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. 








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Thanks For the Clicks, Comrades

Thanks for all the clicks, comrades. Here's the news of the evening:

Actor Bernard Fox has died. He is most famous for portraying Dr. Bombay in Bewitched.

Paging Dr. Bombay

But that's not the way I'm remembering him tonight. For me his most memorable performance is in a low budget horror anthology titled Alien Zone. It was shot in Stillwater, Oklahoma and released in 1978. The movie would probably have been forgotten entirely if it hadn't been re-released by Mill Creek a decade or so ago in one of their collections. In Alien Zone, also known as House of the Dead, Fox plays a detective matching wits with another famous detective, an obvious imitation of Peter Falk's Columbo. Although not technically a horror story, the two battle to see which can outwit the other.

Everything

Everything’s looted, betrayed and traded,
black death’s wing’s overhead.
Everything’s eaten by hunger, unsated,
so why does a light shine ahead?

By day, a mysterious wood, near the town,
breathes out cherry, a cherry perfume.
By night, on July’s sky, deep, and transparent,
new constellations are thrown.

And something miraculous will come
close to the darkness and ruin,
something no-one, no-one, has known,
though we’ve longed for it since we were children.
Anna Akhmatova




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Shadmocks, Mocks, and Humghouls

Roy Ward Baker directed many movies, and R Chetwynd Hayes wrote many books, but The Monster Club is the movie where the talent of these two British horror meisters intersected. Although maligned for a long time as cheesy and not scary at all, The Monster Club has in past years begun to receive the credit it deserves as a fun and well-crafted entry into the horror anthology genre.

The Monster Club, based on the book of short stories of the same name by Hayes, weaves three stories of semi-gruesome horror around performances by contemporary British bands in a subterranean club being attended by Vincent Price and John Carradine.

Carradine, Price, Pleasance, Chetwynd Hayes and Roy Ward Baker. Critics of this movie were always off base. If the criticism is it wasn't scary the proper response is so what. It was meant for a broad television audience. It most definitely is PG13 at worst and in my opinion appropriate to watch with your family at Halloween. Cheesy? So what? If you're not familiar enough with Vincent Price's work enough to know that 99% of his performances were cheesy then you shouldn't be offering an opinion in the first place.

Most American audiences who hadn't rented it on video saw The Monster Club for the first time on Elvira's Movie Macabre on the evening of Feb 6, 1983. It was episode 66. That's when I saw it. We all learned a lot about monsterdom from this movie.

We learned that there are the primate monsters, vampires, ghouls, and werewolves, but we also learned that these primate monsters interbreed, creating hybrid monsters, and that these hybrids also interbreed with the primate monsters, other hybrids, and even humans. Price says "The results are almost always disastrous, but they will do it." 

"What do they do?" Carradine rejoins, and Price launches into the setup for the first story, about a lonely creature called a Shadmock that isn't scary in any real way except one...

Shadmocks, Mocks, and Humghouls from The Monster Club

Two of the three stories involve Shadmock and Humghouls, two of the lowest creatures in the monster hierarchy. Humghouls seem to have even less powers than a Shadmock. None in fact according to the third story. Perhaps they enjoy a little human flesh once in a while, but they get that from the ghoul side of the family. 

All three stories in The Monster Club are entertaining, but what is even more entertaining about this movie is the music, the set up interludes where Price and Carradine speak, and the soundtrack. With the success of the Netflix show Stranger Things, and a resurgence in interest in electronic music, fans of this musical genre will want to check out Alan Hawkshaw's songs here, including Ghoul's Galore. 

Those who have bad-wrapped The Monster Club in the past should give it another chance, and all fans of horror should definitely give it a first chance.

2026 update: I had a humghoul moment last week at the post office. No one was there when I arrived but a few moments after I started trying to send a package through customs I turned and there were like ten of them.

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Escapes, Hosted By Vincent Price

Escapes movie poster

A while back someone, familiar with the fact that I watch a metric ton of cheesy horror movies every year, asked me about a story where a delivery driver ends up trapped in a podunk town after ignoring the advice of an older man to slow down and enjoy a cup of coffee before he headed on down the road. I knew I had seen this particular short, and it drove me crazy that I couldn't remember what anthology horror collection it as. Then earlier in the week I found it. It wasn't easy. I found it on this quite exhaustive list of horror anthologies. And I'm glad I did. 

Escapes is a collection of five tales of different lengths, hosted by Vincent Price. Some of these shorts were shown on the Sci Fi channel in its early days, but how they got Vincent Price to host I have no idea. I suppose they gave him money. The rumor is $10,000. 

The centerpiece of the anthology is the aforementioned Coffee Break, where a delivery driver breezes into a small town blaring obnoxious heavy metal music, and is advised by the town elder to turn it down, relax, enjoy the scenery, and stop for a cup of coffee before he heads back to the main hiway. Of course the delivery driver peels off listening to the music even louder, finds that no matter which road he takes he ends up back where he started, and eventually does stop at the cafe where he finds the town elder behind the counter holding out that cup of coffee. You know the rest.

Escapes is fun. You can easily find it on YouTube, and that might be the only place, but if you like this genre of horror anthologies you won't hate me for saying it's worth a look. 


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Elvira's Movie Macabre Episode 101: Joel M Reed's Blood Bath

Blood Bath Joel Reed

I discover as I grow older a lot of our life is only what we have imagined our life to be. A good example is the movie Joel M. Reed's Blood Bath. I remember seeing Blood Bath on Elvira's Movie Macabre sometime in the mid 1980's, late on a Friday night. Looking it up to verify this, Blood Bath did indeed appear on episode 101 of Movie Macabre on July 8, 1984; a Sunday if the program I consulted is to be believed. I loved this movie the first time I saw it. And a few years ago when I used to get actual movies in the mail from Netflix, I kept this DVD for several months. Sorry if you were waiting for it, but I must have watched it two dozen times in those months. 

You would think that having seen the movie that many times I could easily rattle off the plot of the three anthology segments, plus the opening and closing wrap-around, but I can't. Which is why I'll eventually have to watch it again, and why, when I do, it will seem like a new movie to me. 

January 27, 2018: After about fifty subsequent viewings, I can say the plot of the first story is a hitman who is done in by a "Tutti Frutti" singing joyrider, the second is about a daydreaming schlub who dreams his way to death, and the third is about a miserly slum lord who ends up forced to eat all of his money to survive after he is locked in his own vault. The most interesting things I have learned since I wrote the initial post is that Joel M. Reed wrote a book about Donals Trump in the 1980's. 






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