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A near perfect highlight reel of Stephen King's storytelling skills and George Romero's homegrown horror approach, Creepshow was definitely a hard act to follow. Perhaps that why both men pulled back a bit from the sequel produced five years later, Creepshow 2 (1987), with Romero adapting three lesser King tales and passing off directing duties to his longtime cinematographer, Michael Gornick. The film can't help but suffer by comparison, so it's best to stack it up against Romero's other horror anthology series, Tales from the Darkside , which beat HBO's Tales from the Crypt to the punch by a good seven years, mining the same E.C. Comics aesthetic of ghastly goings-on with a darkly humorous moral lesson. With fewer stories and a cast of virtual unknowns, Creepshow 2 feels much more like a small screen production; and from that perspective, it's a fairly successful one. Old Chief Wood'nhead is a golem-type revenge story with a cigar-sto...

An ambitious Canadian "tax-shelter" production from 1973, The Neptune Factor keeps its underwater adventure story relatively classy with a cast that includes the always convincing Ernest Borgnine, the ethereally beautiful Yvette Mimieux and a hunky young Ben Gazzara. Set aboard an experimental submarine on a rescue mission to save the survivors aboard a deep-sea habitat in distress, the crew descends to unexplored depths only to find....a salt-water aquarium? Divers "Mack" MacKay (Borgnine) and Adrian Blake (Gazzara) are headed topside when a quake sends their advanced underwater lab - and three crew members - tumbling into a bottomless abyss. Desperate for help, their prayers are answered when the Neptune arrives on a test run and its skipper agrees to scout for the wreck before life support runs out. But a deep-water current pulls them into a cavern filled with monstrous fish, pushing the sub to the limit and threatening their very survival. No matter how sc...

A big-screen spin-off of the little-known BBC TV series, Doomwatch (1972) ditches most of the original cast and proceeds with a new environmental thriller involving the residents of a Scottish Isle undergoing a strange transformation. An unexpected combination of Nigel Kneale ( Quatermass ) conspiracies with an anti-pollution agenda, the film is an odd duck to be sure, but one that curious genre fans will likely enjoy for that very reason. The titular Doomwatch organization is charged with investigating environmental threats to the realm, and it seems that Dr. Del Shaw (Ian Bannen) has sniffed one out on the island of Balfe. Visiting to check-up on the aftereffects of a recent oil spill, he finds the residents a cold and unwelcoming bunch, even the visiting schoolteacher (Judy Geeson) who refuses to risk losing their trust by helping Shaw investigate their odd behavior. But a pair of dead bodies and two or three death threats later, the pair team up to prove there's something d...

A follow-up to the surprise success of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? - which paired two of Hollywood's most powerful leading ladies, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford - Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) began filming with the same duo in front of the camera and the same director behind it. But with Davis elevated to an uncredited associate producer status, the actress gleefully took revenge on Crawford, who eventually left the picture for (supposed) health reasons. Olivia de Havillland stepped into the vacated role, providing a more stable working relationship for this "spiritual sequel" which swings from a grand 'ol Gothic horror story to a gory true-crime expose. Opening with a shocking prologue in which John Mayhew (Bruce Dern) has his head and hand chopped off by an unseen murderer, the guilty party is believed to be Charlotte Hollis (Davis), whose extramarital affair with Mayhew was frowned upon by her father. But the charges fail to stick, and Charlotte...

Part of the Depression era fad inspired by the success of Bonnie and Clyde , Boxcar Bertha (1972) would have faded into obscurity long ago if not for the simple fact that it was directed by Martin Scorsese. Early works by legendary filmmakers, no matter how inconsequential, are rarely discarded; they're dissected for hints of greatness to come. But one would be hard-pressed to find much to brag about in this Roger Corman-produced road movie based on the pseudo-autobiographical account of the fictional character (I'm as lost as you are) Bertha Thompson, a sexually-liberated, revolutionary-minded woman of her time who falls in with a gang of ne'er do wells hoping to outfox the nation's economic disaster. The plot meanders through a cast of colorful characters: Big Bill Shelly (David Carradine), a union man whose principals are put to the test when it comes to making a living. Rake Brown (Barry Primus), a card shark with a distaste for violence. And Von Morton (B...

As Cannon Films' bid for mainstream success and critical appeal, Runaway Train (1985) was a rousing success, earning three Oscar nominations and a healthy amount of cash at the box office. Based on a shelved screenplay from Akira Kurosawa and helmed by Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky, the film was a far cry from typical Cannon release ( Death Wish 3 and Invasion U.S.A. were their other big films on the docket that year) and proved the producers Golan - Globus could keep things classy if the mood struck them, a lesson co- producer Harvey Weinstein would take to the bank. But the film couldn't completely shake the Cannon exploitation aesthetic, resulting in a schizophrenic bit of inspired and insipid filmmaking that, like most of the studio's output, remains compellingly watchable. Legendary prisoner "Manny" Manheim (Jon Voight) stages yet another escape from a maximum security Alaskan prison with help from a motor-mouthed fellow inmate, Buck (Eric Robe...

