43 (and growing) "Bad" Horror Movies Every Horror Fan Must See

This is a list of horror movies I watch on a semi-constant basis with a few quick notes to remind me what they are when I forget. It is not intended as a detailed synoposis of those movies, and unless you're a dedicated fan of horror these movies probably won't entertain you at all. Note: I made this list in the car between Wausau and Dr. Evermore's Forevertron in North Freedom, Wisconsin. I'm in the early stages of memory loss, and it's just a list, folks. It's meant as a tribute to all the low budget horror films that have meant so much to me all my life, not something to fight about, but I'd enjoy it if others wanted to talk about any of these films or similar ones that have meaning to them. Maybe some of these movies will help you get through some hard times and dark nights with their unpretentious devotion to the genre the way they have for me.

1) Screamtime: Anthology piece shot in Britain, but with introductory segment shot in New York. Has the gnomes story I really enjoy.

2) Nightmares: Anthology piece with Emilio Estevez in the Bishop of Battle segment.

3) Point of Terror: Peter Carpenter vehicle about a small time lounge singer who has aspirations of being a star.

4) Night of Horror: Confederate zombies pursue a rocker and his friends.

5) Werewolves On Wheels: Great soundtrack by Don Gere. Biker werewolves who take on a Satanic cult.

6) Enter the Devil: Wonderful regional B movie shot in Texas and with a unique take on the Satanic cult genre.

7) The Offspring (From a Whisper To a Scream): Awesome Vincent Price anthology piece about Oldfield, a Southern town where the sins of the past always come back to haunt those in the present.

8) Toxic Zombies: Pot growers crop dusted by the DEA transform into zombies and pursue those unlucky enough to be anywhere in the vicinity.

9) No Blade of Grass: Stark, cynical assessment of human nature after an environmental disaster plunges humanity into chaos.

10) Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things: Favorite movie. A theatre troupe of young Hippies land on a small island with a cemetery to perform a Satanic ritual meant to raise the dead. It works.

"So what's with this little thing we're askin'?"

11) Shockwaves: Aquatic Nazi zombies rise from their shipwreck to hunt down members of a shipwrecked crew on an island with an abandoned resort which Peter Cushing lives in.

12) Psychomania: Biker gang punk learns secret of immortality from his psychic mother.

13) Mansion of the Living Dead: Incredibly misogynistic Jess Franco movie starring another island resort and living dead reminiscent of Ossorio's Blind Dead.

14) Revenge of the Dead: French movie mistaken for a zombie movie by those disappointed it's really a mystery with another abandoned spa and only one zombie.

15) City of the Walking Dead: Probably the first fast-moving zombie movie.

16) The Monster Club: Co-favorite movie of all time. Vincent Price in another anthology piece set in a London night club for monsters.

What happens if a Shadmock whistles?

17) Alabama's Ghost: Bizarre piece of nonsense released as a Thriller Video hosted by Elvira directed by a scuplter.

18) The Spookies: A car-wrecked group of goofs happen upon an abandoned house that really isn't bandoned.

19) The Phantom of the Paradise: Paul Williams as Faust.

20) Scream and Scream Again: Price, Lee, Cushing.

21) Dracula 1972 A.D.: Chhristopher Lee as a Dracula in swinging London.

22) Escapes: Quaint but charming low budget anthology piece "hosted" by Vincent Price with the great Cup of Joe segment.

23) Pigs: First saw on Movie Macabre. An on-the-run mental patient meets the only other person crazier than her at a remote diner that serves the meat of pigs that survive on human flesh.

24) Gargoyles: ABC movie of the week in early 70's about the re-awakening of ancient gargoyles in the Southwestern desert.

25) Messiah of Evil (Dead People): Eerie, atmospheric movie about the return of the Red Moon to Point Doom, California. Great scenes at the theatre and Ralphs.

26) Simon, King of theWitches: Written by a real expert on witchcraft, avoids many of the cliche tropes of movies about witches.

27) The Cold: Shot at the now demolished Northernaire Resort in Wisconsin, the tale of three oldsters who invite several strangers to their resort off season every year to play a deadly game. William Rebane directs.

28) Zombiethon: Compiled footage from several zombie movies sliced together with several amusing interstitial shorts.

29) Night of the Comet: Against inconceivable odds, two sisters in different locations survive a meteor cataclysm.

30) Dr. Heckyll and Mr. Hype: Oliver Reed in an unusual retelling of the famous horror story.

31) Class Reunion Massacre: Shot in a Southern military academy, several people gather for a high school reunion. You know the rest.

32) The Beast Must Die: Werewolf mystery. Who is the werewolf? Who isn't the werewolf?

