Retro Reviews

I love low budget SOV films and will take them over any mainstream big budget movie that Hollywood vomits out on a regular basis. I particularly love the horror ones that came out in the 80s and 90s, and there is just something about them that make me feel all …

Seven years after the release of Ridley Scott’s phenomenal Alien in 1979 (read our retro review here)—a movie that had people lined up and down city streets to see it and helped usher in the age of the blockbuster—the next dose of deep space terror was unleashed. This time, sitting …

Before we get into this, I just want to say that the movie came to me in one of the worst times of my life. I suffered a lot at this age; I had to grow up quickly, and it wasn’t very fun. However, here comes the good part. Bill …

30 years ago, my life changed forever; I was the nobody kid who found the beloved punk rock scene. I remember how it felt when I was told I was going to be a dad. I didn’t even know I wanted to be, because a kid would just hold me …

Homicidal mushrooms with teeth terrorizing a wooded retreat?? Yes please!! In a nutshell, that is the premise of director Dave Wascavage’s (Tartarus) cheap-o epic Fungicide! What film deserves the Visual Vengeance treatment more than this one? At least it’ll go well on pizza… Synopsis What happens when a crazed scientist …

For those who aren’t familiar with it, Big Trouble in Little China is a John Carpenter film that released on July 2, 1986, one that struggled and inevitably flopped in the box office but rebounded on home video release, eventually becoming a cult classic, loved by many, but especially this …

Like it or not, everybody, and their brother (sometimes literally), in the late 90’s-early aughts, were making direct-to-video horror films. Shooting and editing were quick, easy, and relatively cheap, and distribution was everywhere to feed rental stores hungry for product. Predictively, lots of ripe turds were shat out onto shelves, …

It’s truly hard to believe that horror filmmakers were running out of ideas in the mid 1980’s, but haunted elevators? On the surface, that’s what director Dick Maas’ 1983 film The Lift appears to be about. But, in a strange amalgamation of genres, it touches on some themes that were …

My introduction to director Rolf Kanefsky was 1990’s brilliant There’s Nothing Out There, but my introduction (apart from a fleeting Tromatic glance)  to horror film goddess Tiffany Shepis (Victor Crowley) was Kanefsky’s equally brilliant The Hazing. Having only seen it on bootlegs of dubious quality and streaming, I jumped into …

As a child of the early 1980’s, few films sparked my imagination the way Clash of the Titans (1981) did. Even though it followed visual FX extravaganzas like Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Superman, Ray Harryhausen’s painstaking stop motion work was still more than capable of inciting wonder …