6. Terror Night AKA Bloody Movie (1987)
The story involves a group of couples who decide to spend the night at the soon to be demolished mansion of the long missing silent movie star Lance Hayward. Unfortunately, he is still alive and recreates characters and kills from his various movies. A somewhat hard to obtain horror picture that is best described as being average at best, yet contains enough gore and nudity to satisfy most fans.
There is a great deal of attraction in this for movie geeks and exploitation cinema fans, as Aldo Ray (The Green Berets), John Ireland (Satan’s Cheerleaders), Jay Richardson (Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers), Alan Hale Jr.(Gilligan’s Island) , Cameron Mitchell (The Toolbox Murders), Dan Haggerty (Grizzly Adams), Michelle Bauer (Café Flesh), and Fred J. Lincoln (Last House on the Left) are all involved in some capacity.
There was also a great deal of the crew involved in this project who at one time or another were part of the porn industry, particularly the producer and director Nick Marino. It originally went straight to VHS and then received a DVD release in 2004, re-titled as Bloody Movie.
7. Geek AKA Backwoods (1987)
This is a low budget horror film that appeared to be trying to capitalize on the success of redneck and the southern horror subgenre in the ways that Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Deliverance did. A couple is camping in Kentucky and come across a weird redneck family that lives alone in the woods, mainly because of their mentally deranged and murder hungry son.
It’s a pretty slow moving story with a low body count, which ends up being marginally good due to some surprising full frontal nudity and a fairly inventive ending. It appears that it has only been released on VHS, but it is currently available to watch on YouTube.
8. Lone Wolf (1988)
“Be Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf!” [5]. This is a super low budget flick that falls somewhere in between being considered total shit and the “so bad it’s good” category. It’s a mixture of big hair, bad 80’s rock music, and older actors pretending to be college students in this Breakfast Club meets Teen Wolf mash up.
The actor that plays the lead singer of the rock band amusingly resembles David Hasselhoff of Knight Rider and Baywatch fame. The werewolf special effects are decent for something that resembles a made for TV movie, with a transformation sequence and several amusing goretastic moments that are mostly at the end. There does not appear to be an official DVD release of this, just the VHS version transferred to DVD.
9. Things (1989)
“Things, A Movie That Defines What Cult Really Is…” [6]. This is a super low budget Canadian horror weirdfest that is in competition with Plan 9 from Outer Space and Manos, Hands of Fate for the title of worst movie ever made.
The plot involves a husband and wife seeking out the help of a mad doctor in order to have a baby, leading to alien like creatures hatching out of her womb. The father and his two friends must fight off these things to survive, while randomly chilling out for a drink. There is no doubt that this is a complete and utter disaster, with a jumbled plot that combines elements of Evil Dead, Alien, and the mad scientist subgenre.
The big difference is just how unbelievably funny and ridiculous all of the dialogue ends up being between the characters, referencing numerous horror films and making virtually every line of dialogue quotable. The dialogue and totally absurd sound effects were all obviously recorded in post-production and end up sounding like it’s actually narration being done by the Mystery Science 3000 crew. The synthesized score is also unusual yet slightly addictive.
It was originally released on VHS in 1989 and then released on DVD by Intervision in 2008, with some extras and audio commentary. The budget was reportedly around $35,000. In a review from Robin Bougie of Cinema Sewer magazine said that it’s “the worst movie ever made. I don’t mean [“bad”] like the way Troma makes bad movies. I’m talking about bad with the best of intentions, like all of the best “bad” movies. You like tormenting yourself with hilariously trashy, moronic, gory, idiotic bad films?? Things is the fucking king of bad movies. This is the movie you put on when you have a get together of pals — and just blow them away. Trust me, you have never seen anything like this in your life. It’s absolutely astonishing in how it is able to mentally wreck anyone who watches it” [7].
10. Mahakaal AKA The Monster (1993)
In what can be simply described as the Bollywood version of A Nightmare on Elm Street, this is one crazy Indian rip off flick. It is basically the same plot line from the first Freddy Krueger movie, with many similar moments, scenes, and music. The main difference is the wonderfully crazy additions that you should come to expect from any Bollywood movie, it is chock full of musical numbers, a weird comedic character, karate, and college students who like they’re 40.
This version of Freddy is called Shakaal and has added in more demonic elements and imagery, with a funky torture dungeon replaced for school boiler room. Despite being complete and utterly ridiculous, it’s still can’t miss entertainment that features some interesting visuals, decent gore, a bunch of fake skeletons, and lots of fog and explosions.
All the works cited can be found here.
Author Bio: Raul J. Vantassle is a jazz musician whose key strokes move about the page creating an explosion of formlessness to form, or just total bullshit. His heroes include John Waters, Robert Crumb, Charles Bukowski, and the Cobra Commander. His Knowledge of film goes across the board but he specializes in Asian and cult cinema. He may be the filthiest person alive. You can visit his blog here.