Tag: Canadian horror

Really Awful Movies: Ep 85 – Crappy Movies of the Week

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Anthrophagus

Anthrophagus is in the Italian cannibal genre, an outputting one to many. Director Joe D’Amato is responsible for this one, as well as many of the Emanuelle exploitation movies.

And he was a busy man. He made 200 films, many of which are…in the adult genre.

Anthrophagus was on the Video Nasties list in the UK, deemed too extreme to release. Does it live up to the hype?

Rituals

Also on the show, a discussion about the James Dickey novel Deliverance, and Rituals, a Canadian variant on the infamous Ned Beatty movie.

Instead of four guys in a Georgia gorge (say that three times fast), Canadian doctors go on a fishing trip. And they face something equally as terrifying in Northern Ontario. Also known as The Creeper, this 1977 production actually features legit actors, notably, the legendary Hal Halbrook.

And it’s not crap! Quite the contrary!

Really Awful Movies: Ep 74b – Black Christmas

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Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to everyone. In the spirit of giving, we at the Really Awful Movies Podcast, are giving our listeners a holiday treat — what is arguably the first slasher ever, Black Christmas.

Featuring a POV killer, pre-Carpenter’s Halloween, and a whole lot of mouth- breathing dirty phone calls, Black Christmas is a lovely film which still has the ability to shock. It’s well worth a look, especially as an alternative to the ubiquitous ELF or It’s a Wonderful Life.

On this episode of the show, we delve into Canadian horror…and the impact of Black Christmas.

In the mid-70s, director Bob Clark (Porky’s/Murder by Decree) gave us this, a film which features tropes later beaten like a dead horse and requiring dental identification in the slasher boom: you’ve got the threatening phone calls, the sorority sisters trapped in a house, disbelieving authority figures, a killer with a murky backstory and of course, blood.

To heck with Bing Crosby, we’re dreaming of a Black Christmas. This one may haunt your nightmares, although it’s been usurped by later films and somewhat stripped of its influence as years have gone by. However, its place in the horror pantheon is undeniable.

Don’t forget to check out new episodes of the Really Awful Movies Podcast every Friday.

Really Awful Movies: Ep 74 – The Fly

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On this episode of the Really Awful Movies Podcast, what is arguably the greatest horror remake of all time, The Fly (not that we want to argue, but if anyone wants to step up to the lectern and make a case for The Thing or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, we’d be happy to entertain it).

Flies and death are synonymous.

This wasn’t news to our man David Cronenberg, who gave new life to a fly-man hybrid, Dr. Seth Brundle. The genius doctor, played by Jeff Goldblum, builds a tele-porting device and manages to move matter from one place to another, only getting into trouble when he puts himself in the machine and a fly gets in with him, creating something monstrous in this, a film that came about during the infancy of recombinant DNA technology.

Along for the ride is a science journalist Veronica (Goldblum’s then girlfriend, actress Geena Davis) and what we get is essentially a love story set against this very odd backdrop: a man pushing the limits of the human form, transmogrifying into something truly terrifying.

There are many interpretations of what this film is about, the most prominent of which is the insect change as AIDS subtext. Watch it and see, as it remains as fresh and shocking as it must’ve seemed to movie-going audiences back in 1986.

Let us know what you think and if there are any films you’d like to see us explore on the show: really awful movies [at] gmail dot com

For a full review, please read this:

The Fly (1986)