Terror Train (1980) – Roger Spottiswoode

In the early 80s, poor Jamie Lee Curtis seemed to be in constant trouble with slashers. I remember seeing the fairly generic poster when I was a kid, and the masked face and the knife really bothered me. As mentioned previously it took me a long time to come around to horror films. So until…

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) – Renny Harlin

The fourth entry in the Elm Street series has a pretty cool pedigree behind the camera. A young, up and coming director, who would go on to make some solid 90s action films, Renny Harlin helms the film, and the story was developed by Brian Hegeland and William Kotzwinkle, before Heglenand, Jim Wheat and Ken…

TAD 2021: Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It dir. Yernar Nurgaliyev

Kazakhstan delivers Toronto After Dark’s Opening Night Gala Film, Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It, and it sets up perfectly what to expect from TAD if this is your first time. There is going to be blood, wild on-screen deaths, laugh out loud moments, uncomfortable humour, and a lot of cross genre entertainment. Datsan (Daniar Alshinov)…

Freddy vs. Jason (2003) – Ronny Yu

After the mess that was Jason X, Freddy vs. Jason, the film that horror fans had been waiting for, ends up being pretty damned entertaining, despite some inconsistencies in tone, effects, and in-universe continuity. Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) has been forgotten, so he seeks a way to bring fear back to the young people of…

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993) – Adam Marcus

New Line Cinema takes over the reins of the Voorhees series for the next three films, and for their first film, the creator of the original film, Sean Cunningham insisted on something different. Adam Marcus, who served as the film’s director, and one of the film’s writers definitely did that, and delivered one of the…

Dawn of the Dead (2004) – Zack Snyder

It takes guts to want to remake a Romero zombie classic, but that’s where we are with the next zombie film featured in DK Canada’s highly enjoyable Monsters in the Movies book. Zack Snyder, a wonderfully visual director, who never actually seems to be able to handle story and character (or any measure of subtlety)…

Day of the Dead (1985) – George A. Romero

DK Canada’s Monsters in the Movies brings me a Romero zombie classic, the last installment of the original trilogy, Day of the Dead, as I continue to explore the chapter focusing on the walking dead, the zombie. With makeup effects work by Tom Savini, and a cool score by John Harrison, Romero’s classic is a…

Zombie (1979) – Lucio Fulci

The next zombie movie to be featured in DK Canada’s highly enjoyable (and bloody) Monsters in the Movies book has been on the periphery of my life for a long time, though I had never seen it. I remember seeing the poster for Zombie aka Zombie Flesh Eaters aka Zombi 2 on the theater sheet…

TAD 2018: You Might Be the Killer (2018) – Brett Simmons

The final night of Toronto After Dark gets underway this evening, and while I didn’t get to see all the films I wanted to see (life gets in the way), I enjoyed the ones I did, and loved sharing my thoughts on them with you. The final screening tonight (which does so twice, once at…