It’s spooky season and I thought it’d be a good time to whip out another edition of “Great Minority Movie Heroes” but leaning in to the horror genre. That’s admittedly a hard task, but I listed five really interesting and likable minority movie heroes of the horror genre.
Tag Archives: Slasher
Bring it On: Cheer or Die (2022)
There’s a horror sequel to “Bring it On.” Repeat: There is a horror sequel (part seven!) to “Bring it On.” The cheerleading sports teen comedy that birthed a series of cheerleading sports teen comedies actually has a sequel that is a full on horror movie. That’s kind of like a sequel to “Mission Impossible” that’s a full on slasher film or something. It’s kind of amazing. It’s too bad “Cheer or Die” just isn’t.
Hellraiser (1987) [LA&M Film Fetish Forum]
“What is your pleasure, sir?”
Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser” is a purely body horror tale about hedonism in its purest and most raw essence. Even today it’s a very erotic, but gruesome tale about the pursuit of pleasures of the flesh and how it links to a breed of entities that may or may not be pure evil. “Demons to some, Angels to others” Pinhead (technically named “Hellpriest”) proclaims is a representation of the how the cenobites reach deep down in to the pits of sexuality and kink. And no human can ever really be prepared to see what the practices of this otherworld army has in store for them.
Totally Killer (2023)
A lot of modern directors are cultivating a formula of taking classic eighties and nineties movies and giving them a clever horror twist. While many have likened “Totally Killer” to “The Final Girls,” I’m more prone to consider “Totally Killer” a horror twist on “Back to the Future.” It’s very much a nod to Robert Zemeckis’ film right down to the similar finale. The way director Nahnatchka Khan stages her horror comedy is so much in the vein of the classic film, but that thankfully doesn’t hinder the experience.
Ranking the Ghostface Killers from Favorite to Least
The first rule of Ghostface in “Scream,” is that it’s always someone you know. No matter what’s happening to the main characters, the killer or killers are always someone within close vicinity that have a personal connection with you. To date there have been multiple people that have taken up the mantle of Ghostface, especially since the “Scream” movie series is six movies in, and on the way to the seventh. So now that “Scream 6” made a big hit at theaters in 2023, I thought I’d break down the Ghost Face killers from favorite from least favorite.
The list does exclude the killers from the MTV “Scream” series, of course, as I’m sticking mainly to the movie series continuity.
Feel free to let me know what your ranking would be in the comments.
Return to Horror High (1987)
I have to say that I quite love “Return to Horror High.” Yes it’s convoluted and mostly a nonsensical meta horror comedy about the horror genre, but a lot of the ideas it lays out during the duration of its story are so ahead of their time. “Return to Horror High” (not a sequel, by the way) has the distinction of being cited as one of the precursors to “Scream,” but it really only holds that distinction in how it takes a step back and analyzes horror. Beyond that Bill Froehlich’s film is only really connected in that it’s a slasher with a whodunit twist. The rest of the movie is a pretty nonsensical meshing of storytelling styles, and twists that make no sense. Nonsensical is the key word to “Return to Horror High,” but that’s also what makes it so good.
Mary Had a Little Lamb (2023)
It seems like every other year there’s an attempt to deliver fans a new “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and like clockwork here comes “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Centered on Uncork’d Entertainment’s initiative to offer genre films based on classic nursery rhymes, director Jason Arber and writer Harry Boxley really don’t do anything new or creative with the whole gimmick that his movie is centered on. It’s, in a nutshell, a beat for beat, condensed remake of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” but dropped down in to the UK.