Wintergate’s weird offering is one of the contenders for the first shot on video horror movie, although its detractors are critical of its theatrical release on New York’s 42nd Street and its run in the drive-in cinemas, making Sledgehammer (1983) or Blood Cult (1985) more likely candidates, neither of which saw distribution to the big screen. Boarding House, or Boardinghouse or Housegeist or Bad Force as it has been known, is also a nominee for being one of the trashiest horror videos of all time. While Wintergate attempted a new angle on the slasher craze with his out-of-body killer, the script, the acting, the editing and the sound were atrocious. With its cast of scantily clad young ladies and hopeless editing it resembled a porn movie throwing in an abundance of trashy gore just for good measure. Yet for all of its lack of technical merit it still has its fans. The possessed refrigerator madly hurling food at the girls still raises many a smile; although you don’t have to look too closely to catch sight of the arm stretching out of the fridge.
WHEN WILLY AND Lacey are caught as they spy on their mother and her lover, they are immediately punished. Willy is gagged and then tied to his bed, but his sister manages to set him free. Intent on revenge, the young boy takes the kitchen knife from his sister and sets off towards his mother’s bedroom. He confronts his mother’s abusive lover before the mirror in her bedroom and stabs him to death.
The film moves forward to see Lacey now married with her own young son, having been brought up with her brother on a farm owned by their aunt and uncle. Such was Willy’s trauma that he has never uttered a word since the night of the murder. When Lacey receives a letter from their dying mother, so begin her nightmares of being bound to a bed and threatened by an unseen figure wielding a knife. Her husband has become very concerned, so much so he accompanies her to a psychiatrist before taking his wife to visit the house in which she once lived. While in the house, Lacey catches sight of a reflection that resembles her mother’s former lover staring at her from the same mirror in the bedroom where he was stabbed all those years before. Terrified, she loses control and smashes the mirror with a chair. Her husband’s concern turns to embarrassment as he offers to take the mirror away to be repaired. A piece, however, is left behind and the three children who now live there are murdered as a mysterious presence stalks the house.
Back at the farm, Willy has become so fearful of mirrors he has taken to blacking them out; only in the last few days, he almost strangled a young girl after catching sight of the reflection of his face. When he comes upon the broken shards of a mirror, a pitchfork rises from the ground and almost impales him. The shattered mirror now begins to exact its revenge engaging an array of scissors, knives and the offending pitchfork in a series of point-of-view shots that as early as 1980 had already become essential to the slasher trope. When a fragment of the mirror becomes wedged over Lacey’s eye, she falls prey to the possession of the evil spirit that was once her mother’s hateful lover. His vengeful wrath now threatens her family, and only when their priest removes the shard and hurls it into water, where it bursts into flames, can they be sure that they are safe. The remaining pieces are then tossed into a well, each consumed by fire. One fragment, however, lies hidden on the ground, its reddened glow leaving the story open to a potential sequel.
Ulli Lommel’s script was undoubtedly inspired by the work of John Carpenter on Halloween, drawing upon his use of point-of-view photography, the synthesized score and the silent killer whose face was obscured for so much of what transpired on screen. As The Boogeyman hacked its way to a climax there was also a tip of the hat to the supernatural horror of a few years before, The Exorcist (1973), as the priest called upon his faith to rid the world of this recently resurrected evil.
The great seller for Lommel’s film would be the novel threat created by the mirrored reflections; its reputation was very soon enhanced when word spread of the grisly nature coursing through its stream of killings. With very little money at his disposal, Lommel knew he had to deliver and so he did with a series of gory death scenes, which worked to lure his audience at a time when the slasher craze was beginning to seize American youth by the throat. A few years later this would draw the attention of the BBFC, who included the film among its video nasties in October 1983, two years after its release to video. It was later removed from the felonious list in July 1985 and was only considered fit to be reissued in 1992, when three minutes of cuts were carried out to Lacey’s harrowing nightmare sequence along with those shots tracing the blood trickling down the breasts of the girl who had stabbed herself with the scissors. It would be another eight years before it was finally made available in its uncut form. A sequel followed in 1983, Boogeyman 2, which, due to its flashbacks to the original film, also incurred the wrath of the BBFC, with the less offensive Return of The Boogeyman being produced in 1994.
