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Entries tagged with 'Slasher'
Posted Sep. 28, 2007,
Brad Pitt, Psycho Killer?
By Dennis Dermody
Any good actor worth his or her salt has a skeleton of an early horror film in their closet. The lovely Naomi Watts was in Children of ohe Corn IV: The Gathering. And before Brad Pitt made his splash in the film Thelma & Louise he made this 1989 body-count teen slasher film Cutting Class. Directed by Rospo Pallenberg -- who wrote screenplays for John Boorman (Excalibar), it's about a series of killings a local high school. Who did it? The pervert Principal (Roddy McDowall), the weird kid just let out of a mental institution for killing his dad (Donovan Leitch) or the hot jock in the red convertible (Brad Pitt)?
The film features lots of attempts at lame black humor and some creative murders -- one teacher gets pushed into a kiln, one has her head bashed into a copy machine, the gym coach gets an American flag plunged through him... But Brad Pitt has star quality to spare even at this young age -- you can't take your eyes off him while he's on screen. Leave it to Lionsgate to unearth this baby....
Posted Sep. 12, 2007,
The Burning out on DVD at Last!
By Dennis Dermody
It's finally here: the uncut version of the beloved 1981 slasher movie The Burning is finally available on DVD. ( www.mgm.com/dvd ) Set at a summer camp where years before a hideous prank on the caretaker Cropsy caused him to be burned an hideously disfigured, he now stalks new campers with sharpened hedge shears -- and the blood flows. One of the first Miramax films, with plenty of newcomers like Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens, Holly Hunter, and outrageous bloody special effects by Tom Savini, most of the film's best parts were discarded in order to get an R rating (but have popped up on bad bootlegs for years). Finally, in all its gruesome glory, we get to see the notorious scene wherein Cropsy goes to town on an entire raft of kids with his trusty shears. It really is unbelievably gory and great.