Skeletons In The Closet: Best Actor 2016

Every year I try (and mostly fail) to catch every film nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, and I will continue that tradition this year. But I also want someone to root for in the Performing categories as well. But here's the thing. I don't have the patience to sit through quite that many Oscarbait movies, so I've decided to Brennan up the joint and run a new experiment:

I will watch a horror film starring each of the Best Acting nominees to honor the performances they gave long before they made the A-list. Let's begin with mini-reviews covering the male performers being honored at this year's ceremony.

Skeletons in the Closet: Best Actor Nominees

Casey Affleck

Nominated For: Manchester by the Sea

I actually caught this one, as it's also nominated for Best Picture, so you can read my review right here. Affleck plays Lee Chandler, a grief-stricken man who must take on the responsibility of caring for his late brother's teenage son. But before that, he was a teen himself, and he wound up on the wrong end of a post-Scream horror extravaganza.

Skeleton in the Closet: Soul Survivors (2001)

Director: Steve Carpenter

Cast: Melissa Sagemiller, Wes Bentley, Casey Affleck 

Run Time: 1 hour 24 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

After a fatal car crash, Cassie begins to see ghostly visions of her boyfriend as mysterious happenings disturb her midterms week.

Seriously, what the f**k is p with Soul Survivors? As evidenced by its headshot lineup poster, crane shots of school buildings, and grotty pop metal soundtrack, it’s meant to be a post-Scream teenybopper slash-em-up, (during the prolonged death rattle of that particular trend), but it rams head-on into that other horror trend of the early 2000’s: the Sixth Sense-esque reality-bending parapsychological thriller. Toss in Dorm That Dripped Blood co-director Steve Carpenter, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for an unholy disaster, even if its cast is a stunning result of the collusion of the B-movie gods, uniting millennium Scream Queen Eliza Dushku, a Wes Bentley fresh from American Beauty, and B-side brothers Luke Wilson and Casey Affleck.

This seems like it would be so far up my alley it’s blocking my back door, so why exactly does it fail so miserably? It’s certainly not Affleck, who’s giving a performance similar enough to his turn in Manchester by the Sea that I’m sure he’s praying nobody notices. And the rest of the ensemble is perfectly serviceable for this kind of movie (look, in the 90’s we got two films in a row starring Jennifer Love Hewitt’s breasts, so this is a step up). And the cinematography is TV movie bland, but at least it’s in focus.

I think the bulk of the blame will have to settle on the script, also by Steve Carpenter. It so vaguely resembles anything even remotely similar to a feature film that you have to wonder if this wasn’t some 85-minute Kuleshov experiment, juxtaposing random images to see if any meaning rises from them whatsoever. It doesn’t. Among the shattered fragments of motion Soul Survivors calls “scenes” are Elm Street nightmares, interminable clubbing shots that mimic Buffy’s The Bronze, an allegedly adorable wall-painting sequence that is frighteningly overzealous, and… Well, I have no clear idea who is where and why, because this movie had such a multitude of interlocking layers of dream, hallucination, and reality, but somebody definitely had sex with a ghost.

It’s a ten-car pileup of a story, one that could be called “nightmare logic” if the film was well-made enough to be scary to any degree. As it stands, the only shock gags it can come up with are shadowy figures that look like Eliza Dushku turning out to be Eliza Dushku. It has all the thrills of looking at things without your glasses on. It throws every spooky element it can think of into a pot (masked serial killers, ghosts, crypto-lesbians) but it fails to spice things up with any sort of atmosphere before forgetting to resolve anything it introduced in the first place.

In short, Soul Survivors is haphazard, poorly paced nonsense, and its very existence is an affront to everything I love. Don’t watch Soul Survivors, for the love of God.

Rating: 2/10

Andrew Garfield

Nominated for: Hacksaw Ridge

Andrew Garfield is a fresh face, having just hit the scene in 2010's The Social Network, but before he played a pacifist in Mel Gibson's Best Picture nominee Hacksaw Ridge he... Well, he didn't have much of a chance to work in horror before he escaped the B-list, but here's a mildly supernatural short film he did, which was incidentally directed by the screenwriter of another Best Picture nominee: Lion.

