(1980)
Dir - Lewis Teague
Overall: MEH
A standard entry into the nature horror sub-genre, (with a musical score that closely enough resembles Jaws at times), Alligator is about precisely what you would imagine it is about. Utilizing an actual real life animal or animatronic puppet if need be, it comes off remarkably better than any CGI does, (Greg McClean's Rogue comes to mind), so no complaints in how acceptable the giant, mutant reptile creature looks here. Complaints are a plenty though. Lewis Teague, (Cujo, Cat Eyes), stages one or two exciting moments, but the film ends up being a pretty laborious chase where the humans are endlessly trying to catch up to the title monster. It is also very predictable with foreshadowing you can see a mile way, (such as a fancy dinner party for the corrupt pharmaceutical mogul and the city's mayor that is shown in an early scene only to make it crystal clear that the alligator is of course going to crash the shindig later). The characters are pretty textbook, (the tough, no bullshit hero, the smart and sassy love interest, the stupid police chief, the annoying news reporter, and arrogant, smug villains), and there are blatant environmental and animal rights messages to give it some weight. Convenient, "only in a movie" things like this are pretty harmless though as it is just a silly little killer animal movie in the end.
(1982)
Dir - Amy Holden Jones
Overall: WOOF
What probably could have been a still bad yet at least potentially interesting early slasher entry, The Slumber Party Massacre is instead probably in the lead as the most boring such slasher movie every made. The "what could've been" tag is appropriate in that feminist author Rita Mae Brown actually wrote it as a parody of the loathsome genre, but producers insisted on financing it as a cheap, uninspired cash-in that checks off utterly everything these movies refused NOT to do. The killer has superhuman stamina, keeps not being dead, and has time to be everywhere at once so he can hide everyone's bodies for comedic effect. Also, the score was of course done on a cheap keyboard, there are tons of boobs, and every fifteen seconds another psyche out tries to get you, which get old probably by the second one. Besides the fact that it was both written and directed by women, (Amy Holden Jones makes her debut behind the lens here), you would never notice it by how hopelessly bland it all is. The movie is not so much aggravating, it just defines pointless and even for those poor, poor souls who cannot get enough of mind-numbingly dull slasher garbage, one is very hard-pressed to find a single thing remotely memorable here.
(1988)
Dir - Don Coscarelli
Overall: WOOF
Two entries into this franchise and it continues to baffle one with its awfulness. Don Coscarelli's Phantasm is one of the most inexplicably bad horror movies that also has a laudable reputation and though the sequel has a far larger budget and far better acting, it is just as horrendous. These movies are incomprehensible nonsense. Following two characters from the first film, Phantasm II dives right in without making any attempt to explain itself yet again throughout its entire running time. Everyone is on a cross-country quest to hunt down the Tall Man and how they are doing this, how they are connected to new characters that spring up in people's dreams, and what the Tall Man is again up to is anybody's guess. Speaking of Angus Scrimm, no horror movie villain in history wastes more goddamn time than the Tall Man does. He absurdly spends the entire movie having people right in his grasps who he fully intends on killing/turning into zombie midgets or whatever, only to drop some awful dialog at them, let em go, and then go to their house and capture them later. The barrage of unanswered questions, plot holes, vacant logic, and tedious structure you would think would be improved upon compared to the first abysmal installment, but for whatever astronomical reason, this series would continue on in such a fashion and remain popular for many years to come. Whatever the goddamn appeal, such is anyone's guess.
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