Counter-revolution, attempted time-travel, imagineering. 1981 was at the cusp of a wave-peak, the initial effort to return The United States to a 1950's White Christian Cishet Supremacist Wonderland of small-town shopkeepers, in-line law enforcement, nuclear families, with nothing to trouble the surface of the illusion. This time, this Golden Age, never existed, except in model railroads, dollhouses and the dreams of fascist demagogues whose public-private-police-state partnership of soldering business interests to Xtian Fundamentalism and Cold War Paranoia paid off handsomely after a decade of founding conspiratorial think tanks and flooding what markets could be with coded and uncoded messaging. This was an effort to create an uncanny state, a slipstream woven from money and desire and force, a haunted house…

This is a strange little horror movie from director Gary Sherman. Set in the coastal town of Potter's Bluff, the film stars James Farentino as local sheriff Dan Gillis. He's investigating the mysterious death's of some tourist's but when the supposed dead bodies start re-appearing as if nothing's happened, Dan realise's that his quaint little town is hiding a dark and disturbing secret.
I found this movie had a bit of a Stephen King vibe to it, set in a small town that harbours a secret, it keeps you on guard as your never sure who to trust and I was never quite sure where the film was going. The thick fog that generally enshrouds the town gives the film…

Hooptober 3.0 (2016) #31

Imagine cruising down the highway in your Kombi van one cool autumnal afternoon. While shifting your bum about on the seat, you realise just how long it has been since you last got out from behind the wheel. A stretch of the legs and some fresh air would be very welcome right about now. So, when you see the exit sign for Potter's Bluff you smile to yourself and veer onto the off-ramp.

As you head towards the small town you see a calm and quiet beach by the shore. You cannot see a single soul about anywhere, it would be just like your own private beach. You decide to stop here for awhile so that…

A cult-like town isolated somewhere on the coast of California gruesomely murders visitors and delivers the bodies to the mortician. The mortician is like the leader of the town since they're all dead and he restored them. The sheriff investigates the murders but his life isn't quite normal either. His wife teaches in the elementary school, and is giving a lecture on witchcraft to the children as he watches from outside the classroom door, kind of laughing and then starting to worry. The whole film is shot kind of darkly, making it look pretty creepy, and the scenes of a mob of normal looking townspeople photographing and filming the bloody murders are done really well. It's much worse and more…

** >>Time's running out! If you can vote early, please do so! If you're in a state in which mail-in ballots must be received by November 3rd (such as Wisconsin), don't vote by mail! Locate a legitimate dropbox and use that instead! If you know ANYONE that can vote and hasn't, consider reaching out to them and encouraging them to participate. This election is too important to sit out. Stay safe and make your voice heard!!<< **

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I've spent more than a few years sifting through "best of" classic horror lists, looking for the kind of stories that somehow provide me with engaging genre entertainment and that manage to do so in comforting ways (paradoxical, I know). It may…

Spooky Scary Horrorthons 3 - Film #32 (Bonus Film #1)

Potter's Bluff is a calm little coastal town with an equally small population. It all seems so perfect, like a picture forever capturing an alluring beauty. And let me tell you something.. It is perfect!

The little town may however seem a bit odd, at a closer inspection. That mortician may seem a bit too passionate about his job and that teacher seems more inclined to teach her students about witchcraft than something like mathematics or geography. But don't worry, small towns like this one are bound to have some interesting characters.

You should be careful when you hit the roads around here though. Why, just recently a photographer from…

Undead & Buried would have been more accurate.

Dead & Buried was banned for a while back in the early 1980s in the UK under the stupid Video Recordings Act that was supposed to get rid of so-called 'video nasties'. These days it would probably get a 15 certificate. What is depressing about it all is that this film is far from being the mildest film that was banned on that list.

It's also not the best - but it's not bad. It did struggle to really engage me for one or two extended periods of its running time mainly because it's a pretty stop-start affair. That is a problem I have with a lot of slasher films (of which this is…

Geoff T's Hoop-Tober 3.0 Challenge
Dead & Buried (1981)

The writers of Alien scripted this bizarre chiller about a seemingly peaceful coastal town named Potter's Bluff with a deadly secret. A group of townspeople are brutally murdering any tourists that step foot, and staging their deaths as accidents. Local sheriff Dan Gillis investigates the mysterious deaths, and the deeper he digs, the more he realizes that the killings may be part of something bigger, a town-wide plan to reanimate corpses and bring them back to life.

Aside from some decent performances (one of which is Robert Englund as one of the creepy townspeople), I can't deny the genuine creepiness of this at times since it is high on plenty of atmosphere…

“Oh, Daniel Daniel Daniel Daniel, you’re a great disappointment to me. A whole week and you were still unable to establish that poor man’s true identity.”

“What’s it to you, Dobbs?”

“‘What’s it to me?’ A sea of caskets. That’s what you have me burying there. A sea of caskets! Now if you had been able to find that poor boy’s family they might have asked me to perform some of my magic.”

“You know, Dobbs, sometimes you make me sick.”

“Sick!?! You bring me a body that smells like burnt steak. You force me to keep it ‘til it begins to rot, and you have the nerve to tell me that I make you sick?!?!”

Gah!  I’ve seen this…