33) House of the Dead (Alien Zone): The original House of the Dead, shot in Omaha. A low budget anthology piece about a pilandering convention goer being shown the wages of sin by an undertaker.

34) Joel M. Reed's Bloodbath: Great anthology piece.

35) Funeral Home: Canadian horror movie about a young woman who goes to stay with her grandmother for the summer at the home where her grandfather was an undertaker.

36) Night Train To Terror: Bizarro anthology piece with the greatest musical intro of all time and Bull from Night Court in two of the segments. 

Everybody's got something to do. Everybody but you. 

37) Ghost Ship: Nazi ghost ship.

38) Hard Rock Zombies: A favorite at Zombie Night

39) A Name For Evil: Robert Culp as an architect who leaves the city to return to his ancestral home, but soon finds an angry ancestor doesn't want him there.

40) Satan's Children: Florida news guys swindles his friends to make this anti-Satan cautionary tale about a young man who leaves his broken home only to be raped by Molly Hatchet and then joins a Satanic cult.

41) The Boneyard: Phyllis Diller, Norman Fell, an offbeat lead character, and a zombie poodle in an oddly effective dark horror movie.

42) The Video Dead: A haunted television mistakenly sent to a California suburb unleashes a David Bowie zombie.

43) Creepshow 2: "Thanks for the ride, lady."

Newly remembered

44) Ghostkeeper: Canadian snowmobilers are stranded at a abandoned resort. First Wendigo movie I am aware of.

45) Humongous: Canadian boaters are shipwrecked on an island where a Big Head Todd monster still lives in an abandoned resort.

46) Warlock Moon: A college girl is lured by a charming stranger to an abandoned resort where cannibals ply their trade.

47) Screams of a Winter Night: At an abandoned resort (getting the idea?) in Louisiana, a group of young college types trades urban legends, then becomes one. 

48) Devil Times Five: At a ski lodge deserted for the season, the owner beckons his daughter, her boyfriend, and Boss Hogg and his alcoholic wife to be murdered by a cross-dressing Leif Garrett and a 15 year old albino the director was banging, because it was the 70's

Devil Times Five

49) Nightmare In Blood: The first horror con ever turns bloody when a movie vampire scheduled to appear turns out to be a vampire. 

50) The Baby: A grown man is treated like a baby by his two sisters and mother. A truly unusual movie. It is horror.

51) Death By Dialogue: Almost forgot this gem, but that's why this list is here. A group of college student visit one of their uncles, who lives near an abandoned film set, and snooping in the basement finds a mysterious script whose contents come to life as they are read. One of the best decapitation by a heavy metal band one stumbles upon performing in the forest scenes ever. 

52) Hellgate: A movie I used to confuse with Death By Dialogue because the settings seem so similar. Ron Palillo (Horshak from Welcome Back Kotter) is in this one about college students who end up in an abandoned Western Ghost Town attraction that comes back to life. Or something like that.

53) Tourist Trap: The Rifleman, Chuck Conners, owns a tourist trap wax museum. 

54) Dead and Buried: For some reason had blocked this one from my memory, perhaps confusing it with something else, until a couple months ago, when I finally watched it, and will again, hopefully. Coastal town full of pyschos murders tourists and... little bit like The Fog or Messiah of Evil.

55) Mark of the Witch. Anitra Walsh as a witch who returns to a college town to seek vengeance on a ersatz Leslie Nielsen type who condemned her death in a previous life. 








Pin It

I Was Here

Going to spend the night here at Zombie Logic Press headquarters on the Holmes Block. Just rented Enter the Devil on Amazon video. Haven't written a word here in two months. Not a damn thing to say about anything going on. I play Dungeons and Dragons on Tuesdays, and nothing that happens in those sessions strikes me as any more bizarre and surreal that was has happened around me this year.

We got a piano this week. And a roll top desk much like the one my parents had in their home. Nothing fancy, just a department store style roll top desk, but when I saw it at the thrift store I knew I had to have it. Been looking for five years now, and this one just appeared when we were trying to waste a few minutes browsing on our way to something else. I bought her a piano and she bought me a desk.

Night of the Living Dead has been on a constant loop on the VHS lately when I'm here at the apartment. 

recently I stopped collecting vinyl records and started collecting cassette tapes instead, for a couple of reasons. First, vinyl records are just too expensive, and I never really liked them in the first place. I was happy when cassettes, then compact disks came along. I just wanted listening to the records at all, but I have no fear about putting a five dollar cassette in my boombox and listening to something like Van Halen or Tom Petty.

