It would have been a pretty fulfilling slasher marathon if you rented these three lost slashers from the video store back in 1988. Here’s why.
ICED
It’s a wintry skiing slasher from Jeff Kwitny, the man also responsible for the “Beyond the Door 3” film Amok Train. Slightly less of a mess and loaded with 80s charm, Iced begins with intro synth music and a snowy mountaintop drenched in red light and fog machines. YES!
There’s bad 80s dance music (meaning awesome dance music) at a ski resort as friends exchange competitive jabs. But one guy doesn’t take it so lightly, and things just get worse when he catches his girl in bed with a hot-bodied dude. We quickly learn that angry skiing is bad for your health….
Four years later, the friends are invited to the opening of another ski resort. Soon after they arrive, we get killer POV through broken skiing goggles, cheap scares as the friends get comfy in their cabin, and a whole lot of scenes of a naked guy doing coke and bathing.
That’s really all I (need to) remember happening before bodies start piling up in classic 80s-style kills, including death by snowplow, throat stabbing, choking, and electrocution.
Plus, the final girl gets a long chase scene in the snow with body reveals and a good 80s horror soundtrack before a hokey final frame scare. Now that’s my kind of 80s video store rental.
FATAL PULSE
Another one with b-movie charm, Fatal Pulse takes place at a college – a classic slasher setting. A nice dude is in the wrong place at the wrong time, so when all the chicks in his girlfriend’s dorm begin getting killed off, he is sort of the main suspect.
Together with his comedy relief buddy—who just wants to watch reruns of Green Acres and Petticoat Junction—he hatches a plan to catch the killer, which includes using his girlfriend as bait!
The 80s fun includes a chick’s bra coming off just before she’s killed, a long, solo aerobics dance montage, a chick’s throat sliced with a vinyl record, and boobs in a bathtub.
The slasher fun includes killer POV and breathing, a creepy janitor, a sadistic electrocution scene, a victim tossed out a window, a victim covered in plaster, and a final girl chase scene complete with blue horror lighting.
HOLLYWOOD’S NEW BLOOD
1988 was a good year for bad slashers that totally capture the spirit of the 80s. Hollywood’s New Blood has a group of people gathered for an acting seminar at a cabin in the woods. The killer POV starts almost immediately, and then there’s a tale told around the fireplace of a tragedy that befell a film crew sixteen years before, and then…
We see that there’s not just one but three killers, and they’re basically a trio back from the dead.
Calls of the wild and good horror music abound as the cast begins to trickle into the forest for sex and to look for those who don’t come back.
Why the 80s ruled – those are his everyday shorts.
While the zombie killers are creepy enough, the one disappointment here is that most of the kills are cutaways, and we just get to see the aftermath.
However, a small group of survivors eventually plays cat and mouse in the cabin with the killers…and they give it to the final killer really bad.
Along with a rockin’ 80s horror pop “Hollywood’s New Blood” theme song at the end of this film, which only runs about an hour and ten minutes, we get a ten minute montage of scenes from the movie…and that’s before the credits even role. Yep. This is a 60-minute 80s slasher. Perfect.
