Trends of Terror 2019: 150 Movies So Bad They’re Good: Trends of Terror, #6

By Steve Hutchison

I hope you like cheese. This book is full of it. In this edition of Trends of Terror, film critic Steve Hutchison reviews 150 horror and horror-adjacent movies so bad they're good, sorted from best to worst. How many have you seen?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Hutchison
• Release date: Jul 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393003199

Steve Hutchison

Artist, developer and entrepreneur in film, video games and communications Steve Hutchison co-founded Shade.ca Art and Code in 1999, then Terror.ca and its French equivalent Terreur.ca in 2000. With his background as an artist and integrator, Steve worked on such games as Capcom's Street Fighter, PopCap's Bejeweled, Tetris, Bandai/Namco's Pac-Man and Mattel's Skip-Bo & Phase 10 as a localization manager, 2-D artist and usability expert. Having acquired skills in gamification, he invented a unique horror movie review system that is filterable, searchable and sortable by moods, genres, subgenres and antagonists. Horror movie fans love it, and so do horror authors and filmmakers, as it is a great source of inspiration. In March 2013, Steve launched Tales of Terror, with the same goals in mind but with a much finer technology and a complex engine, something that wasn’t possible initially. He has since published countless horror-themed books.

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Tales of Terror’s

Trends of Terror 2019

150 Movies So Bad They’re Good

INTRODUCTION

I hope you like cheese. This book is full of it. In this edition of Trends of Terror, film critic Steve Hutchison reviews 150 horror and horror-adjacent movies so bad they’re good, sorted from best to worst. How many have you seen?

Return of the Living Dead III

1993

A teenager struggles not to feed on humans and spread her curse after being brought back to life by a toxic gas that turned her into a zombie.

Strongly inspired by Romeo and Juliet, this Return of the Living Dead marks the franchise’s will to reinvent itself. None of the actors are making a return and a new formula is introduced. The key element, here, is that one of the two main protagonists, Julie, is slowly becoming a zombie and incidentally letting us in on the curse. We get to live the transformation from a more serious human angle.

The script lives up to the twisted concept’s potential. You haven’t seen sexy until you’ve met a girl delaying a progressive undead curse through self-mutilation and implicit sadomasochism. Her darkly sexual character design makes her both an interesting protagonist and threat to her boyfriend. As superheroes would, and to make us care for her, she only feeds on criminals and spares the innocent.

You’ll be pleased to find the same make-up and practical effect quality as the previous films, but filmed differently. There is obvious effort in delivering a story with depth, for the first time. The characters are well-written and no longer an easy caricature. Although the film has its share of cheese, the writing is smart, cohesive, and the actors perform wholeheartedly.

7/8

Halloween III: Season of the Witch

1982

A shady mask factory plots to decimate the children population worldwide on Halloween night using a rigged live broadcast.

This Halloween sequel doesn’t feature Michael Myers, the infamous shape, and converges in no way with his storyline. This is a whole new concept. We get a darker and a highly supernatural film. Halloween celebrations are the main focus, now; not just a backdrop. It is politically incorrect and it’s perfect this way.

Indeed, despite its cheesiness and fun elements, the third Halloween contemplates the concept of child genocide as main theme and, for this reason, never lets you drop your guard. No matter how funny it gets, you can’t exactly laugh about it. This is delivered crudely, with striking gore but with stunning creativity. The script is flawed but is filled with surprises and well executed.

Halloween 3 may break the franchise’s flow, but is remarkable as a stand alone horror movie. It has its own sonata and a legendary synthesizer score that manages to creep you out. It has quite the gimmick, quite the cast, and it is completely over the top. Don’t try to make too much sense of it all. Sometimes, too much fantasy kills the story.

7/8

The Return of the Living Dead

1985

The employees of a medical supply warehouse come in contact with a toxic gas that turns the living and the dead into contagious brain-eating revenants.

Return of the Living Dead is admittedly a parody of The Night of the Living Dead franchise and it’s great! It takes the humor many steps further by breaking cliches and shuffling the rules of the zombie mythology. For example, they are more resistant, come in different shapes and sizes; some look like monsters, some are skeletons. A split dog is even thrown in the mix to make a point.

The film is lively and the characters are goofs, but never at the expense of rewarding, progressive storytelling. The stylish plastic gore, the rubbery make-up and the animatronics range from cute to terrifying; sometimes slightly flawed but always effective. This is a horror movie of its time that indulges in nudity and gore, but it does so in surprisingly creative ways.

