Behind the Couch

This underappreciated backwoods-slasher is a top-tier example of the subgenre, demonstrating just how powerful and effective the slasher can be as a form of storytelling. Released in the early 80s, the Golden Age of the slasher film, Just Before Dawn combines eerie atmospherics and breathless suspense, emerging as a survivalist horror creeper with echoes of an environmental message. Its premise is standard slasher fare (but hey, that’s why we’re here, there’s comfort in the familiar) as a group of friends head into the mountain forests of Oregon to explore a piece of inherited land, only to fall foul of a sadistic killer who picks them off one by one. Hmm, a backwoods slasher in which city-folk camping in a deep, dark forest are brutalised by a hulking, machete-wielding bogeyman? Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Just Before Dawn is far from a Friday the 13th clone though. While it was released the same year as Friday the 13th Part 2 and The Burning , it’s a very different beast: relative...

With a darker edge than its predecessor, a stronger sense of inevitable doom and a deeper dive into the witchy mythology established in the first film, Fear Street Part Two: 1978 continues the story of Shadyside’s imperilled teenagers, flashing back nearly 20 years to explore an earlier massacre brought about by the witch’s curse and how these past events might help Deena and Josh save Sam in 1994. Fear Street was always intended to be a trilogy, and this instalment works to expand the mythology established in the first film and explore more of the backstory of various characters, notably the mysterious C. Berman (Gillian Jacobs), who back in the 70s survived an encounter with the witch and her possessed minions, and therefore offers hope to the teens in the 90s. Most of the film is a flashback to her youth when she, her sister and other Shadyside youngsters face off against an ancient evil at an isolated summer camp. Like the first film, parental figures are conspicuous by their abs...

In a desperate attempt to reboot his flailing slasher movie franchise, a shady film director gathers a group of troubled young adults to participate in a reality TV show at an isolated and long abandoned summer camp. Inane dialogue, tensionless murders and convoluted plot twists ensue... Head over to Exquisite Terror to read my full review. While you're there, why not pre-order a copy of Exquisite Terror issue 4 ? Inside you'll find essays and articles on the likes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , Jim Van Bebber, Berlin’s newest horror production outfit, The Silence of the Lambs , and my own essay on the folkloric and literary heritage of Count Dracula. All for only £1.50. 

The Hills Have Eyes (2006) 2013 Dir. Calum Waddell Backwoods: pl.n. (used with a sing. or pl. verb) 1. Heavily wooded, uncultivated, thinly settled areas. 2. An area that is far from population centres or that is held to be culturally backward. “ West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs. ” HP Lovecraft The backwoods has long held a strange place of morbid fascination in the collective mind of city dwellers. It represents escapism – somewhere to go to negate the hustle and bustle of the concrete jungle; a place which grants...

2012 Dir. Gav ‘Chuckie’ Steele A group of friends head into the local woods to try and score some weed. Unbeknownst to them, a madman has been running amok, bumping off anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path. Their only salvation lies with a local cop-obsessed oddball who soon realises he’s as out of his depth as they are… What Steele’s debut feature film lacks in budget, it makes up for in outrageous humour, decently developed characters and group dynamics, assured direction and a plethora of increasingly splashy but well realised effects. Low budget indie horror can sometimes be tedious and flat, but the imagination on display throughout The Shadow of Death demonstrates the considerable talent - and imagination - of its makers, and it unspools as a cheap and cheerful – though thoroughly innovative – throwback to grindhouse splatter flicks of yesteryear. While the scenario may be very familiar – group of friends terrorised in dark woods by rampaging psycho – the likeable...