Skeleton in the Closet: "Air" (2009)

Director: Luke Davies

Cast: Andrew Garfield, Felix Benton, S.A. Griffin 

Run Time: 18 minutes

An English geologist meets a young boy with a mysterious secret on his travels through Texas.

It’s perhaps unfair to compare “Air” to a cliché-ridden, desperately overserious student short film, because that’s in all likelihood what it actually is. If you’ve seen a  single ghost movie, you’ll be able to guess at least one of the two plot twists within seconds. Considering that I too have made my share of crappy student films, I’ll keep this short and polite.

The plot is overly straightforward, too much to justify the 20-minute run time, but one takeaway from this is that Garfield has an inherent neurotic charm. Even in this microbudget environment, he gives a performance that – if not superlative – is at least natural and engaging. Do I recommend anybody ever watch “Air?” No, of course not. But I’ve sat through enough short film festivals to know that it could have been much, much worse.

Rating: 5/10

Ryan Gosling

Nominated for: La La Land

Another flick I’ve seen and reviewed! It’s almost like I didn’t need to do this project after all. Oh well. In La La Land, Ryan Gosling reteams with Emma Stone for the third time (after Crazy, Stupid, Love and Gangster Squad) as Sebastian Wilder, a down-on-his-luck jazz pianist with big dreams. But before that, he was a Canadian child star with even bigger dreams, of being a famous actor. But if you want that Oscar, you’re gonna have to slum it...

Skeleton in the Closet: Are You Afraid of the Dark? S5E3 "The Tale of Station 109.1" (1995)

Director: Ron Oliver

Cast: Gilbert Gottfried, Zachary Carlin, Ryan Gosling

Run Time: 22 minutes

A kid who’s obsessed with death is accidentally sent to the afterlife’s waiting room after stumbling across a radio station transmitted from the beyond.

Of the two beloved children’s horror shows of the 90’s, Are You Afraid of the Dark? maintains the best continuing reputation, and for good reason. A kids’ series that wasn’t afraid to get down and dirty in the Twilight Zone trenches, it didn’t talk down to its young audience. “Station 109.1” isn’t particularly gory or shocking, but it’s a reliably macabre tale that combines low-fi ghostly thrills with an ironically bureaucratic satirical tang provided by – of all people - Gilbert Gottfried.

Gosling isn’t the lead in this one, but he’s oddly convincing at playing a mechanically-inclined older brother in spite of his weedy-ass arms. There’s nothing that would indicate the stellar work he’d grow into, but we all have to start somewhere. “Station 109.1” is a delightful 90’s relic (a major plot point hinges on a slap bracelet), even if it’s utterly disposable TV entertainment. But wait, there’s more… 

Rating: 6/10

Skeleton in the Closet #2: Goosebumps S1E15 "Say Cheese and Die" (1996)

Director: Ron Oliver

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Akiva David, Renessa Blitz 

Run Time: 22 minutes

A kid discovers a cursed Polaroid camera that causes bad things to happen to whoever it takes a photo of.

Guess who has two Oscar nominations and was also in the other pre-eminent kids horror show of the 90’s? This Gosling! While I love the Goosebumps book series and “Say Cheese and Die” in particular, Goosebumps was the Bud Light to Are You Afraid of the Dark’s craft brew, A cheesy ramshackle affair with a toothless approach to Stine’s already light horror material, this one wears its low budget on its sleeve. Although the splashes of red, green, and blue light in an abandoned warehouse are lovely, the easiest prop in the world – a spooky camera – is a dreadful hunk of plastic that looks like it was fished out of a Burger King dumpster.

And I don’t know what happened in the intervening year, but Gosling is terrible here, mugging like the back shelf of a coffee shop. The only redeeming thing about his performance is that it’s not half as dreadful as his co-stars: excepting Richard McMillan (Cube Zero, The Day After Tomorrow) serving a delicious plate of ham as a sinister lurker in a bright silver fright wig. I suppose as a child actor, you learn on the job, and somewhere along the way Gosling sharpened his craft to the stiletto point it is today. Maybe it happened on the set of Young Hercules…

Rating: 3/10

Viggo Mortensen

Nominated for: Captain Fantastic

Viggo Mortensen is a happy surprise on this list. It's been a while since we've heard the Lord of the Rings star's name in casual conversation (especially considering nobody actually saw Captain Fantastic), but before he played a hermetic father who has raised his kids deep in the woods, he belonged to another, even less healthy family living in rural seclusion...

