Way back at the dawn of home media, your parents didn't have streaming movies and TV like us
advanced future people.
Instead, they had to rely on VHS tapes: blocky cassettes that displayed video of questionable
quality and which fell apart way too easily.
Some pretty cool horror movies were released on home video during that time, and a lot
of them never made the jump to DVD or Blu-ray.
Sure, you can find a few of these on bootleg DVDs and foreign releases that may or may
not work stateside.
But none have had an official US release, and your horror movie collection is worse
off for it.
Blood Beach
In 1975, a young Steven Spielberg reinvented Hollywood forever by creating the summer blockbuster
with Jaws.
Over the next several years, dozens of ripoffs of that film were released, most of which
were in no way subtle.
By 1981, audiences had been subjected to so many versions of beach-based terror that one
desperate screenwriter had a brilliant idea to freshen things up: What if the beach itself
was eating people?
That's the wonderfully insane premise of Blood Beach.
"What would you call it?"
"Blood Beach, man."
"Yeah, right on."
The movie begins when a woman out walking her dog is sucked under the sand by some unseen
beast.
Several more sand-suckings happen before anyone notices, and no one is smart enough to simply
stay away from the beach.
The brilliant film ends with a ridiculous-looking monster getting blown to bits, and an obligatory
sequel setup.
"What is it?
What the hell is it?"
"Who the f--- cares what it is?!"
Sadly, the sequel never materialized, and Blood Beach never received a US DVD or Blu-ray
release because its distributor went broke.
If you happen to secure a VHS copy, be prepared; the cover art is freaking terrifying.
And amazing.
Killers
Director Mike Mendez's 1996 debut feature Killers, sometimes known as Real Killers,
is about as obscure as it gets, but if you're able to hunt down a copy, you won't be disappointed.
Because of its title and year of release, it's often thought to be a Natural Born Killers
ripoff…. but it's definitely way crazier.
The movie opens with two brothers shotgunning their parents in a manner very similar to
the famous Menendez brothers case.
They're sentenced to be executed but escape from prison, eventually showing up at the
home of a suburban family who seems to have been expecting them.
The family actually seems downright psyched… but why?
The movie goes off the rails in ways we can't really describe here.
Since DVD rights are currently in limbo, you'll just have to track down a copy on tape for
yourself.
Mr. Frost
The one and only thing you need to know about 1990's Mr. Frost is that Jeff Goldblum plays
the Devil.
That alone is an iron-clad pitch for any movie, and Mr. Frost delivers.
It's an excellent slow-burn psychological thriller.
And, it bears repeating, features Jeff Goldblum as the literal Devil.
"What do you mean, what do you think I'm kidding?"
The mysteriously rich Mr. Frost is thrown into an asylum after dead bodies are found
buried all around his mansion.
Once committed, he starts messing with the head of a young doctor, insisting that he's
the actual Devil and proving it by doing weird, devilish tricks.
Less obscure than most given its star power, the DVD of Mr. Frost was never released in
the states.
But truly, no Goldblum collection is complete without it.
"Call evil by its proper name: Mr. Frost."
The Keep
1983's The Keep is nothing like the rest of Michael Mann's movies.
A Gothic horror film set during World War II, The Keep is only Mann's second feature,
based on a horror novel which he transformed into an expressionist, nightmarish art film
— with predictably weird results.
It's the story of a German platoon that encounters an ancient monster in an abandoned fortress,
told through blue filters and with a Tangerine Dream soundtrack.
The disjointed editing amplifies the dreamlike feel that was Mann's intent, and his signature
visual style is as sharp as ever.
It's not exactly a lost classic, and Mann himself tends to act like the film doesn't
exist — but yes, Michael Mann made a movie about Germans getting eaten by monsters and
it was pretty cool.
Blue Monkey
First things first: there are no monkeys, blue or otherwise, in 1987's Blue Monkey.
The film is about a giant bug monster, though the movie is sometimes found under more appropriate
titles like Insect or Invasion of the Body Suckers.
Title issues aside, Blue Monkey is pretty much a mashup of Aliens and The Thing, which
sounds pretty awesome.
A man falls ill when he's poked by a weird, exotic plant and is taken to the hospital,
where he promptly barfs up a giant white larva that starts growing very quickly.
Before anyone has the time to say 'xenomorph', the hospital is quarantined, making those
trapped inside easy pickings for the car-sized bug-creature.
It's an extravaganza of low-budget '80s creature effects, and the fact that it borrows liberally
from some much better movies is really part of its charm.
Really, the only disappointment in the whole movie is that no character ever says, "There's
a really bad bug going around this hospital."
What a missed opportunity.
Grim Prairie Tales
As a storyboarder and illustrator for many big-screen films, Wayne Coe had an extremely
successful career.
But all the while, he was dreaming of directing his passion project: a horror-Western anthology
film.
Originally intending to shoot one segment every year for five years using his own money,
Coe was able to secure a producer, a small budget, and in a pretty major coup, James
Earl Jones and Brad Dourif.
"Oh, I didn't expect that!"
Shot with a strong streak of social conscience, Grim Prairie Tales turned out to be quirky,
creepy, and effective, which apparently nobody was ready for in 1990.
Practically no one saw the film, but he got to make a pretty sweet horror flick with James
Earl Jones, and he almost certainly has the VHS tape that proves it on hand at all times.
Dream Demon
Released in 1988, Dream Demon was the brainchild of British filmmaker Harley Cokeliss.
He'd already worked on films like The Empire Strikes Back, but what he really wanted was
to screw with people's heads.
In Dream Demon, a young woman, anxious about her impending marriage, starts having spooky
nightmares that end up somehow warping reality.
She and her friend try to figure out what the heck is going on while it becomes harder
and harder to tell what's real and what's not.
It makes for a well-crafted film that doesn't borrow as much from A Nightmare on Elm Street
as you might expect.
There's no actual demon, but the film's hallucinatory tone makes for an even weirder story.
You don't get Freddy, but you do get whatever this is.
[Screaming]
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