Enter the Devil is a really effective and unique low budget horror movie shot in Texas in the early 70's. A nice addition to the Satanic cult genre that was so en vogue then. And a unique take on it. 

I was here.

P.S. The Devil never does enter Pin It

Zombie Logic's Incredibly Brief Movie Reviews: The Keeper

I started early tonight with what Jenny and I refer to as the "crummy movies" because I'd like to get in as many as possible. The movie is actually one I'll be finishing from last night titled The Keeper.

The Keeper is a low budget horror film released in 1976 and shot in Vancouver, British Columbia. It is one of those films that is not remembered kindly by those who bother to remember it, and I think one of the primary reasons for that is that for reasons no one can explain (probably cash), Christopher Lee stars in the movie. Not just a quick cameo, but he's actually in the movie. He plays The Keeper, the keeper of an asylum where family members of wealthy families are kept, and meet nefarious ends at the hands of the maniacal Keeper, who sits at his mysterious console and and doles out punishment via mind control and hypnotism to the inmates, and really anyone who comes to save them.

Christopher Lee at his console of terror in the 1976 movie The Keeper

Like I said, if you want a bad review of The Keeper, you can find it easily somewhere else. It's altogether an off kilter production from a crew that hadn't done much before, and didn't do a whole lot after. I watched it mostly as I was doing other things and cleaning the apartment. I like how the console is built into what looks like a roll top desk, so thumbs up from me. 

Pin It

Satan's Children: An Early Seventies Tribute To Satan, Homophobia, and Molly Hatchet

Satan's Children, Just your typical early 70's tract about Satan, queers, and Molly Hatchet. Here's how it breaks down.

Same old story: Bobby Douglas, not the Bears' quarterback, is a teen in Florida, living with his step- dad and step- sister, presumably after his mother has died. He's not really welcome in the home anymore, and is used primarily as a servant. His step-sister especially likes to torment him, like in this scene where she taunts him about his small penis, then later spills the beans about Bobby's secret marijuana stash at the dinner table, prompting Bobby to snap and run away from home. 

He dejectedly wanders the streets as sappy music lets us know this is sad wandering time. He enters a diner and gets hit on by an old queer. It is here we start to learn someone really has a bad feeling about gays. He is saved by a young macho dude just in time, taken for an exhilarating motorcycle ride, and invited back to his place to crash. It seems like a godsend. Maybe this guy will show Bobby the ropes and make an upstanding citizen out of him. For sure it's better than going down the trail of queerdom, right?

Wrong. Here's Bobby being gang queer-raped by the members of Molly Hatchet, three years before the release of their self-titled debut album. They decide after an evening of Flirting With Disaster that they're done with Bobby, and roll him out of the car at about forty miles an hour, where he fortunately ends up...

In a Satanic Hippie cult's backyard. These twat cannons like doing things like burying people in sand and covering them in syrup for the ants to enjoy, and hanging whoever it seems is out of vogue with satan this week. These are jerkoffs, but one thing everyone can agree on is gays are bad, especially satan. I never knew this, butsatan hates homosexuality, and Bobby is not welcome at the commune, even though one of the girls has taken a shine to him. She's the one buried here.

There's a whiz bang finish here. Lots of action. Bobby gets even. I won't ruin the fun by detailing the gruesome events. His sister does apparently find out what his penis size really is. 

Then everything ends on a real happy note as the cult members revel in this extended crucifixion scene of someone who has engaged in no injurious behavior to them or satan. 

The story of the making of the movie is rather interesting in itself. Back in the fall of 1973, longtime WTVT director Joe Wiezycki decided to return to his dream of directing an honest-to-gosh low-budget feature, shot entirely in the Tampa Bay area, using local cast and crew.  His first effort five years earlier was called "Willy's Gone."  It ended badly when the film failed to gain adequate distribution.  Making matters worse, the film's investors were all Channel 13 employees...each contributing $1,000.  But Joe was determined to prevail and become the Alfred Hitchcock of Tampa Bay. - from Making of satan's children

Long story short, he made the movie. I'm watching it right now. It's entertaining as hell, but the homophobia is a bit offputting, and Satanists always seem to make jackasses out of themselves when portrayed in cinema. Go ahead and give this pig a ride. You'll probably like it.  Pin It

Equinox: The Movie That Helped Inspire Evil Dead

By many accounts, the low budget movie Equinox, originally shot in 1967, but not released until 1970, inspired the  creative team responsible for Evil Dead quite a lot. Four young adults – Dave, Susan, Jim and Jim's girlfriend – head into the woods to look for a lost scientist, Dr. Arthur Waterman. The friends have a picnic and glimpse a mysterious castle in the woods. They find that Dr. Waterman's cabin seems to have been destroyed. A forest ranger, who is Asmodeus in human form, watches over the teenagers. 