Skeleton in the Closet: Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)

Director: Jeff Burr

Cast: Kate Hodge, Ken Foree, R.A. Mihailoff

Run Time: 1 hour 25 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Well whaddya know, I've already reviewed this one. How convenient for me!

Rating: 4/10

Denzel Washington

Nominated for: Fences

Denzel Washington has had a long and storied career, so it's no surprise to see him gracing this list. But while that career has taken him to the role of washed-up lower class father Troy Maxson in the film adaptation of August Wilson's play, he had a chance to get down and dirty with a film that combined one of his most frequent roles - a homicide detective - with something a little more supernatural.

Skeleton in the Closet: Fallen (1998)

Director: Gregory Hoblit

Cast: Denzel Washington, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland

Run Time: 2 hours 4 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

After a serial killer is executed, his crimes begin again. A local homicide detective quickly learns that he must hunt down a body-hopping, murderous demon who’s perpetrating the killings.

Fallen is a preternaturally weird movie. And I don’t just mean because it’s a theological police procedural with a literal demon as the villain. This is a film that pretty much incinerates the fourth wall with an in medias res “how did I wind up like this?” gag straight out of Emperor’s New Groove before diving into its vein-throbbingly serious rumination on God and the human experience. This tonal imbalance teeters through the entire film, which can’t seem to decide whether it’s Silence of the Lambs, Seven, or Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.

Whatever it is, it’s still pretty good. Denzel Washington is so charming he actually humanizes the role of “perfect, by-the-book cop,” and his partner is John Goodman so I can’t complain. And although the film doesn’t explore its body-switching concept to tis fullest extent (it’s much more content to wallow in philosophical soliloquies, because the 90’s were a rough time for everyone), it provides several memorably chilling moments where a cotillion of random passersby have their average facades splinter into expressions of pure malice.

Do I like the abortive Hannibal Lecter riddles that paint our hero to be such an unrestrained moron that he has to ask a nun to define the word “apocalypse” for him? Of course not. Do I want to watch the incessant shots that paint the world in the mottled yellow hue so popular in late 90’s urban dramas? Hell no. Do I enjoy seeing the sole major female character be treated like an anthropomorphic baby carriage? I’d rather gargle hot coals. But in spite of its excess of extremely dated detritus, it still manages to leave an impression.

Maybe it’s because I just watched Soul Survivors, but I had a good time with this one. It’s far more a Denzel Washington movie than it is a horror movie, but its villain is distinct enough to cast an eerie pall over the proceedings. And a certain reveal in the third act should be monumentally silly, but it’s so earnestly presented that you kind have to love it. I’d sooner watch Fallen than any other project on this list, though- full disclosure – my tragic viewing history predicts I’ll probably catch Leatherface way more times.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 2140

Don't Mess With Texas

Year: 1990

Director: Jeff Burr

Cast: Kate Hodge, Ken Foree, R. A. Mihailoff

Run Time: 1 hour 26 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

"They just get dumber and dumber, don't they?"

This line from Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III is meant to be about the victims that wander in the way of the treacherous Sawyer family, but it's quite accurate in describing the franchise itself. It's a true marvel how ineffably, ludicrously dumb the filmmakers in charge of horror sequels tend to be, but the people behind Texas Chainsaw III just about take the cake, ripping continuity to shreds and replacing it with goreless, gibbering claptrap.

Although in retrospect, we all should have seen it coming when New Line Entertainment picked up the property in the late 80's. Sure, it's the company behind the beloved Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, but New Line in the 90's was like quicksand for horror franchises, sucking up everything good about them and spitting out dreadfully bizarre and bizarrely dreadful films like Freddy's Dead and Jason Goes to Hell.

Heck, even the teaser trailer tried to warn us it was a piece of crap.

