Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Favorite Underrated Horror

Brian is an assistant programmer at Fantastic Fest, a Brian Trenchard-Smith and home video aficionado and an avid beer drinker living in Austin, TX. His random musings can be found on Twitter ().



ALIEN RAIDERS (2008) - A low-budget horror/sci-fi hybrid done with style and mostly practical effects, ALIEN RAIDERS is an impressive feat and fun every time.


BLOOD RAGE (1987) - Everything out of Louise Lasser's mouth in this Thanksgiving horror is golden. It also helps that this seedy shocker opens with one of the best drive-in horror set pieces ever and continues barreling along on a crash course with insanity with nary a regard paid to traditional ideas of plot. Track down the most uncut version you can find, I recently saw this in 35mm under its theatrical NIGHTMARE AT SHADOW WOODS title and was disappointed to find all the gooey bits cuts out.

WITCHBOARD 2: THE DEVIL'S DOORWAY (1993) - Tenney dips back into the Ouija well and the results are surprisingly awesome. Featuring all the fashion and decor that make us regret the '90s so violently but also utilizing some impressive camerawork and sprinkled with playful kills, it's everything you could want in a sequel about a mass-produced board game.

MIKEY (1992) - Most killer kid movies portray the little shits as pure evil without much hint of personality. Mikey, on the other hand, is a bratty little butthole and a vicious 9-year-old horndog. It goes a long way in setting this apart from similar films. MIKEY has a playful streak (it has COMMANDO levels of one-liners) but doesn't skimp on the tension and the killing.

UNINVITED (1988) - Greydon Clark writes and directs this little horror-movie-that-almost-could and casts greats like George Kennedy, Clu Gulager and future Melrose Place superstar Rob Estes. The plot involves an experiment that leaves a bloodthirsty monster living inside an adorable cat. It escapes and ends up on a boat with a bunch of partying youngsters and you can probably imagine what happens next. Toy boats, bad puppets and long stretches of boring people doing boring things makes this probably the least well-made film on the list. Decent cat-based horror is fairly hard to come by and the killer mutant kitty attacks in this movie make it a super fun watch.
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