1980s
Plot: pregnant woman is murdered… and comes to haunt her wrongdoers. Ghost with Hole (for once a pretty accurate translation of the original Sundel Bolong, released alternatively as Devil Woman internationally) is, if not the height of Indonesian horror, than at least one of its more enduring and recognizable entries.
1980s
Plot: in fascist Italy thirty-something Teresa awakens dormant sexual desires. Giovanni “Tinto” Brass revived classy soft erotica in a time when the genre was considered all but extinct. From somewhere around the mid-sixties up until the late seventies the subgenre survived primarily thanks to the exploitation industry. In Italy erotica
1980s
Plot: Waldemar Daninsky faces Countess Elisabeth Báthory… again! El Retorno del Hombre Lobo (or The Return Of the Wolfman, released in North America as The Craving in 1985 and, at a later stage, internationally as Night of the Werewolf) was the first of two El Hombre Lobo episodes produced during
1980s
Plot: the Shelleys visit Byron and compete to write the scariest story they can. Even the most talented and serious of directors like to unwind from time to time and indulge themselves in what by all accounts should be considered pulp. For British filmmaker Ken Russell that was Gothic. To
1980s
Plot: kept woman is targeted by psychotic killer in luxury high-rise tenement. Amidst the mid-80s slasher deluge Mexico contributed an old-fashioned suspense and terror flick in the British and American tradition that feels a decade older than it is. It might not have the sheer weirdness of The Mansion of
1980s
Plot: not everything is what it seems in this retirement home…. La Nuit de la Mort! (or Night Of Death! back at home, re-released in 1988 by Colombus Video as the more colorful Les Griffes de la Mort or The Claws Of Death to fully exploit the advent of the
1980s
Plot: aunt Marta will kill to see her estranged family – or are they already dead? Don't Be Afraid Of Aunt Marta (released domestically as Non aver paura della zia Marta and for some reason released in North America as either The Murder Secret or The Broken Mirror) is
1980s
Plot: tourists are stalked by cannibalistic killer on remote Greek island. The nineteen-eighties were an interesting time for American cinema. The old fashioned terror and suspense films were given a new coat of paint and updated for the new decade. Halloween (1978) was instrumental in that regard. John Carpenter’s
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
1980s
Plot: psychotic loner terrorizes New York City with nightly killing sprees. Amidst the deluge of cheap (and often, infuriatingly irritating) slashers it’s easy to forget that the subgenre could occasionally conjure up something halfway interesting when it traded the regressive for the psychological. Maniac is one such example. For
1980s
Plot: the weather outside is frightful and this year Santa’s homicidal. If one were to look at the direct forefather of the 1980s slasher the first two things that come to mind are the German krimi and the Italian giallo. Both existed parallell from each other, at times overlapped
1980s
Plot: malfunctioning elevator kills people in luxury office tower block. It’s interesting to note that Belgium and the Netherlands never developed regional (exploitation or otherwise) cinematic industries of their own whereas their surrounding countries in continental Europe did. Belgium and the Netherlands frequently could be found co-producing with fellow