When the group stumbles into a cave, a strange old man presents them with an ancient book filled with magical lore and symbols. Asmodeus sends monsters – a giant ape-like creature and a green-skinned, fur-clad giant – to retrieve the book from them at all costs. The ape-like creature kills the old man. The castle seems to have disappeared, however the friends discover that it has been rendered invisible by magic.

After killing Jim, Asmodeus reveals his true form, that of a winged red demon. Asmodeus kills Jim's girlfriend and then attacks Dave and Susan. Dave and Susan flee to a cemetery and destroy the demon with a cross. As it dies, the cemetery explodes, killing Susan. Dave sees a shadowy giant who prophecies that Dave will be dead in one year and one day. Dave loses his sanity, and is confined to a mental hospital. One year and one day later, an evil-faced Susan arrives at the hospital to visit him.

With the end credits the film ends with "The End?" leaving the audience to wonder if the story will ever continue and if Susan is still possessed by Asmodeus.

August 10, 2026 update: Saw this again a few months ago on Creature Features. Still a fun movie. 

Pin It

Death By Dialogue

In the 1988 film Death By Dialogue, a group of college students head into the California wilderness to visit an uncle who conveniently lives next to an abandoned film set. None of what happens in the movie makes any sense outside of the setup that there's a possessed movie script that is unearthed, and whoever reads it will be subject to the grisly details contained in the storyline, up to and including...

                        

Having sex with this chick, then for no damn reason at all wandering into the forest and...

                    

Discovering a heavy metal band playing, only to be decapitated moments later when the bass players guitar turns into an axe. Or...

                       

Just joking. Gary Busey isn't in Death By Dialogue. This review is over. 

More Zombielogic's Incredibly Brief Movie Reviews

Death By Dialogue Tumblr

January 25, 2015: Still love this incomprehensible movie. I feel like it is shot in the same location the movie Hellgate was. Some times I think they are the same movie. But they are not. 

Pin It

Drive In Massacre Is a Cult Classic That Kills

Drive In Massacre is a 1977 film that gets 2.5 stars on IMDB. It's a little better than that, but not much. Regardless of the rating, fans of low budget horror know that bad reviews and low ratings have nothing to do with how much fun a B movie can be. This one has good moments. 

And by "it" we mean...

This. The kill scenes aren't too shabby if that's your thing. It's not mine, but they're not too shabby.

So, believe it or not, these two schlubs are the detectives assigned to solve the case of the Drive In murders.  When I first saw these two losers I figured they had to have put up a lot of money to produce the movie because they don't look they could solve anything but a case of lost Ex Lax (and I don't even know what that means). Who dunnit?

Was it this weird dude who I think they call Germy who works at the drive in, or 

This Anton Levey looking dumbfuck? Or some third guy with a pink shirt and white belt looking more like a modern hipster than any hipster I know but I can't find a picture of him so you'll have to take my word for it?

Who cares, because this just in... the red stuff on your hot dog might not even be ketchup. Drive In Massacre, pretty good, with some interesting but stupid characters, dumb-ass looking cops who look like serious perverts, and I forgot who the killer was.

You can find Drive In Massacre in this highly recommended boxed set for less than twenty bucks.

March 29, 2013: I'd love to watch this movie again tonight. 

Pin It

Dead People (Messiah of Evil)

Dead People is a low budget 1973 horror movie written and directed by William Huyck and shot in various locations in California. Some very attractive women and quality actors were in the production, including Michael Greer and Marianna Hill. A very good, unusual movie with a magnificent eerie feeling to it. several really great scenes, including 

This unbelievably successfully creepy scene in a movie theater and

This one in a Ralph's supermarket. I bet you can guess what happens next.

This is one of those quirky, well-done early seventies horror movies where you wonder if things are going right by accident or if someone really wanted it to look and feel this bizarre. There are some great unintentionally bad gaffs like a classic mispronounciation of Richard Wagner which supposedly resulted from a straight reading of the script, but even these uneven moments will just make you fonder of this one-of-a kind movie. 

Not to be overlooked in the spooky atmosphere achieved by the script, location, and shooting of this movie, is some really interesting art work. 

Dead People, which will probably be titled Messiah of Evil if you see it in a bin at Best Buy, is a movie I can come back to anytime and be entertained and really just admire for it's atmosphere and sense of creepiness in a forsaken place. 

Is it a zombie movie? I'll let you decide that for yourself.

I later saw actress Marianna Hill in The Baby, another really magnificent and unusual early 70's movie.

Pin It