The Cherry Hill Chainsaw Massacre

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...

Last week, I reviewed the first half of co-writer-director Tommy Lee Wallace's 1990 made-for-TV adaptation of Stephen King's 1986 psychological sci-fi horror novel, It . Even though both halves comprise a single movie, I decided to treat each one individually, as watching them in one sitting would have resulted in approximately a three-hour viewing. No, thanks. As relaxing and undemanding as the activity of watching a movie may be, there's still a limit as to how long I can sit on a couch and devote my full attention to the screen before me. An hour and a half is plenty long enough, especially when it pertains to a production as enjoyable but mediocre as Wallace's miniseries.  In the last sentence of my review for It: Chapter One , I expressed dread over this week's self-imposed assignment, that of viewing and reviewing the second episode. Growing up, the first episode was one of the scariest and most purely enjoyable creature features my young, easy-to-please eyes ...

You know that feeling when you loved a movie from your childhood, only to grow up, watch it several years later, and realize that it wasn't all your little naive mind made it out to be? That perhaps the majority of critics were accurate in their assessment that it was just okay, or maybe even flat-out bad? For me, there are several horror films that fall into either of those unfortunate categories, and some sting sharper than others. Having lost my affection for the Wishmaster and Leprechaun franchises represent no great loss. But Rick Rosenthal's Halloween 2  is a whole other story. Once my favorite of the Halloween sequels growing up (that hospital setting and the quiet simplicity of the premise were the bomb!), the last time I watched it, which, in a way, was the first real time, it was nothing more than a boring slasher about uninteresting people running to and from hospital rooms, up and down the hallways, while Laurie Strode, once a resourceful, fiercely protective mama b...