HAVING NARROWLY ESCAPED the natives on the homage to King Kong, Skull Island, an explorer returns an infected Sumatran Rat-Monkey to the Wellington Zoo, New Zealand. Soon after, Lionel Cosgrove (Timothy Balme) takes the girl of his dreams, the local shopkeeper’s lovely daughter Paquita (Diana Peñalver), for a cosy day out to the same zoo to see, among many other things, the Sumatran Rat-Monkey. Unfortunately, his overbearing Psycho-esque mother, who is very disapproving of Paquita, has followed them on their romantic escape. While snooping on her son, she gets too close to the monkey and once bitten begins to turn into a voracious zombie. Lionel manages to overcome his horror and as the dutiful son vows to take care of her. However, even though she is prescribed with a veterinary anaesthetic, it proves impossible to keep her under control and his mother begins to rip into the flesh of their neighbours, who in turn become unquenchable zombies.
While Paquita remains unaware of Mrs Cosgrove’s deteriorating condition, Lionel keeps her and her zombie accomplices sedated in the cellar of their huge suburban home. This doesn’t last long; his mother makes a bid to escape, only to be knocked down by a tram. After the funeral, Lionel makes his way to the graveyard knowing he still has to administer her medication, but is set upon by a gang of thugs. Without the sedative, his mother is free to rise and is once again overwhelmed by the needs of her zombified condition. When she erupts from the grave, the Reverend McGruder is one of her first victims and it becomes obvious he has salacious intentions for the zombie nurse, with a bit of zombie sex in the offering. In no time at all they have a zombie baby, and so the bloodthirsty plague continues until Lionel’s house is bursting with this rampaging epidemic.
When Lionel’s avaricious Uncle Les (Ian Watkin) discovers the madness in the cellar, he uses this as a way of forcing his young nephew to relinquish his inheritance. The well-intentioned Lionel now accepts he must kill the deranged infestation thriving beneath the house, so he begrudgingly poisons them. As he sets about burying the zombie corpses, Uncle Les and his friends arrive for the housewarming. However, in a fitting twist, the poison turns out to be an animal stimulant, and in preparation for the outrageous finale the zombies are already enthusiastically emerging to join the party. Lionel and Paquita find themselves besieged by droves of these putrescent creatures until the doting son reveals the lawnmower and an orgiastic splatterfest of decapitation, severed limbs and disembowelment follows with the zombies being ruthlessly annihilated. Not quite – Lionel’s mother has survived to metamorphose into a reflection of her true self, a perverse Oedipal monster fixed on subsuming her once pathetic son. In a confrontation on the roof of the house, she squeezes him back into the depths of her repellent womb only to be subjected to his rebirth as he hacks his way to freedom. As she plummets into the blazing house, both Lionel and Paquita escape, covered from head to toe in gore.
Following the success of his low-budget comedic science fiction horror Bad Taste (1987), Peter Jackson returned with a hideously dark comedy Braindead, released as Dead Alive in the United States owing to a film of the same name being released in 1990 starring Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton. On this occasion, he gleefully followed in the gore-soaked footsteps of Dawn
of the Dead, The Evil Dead and Re-Animator. While the censors in both the UK and Australia were a little more appreciative of this visceral humour, many countries recoiled at was has been acknowledged as one of the bloodiest horror comedies ever made. The early parts of this film set in 1957 present a homely setting, alluding to a hopeless love affair, until Jackson splatters the screen in his first wave of gore before completely immersing the entire set in a cascade of never ending entrails. Braindead is believed to hold the record for most blood spilled in a film with 300 litres bucketed on for the finale. Jackson’s techniques proved almost flawless and awards deservedly followed throughout 1992 and 1993, before he went on to even greater success.