Texas Chainsaw III "tells" the "story" of Michelle (Kate Hodge) and Ryan (William Butler of Friday the 13th Part VII), an annoying couple who are taking a road trip from LA to Florida by way of Texas. After a run-in at the Last Chance gas station and an unfortunate trunk-chainsawing, they get into an accident on a back road, flipping weekend survivalist Benny's (Ken Foree of From Beyond and Dawn of the Dead) Jeep and sending their own car careening into the forest.

After an interminable amount of Noises Off antics in the forest (up to three crazed hillbilly cannibals and up to four crazed victims appear and vanish between scenes at the whims of some unknown but certainly unmerciful god), Michelle arrives at a house in the woods (for the first and only time shot somewhere other than Texas - in this case Valencia, California though it looks more like the swamp planet Dagobah) just in time for the obligatory dinner party sequence.

As always, our Final Girl (insofar that she survives and is a female) gets to meet the family. And here's where things get hairy. If you recall from my previous entry in this franchise, Part 2 ended with the entire clan being blown up by a grenade and/or chainsawed and tossed into a turbine. I'll give the filmmakers a pass on bringing back Leatherface (R. A. Mihailoff) because a beloved franchise does need its main villain. But evidently the Sawyer family is like a Chia pet - just sprinkle some blood and new families will sprout around you, as many as you want!

You want three new brothers? Sure thing! Here's Tex (a pre-Aragorn Viggo Mortensen), Tinker (Joe Unger), and Alfredo (Tom Everett), each more unexciting and derivative than the last. You want Grandpa back? No problem! Here's his corpse to tide you over. You want a little girl (Jennifer Banko) in spite of the fact that there's no possible combination of sexually healthy humans in the film that could have borne her from their coition? You want a Mama (Miriam Byrd-Nethery) in a wheelchair with an electrolarynx? Screw you, you lunatic, but you got it!

The true modern family.

I haven't even mentioned that the family now lays traps in the woods like they're the frickin' Most Dangerous Game of the American Southwest and that Leatherface now has a leg brace as well as the ability to drive. Not to mention the film completely overestimates the importance of the chainsaw, elevating it to totemic power within the family.

For all this we're given no explanation. No delicate tiptoeing around continuity. Not even a gentle nod. The new world order for the Sawyers simply exists. And your ability to enjoy this movie is contingent on your ability accept this turn of events. But hey. I'm an easygoing horror fan.

I've laughed my way through Jason's dead child body teleporting from the New York sewers back to being a full-grown man at Crystal Lake. I've endured Freddy Krueger miraculously sprouting a wife and daughter and being given his dream powers by ancient worm demons. I've cheerily skipped through Michael Myers' induction into the Cult of Thorn. 

But Texas Chainsaw III just plain pisses me off. It's one thing to make a dumb horror sequel. It's another to create a film that dares to spit in the face of continuity itself, then devotes all its resources to a slavish imitation of the aesthetic of the original film, all the way down from the heat dripping off the frame to the insert shots of the sun to the armadillo in the road. And then attempts to dispel any potential claims of plagiarism by sticking earrings on that armadillo.

The cherry on top? That doll is named Sally.

This is infuriating to any hard-won fan of the franchise. But if one could manage the Herculean task of looking past that anger and being completely objective... The movie still is a piece of crap. But at the very least an amiably daffy piece of crap.

This is the first film where the acting slips below the slasher threshold, landing firmly in camp territory. Mihailoff's Leatherface is supremely unimpressive either way you slice it (be it chainsaw or what have you), but Mortensen's Tex is a delightful nutcase with an accent like slow-churned molasses. And Everett filters the Hitchhiker impression that provides the character of Alfredo through an accent that can only be described as "Elvis with a penny up his nose." And man oh man can Ken Foree be a bad actor when he wants to be, shouting his lines with little to no concern upon whom they fall.

There's just slightly enough gore to wet a neophyte's whistle, though even in the five-minutes-longer unrated cut, the grue is rather subdued. But the hamhanded dialogue more than makes up for it with its Screenwriting 101 tricks (use a random token from Act 1 to pay off a kill in Act 3, mirroring character situations before and after they make a change), which spill out from the screen like a magician's handkerchief.

