayed the cool promo items too.  Posters, cardboard displays, etc.  There was an older guy who worked there.  He was heavier, with graying hair and glasses.  The other guy was younger, with black hair.  He would talk about movies forever, if you let him.  Not a bad thing.  I really wish I could remember their names so I could attempt to find them and interview them about the 80's video boom.  They had other genres too, but I was always a horror/action guy so those are what I remember best.  Later on when places like Blockbuster came about, the smaller places, like Video Castle, slowly died off.  At Video Castle, there was always a back room that rented porn.  Once places like Blockbuster took over the video market, the smaller places could only survive by renting porn because that was the one thing they could offer that Blockbuster did not.  Soon, all of the stock at Video Castle was for sale and they made most of their money from porn rentals.  That is always the nearing of the end for those stores.  I can name five or six others who followed suit in the years after.  I bought as much as I could while it was still open.  He had tons of great titles for sale, some of which I still own to this day.  Finally, I was there one day, and he informed me that they would be closing.  And that was the end of Video Castle. 
One of the titles that I bought the last time that I was at that store was The Outing.  It's a slasher/monster movie hybrid about a trio of thieves who rob an old lady and steal a lamp.  Well, there is an evil genie in this lamp.  Inevitably, the genies gets set free and lays wasts to most of the cast, in various gory ways.  People are ripped in half, eaten by resurrected mummies and impaled with spears.  Most of the movies takes place at night at a closed history museum.  This is a pretty cool atmosphere for a horror movies, as it is naturally shadowy and darker. 
Some of the acting isn't too hot, but the effects are good and the pace never really drags.  Honestly, the movie always seems to get average at best reviews but it has sentimental value to me and that is probably why I revisit it often.  I recently acquired a nice DVD R of this and anything I see it or the VHS on the shelf, I'm bombarded with memories of Video Castle.  The world is lacking without stores like that still around.