low budget horror

Number 11 of My Top 31 Horror Movies : An unearthly fog rolls into a small coastal town exactly 100 years after a ship mysteriously sank in its waters : the movie starts on a beach, a group of kids sat around a burning fire as an old fishing captain tells the story about a shipwrecked clipper boat named the Elizabeth Dane….. : after the success of his 1978 horror Halloween, and turning his back on filming a more lucrative sequel filmmaker John Carpenter turned to a story he had written after finding inspiration from a 50s movie The Trollenberg Terror and also by visiting the infamous and some say mystical Stonehenge : THE FOG is both riverting and utterly hair-raising and unlike many of it’s contemporaries it’s not violent or gory yet there’s something quite unsettling lurking deep down in the belly of this 80’s ghost story : from the chilling synth score that accompanies the whiteness of the fog drifting up the coast and into Antonio Bay sweeping across the horizon into churches, underneath doorways, shrouding everything that it comes into contact with, in a death cosuming way to it’s terrific cast that includes Jamie Lee’s drifter, Tom Atkins townie, the wonderful Hal Holbrook as Father Malone and the gorgeous Adrienne Barbeau as DJ Stevie Wayne who broadcasts a local radio show from the lighthouse on the coast (filmed at Point Reyes) : there’s many ingredients to a great movie but for me apart from it’s director the person responsible in how the film looks & feels to the viewer is the DP and they don’t come more impressive than Dean Cundey, I mean talk about LEGEND, from Halloween, The Thing, Escape from New York to Romancing the Stone, Back to the Future and Jurassic Park here’s a guy who has managed to capture moment on film like no other and with John Carpenter’s The Fog Cundey creates this ghostly, chilling atmosphere one of dread and unpleasantness that resonates from the very start of the movie to it’s finish : If you’ve never seen John Carpenter’s THE FOG then your missing a trick, it’s the perfect antidote for those dark & rainy nights when a good old fashioned horror is required, a scary movie that will engulf, unnerve and creep you down to your bones ★★★★★

Number 22 of My Top 31 Horror Movies : Five friends travel to a cabin in a remote region of Tennessee, where they release flesh-possessing demons : Sam Raimi’s THE EVIL DEAD is still after all these years a joy to behold, a guilty pleasure, a wickid low budget scare fest that sees actor Bruce Campbell get pretty much everything thrown at him and his friends? well they get attacked, possessed and wreak holy havoc : there’s no doubt that the two sequels to The Evil Dead are great fun but it’s Raimi’s original released back in 1981 that holds a place in my horror loving heart : right from the offset when their car crosses that rickety old bridge on their way to the cabin, the banging of the swing porch and then as the key is retrieved from it’s place above the door the swing stops, the poster nod to Craven down in the cellar and for a budget of $400,000 the effects throughout are impressively gruesome especially Cheryl’s possessed demon who’s one mean, twisted servant from hell : I rememeber watching this over a friends house during my early teens a few years after it’s initial release and being scare senseless, from it’s shaky camera work, the wind effect, the tree attack to the body dismemberment all had a lasting effect on me growing up and still does : The Evil Dead is pure brilliance, shoe string budget filmmaking of the highest standard that MUST BE WATCHED at least once a year : speaking in my best demonic voice JOIN US ★★★★★