10 Offbeat Horror Films to Enjoy this Halloween Season (Part II)

Following up on our recommended Halloween viewing of strange and unusual horror films, we continue with Brian Yuzna’s Society. Read below for more…

Society (1989)

Bride of Re-Animator director Brian Yuzna’s strange 1989 horror film Society tells the story of a young man named Bill Whitney (Billy Warlock), who discovers that he does not have much in common with the other members of his family. His psychiatrist tries to convince him that he is simply paranoid when he decribes his family’s odd behavior. Bill’s suspicions only intensify after discovering an audio tape recorded by his friend Milo which appears to reveal that his mother, father, and sister may be engaging in incest. Things slowly get really weird as Bill begins to learn that his family and many of his peers are members of a secret elite social establishment which feeds off the lower classes. Frequent Yuzna collaborator Screaming Mad George’s trademark special effects are on full display here as the elites engage in body morphing, a strange orgy they call “shunting”, and ultimately in a showdown between Bill and his rival Ted Ferguson (who he not-so-affectionately refers to as “Gumby”). If you’re in the mood for 99 minutes of weirdness you can’t do much better than Society.

City of the Living Dead (1980)

Thin on plot but thick on atmosphere, gore, and style, Lucio Fulci’s 1980 supernatural zombie film City of the Living Dead opens with a priest hanging himself in a graveyard. By doing so, the priest opens up the gates of hell and things start to get very bad in the town of Dunwich. A psychic named Mary Woodhouse (Catriona MacColl) sees Father Thomas’ suicide in a vision during which she collapses and apparently dies from fear. Journalist Peter Bell (Christopher George), who is investigating the suspicious death, decides to take a stroll through the cemetery where Mary has just been buried. While there, he hears a muffled scream from nearby. Realizing that Mary may be in the process of being buried alive, he uses a pickaxe to break her out of the coffin. Bell and Mary then make their way to Dunwich in order to locate the grave of Father Thomas and re-close the gates of hell before All Saint’s Day. The film is quite moody and creepy in parts, and also serves up a generous helping of gore and zombie mayhem courtesy of special effects artist Gino DeRossi. Some of the highlights include brain ripping, gut puking, a storm of maggots, and a drill through the head. While the pacing can be a bit slow at times, City of the Living Dead is an enjoyable horror film and makes a great choice for Halloween viewing.

Street Trash (1987)

Perhaps one of the grossest and funniest splatter flicks to come out of the 1980s is Jim Muro’s Street Trash. Released in 1987, the film was shot in the boroughs of New York City and centers around a group of homeless people who have set up residence in a local wrecking yard. When the owner of a liquor store finds a case of 60 year old booze called Ten-Afly Viper in the basement, he decides to sell it to the disenfranchised winos for one dollar per pint. The only problem is when a person drinks the deadly booze, it causes him or her to melt and explode into piles of multi-colored goop. There’s a lot going on in this movie, which was written by Document of the Dead director/writer Roy Frumkes. The main focus is on two brothers, Fred and Kevin, who are runaways and have built a house in the junkyard out of old tires.  There’s already a rivalry between the brothers and another group of homeless led by a psychotic Vietnam vet named Bronson, but things get worse when Fred takes advantage of a mobster’s drunken girlfriend who he finds puking in a back alley. There’s also a cat-and-mouse game going on involving a pissed off cop named Bill as he pursues Bronson, who the officer believes is responsible for several deaths in the area. While all this is happening, bottles of Viper are circulating on the streets of New York and more people begin turning to sludge. Street Trash features some great special effects by Jennifer Aspinall who also worked on The Toxic Avenger (1984) and this movie is bound to please anyone with a strong stomach and twisted sense of humor.

Burial Ground (1980)

Andrea Bianchi’s Burial Ground is one of the oddest zombie movies to come out of Italy in the wake of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. When a big-bearded professor inadvertently awakens the dead at an old Etruscan burial site, he is ceremoniously eaten by the creatures while proclaiming “I’m your friend!”.  Afterwards, a group of three married couples, one of whom has a “young” son named Michael, arrives at an old mansion expecting to meet with the professor. It’s not long before the group is confronted with mobile rotting corpses while belting out some of the most ridiculous dialogue you’ve ever heard. There is also a weird relationship between Michael and his mother which culminates in one of the film’s gore highlights. Burial Ground clearly draws on elements from Lucio Fulci’s Zombie, not the least of which is the look of the zombies themselves. The ghouls in this film are complete with decayed, maggot-covered faces, skeletal hands, and wormy eye sockets. There’s also plenty of flesh ripping and gut munching featured here, with special effects provided by Gino DeRossi. If you’re in the mood for some sleezy, gory zombie mayhem then you can’t go wrong with Burial Ground.

Brain Damage (1988)

Frank Henenlotter, the man behind the Basket Case series, brings us another bizarre motion picture in the form of Brain Damage. The 1988 horror film presents an interesting perspective on the issues of drug addiction, when a young man named Brian (Rick Herbst) becomes host to an old parasitic creature called “Elmer” (or Aylmer). The worm-like being attaches itself to the back of Brian’s neck and injects him with a hallucinogenic substance which puts him in a euphoric state. The catch is, that in order to keep Elmer alive he must be fed live human brains. Elmer (voiced by the legendary Zacherley of Chiller Theatre) convinces Brian to take him out at night in the streets of New York City in search of fresh victims. Before long Brian is unable to distinguish between his hallucinations and what is reality. Some cool and gory special effects highlight this unique movie which infuses humor and horror to bring to light the serious problems of addiction. Elmer ultimately overtakes Brian’s life, forcing him to commit murder in exchange for a dose of the “juice”. Fans of strange and original horror films should definitely find some enjoyment in Brain Damage.