I admit it, I’m a sentimental old fart. I get choked up and maudlin very often, when I think of family and friends, a moment in time when I realized the tragedy life can bring to us, or the joy. I tear up at the movies regularly, or reading certain passages in books. But I never thought I would weep at the loss of a video system. If you read We Are Movie Geeks regularly you must be aware of the video revolution of the 1980s, when VHS players and recorders found a place in almost every home in America. I hope you recall the early days when VHS was neck and neck with Betamax, a technically better system. Remember the days of Mom and Pop video rental stores when almost anyone could open a store front, and with a collection of VHS tapes start making money? As one of the many,...

With the demise of the drive-in theater rose the behemoth home video industry – and a torch was passed from one era of low-budget directors and producers to a new batch of underfunded fringe filmmakers. These fresh faces had new technology, and a new distribution game… but a similar reckless abandon and rebellious tenacity as their b-movie forefathers.

Fright fans were introduced to a new breed of horror movies - made for tens of thousands of dollars… or thousands of dollars… or a few hundred bucks and a borrowed video camera. Unpaid amateurs / quasi-professionals made up the bulk of most casts and crews - and often, the directors and producers were quite inexperienced themselves.

Join me for a visit to the heyday of the direct-to-video, micro-budget horror movie. We’ll explore this strange new cinema of the 80s and see how it evolved through the ‘90s. (Be sure to adjust tracking for best picture quality.

Ever since he was a horror movie-obsessed kid growing up in Tulsa, Okla., Todd Lincoln has dreamed about unleashing hell onto the big screen. But the writer-director has spent much of the past decade discovering the real-life horrors of development hell as a succession of projects — including a reboot of The Fly and an adaptation of the comic book series Hack/Slash — came to naught. “You’d have the friends and the family and everybody come up and say, ‘Hey, maybe you should think about something else,’” Lincoln admits.

Thursday, the filmmaker’s dreams finally will come true when his supernaturally-inclined directorial debut,...

In the year of 1985, a movie by the name of Blood Cult was released, with its entire advertising campaign claiming it was the first shot-on-video horror movie made directly for the home video market. This statement couldnt be any more false. First of all the first Sov horror movie made for the home video market was a 1983 ultra low-budget surreal horror movie called Sledgehammer, and that wasnt even the first Sov movie! The first Sov was actu…...

Year:  2008Director:  Darrell MapsonCast:  Alexandra Gorman, Willy Ortlieb, Mark MacPherson, Stephanie Hoover, Lee Otrlieb

A group of friends decide to explore an old junkyard that is reportedly haunted by the angry ghost of a worker who was murdered there years before.  Unfortunately for them, the story is true and the ghost does not take too kindly to trespassers.

The first rule of independent filmmaking: do not attempt to do more than your budget allows.  Hot Rod Horror possesses and ambitious premise that, if handled properly, had the potential to be a creepy and fun throwback to slasher films of the past.  It certainly has a unique setting--an abandoned junkyard--that could have been an exceptional showcase for some intense stalk and chase sequences.  However, since all of the film's action takes place in broad daylight the potential for unsettling atmosphere is squandered.  It is blatantly obvious that the budget of the film was probably non-existent,...

This month sees the release of A Nightmare on Elm Street, a remake that’s been a long time coming. With so many slasher revivals going on, be they remakes or original properties, it’s important now to look back on the genre and learn a few of its intricacies. The wealth of material to cover is staggering. The films that follow do not necessarily represent the finest work the genre has to offer, but were selected for their uniqueness and appeal.

If any of these tickle your fancy, I've included some Amazon links to buy the ones that are still in print. Unless otherwise noted, all of these releases present the films in their original aspect ratio and in their most complete versions available to date.

[Note: While extensive measures have been taken to eliminate graphic details in deconstructing the films, trailers and clips have been provided wherever applicable. They can at times be exceedingly violent, and quite spoiler-heavy. We urge you to use judgment before viewing them. Thank you.]

Inferno (IMDb)

1980, Dario Argento

The core difference between director Dario Argento’s celebrated Suspiria and its overlooked follow-up, Inferno, is simple: Inferno hates you.