The Cherry Hill Chainsaw Massacre

In 1992, Jonathan Demme's psychological slasher, The Silence of the Lambs , dominated the 64th Academy Awards, becoming one of only three motion pictures thus far in history to score the "Big Five" Oscars: Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins, Best Actress for Jodie Foster, Best Adapted Screenplay for Ted Tally, Best Director for Demme, and most prestigiously (and uncommonly) of all, Best Picture, the latter of which makes it the first and currently sole horror film to achieve such an honor. While this would mark the final instance of a 20th century horror film actually leaving the ceremony with any bronze statuettes in its hand, eight years later, M. Night Shyamalan's supernatural magnum opus, The Sixth Sense , received nearly the same level of appreciation from voters, earning a total of six Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for Haley Joel Osment, Best Supporting Actress for Toni Collette, Best Original Screenplay and Director for Shyamalan, a...

In this day and age, it's nearly impossible not to anticipate an iconic horror property from the 20th century to be given the remake treatment. The fundamental reason is fairly obvious: if audiences are familiar with a certain story and the characters who inhabit it -- especially the villain -- it's a sure thing they will flock to the theater to witness a modernized interpretation that will reintroduce them to the material using the advantage of updated technology. The best of the remakes will refuse to coast solely on the power of nostalgia and offer a unique take that distinguishes themselves from their source material and therefore justify their existence; the worst will offer a reheated carbon copy whose raison d'etre is to suck your wallet dry and laugh themselves all the way to the box office.  There is a distinct difference, however, between remaking genre entries along the lines of  Halloween , Friday the 13th , A Nightmare on Elm Street , Psycho , The Texas Chainsa...

The idea for a great horror story can manifest from the simplest life experiences. Take the character of Freddy Krueger for a perfect example. As a child, Wes Craven simply looked out his apartment window one night and saw a most petrifying image: an elderly man in a fedora walking along the sidewalk suddenly stopped and stared up straight at him. Combining that image and the undefinable fear it provoked with the name of a schoolchild bully, Craven made history in 1984 with a thrillingly imaginative supernatural spin on the burgeoning formula of the teen slasher flick, introducing one of the most enduringly terrifying monsters in the history of horror cinema along the way. Stephen King, who is without doubt the most renowned author of horror responsible for some of the most distinctive horror stories brought to life on the screen, experienced a similar epiphany that likewise originated in the blackness of nighttime. One night, a massive thunderstorm occurred where King was living at th...