The Boogey Man (1980)
½ Man this is bad. A girl sees her brother commit murder through a mirror. Years later, the woman finds the mirror and shatters it, only to have the pieces commit inexplicable evil deeds as they are scattered around. (Kind of like Oculus but terrible.) Poorly filmed with little money and a bad script, it’s the kind of film whose inclusion in They Shoot Zombies makes me question the entire list.
Zombie Holocaust (1980)
aka. Doctor Butcher M.D.
★ ½ I’ve seen a few (too many) of this type of Italian Horror, but this one throws everything into the stew. An organ thief at a hospital leads to an expedition into the jungle where cannibals live in fear of a mad doctor and his zombie army. The gore effects are really well done, and the movie moves quickly through all the sub-genres, but this is still only for people into this type of extreme film. Frequently mentioned on Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast.
Bloody Moon (1981)
aka. The Saw of Death
★ ½ I’m not instantly against sleazy filmmaker Jesûs Franco. I was a fan of Paul Verhoeven once. There are a couple of memorable violent kills in this slasher, but most of it captures the inane plotting and stupid characters that’s bad about the sub-genre. It’s Giallo without the flash.
Amityville II: The Possession (1982)
★ ½ Most of the movie is very grim, with an abusive father and the demon possessing the son lusting after his sister. The haunted house scares are standard fare. (Doesn’t helped that I just watched Netfilx’s Haunting of Hill House.) The final third is a pretty good Exorcist knock-off with good special effects supporting the battle between Priest and Demon.
976-EVIL (1988)
aka. Dial the Devil
aka. Horrorscope
½ Hard to believe this was directed by an actor. While Robert Englund will never be nominated for an Academy Award, he’s one of the best within the Horror genre. The ‘acting’ here (by some pros as well as amateurs) is across the board terrible, as if they were trying to invent a new type of performance art. I’m talking Gigli bad, less believable than those scenes of Nicholas Cage in The Wicker Man, except here it’s all the time (and not even a fraction of it is entertaining.) The cheap production and nonsensical story might have bothered me more, if I could’ve gotten past the people.