This is a zombie slasher featuring a bunch of rebels and a young man, their friend, working his first day in a shady medical supply warehouse while they are partying in the cemetery outside waiting for him. This rendition of the undead has been given one-liners to chew on and a drop of individuality. The abominations are nicely designed and in a way to pull a smile.

7/8

Night of the Demons

1988

On Halloween night, partying teenagers stir up spirits inside an abandoned house after a seance.

Like all marketable horror films of the 80’s, Night of the Demons is an inexhaustible source of cheese, gore and partial nudity, has a strong gimmick and a catchy sonata. Few movies summarize quintessential b-horror like this one, though. It combines tropes of many major subgenres, namely haunting, possession, slasher and witchcraft. By genre tradition, it features teenagers in their 20’s, too.

Several aspects of the film make it one of the best horror productions out there. Contrary to vampires, zombies and werewolves, demons are an ill-defined antagonist in horror movies. In Night of the Demon’s case, they are as vocal, magical and virulent as Evil Dead’s and as physically threatening as 1985’s Demons’. In all three instances, the invasion is limited to a confined location.

The dialog is disorganized and the acting exaggerated, yet the end product is so unique that it might as well be considered a deliberate directorial decision. The characters are dumb. The subplots are silly when not downright hilarious. The ambiance is highly pertinent for a Halloween setup and the style is so cohesive that Night of the Demon’s cursed land comes out as a suspension of reality.

7/8

Night of the Demons 2

1994

Teenagers unknowingly carry a demon curse from a haunted house to their school on Halloween night.

1988’s Night of the Demons was self-contained. Against all odds, Joe Augustyn performs a tour de force, here; powerful enough to bring back all the elements that made the original a classic, and carries the action from the haunted house to a Catholic boarding school; the second next best context for sexually frustrated teenagers. This is pretext, of course, for brattiness and blood…

The only thing the original had that the sequel doesn’t is script purity. The arc was simple, and so were the characters. The writing is more layered in Part 2 and not as lively, but continuity is ensured by creative minds. As a sequel, it succeeds in further exposing the virulence of its creature with little redundancy: they are re-established as sexual demons that rely on fluids to possess.

Aside from centering on religion and the occult, the film meets every standard set by the original: deliberately bad but not terrible actors, imaginative practical effects, shock value, teen hormones and a lot of partying. Night of the Demons 2, like its predecessor, is more entertaining than intellectual, more humorous than dramatic, but manages to mix comedy and horror in 80’s retro fashion.

7/8

Killer Klowns from Outer Space

1988

Alien clowns from outer space terrorize a small town.

Calling these clowns creepy would be an understatement, but they are equally rollicking. They’re basically mascots with a facial rig, but what a strange and amusing design they are. They look like they are made of Play-Doh. Killer Klowns from Outer Space is one of the most imaginative horror movies ever made. It’s completely out of left field. The deeper you dig, the weirder things gets.

The protagonists are fun, but their personality is surpassed, in terms of eccentricity, by the clowns themselves. You couldn’t possibly squeeze more juice from this concept. This script has been thought through and through. We’re eventually transported into the clowns’ spaceship, a giant labyrinthine funhouse that is absolutely surreal and that the human mind can’t comprehend.

As colorful and infantilizing as it is, you might want to reconsider showing this movie to a kid. It is gory and politically incorrect. It was made by three brothers who couldn’t care less about your sanity. Killer Klowns from Outer Space is an alien film, a slasher; it contains both science-fiction and horror elements, and it even succeeds as a comedy. Its flaws are mostly subjective.

7/8

Night of the Creeps

1986

Alien brain parasites turn their hosts into zombies.

This is the quintessential cheesy supernatural 1980’s horror movie. It’s also a homage to 1950’s science-fiction. There are similarities between the two decades, cinematically, and Fred Dekker, writer and director, points them out. Night of the Creeps is about a fraternity initiation gone terribly wrong, and it’s about alien leeches. It’s light-spirited, fun and highly atmospheric.

If you think the first act is amazing, you’ll be pleased to know that the second half of this film is just bonkers. You’ll wish that’s all the movie was. Of course, then, we wouldn’t have exposition. The characters are colorful. There’s the ginger kid, his crippled friend, the love interest, the bullies. Then, there’s Tom Atkins playing a cop who’s getting too old for this shit.

I promise you, if you’re a fan of the 1980’s, that you’re going to have a blast with this one. If somehow you haven’t already seen it, stop what you are doing and watch it. There’s mild nudity. College girls sure love to shower. Gore is abundant, and the practical effects are something else. Words cannot describe how magical Night of the Creeps is.

7/8

Friday the 13th Part 6: Jason Lives

1986

While attempting to confirm the