Episode Details

This year’s genre journey has reached my personal favorite era, the heyday of direct-to-video madness. Pretty much anyone could and did make a movie during these decades, and while I didn’t watch anything shot on video this year (Things, anyone?) I did watch a whole lot of low-budget slop pushed out in plastic boxes with deceptive artwork and misleading titles primed to draw the eye of a passing future film nerd.

The 80s and nineties deliver the whole stack: good, bad, and boring, but mostly what the VHS decades provide us is weird.

This week I bring you kids broken by catching their parents getting freaky, the MTV generation’s answer to Willy Wonka, nightmares and lurking fears and just plain fears. Shadows and curses and evil genies and multiple books of the dead. It’s not just horror, it’s X-TREME! So grab your skateboard or BMX and do an ollie while slamming a Mountain Dew in day-glo shorts, ‘cuz we’re getting all the Gen X here.

Featured Films:

* 1980 - Nightmares

* 1981 - The Beyond

* 1982 - Mortuary

* 1983 - Of Unknown Origin

* 1984 - The Initiation

* 1985 - Day of the Dead

* 1986 - Neon Maniacs

* 1987 - The Curse

* 1988 - Killer Klowns from Outer Space

* 1989 - Leviathan

* 1990 - Arachnophobia

* 1991 - Cast a Deadly Spell

* 1992 - Spellcaster

* 1993 - Night Terrors

* 1994 - Lurking Fear

* 1995 - The Fear

* 1996 - Necronomicon

* 1997 - Wishmaster

* 1998 - Shadow Builder

* 1999 - Lake Placid