ON ITS ORIGINAL release in Italy, Burial Ground went to the theatres as Le Notti del Terrore and began with a Professor Ayres as he studied an ancient crypt close to a cemetery. As he hacks away at one of the walls, an evil force is mysteriously set free. With nothing by way of an explanation, a skeletal creature lunges forward heading straight towards him and within seconds several more of these hideous creatures arise from the grave. The chase is all too quick and their quarry brought to slaughter. Unbeknown to them, their cannibalistic urges will soon be satiated by a group of socialites, each with precious little depth to their personalities, who are about to arrive for a weekend of fun and frolicking at a nearby mansion.
When two of the group, George and Evelyn, come upon the artefacts previously unearthed by Ayres, several bulbs explode in the house, a portent of the horror to come. Zombies now lumber from the caves into the surrounding countryside. The group become aware of these maleficent creatures when another impassioned couple are disturbed by a zombie rising from the ground. They bid to escape, but George is the first to die, ripped apart and then eagerly devoured. And so the rest are very soon dispensed. The resourceful zombies gather tools from an old shed, before scaling the mansion in a manner that Romero’s and Fulci’s rotting offspring never could. One bright zombie hurls a knife, which skewers the hand of his victim; decapitation by a garden scythe then silences her screams. The next victim is seized by the hair and impaled on the sharp edges of a window. Among the marauding mob is the now putrescent Professor Ayres, who returns to rip the throat from one of the party, before feasting on his innards. The following morning the zombies, now disguised as monks, savour yet another victim.
Soon after, the three survivors, Mark, Janet and Evelyn, prepare to meet their end trapped in a workshop. Their attempt to escape is thwarted by Evelyn’s zombie son, Michael, who has already shocked his mother with his incestuous sexual advances. Michael, as perverse as ever, exposes her breast, then true to his newfound tastes ferociously bites it off. More zombies appear; in the furore Mark’s head is forced into a buzz saw and then the recently slaughtered George returns to savour his dead wife’s face. His companions satisfy their cannibalistic cravings with the remainder of her squirming body. Janet is the last to die, swamped by the zombies in what will be their final assault. The grainy scenes that bring Burial Ground to an end impart a sense of the apocalypse, making the finale all the more dismal and reflected in the closing caption: “The earth shall tremble, graves shall open, they shall come among the living as messengers of death and there shall be the nights of terror.”
Andrea Bianchi’s Burial Ground was also packaged as Nights of Terror, The Zombie Dead, Zombie Horror and is one of the many films to have been released as Zombie 3. Along with Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City (1980), it is one of the few zombie movies where the dead appeared to be more intelligent than their warm-blooded counterparts. This was the heyday of splatter and, typically, any rational character development was sacrificed for extra helpings of blood and guts. The death scenes had to be creative to compensate for the flaws in plot, but all too often Bianchi’s limited budget made them appear a tad farcical. Scarce resources prompted effects man Prestopino to design a rubber mask to create the decomposed appearance of the zombies, which was how they often appeared on screen. The pace, however, was breathtaking; if the weekenders weren’t in the throes of passion they were desperately fighting for their lives. And just when the viewer thinks this tumult couldn’t stop, the film comes to an abrupt end. This may disappoint, but also works to consummate the damning air of doom that has imbued so much of this story.
The film is best remembered for the portrayal of the Oedipal young Michael by Peter Bark, an adult dwarf, whose desire for his mother is far more disturbing than the cannibalistic spectacle at the forefront of this film. When Burial Ground was made, child labour regulations made it impossible to employ children in such a role. A few years later, the introduction of the Video Recordings Act of 1984 made it impossible to find an uncut version of this film in the UK. When it was released on video it was heavily censored, with a little over ten minutes removed by the distributors and a further three minutes cut by the BBFC. The film was thankfully restored for its 2004 release.
LESS THAN TWELVE months after the original camp slasher first appeared in Friday the 13th, a new face arrived on the scene courtesy of a group of boys at a summer camp who play a practical joke on Cropsy, the alcoholic caretaker, a ne’er-do-well with a somewhat tarnished reputation. Their prank went horribly wrong and flames accidently engulfed the caretaker’s cabin. In the ensuing devastation, he became overwhelmed by the fire and only saved himself by stumbling down a ravine to douse his burning body in the river below.
