Another straight-to-video movie. Babysitter, Halloween, deranged slasher escapes from a lunatic asylum... Sound familiar? Unfortunately this movie stopped there when it came to emulating more famous slice-n-dice slasher movies themed around Halloween. Bloodless, boob-less and brain-less. with a weak story-line that's padded with the child being baby-sat playing pranks on the babysitter. With the addition of low-lighting (they obviously didn't have the budget to even pay the electricity bill), low-body count, low-quality and it would seem low expectations even of itself.

Bizarrely, and for any cult film fan this maybe the selling point, the movie features a whole 3 minutes of David Carradine. Apparently the Carradine footage was spliced in having been filmed a couple of years previous. Or some rumour has it.

There literally nothing redeeming about this painting-by-numbers so called slasher flick, apart from checking it off the list.

A straight-to-video piece low-budget horror. So what you'd expect, full of bad special effects, and slow-paced lacklustre story-line that's been seen a dozen of more times before. Demonic scarecrow rises-up from the dead to take revenge of the ancestors of the man that killed his warlock creator. Oh and it features scream queen Linnea Quigley again, only mentioned in the post before last about the Night Of The Demons.


This is a so-bad-its-bad movie, and one possibly for only the die-hard schlock horror fan. Cheap doesn't cover it. And low-budget is no excuse. I guess what little budget they had was spent getting drunk every night after filming, as there is little other explanation for what they spat onto 16mm celluloid. 


All that said though, there is something endearing about this little known piece of horror. Whether that is the comfort that the well trodden clichéd path the story takes, or whether its just a reminder of those halcyon days of watching every horror movie the local video store had on offer, revelling in such horrendous finds as this.  

The third instalment and the "what were they thinking?" part of the franchise! A blip on the radar of the Halloween movies, that for some reason best known to the makers doesn't feature Michael Myers. And in fact has no reference or connection to the other two Halloween movies that came before it. The whole slasher theme which made the original Halloween such a successful cult film is ignored, and instead the movie is about witches with some quasi-sci-fi thing going on. The story involves androids and masks with electronic chips that are supposed to have a fragment of Stonehenge in them. I'm already confused and will leave the story-line there. Although I do remember the commercial that was played on TV that activated the chips was creepy. But apart from that I really remember little else from this movie. But saying that, I do remember something, which is a lot better than many (and there has been a a lot) of horror movies I've watched. over the years. So maybe, just maybe, it isn't as bad as it seems. If you take it as a tongue-in-cheek parody that is.

Also entitled Halloween Party, Night Of The Demons is a first in a short lived teen-horror franchise series of movies based around Halloween. The typical teen horror of, who is dating who, who is having sex with who, who is the demon possessing now! And how will this teen we are screaming at the screen to die, going to be killed off?

A classically bad 80s teen don't stay in the haunted house you idiots horror, where you are just waiting for the kill scenes. (Note: Nudity usually means there's a kill coming up very soon.) Though there are some fun and imaginative kill scenes, and it does feature one of the ultimate 80s scream queens Linnea Quigley. Still Night Of The Demons is what it is, a cash-in churned out formulaic horror flick. 

Now as fans of such flick know, there is nothing wrong with formula if all the ingredients are there. And with this piece of schlock horror they are. A wonderful vintage ride into a world when horror was good clean fun, and not some self-referential trying too hard idiocy.  

It's Halloween night, so what better a movie than the cult classic from the 80s Trick Or Treat?! What better a movie that featured guest appearances by Ozzy Osbourne as a crazy evangelical preacher, ranting about the evils of rock music. With Gene Simmons as Nuke a radio DJ (who was originally offered the role of protagonist Sammi Curr), and almost starred Blackie Lawless from the band W.A.S.P in the role of the Sammi Curr. (Now that would have been the cherry on the icing on the cake.)