One of the most common techniques used in horror is the "exploding frog" effect. Just like juvenile delinquents stuffing a frog full of firecrackers and admiring the show, much of the genre is built around that kind of shock and awe approach. And director David Cronenberg is no exception. In fact, the famous "head-popping" scene from Scanners might be the most celebrated splatter effect in history. But what differentiates Cronenberg is his clinical fascination with the result, a meticulous cataloging of each bit of gore as if the audience is witness to an important scientific experiment rather than a low-budget piece of exploitation filmmaking. And what's more amazing is that sort of clinical approach was there right from the very beginning. As a follow-up to his incredible feature-film debut, Shivers, Cronenberg didn't fall far from the venereal horror tree with Rabid (1977), this time casting porn star Marilyn Chambers as a Canadian "Typhoid...

Thanks to cable TV, C.H.U.D. (1984) quickly evolved from forgettable creature feature to a ubiquitous pop-culture acronym. One could very well pick your friends based on whether or not they could translate the full title into Cannibalistic Underground Humanoid Dwellers . The British thriller Raw Meat (1972) got to the idea of sewer dwellers first (and better), but C.H.U.D. 's dumbed-down, direct to video approach - and surprisingly strong cast - was a perfect fit for the latex creature creation craze of the '80s. It's still a mediocre movie, but there are plenty worse pop culture touchstones to kill time with on a Saturday night. Captain Bosch (Christopher Curry) is facing a string of disappearances in his precinct, including his own wife who vanished while walking the dog on a city street. Defying pressure from up top to keep things quiet, Bosch teams up "Reverend" Shepherd (Daniel Stern), who runs a local soup kitchen, to try and get some answers. Meanw...

By cinematic standards The Chase (1966) is a bit of a bait and switch. The title, the cast and the behind-the-scene pedigree all suggest a semi-escapist prison break story, a manhunt complete with murder, deceit, bullets and blood. But the film directed by Arthur Penn - who would provide all that and more for Bonnie and Clyde just a year later - flips those expectations quite strategically, making a hero out of its troubled convict Bubber Reeves (Robert Redford) and despicable villains out of the residents of the small Texas town that raised this unfortunate son. Bubber's breakout is the match that finally sets ablaze a bonfire of simmering resentments, lies and violence. Sheriff Calder (Marlon Brando) is ostensibly the man in charge, but he owes his position to Val Rogers (E.G. Marshall), a well-meaning but spineless oilman whose own son, Jake, would trade all their wealth and privilege for a life of poor contentment with his mistress, Anna Reeves (Jane Fonda)...who just hap...

When 9 to 5 was first released in 1980, women in the workplace, while not exactly a novelty, was still a fresh enough concept to provide plenty of satirical fodder for a generation just graduating from the struggles of woman's lib. The message was pretty simple: We're all driving down the same road, but men continue to zip by in the carpool lane. The film fed us revenge fantasies mixed with a feminist can-do attitude. And it all seemed quite amusing at the time...until you realize that 35 years later, almost nothing has changed. In that respect 9 to 5 is tragically prescient in a way that stings just as much as it tickles. Judy, Violet and Doralee (Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton respectively) all work under the thumb of incompetent middle manager Franklin Hart (Dabney Coleman) whose ineptitude is only matched by his overtly misogynistic attitude. Any way you cut it, the guy is an asshole. So much so, that when the girls kidnap him and take over the office fo...

Much like concerned citizens adopt a lonely stretch of highway to keep clean, horror fans are prone to adopt particular slasher films out of the goodness of their heart. The biggies like Halloween and Friday the 13th don't need much tending, but lesser-known, homegrown outings like The Mutilator and Happy Birthday to Me require a good amount of effort to appreciate; and perhaps that's what makes them all the more likable. 1984's The Initiation fits the bill perfectly, with a perpetual puppy-dog expression from star Daphne Zuniga, a supporting cast of likable Texas locals as cannon fodder and a soap opera twist that's just as enjoyable the 10th time you watch it as the 1st. As part of a pledge week prank, Kelly Fairchild (Zuniga in her first leading role) and some of her follow sorority members sneak into the local mall after hours. But the double-dare turns deadly when a killer begins to stalk them through the stores, picking them off with arrows, axes and a...