This may not be the first example of a Hicksploitation movie, but it’s certainly one of the more important ones. It pretty much paved the way for similar entries in the genre like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), or even Wrong Turn (2003). Without this one, you wouldn’t have those. Degenerate inbred illiterate hillbillies as the bad guys? Check! Naive city folk as the victims? Check! A twisted mix of Southern Gothic, Bugs Bunny Cartoons, and Exploitation Movie atmosphere? Double Check! This is the good stuff. This is the kind of movie that begs to be watched while sitting in the back seat of a musclecar at a seedy Drive-in, drunk on cheap beer, and making out with a stripper you picked up hitchhiking. There’s just no other way to truly appreciate insanity such as this. Hold on to your horses, because I’m going to review H.G. Lewis’ Two Thousand Maniacs!
Continue reading
Author Archives: Jeremy Knox
Bad Movie Monday: Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978)
It’s kind of weird that I hadn’t reviewed Attack of the Killer Tomatoes yet since it was more or less my introduction to bad movies. I remember being about ten years old and hearing whispers about it on the playground. Kids would talk about having watched this movie with the same kind of eerie somber tone reserved for describing how they saw the ghost of a dead grandparent standing at their bedroom door. “You won’t believe what I saw last night, but…”
So, how does it hold up nearly forty years later? Well, let’s find out!
Continue reading
THE PICTURES OF DAVID LYNCH: ERASERHEAD (1977)
David Lynch, one of the most monumental filmmakers of all time, has died. To say that I am devastated is an understatement. Because the man was so much more than a filmmaker to me. He was a doorway into art and beauty and soul. He was a mentor and father figure and shaman. He provided philosophy and council and entertainment. He was the sort of person that I aspired to be like, to the point where I’ve been subconsciously dressing like I was a character in one of his movies for last forty years. He influenced my taste in religion, food, music, movies, books, painting, sculpting, fashion, cars, and even architecture. No other filmmaker made me feel the way he did. No other filmmaker transformed me as much as he did. Without him, I would not be me. It’s as simple as that.
So I wanted to talk about his life and his movies and how he’s affected me as an artist and as a human being. So let’s talk about Eraserhead, because that’s where it all began.
Continue reading
Bad Movie Monday: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation
Well, it’s that time of the year again and we all know what this means! It means a bunch of obnoxious songs screaming at you to buy luxury items, malls packed full of depraved people ready to knock old ladies down in order to get the last Xbox, demented family members coming to visit and eat all your food while terrible movies play on a constant loop as if they’re pagan drumbeats that you can’t escape. Luckily, I’ve immunized myself against the last one by watching trash every Monday for the last four years. So let’s talk about that by reviewing today’s movie Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation.
Bad Movie Monday: Without Warning (1980)
I’ve watched a lot, and I do mean a LOT of bad movies in the last few years, and some of these movies are so much fun and were made with such love and sincerity that I will unironically never forget them for the rest of my life. They’re almost like happy memories. They bring joy, just thinking about them. Then there’s movies like Without Warning, where I watched it about a week ago and forgot every single solitary thing about it within a day and had to re-watch the whole stupid mess again just to write this review. Yeah, it’s that kind of movie. Continue reading
Bad Movie Monday: Burial Ground (1981)
Not everyone is like me, a movie masochist who willingly seeks out the absolute worst that cinema has to offer. Some of you might enjoy a little bad acting or some ridiculous plot twists, but you don’t want to feel like the movie mugged you in a dark alley and then kicked you in the groin for good measure. The desire for a film to NOT cause your mind to snap is something I can totally empathize with. You want fun, not pain. I understand perfectly. So today’s Bad Movie Monday suggestion is going to be a mostly fun one. And so I present to you Burial Ground.
MEGALOPOLIS (2024)
It was as if the stars and the planets had aligned. I had finally earned some well deserved and much needed time off from my day job and one of my friends suggested we go see Megalopolis while it was still playing in theatres. Since I hadn’t posted on the site in a while and have been wanting to write something, I decided to take him up on the offer. I am, after all, the resident bad movie connoisseur am I not? So if Megalopolis is truly a disaster, a Megaflopolis as many critics are saying, then my review should be the final word on the subject. Because who can you trust if not me?
Continue reading