Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
Blu-ray (Collector’s Edition)
Director: Kim Henkel
Screenwriter: Kim Henkel
Cast: Renée Zellweger, Matthew McConaughey, Robert Jacks
Distributor: Scream Factory
Rated R | 87/94 Minutes
Release Date: December 11, 2018

Written and directed by Kim Henkel (co-writer of Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), 1994’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation is the fourth installment in the series. Originally screened as The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the movie, which stars Matthew McConaughey and Renée Zellweger, was shelved by Columbia Pictures until 1997 when it was re-cut and released as Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation.

Each year for over a decade and half, the New York City Horror Film Festival has handed out its Lifetime Achievement Award to an icon of horror cinema. The festival was created and organized by the late Michael J. Hein back in 2002 and the first two recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award were George A. Romero and Tom Savini.

Perhaps fittingly this year’s recipient was Tony Todd, who broke into the horror genre in Savini’s 1990 remake of Romero’s classic Night of the Living Dead. Two years later, he became a true horror legend when he played the titular hook-handed Candyman in Bernard Rose’s film based on the Clive Barker story The Forbidden. Since then Todd has used his massive 6’5″ frame, size-16 shoe, and deep voice to leave a lasting impression on the horror industry with appearances in the Final Destination franchise, Hatchet 1 & 2, Masters of Horror, and more. Saturday night at the Cinepolis Chelsea, The Candyman showed up to a sell-out crowd (with probably 50+ others standing in the aisle) to accept his award and partake in a Q&A.

A Quiet Place
Director: John Krasinski
Writer: Bryan Woods, Scott Beck, John Krasinski
Cast: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Cade Woodward
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Rated PG-13 | 95 Minutes
Release Date: April 6, 2018

Co-written and directed by John Krasinski, the horror-thriller A Quiet Place is set in a dystopian 2020, in the aftermath of an extraterrestrial attack. The planet’s population has been decimated by a race of blind, bloodthirsty creatures that hunt their prey with a heightened sense of hearing. In New York, the Abbott family learns how to survive in complete silence after their youngest son, Beau (Cade Woodward), falls victim to the sound-sensitive invaders.

Older horror fans may not know who Adam Green is, but for the better part of the last decade the filmmaker has written and directed some of the very best in slasher horror. Known primarily for his Hatchet series, Green also directed Frozen (2010″¦ not that one), Digging Up The Marrow (2014), and the TV series Holliston on FearNet. In 2006, Green wrote and directed Hatchet, a throwback to ’80s-style guts and gore slashers, starring everyone’s favorite Jason, Kane Hodder as the gigantic unstoppable monster, Victor Crowley. Not only did Green get a horror legend to play his lead villain, but icons Robert Englund (Freddy) and Tony Todd (Candyman) also appeaed. With the sequels, more and more horror legends showed up and soon Green amassed an army of Hatchet fans, both in and out of the industry. This week, the fourth film in the franchise, Victor Crowley, debuts on Blu-ray Combo Pack, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and VOD. I was able to get some time earlier this week to speak with Green about the film as well as its place in horror history…

Two days before Christmas in 1985, a pair of young Judas Priest fans from Reno, NV went to a Lutheran church playground and attempted suicide with a 12-gauge shotgun under the chin. One of them died instantly while the other survived with facial disfigurement but died from an overdose of painkillers three years later. Their parents brought a civil action suit against the members of Judas Priest, alleging that their sons had been compelled to kill themselves after hearing what they believed to be a subliminal message hidden in a cover of Spooky Tooth’s 1969 song “Better by You, Better than Me” that Priest recorded for their 1978 album Stained Class.

Since the origins of rock & roll, any music that wasn’t family-friendly sock-hop fodder sung by Bing Crosby or Peggy Lee was considered to be the work of agents of the dark lord Satan, and groups of self-righteous religious nuts and power-mad authority figures assembled protests and burned thousands upon thousands of copies of these records in effigy. Horror filmmakers in the latter half of that narcissism-fueled decade cashed in on the raging hysteria by producing several low or medium-budget features with hard rock and/or heavy metal tunes not just occupying space on the soundtrack albums, but actually figuring prominently in the plots.

Horror and metal have always enjoyed a cozy relationship that endures to this day. Since no celebration of Halloween is complete without a juicy fright flick marathon to enjoy with that bag of candy you pilfered from your nieces and nephews, here’s my list of the 5 best heavy metal horror classics to ever grace a theater screen or the shelves at your neighborhood mom & pop video store that closed down ages ago and was replaced with a Verizon Wireless retailer.