2010 Dir. Steven R. Monroe While staying at a secluded cabin to finish her novel, a young writer is brutally raped and left for dead by a group of local men. Some time later, she systematically hunts down the men to extract merciless and gruesome revenge.  The original I Spit on Your Grave  is a notorious rape-revenge film produced in the 1970s. Written and directed by Meir Zarchi, it generated controversy upon its release for its graphic violence and depiction of the brutal gang rape of the main character (novelist Jennifer Hills, portrayed by Camille Keaton) which lasts about half an hour. It was branded a Video Nasty and subsequently banned. Some critics over the years have suggested the film is ‘pro-feminist’, that Zarchi was exploring 'feminist wish-fulfilment', and that revenge narratives can subvert traditional power dynamics, ultimately empowering the victim. Others have said it can't possibly be a feminist work because rape-revenge films are inherently miso...

Dir. Marcus Nispel When his younger sister becomes the latest person to go missing during a camping trip to Crystal Lake, Clay Miller sets out to find her, with or without the help of the local police. Falling in with a crowd of teens staying in a holiday chalet on Crystal Lake, he is joined by sympathetic Jenna in his search of the local area, while her friends remain at the house to party. Before long it becomes apparent the area is stalked by a hulking psychopath who abducts and murders anyone who encroaches upon the grounds of an old summer camp… It would seem those old campfire tales of a hermetic psycho named Jason Voorhees may have had more of a grounding in reality than anyone ever dared dream of… Let the blood run free! When it was originally conceived, the remake of Friday the 13th was intended to be an origin story, detailing the genesis of mass murderer Jason Voorhees. Writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, who had previously worked on Freddy vs. Jason for New Line...

2003 Dir. Ronny Yu The memory of Freddy Krueger has been collectively suppressed and vanquished from the youth of Springwood – rendering him powerless and incapable of claiming any more victims. The dream-dwelling killer therefore resurrects the brutish Crystal Lake marauder Jason Voorhees and manipulates him into going to Springwood to carve up a few teens and strike fear and chaos into the community once again. Only problem is, once Jason starts a-killin’, there’s just no a-stoppin’ him. There’s eventually a big show down between the pair and some unfortunate teens who get stuck in the middle of it all… Since the initial idea of filming a face off between Freddy and Jason way back when Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood was being developed, there had been numerous screenplays by a plethora of writers over the course of a decade that tried to flesh it out and make it a reality. The show-down between two of horror cinema's most iconic antagonists was stuck in developm...

2001 Dir. Jim Isaac In the near future a team of government scientists finally succeed in capturing and containing the seemingly indestructible killer Jason Voorhees. They plan to cryogenically freeze him, but not before he breaks free and slaughters all but one of them. Sole survivor Rowan lures him into the chamber but is frozen in time with him. Flash forward to the year 2455; earth is an uninhabitable wasteland, devoid of life. Jason and Rowan are discovered by a team of interplanetary explorers on a scouting mission to earth, and taken back to their ship to be thawed out. Newly revived, Jason does what he does best. Murderlises people. In space (!).  The final shot of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday AKA Friday the 13th Part IX promised us a confrontation between Jason and Freddy Krueger. Indeed, with that ‘final’ instalment of the series and with Krueger’s own franchise coming full circle with Wes Craven’s New Nightmare , the time to bring both villains together...

1993 Dir. Adam Marcus While up to his old tricks at Crystal Lake, Jason is blown to smithereens by the FBI. During the autopsy however, his demonic spirit possesses the coroner who sets off on a killing spree, in search of Jason’s hitherto unmentioned niece, Jessica, the only person who can stop him once and for all. With his spirit jumping from person to person by way of a parasitic, demonic heart (!) rendering those it possesses indestructible, it won’t be an easy task for Jessica to defeat him… “ Through a Voorhees was he born... Through a Voorhees may he be reborn... And only by the hands of a Voorhees will he die .” Another year, another Friday the 13th movie which claimed to be the last in the series. Wasn’t that supposed to be The Final Chapter back in ’84? My brain hurts. New Line Cinema now owned the rights to the series (well, to the name of 'Jason Voorhees', anyway), and Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday was also the first film in the series since the ...