Behind the Couch

1985 Dir. Jack Sholder Five years after Freddy Krueger was seemingly defeated by teenager Nancy Thompson, a new family move into her house on Elm Street. Jesse, the teenage son, begins to have terrifying dreams of a horribly burned man with knives for fingers who wants to possess him in order to continue murdering the children of Elm Street. The man of your dreams is back! While he was attempting to find a studio to back his script for A Nightmare on Elm Street , director Wes Craven was financially destitute. He lost his savings and his house, and his marriage fell apart. To make ends meet he worked as a script doctor, and when New Line offered to produce A Nightmare on Elm Street , Craven was so broke he had to sign over all the rights to the studio who eventually insisted upon an open ending to the first film in order to set up a sequel. As an indication of what to expect from the Elm Street sequels, just consider that head of New Line, Bob Shaye, famously likened the proc...

Making their way to the biggest LGBT Festival of the year, five couples stop over at a creepy hotel for the night - unaware that the proprietor is a homophobic, fundamentalist, right-wing Republican intent on whittling down their numbers. Mainly by feeding them to her cannibalistic mutant son Manfred... To call The Gay Bed And Breakfast Of Terror  a campy trash-fest, would be stating the obvious. This is not a subtle film. It is brash, outrageous and fabulously perverse. The title alone should alert you to what to expect, really! It serves up  Mommie Dearest -theatrics, a scathing critique of Christian extremist ideology, political incorrectness and every gay stereotype to increasingly hysterical effect. An irreverent and schlocky good time.  Head over to Eye for Film and check out my full review.

2004 Dir. Paul Etheredge-Ouzts A group of friends are stalked and murdered by a masked killer as they party at West Hollywood's Halloween carnival.  Slasher movies can nearly always be relied upon to stick closely to a familiar structure and a set of conventions established by the likes of Halloween  (1978) and Friday the 13th  (1980) - oblivious characters are picked off one by one by a masked killer in an isolated location (summer camp, quiet suburban neighbourhood, sorority house, college campus etc) as they separate and wander off from the group. Eventually only one (usually a young woman - the 'final girl') is left to defeat the killer alone. Scream (1996) shook things up and breathed new life into the slasher film, with its fresh humour, irony and cine-literate characters and dialogue. In a post- Scream landscape however, is there anywhere left for the slasher to go that's new and interesting?  Enter HellBent . Written and directed by Paul Etheredge-Ouzts,...