Or, if you prefer, neckerchief.

And luckily for bad movie enthusiasts, the Final Girl is one of those "shout at the screen" types who always turns back after running seven feet and yells at her boyfriend to hurry up fixing the tire while continuously taking away the flashlight she's holding to aid his repairs. And did I mention that all of this is scored with a soundtrack that feels like a Trapt album run through a garbage disposal?

The finale especially is pure dumb fun, with one moment of humor (Leatherface plays a Leapfrog-style kids' game) that lands with intentionality. And at least two of the deaths are chainsaw related, which is far more uncommon than would seem possible in a franchise that has built its entire mythology around the implement.

So perhaps it's not quite as soul-poisoning as I first made it out to be. But the fact remains that this is the first film in the franchise that outright defaces the original masterpiece with its sheer ineptitude. There's certainly plenty more crap to come, but we must never forget this sad day in 1990 which finally felled the savage beast that is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

TL;DR: Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III is dumb and terrible and spits on continuity but at least it doesn't take itself too seriously.

Rating: 4/10

Body Count: 6; not including an armadillo. Or Benny and Leatherface, who looked rather dead last time I saw them, but were revived without a scratch thanks to tampering from Lucifer the studio.

1. Gina is hit in the head with a sledgehammer.
2. Sara is chainsawed to death.
3. Ryan is chainsawed and hit in the head with a hammer.
4. Mama is shot three times with a shotgun.
5. Tex is stabbed in the back and set on fire.
6. Alfredo is shot in the chest with a shotgun. 

Word Count: 13

Reviews In This Series

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Hooper, 1974)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (Hooper, 1986)

Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (Burr, 1990)

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (Henkel, 1994)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Nispel, 2003)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (Liebesman, 2006)

Texas Chainsaw 3D (Luessenhop, 2013)

Leatherface (Bustillo & Maury, 2017)

Archive: January 26, 2013

14 More Celebrities You Didn’t Know Were in Slasher Movies

I had a ton of fun writing my original list, but as I thought about it, I realized there were a lot of omissions that I had overlooked at the time in my haste to discuss Johnny Depp’s midriff. So now I present an addendum.

Read on in horror and see all your favorite stars slum it. Hey, you gotta pay your dues.

Round 1: Leatherface Double Take - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Franchise

Viggo Mortensen

Famous for: The Lord of the Rings, A History of Violence, The Road

Skeleton in the Closet: Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III(1990)

Our dear friend Aragorn is the first of many now-famous stars to have rubbed shoulders with our friend Leatherface. His character’s name also wins the award for Least Effort Put Into a Pun in a Horror Film: Tex. True story.

Renée Zellweger

Famous for: Jerry Maguire, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Chicago

Skeleton in the Closet: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation(1994)

This woman has won an Oscar for her performance in Cold Mountain.

This woman has dated Jack White.

This woman was once engaged to Jim Carrey (OK, maybe that one’s not so good to brag about).

And months before she hit the big time, she starred in this grubby little horror reboot that almost never saw the light of day.

Matthew McConaughey

Famous for: How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, The Lincoln Lawyer, Magic Mike, People’s Sexiest Man Alive 2005

Skeleton in the Closet: Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1994)

Twist ending: He’s insane. 

Following Renée’s footsteps, McConaughey starred in TCM:TNG, became famous shortly afterward, and became the bane of Hollywood reporters before the invention of spellcheck.

He actually fought to keep the film out of theaters, effectively killing any slim chance it had to make money.

Jessica Biel

Famous for: 7th Heaven, The A-Team, Valentine’s Day

Skeleton in the Closet: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

This one isn’t too embarrassing, the movie was actually pretty good, and it’s only Jessica Biel. But still, worth noting.

Matt Bomer

Famous for: White Collar, Magic Mike

Skeleton in the Closet: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

And instantly legions of teenage girls become Leatherface fans.

Round 2: Rap ‘n Slash - A Brief History of Rappers in Horror Cinema

Ice-T

Famous for: “O.G: Original Gangster”, “6 ‘N the Mornin’ “, “Colors”

Skeleton in the Closet: Leprechaun in the Hood (2000)

Ice-T stars as rap producer Mack Daddy whose success comes about by harnessing the leprechaun’s magical flute, which makes people appreciate rap music. I can’t believe I just typed that sentence. 

