Savage Cinema

Sick, Perverted, Crazed, and demented…only a few of the words you can try to use to describe House on the Edge of the Park. You either love it or you hate it. There is no middle ground to distinguish your opinion. This highly under-ratted classic proves Deodato’s talent as a director and visual genius. After three viewings of the film in one sitting, it kept getting better and better. Although it originally wasn’t like I had expected, the second time around it was a lot more entertaining. Not as graphically violent and gruesome as other movies of its time, House in my opinion is a grade “A” exploitation film that can use mind games and visceral abnormalities to shock you and leave you on the edge of your seat.

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When I think of gangs on film, I like to bust it into three categories, Urban Gangland, American Mafioso, and Italian Crime. Urban Gangland would be movies that deeply detail the savage lifestyles of American drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes, and of course street gangs. If I wanted to go into even deeper detail I could break that into two more categories. Urban pre-85, containing films like Shaft, Super Fly, Hell up in Harlem, Black Caesar, Foxy Brown, etc. And Urban post-84, containing films like Crackhouse, Colors, Boyz N the Hood, Menace 2 Society, Juice, and Above the Rim. All films, drug and/or gang related leave a mark on film more tainted that any other genre.

Bizarre Monsters! Ex-Playboy Playmates! Brain-Numbing Terror! Corpse Grinding! Hypnosis! She Demons! Thousands of Maniacs! A 250-LB Woman with A Meat Cleaver! All this and much, much more awaits you insides Hot Schlock Horror. In these blood splattered pages, horror novelist and former Fangoria contributor takes a look at more than 40 films from the golden days of drive-in horror movies, blending interviews, commentary, research, and outrageous hype from original and rare pressbooks. Whether your taste runs to fright films of the late ‘50s (Lost Women), the ‘60s (Two Thousand Maniacs), or the ‘70s (Satan’s Black Wedding), you’ll find some of the greatest lowest-common-denominator-horror-exploitation films of all time right here!

Maniac starring Joe Spinell, William Lustig’s third film, is not only the film that fueled his Maniac Cop series but one of the most brutal serial killer movies ever made. Joe Spinell as told to Fangoria magazine quotes “I don’t even think of Maniac as a horror movie. The horrible thing is that people like this really exist.” This statement really can set up the film. It’s not your average horror movie. The scare factor is minimal and the atmosphere is predominately different due to your knowledge of who the killer is in the first few minutes of the film.

When you speak the phrase, horror movies, your immediate response is of big name Hollywood slashers like Friday the 13th or A Nightmare on Elmstreet. Among others, theirs too many to list, but the last thought in any ones mind would be of an underrated 1977 classic, The Incredible Melting Man. I had seen this movie a few times on video during the 80’s, but it wasn’t until recently that I dug it out of my film collection and sat down and wrote about it. First and foremost, the special effects are the best I’ve seen in any 1970s movie.

The 1960s weren’t only a time for mondo shockumentaries, spaghetti westerns, soft exotic nudies, Hercules, and Hippies, but also the climax of another genre that reigned supreme for almost 20 years. Originating with the 1954 classic The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando, biker movies of all sorts were the talk of the town. It wasn’t until Roger Cormon’s Wild Angels and Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider that motorcycle gangs went from the streets to the big screen. The two films I’m going to talk about are rarely ever mentioned in the biker genre. Those are Richard Rush’s Hell’s Angels on Wheels and Don Sharp’s Psychomania.

When I started Savage Cinema, I wanted to share with the horror web community my love and knowledge of this genre. Over the course of the 4 years I was in limbo with this site I discovered some of the secrets on how to make your site successful. I had been complimented on my product several times already…so I knew it wouldn’t be hard to build a fan base. My motto was always, if you link it…they will come. No matter what web site, big or small, the more web sites your linked to…the more spiders you will get from search engines like yahoo and google. Every time I would link up with anyone horror web site I would always ask them…what tips would you give to an up and coming horror web site. This article is a compilation of all the feedback I got from over 50 different horror web masters.