Five years have passed and Cropsy has been released from hospital, now horrifically disfigured by the burns he sustained on that terrifying night. While his long coat and sunglasses can disguise his lacerations, the madness within rapidly becomes all too apparent. Before revisiting the secluded camp armed with his trusted shears, he vents his rage by viciously carving up a prostitute. What follows is a bloody killing spree, lightened by an abundance of teenage titillation, as the caretaker returns to confront one of the campers whose shenanigans so hideously scarred his body. Sneak scenes allowed glimpses of the desirable young female cast, which were more than matched by the levels of gore, as Cropsy showed himself to be unyielding in his proclivity for slashing throats and whose devilishly sharpened shears took great delight in severing fingers and impaling tender young flesh before their master was unceremoniously struck in the head with an axe.
In trying to find their way into producing films and profit from the burgeoning slasher market, Harvey and Bob Weinstein successfully launched their careers as acclaimed producers of The Burning. This was also one of the first films to come from their newly founded company Miramax Films. Writer Brad Grey also went on to greater things to become the Chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures. As well as enticing prog rock legend Rick Wakeman to write the score, the Weinsteins managed to tease make-up effects genius Tom Savini away from Friday the 13th Part 2 to create the unsightly figure of Cropsy. However, the film ran into problems following the storm over the leniency displayed by the MPAA in their assessment of the previous year’s Friday the 13th. They remained steadfast in their insistence that certain scenes had to be removed before it received an R rating. One of these scenes was the extreme “raft massacre” where Cropsy dismembered five of the teenagers in only a matter of minutes. Similarly, on its release to video in the United Kingdom, The Burning was hounded by complications. Following the sanction of a slightly edited version by the BBFC, an uncut version of the film was inexplicably released by Thorn-EMI. The tapes were summarily impounded under the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, and The Burning joined many of its deviant contemporaries on the video nasties list. Tom Savini’s dexterity on the “raft massacre” proved to be a bone of contention, as was the image of a pair of scissors piercing into a woman’s flesh. Vipco later released a version in the early 1990s with only thirty seconds of gore having been left on the cutting room floor. However, by 2001 an uncut version finally went to print. The furore surrounding this film inevitably made it a great favourite among slasher enthusiasts, with much of its popularity attributed to the gifted Tom Savini.
WITH THEIR EXAMS over, five college friends, Jeff (Joey Kern), Marcy (Cerina Vincent), Paul (Rider Strong), Karen (Jordan Ladd) and Bert (James DeBello), take an extended weekend break at a cabin deep in the woods. On the way, they call at a local country store for supplies, in a scene evoking memories of the strange folk in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). As they stock up, the store owner’s mentally challenged son bites Paul on the hand, a reminder as to their being a long way from home and this being very different to the world they have just left behind them. Soon after arriving at the cabin, Jeff and Marcy retire to their bedroom for a few hours of uninterrupted passion, while Paul and Karen head to the lake for a swim and the red-neck practical joker of the crew, Bert, goes off alone hunting squirrels. In a horrendous accident, he shoots a man down whose face appears utterly rancid. In shock, Bert shoots at him again before scarpering back to the cabin. Several hours later, the same man turns up at the cabin and in the ensuing melee attempts to drive off in their car, vomiting a copious amount of blood across the windscreen and seats. In the heat of the moment, Paul sets the decomposing man alight, watching in disbelief as the burning figure staggers into the lake before finally breathing his last breath.
Shortly afterwards Karen takes a drink from the lake and very soon begins to feel unwell. It isn’t long before ugly looking welts spread across her thighs, forcing her panicking friends to quarantine her in an adjacent shed. Bert we now discover has also been infected. This flesh-eating virus begins to bring about violent changes in each of the group and their underlying frailties begin to come to the fore. In a clever twist the contamination isn’t symptomatic of their deaths; this comes from elsewhere.
The Mammoth Book of Slasher Movies (Mammoth Books) Page 11