1990s
Plot: criminals and hostages end up in bar somewhere on the Mexican border…. There’s no contesting that the ‘90s were pretty dark and abysmal time for the horror genre. Much of it had devolved into thrillers, self-aware or otherwise, on the one hand and comedy on the other.
1970s
Plot: two teen girls, one hot summer, a lifetime of blasphemy and heresy. It was really Jean Rollin who paved the way for the French fantastique. Not by some grand design or clever promotion but rather the accident of circumstance. When The Rape of the Vampire (1968) hit cineplexes across
1990s
Plot: federal agents and mercenaries wage war over Civil War gold treasure. In 1993 Malibu Bay Films mascot Dona Speir uttered the prophetic words, “my work here is done” at the conclusion of Fit to Kill, the closing chapter to Andy Sidaris’ multi-decade spanning LETHAL Ladies franchise, a series
2020s
Plot: lone officer stands between terrorists and apocalyptic annihilation. Interceptor makes exactly zero qualms about what it is. Described by director Matthew Reilly as a throwback to the late 1980s/early 1990s American action movie Interceptor replaces the retrograde and regressive machismo of the 1980s with progressive and socially conscious
1980s
Plot: who or what is prowling and killing in the Amsterdam canals? After the box office success of De Lift (1983) the sky was the limit for producer/director Dick Maas – or at least insofar something like that was possible in Dutch cinema. The only real competition he had regionally
1970s
Plot: businessman gets lost in the Yugoslavian wilds and encounters vampires. The Night Of the Devils (or La notte dei diavoli back at home in Italy) is a minor entry in the continental European vampire horror canon at the dawn of the wicked and wild seventies. The basis for the
1990s
Plot: vampire recounts his life, losses and regrets over the centuries. There’s no contesting that the nineties were a trying time for horror at large. The genre had been reduced to broad comedy, toyed with science fiction with things like The Lawnmower Man (1992) and Brainscan (1994) and was
2010s
Plot: young tech employee meets a girl who might, or might not, be a cyborg. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, wrote English writer Charles Caleb Colton famously in 1820. It’s an old adage that rings true across various spectrums of the art world but none illustrates it
1970s
Plot: primeval colossus wreaks havoc upon metropolitan Toronto… When Dino de Laurentiis released his 1976 remake of King Kong (1933) its impact was profound and immediate. England has responded to Japan’s allegory for certain nuclear annihilation Godzilla (1954) with its own amiable big monster epic in the form of
2010s
Plot: thirty-something girl anxiously awaits her date… or is she? Spain has always been fertile ground for fantastic – and horror cinema. With several decades of history to draw from and the old masters rightly enshrined as the innovators that they were Spain never really stopped producing horror or weird
1970s
Plot: dopey industrialist must procure a male heir and hires a maid. Hilarity ensues! The Mammon Cat (or Il Gatto Mammone, released in Spain as the more descriptive El Impotente Seductor, which basically spoils the entire plot) was released during the marquee year that was 1975, probably the busiest year
2010s
Plot: backpacking tourists encounter mercenaries in the jungles of Thailand. There’s something to be said about the tenets and profound effects of globalization when a contemporary Mainland Chinese jungle action-adventure in the 2010s plays out by the exact same beats and character ur-archetypes as the Thai jungle