Contraband (Lucio Fulci, 1980) DVD Review

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“Italy is starting to look like America in the thirties.” Otherwise known as The Smuggler, gore maestro Lucio Fulci's crime epic Contraband mixes old school Mafia romanticism and contemporary cynicism with extreme violence as cigarette smugglers face off with the new tough guy in town: a drug runner with a sadistic streak...

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The Bogey Man (Ulli Lommel, 1980) DVD Review

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“The Most Terrifying Nightmare of Childhood is About to Return!” Combining dark themes of childhood trauma with slasher movie tropes, The Bogey Man (or Boogey Man, if you prefer) – a former 'Video Nasty' in the UK – tries to do something original with the genre at a time when the formula was being set that others would blindly follow...

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Don't Answer The Phone! (Robert Hammer, 1980) DVD Review

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“RUN – if you must. HIDE – if you can. SCREAM, but … He'll Know You're Alone!” Conceived of before John Carpenter's Halloween blew the doors wide open for the slasher movie craze that swept the horror genre during the 1980s, Robert Hammer's one and only film – Don't Answer The Phone! – is a curious schism between disturbing realism, dark humour, and jumping aboard the killer thriller bandwagon...

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Anthropophagous (Joe D'Amato, 1980) DVD Review

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“It's not fear that tears you apart … it's him!” Formerly one of the most notorious 'Video Nasties' in the United Kingdom – where it was banned in 1984 at the height of the moral panic – Anthropophagous: The Beast, aka The Savage Island, is a flesh-devouring holiday in hell from Joe D'Amato (Love Goddess of the Cannibals, and the infamous Emmanuelle in America). However, even with it's grisly reputation, the film has some grander ideas at its core...

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Contamination (Luigi Cozzi, 1980) Blu-Ray/DVD Review

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“They invade your body … control your mind … blow you apart!” If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Ridley Scott and Dan O'Bannon (the Director and Writer of 1979's Alien) must have been blushing like schoolgirls when Luigi (Starcrash) Cozzi's gut-busting spin on their 'haunted house in space' shocker exploded onto the exploitation scene. Taking a handful of iconic images from Scott's film – including the alien eggs and the chest-burster scene – Contamination dispenses with subtlety and goes for spectacular slow-mo splatter...

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The Beast In Space (Alfonso Brescia, 1980) DVD Review

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“In space no-one can hear you come...” Under the pseudonym of Al Bradley, director and co-writer (with Aldo Crudo) Alfonso Brescia's post-Star Wars intergalactic sexploitationer has to be seen to be believed. Absolutely defining the term 'trash cinema', The Beast In Space – a semi-sequel to Walerian Borowczyk's 1975 art house grot flick The Beast – is a bizarre and scatterbrained odyssey of diffused lighting, gaudy design, and flesh-jiggling distraction.

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He Knows You're Alone (Armand Mastroianni, 1980) Review

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In 1978 John Carpenter's Halloween (following the likes of Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Black Christmas) popularised the slasher movie format to such an extent that a torrent of imitators would soon follow. Some became enduring genre classics like Friday the 13^th, while others were rushed knock-offs … He Knows You're Alone is, unfortunately, one of the latter. However, some of its cast members went on to become very well known – one of whom even became an A-List Oscar winner.

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Maniac (Franck Khalfoun, 2013) Review

In the last decade there has been a veritable monsoon of horror movie remakes, and while familiar names both large and small underwent the 're-imagining' process (to widely varying degrees of success), William Lustig's notoriously nasty Maniac (1980), slid under the radar – until now.

“Leave her alone!” Written and produced by Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur (worthwhile remakes of The Hills Have Eyes in 2006, and Piranha in 2010), with Lustig on-board, and Franck Khalfoun (the utterly dreadful and menace-free P2) in the Director's chair, it was a real toss-up how this one could turn out. Would it be a pointless exercise in thoughtless money-making (akin to A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010), or would it be a fresh and worthy new spin on familiar material that is held dear as a dark and sinister example of the slasher genre at its best?

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