Behind the Couch

2005 Dir. Rick Bota When a tough investigative journalist begins researching a bizarre underground cult, dabbling in necromancy and the resurrection of the dead, she becomes embroiled in a nightmarish world in which her very soul is at stake… The seventh film in the franchise, Deader wasn’t actually written as a Hellraiser film. An existing spec script by Th13teen Ghosts co-scribe Neal Marshall Stevens had elements of the Hellraiser mythology added to it by Tim Daly (co-writer of the dreary Hellseeker ). And it sort of shows. Much like Inferno and Hellseeker , it feels cobbled together in a lazy attempt to keep the franchise afloat; the overtly ' Hellraiser ' moments a clunky afterthought. That said, it’s certainly a marked improvement on the prior instalment, and at the heart of proceedings twitches a genuinely interesting concept - an underground goth cult experimenting with suicide, necromancy and resurrection. These are themes that were dealt with in Barker’s o...

Dir. Samuel Bayer When a group of high school friends begin to die while they sleep, level-headed Nancy soon discovers that she and her friends are being stalked in their dreams by the vengeful, now demonic, child killer their vigilante parents murdered years ago. Can she stay awake long enough to put a stop to his bloody killing spree and save her own skin? One, two, Freddy's coming for you. Again. In 1984 Wes Craven unleashed his long cherished, low budget slasher movie A Nightmare on Elm Street upon unsuspecting audiences, and single-handedly created one of the most enduring and terrifying movie monsters of all time: Freddy Krueger. The definitive bogeyman for the MTV generation, Krueger reappeared in no less than seven sequels and a spin-off TV show as the series grew in popularity; each one upping his clownish antics and making him more ‘palatable’ for the multiplex crowd. Over the last few years an astounding number of horror films from the Seventies and Eighties ...

1988 Dir. Renny Harlin Freddy Krueger returns once again to terrorize the remaining Elm Street teens, and he uses them to infiltrate the dreams of their friends to grow stronger and continue his killing spree. All that stands in his way is the quiet determination of a young woman who can absorb the good natures and attributes of her rapidly dwindling friends, gradually gaining the strength to stop Krueger once and for all. Until the next sequel, of course. " When deep sleep falleth on men, fear came upon me. And trembling which made all my bones to shake " - Job IV, 13-14 " How sweet. Fresh meat. " Freddy Krueger The commercial and critical success of Dream Warriors convinced New Line to start work on another Elm Street sequel. As was their usual custom, producers Sara Risher and Bob Shaye (who likened the creation of each instalment to assembling a cheeseburger!) approached Wes Craven, with whom relations were now in tatters to say the least, as Crav...

1984 Dir. Wes Craven When a group of high school friends begin to die while they sleep, level-headed Nancy soon discovers that she and her friends are being stalked in their dreams by the vengeful, now demonic, child killer their vigilante parents murdered years ago. Can she stay awake long enough to put a stop to his bloody killing spree and save her own skin? One, Two, Freddy’s coming for you… A Nightmare on Elm Street really needs no introduction. Wes Craven’s ground-breaking slasher was released at a time when cinemas were saturated in body-count movies featuring teenagers being stalked and murdered in isolated locations by vengeful (and morally conservative) bogeymen. Despite sticking to the by-then conventional narrative structure of the slasher movie, Craven injected new life into it by deploying a supernatural twist and delving into the most primal fears known to mankind. The director effortlessly preys on childhood fears of the ‘bogeyman’ and scores a major coup by ...

1982 Dir. JS Cardone Hugely influenced by Italian horror cinema, particularly in its doomful mood and nightmarish illogicality, obscure slasher The Slayer seems to draw from the same well of horror as the work of Fulci and Argento; where any semblance of logic and coherence is overshadowed by atmosphere and mood. Struggling visual artist Kay (Sarah Kendall), her husband, her brother and his wife all head off on vacation to a rugged, deserted island retreat. Once there, the already anxious Kay can’t help feeling she’s been there before. Her mounting sense of dread and paranoia peak when her companions are stalked and slain, one by one of course, by a mysterious assailant who seems to have haunted Kay’s dreams from childhood.  Director Cardone builds tension and menace from the outset with the slow-burning story unfurling gloomily to establish vague character dynamics, and the miasma-gorged location serving to wring every drop of foreboding dread from proceedings. No humour is...

1981 Dir. Wes Craven Wes Craven burst onto the horror scene in the 1970s with his distinctive brand of thought-provoking, gritty, survivalist horror titles Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes (both of which have been remade, with the former's 'reimagination' due in cinemas any day now). Before the success of A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984, Craven directed a number of films including the made-for-TV Linda Blair-starring witch-flick Summer of Fear,  and an adaptation of DC Comic’s Swamp Thing. In between these two films, Craven directed Deadly Blessing , a barmy yet haunting tale of fanaticism, obsession and fear. Among others, it starred Sharon Stone in one of her earliest roles. When her husband dies in a suspicious slow-motion tractor accident, Martha (Maren Jensen) is visited by her two friends from the city. They are unsettled that Martha lives right next to an austere religious community of Hittites ('They make the Amish look like swingers...

John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness is an underrated, highly moody horror flick from 1987. After the discovery of a giant canister containing an eerie green and swirling mass under a church, a group of students specialising in philosophy, science, theology and linguistics are invited by a troubled priest (Donald Pleasance) to investigate. They realise that the canister will act as a doorway to hell but the only way to open the canister is from the inside… Soon, the liquid begins to seep out and possess the students, one by one. Meanwhile outside, a group of menacing vagrants led by Alice Cooper surround the church and the remaining students must barricade themselves in, unaware that their colleagues are gradually becoming possessed by the evil in the canister. The collective dream shared by the students is, for this reviewer anyway, incredibly creepy and unsettling. A static-hewn shot of a shadowy figure lingering sinisterly in a doorway backlit with spectral light, is perhaps th...