Trailer of the Week: Girls Nite Out (The Scaremaker, 1984)

Filmed in New Jersey but set in Ohio, this goofy but entertaining slasher film was made by two well-known Buckeye State attorneys, and features Ohio's own Hal Holbrook.

Trailer of the Week: The Orphan (1979)

Oddball horror from New Jersey, filmed by director John Ballard over a period of 10 years.

Trailer of the Week: Silent Madness (1984)

Originally released in 3D! Filmed partly in New Jersey!

Trailer of the Week: Alice, Sweet Alice (1976)

This trailer for Alfred Sole's excellent, New Jersey-lensed Alice, Sweet Alice (under its alternate title, Holy Terror) certainly does play up the Brooke Shields angle...

Trailer of the Week: The Deadly Spawn (1983)

Toothy terror from New Jersey!

Christmas Evil (1980)

Christmas Evil (1980)
Englewood and Montclair, New Jersey

Not only is Lewis Jackson's Christmas Evil (a.k.a. You Better Watch Out) one of my favorite Christmas-themed horror movies of all time, it's also one of my favorite movies of all time.

Santa-obsessed toy factory employee Harry Stradling (Brandon Maggart) keeps a list of who's been naughty and nice in his neighborhood, while struggling with the pressures of working for a company that, in his eyes, makes sub-standard toys. He finally snaps, donning a Santa suit and doling out old-fashioned holiday justice by passing out stolen toys to needy children and brutally murdering anyone who's wronged him.

Watch for "Walking Dead" star Jeffrey DeMunn as Harry's brother, "Home Improvement" star Patricia Richardson in a small role, and appearances by character actors Peter Friedman, Mark Margolis, and Raymond Barry, and E-Street band member Danny Federici. Maggart was a regular on the first season of "Sesame Street," and is also Fiona Apple's father.

The film was produced by former stockbroker Burt Kleiner and Pete Kameron, who had managed The Who and the founded of L.A. Weekly. Another producer, Ed Pressman, is the son of Pressman Toy Co. owner Jack Pressman (Pressman's factory appears in the film).

Trailer of the Week: Ghoul School (1990)

I've decided to end our month-long back-to-school trailer tribute with Tim O'Rawe's Ghoul School (1990). Ohio director J.R. Bookwalter worked behind the scenes on this flick.

Trailer of the Week: Friday the 13th (1980)

Luck Be a Lady With a Butcher Knife

Hard to believe, but 30 years ago this summer, Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th (1980) was winding up its estimated $30 to $40 million theatrical run. Filmed independently around Blairstown and Hope, N.J. (the camp in the film was Camp NoBeBoSco), Cunningham sold the film to Paramount, who turned it into a multi-part franchise that has continued, for better or worse, right up through the present decade (as with the Star Trek films, your best bet is to stick with the even-numbered entries).

And so, in honor of this milestone, a tribute gallery (and thanks to Fred Adelman at Critical Condition for the newspaper ads):

Lawyers, Gore and Money

The tax shelter laws that existed in the U.S. prior to 1986 encouraged a lot of professionals to invest in low-budget film projects, in hopes that they could shelter potentially significant amounts of their income from the IRS. Attorneys frequently pumped cash into these productions; however, these legal eagles occasionally took a more active role, producing and even directing low-budget horror films of their own.

Exhibits A, B, and C:

Toxic Zombies (a.k.a. Bloodeaters, 1980)

After the success of Night of the Living Dead, Pennsylvanians produced a lot of zombie movies, but for viewers of a certain age, writer/director/star and Yale Law School graduate Charles McCrann's Toxic Zombies/Bloodeaters is held in particularly high regard --- and not just because the film opens, incongruously, with a scene of a woman giving herself a sponge bath in the middle of the forest. Toss in some zombified hippie pot farmers, shady government agents (including real-life Romero vet John Amplas), and some corny jokes, and you've got yourself a kooky kilo of stoner zombie comedy.

This was the only film for McCrann, an exec at financial services company Marsh & McLennan. Decades later, he was killed on Sept. 11, 2001, in the World Trade Center attacks. If you check out the preceding link to his tribute page, you'll note that he was not shy about sharing his singular zombie opus with his law school buds or co-workers.





Girls Nite Out (The Scaremaker, 1984)
We meant to cover this peppy slasher flick when we were doing our tribute to Ohio, but we ran out of time. Plus, although it was set in Ohio, and produced by two Ohio attorneys, and starred former Ohioan Hal Holbrooke, Girls Nite Out was actually made in ... New Jersey.

Set on the campus of a fictional Ohio college during an annual scavenger hunt, Girls Nite Out features a crazy killer decked out in a bear suit (the school's mascot) outfitted with steak-knife claws who picks off co-eds while an obnoxious DJ spins a surprisingly good selecton of oldies (how much of the budget went to music licensing?).

Producers Anthony Gurvis and Kevin Kurgis are both well-known attorneys in central Ohio, but Kurgis has definitely made the bigger name for himself with a series of ominous commercials in which he emerges from behind a door and charges the camera like a brahma bull while touting the value of hiring a good personal injury lawyer. These commercials are so infamous around Columbus, that they have inspired several YouTube parodies, and this Facebook page.





The Mutilator (1985)
Finally, we have this North Carolina classic written and directed by Atlantic Beach attorney Buddy Cooper, which positively drips with blood and confusing Freudian subtext as a deranged killer stalks his own son and junior's college buddies in order to exact revenge for his wife's accidental death years earlier. With cast members from Two Thousand Maniacs! and Deadtime Stories, early work from special effects artist Mark Shostrom, and an extremely nasty death-by-gaffe-hook-in-an-especially-uncomfortable-place.

Here's Cooper himself talking to some dude in sunglasses about his one and only film credit:

We rest our case.

Happy Mother's Day!