LL Cool J

Famous for: “Mama Said Knock You Out”, “Doin’ It”, “I Need Love”

Skeleton in the Closet: Halloween H20 (1998)

The Halloween franchise was getting pretty desperate at this point, already having retconned four films to bring back Jamie Lee Curtis, so it makes sense that they would use this kind of novelty casting.

Dirty little secret: The movie, directed by Friday the 13th: Part 2’s Steve Miner, is actually pretty darn good.

Busta Rhymes

Famous for: “I Know What You Want”, “Break Ya Neck”, “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See”

Skeleton in the Closet: Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

Now this is desperate. Busta Rhymes stars as the obnoxious host of a web series who traps a group of teenagers in Michael Myers’ old house and broadcasts their brutal murders online. 

He seems like a standup fellow.

Honorable Mention: Tremaine “Trey Songz” Neverson, who appeared in Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013), earning him a place in both rounds 1 & 2. Unfortunately, his film is too recent to be considered for this category. Better luck next time.

Round 3: Bikini Death Toll - The (Not So) Final Girls

Tyra Banks

Famous for: America’s Next Top Model, The Tyra Banks Show

Skeleton in the Closet: Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

To top things off with what is one of the most awful movies in a franchise that previously featured the magic of Stonehenge turning children’s heads into bugs, Tyra Banks is here. She plays Busta Rhymes’ assistant, and isn’t even murdered onscreen. What a shame.

Amy Adams

Famous for: Enchanted, Julie & Julia, The Muppets, being perfect

Skeleton in the Closet: Psycho Beach Party (2000)

That’s her in the middle! Amy Adams is a gem in this quirky slasher sendup that’s actually pretty great. She is far too adorable to play her role, a sex-crazed vixen who tries to stab her best friends in the back and win the affections of Nicholas Brendon (whom she also appeared with in a season 4 episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

Katherine Heigl

Famous for: Grey’s Anatomy, Knocked Up, 27 Dresses

Skeleton in the Closet: Valentine (2001)

This was a good one. There’s some quality movies on this list, weirdly enough. At least on the very narrow adjusted scale of slasher grading. David Boreanaz (Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Angel) stars as the loveable alcoholic boyfriend, and Katherine Heigl is mowed down within the first ten minutes.

Not to be confused with the 2010 romantic comedy Valentine’s Day, although I’d love to see the look on that horrified Heigl fan’s face.

Round 4: OK Seriously? - These Guys?

Leslie Nielsen

Famous for: Airplane!, The Naked Gun series

Skeleton in the Closet: Prom Night (1980)

This actually happened. Nielsen is the fourth lucky star on this list to have worked alongside everyone’s favorite Scream Queen, Jamie Lee Curtis. If you don’t like Jamie Lee Curtis, you don’t exist.

In Prom Night, Nielsen plays the principal of the high school which is host to both the prom and a teenage blood bath. Did I mention he’s Curtis’s father? Glorious.

Also, be sure to check out the fantastically overlong dance breakdown in the middle of the film.

God, I love the 80’s.

Seann William Scott

Famous for: American Pie, Dude, Where’s My Car?, The Dukes of Hazzard

Skeleton in the Closet: Final Destination (2000)

Steve Stifler’s at it again in this zany teen comedy! After a botched European vacation, the Stiffmeister hangs around town with his wacky friends until he is abruptly decapitated by flying shrapnel.

David Copperfield

Famous for: being a magician

Skeleton in the Closet: Terror Train (1980)

Jamie Lee Curtis gets around. Terror Train is another entry on the list that is unexpectedly high quality. It might actually even be considered “good” in terms of actual real life movies.

Featuring a New Year’s train party/murderfest and about 10 minutes of David Copperfield alternately being creepy and showing off, Terror Trainperfectly sums up the slasher boom of the early 80’s.

In conclusion: Nobody is safe. One by one, the slasher genre will claim all of your favorite stars. You never know who might be next!

Word Count: 1170