In the movie Eddie Weinbauer hears his hero Sammi Curr has died in a hotel fire. Devastated he visits his DJ friend Nuke who knew Sammi Curr personally. Nuke gives Eddie the only copy of Curr's last and as yet unreleased album, Songs in the Key of Death. Nuke plans to play it in full at midnight on Halloween in tribute to Curr. Eddie takes it home and falls asleep listening to it. He wakes-up as the album is skipping, and decides to play the album backwards. 

This year Halloween just happens to fall on a Friday, so we can have a full weekend of horrific film fun. There are a multitude of movies out there that are great Halloween watching, but many movies that lay forgotten. So over the day Weird Retro will bring you some of the best and the absolute worst of Halloween horror movies.

Originally written as a screenplay for a cartoon that wasn't produced in 1967, Ray Bradbury turned The Halloween Tree into a novel. Through the eyes of a group of kids, in search of their lost friend, the story travels through space and time telling the story behind Halloween. The tree in the title, is used as a metaphor for all the branches of of myth and legend coming together to form the holiday we all know today as Halloween.

In 1992, Bradbury finally wrote and narrated an animated version of the story, produced by Hanna-Barbera for TV. The animation won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in an Animation. The voice of Mr. Moundshround, who guides the kids through their journey, was played by actor Leonard Nimoy.

"Weebles Wobble, But They Don't Fall Down!" Was the tag-line of the famous egg-shaped kids toy, popular during the 70s.  A sing-song line, that you'd catch yourself singing each and every time you came across one of the odd little creatures. Originating from Hasbro's Playskool range in 1971. The Weebles Haunted House from 1976, was a 4 room play house that came with a creepy attic, revolving bookcase/haunted mirror, leading to a secret hiding place, a trunk with bats, creaking doors and a chimney chute to drop Weebles into the creepy attic. 

The Haunted House is brilliant, with influences of the Psycho house, the Addams Family, and The Munsters all rolled (or wobbled) into one creepy piece of plastic fun. The play-set came with a witch character a glow-in-the-dark ghost and a Brad & Janet or Hansel & Gretel pair of sappy unsuspecting innocent victims. "Don't go in the creepy looking house you pair of limbless bum-shuffling numb-skulls!!!"

What Halloween party would be complete without at least one playing of the classic novelty song Monster Mash, first recorded in 1962 by Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers? The song was originally banned from the BBC in the UK for being "too morbid". However it was re-released in 1973, reaching #3 in the British charts. And that's probably when I first heard it, and had the song on a Top Of The Tots compilation album. An album I still have to this day, stashed away in a box somewhere. The creepy sound effects, the catchy chorus and the voice of Bobby Pickett doing an over-the-top impersonation of Bela Lugosi's Dracula, the song is a kitsch work of mad genius.

One of the most well known cover versions is by the hardcore horror punk band The Misfits, recorded in 1997. Coinciding with a VHS release of the Halloween cult classic stop-motion animation Mad Monster Party, first released in 1967. (Monster Mash didn't feature on the original soundtrack.) The cover version was eventually released as a single in 1999. One of my favourite covers however is the 1973 Spanish version by Mexican rock and roll stars Luis Vivi Hernandez. 

The strap-line to Black Devil Doll From Hell is "Was it a nightmare? Or was it for real??" A question that many ask after their experience of seeing this movie. That has gained cult status for its bad straight-to-video shot-on-video low-budget flick that combines blaxploitation with a killer doll theme. (I guess someone had to at some point!)

The story (for what it's worth) is of a religious fanatic that buys a demoniacally possessed black ventriloquists dummy with dreadlocks. She buys it even after the ominous warning of the shop owner, that the doll has been bought by four different people before and always made its way back to the shop. She takes the dummy home and it proceeds to sexually assault her through most of the rest of the movie. The evil spirit of the dummy gets inside her, and they both plan to murder their enemies. That's about it for this 70 minute long piece of utter exploitation soft-porn trash.

Directed by Chester Turner, who also made the companion piece Tales From The Quadead Zone (1987). Both movies for only the most hardcore of cult film fanatics.