Black Christmas
Blu-ray (Collector’s Edition)
Director: Bob Clark
Screenwriter: A. Roy Moore
Cast: Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, John Saxon
Distributor: Scream Factory
Rated R | 98 Minutes
Release Date: December 13, 2016

“Oh, why don’t you go find a wall socket and stick your tongue in it, that’ll give you a charge!”

Considered to be one of the first “slasher” films, 1974’s Black Christmas served as an influence for John Carpenter’s Halloween and has since become a cult classic. Directed by Bob Clark (Porky’s, A Christmas Story), the movie was inspired by a series of murders that took place in Montreal, and the urban legend “The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs.”

At a Christmas party at the Pi Kappa Sigma house, Jess Bradford (Olivia Hussey) receives an obscene phone call from “The Moaner,” a disturbed individual who has been calling the house. Jess and her sorority sisters Barb (Margot Kidder), Phyllis (Andrea Martin), and Clare (Lynne Griffin) listen in on the call. The feisty Barb provokes the caller, who responds by telling the girls that he is going to kill them.

Final Exam
Blu-ray
Director: Jimmy Huston
Screenwriter: Jimmy Huston
Cast: Cecile Bagdadi, Joel S. Rice, DeAnna Robbins, Sherry Willis-Burch, Ralph Brown, John Fallon, Timothy Raynor
Scream Factory
Rated R | 89 Minutes
Release Date: May 13, 2013

It’s the standard opening to a low-budget ’80s slasher flick: Two college kids (Carol Capka and Shannon Norfleet) are making out in a convertible. While things are gettin’ hot and heavy, a burly lunatic jumps on top of the car, slices through the soft-top and stabs them to death.

Meanwhile, at Lanier College, it’s finals week. As the semester comes to a close, a fraternity plays a prank by staging a phony school shooting/terrorist attack. I know what you’re saying, “A terrorist attack!?” Yes, a goddamn terrorist attack. I’m talking ski masks, machine guns, a black van – the whole nine. Only in the ’80s could a silly slasher flick draw on real-life events like the U.S. embassy hostage situation in Tehran and President Reagan’s feud with Libya’s Muammar el-Qaddafi for a punchline.

Anyway, an escalating series of pranks and hazings distract everyone – including the town sheriff (Sam Kilman) – from the presence of a lumbering, knife-wielding psychopath intent on slashing up a few student bodies. That’s pretty much all there is to Final Exam, a forgettable film written and directed by Jimmy Huston (My Best Friend Is a Vampire).

Anchor Bay has acquired a movie titled Nothing to Fear, the first to be produced by Slasher Films, which was started by legendary Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash along with Rob Eric and Michael Williams.

The movie follows a family who makes that always dangerous horror movie decision to start fresh in a small town. This particular small town happens to be an actual town in Kansas called Stull. The town has about 20 residents and a decades old legend that one of the seven gateways to hell is located in its small cemetery, and that the Devil himself comes out to walk the Earth a couple of times a year there. Seeing as how it’s not likely you’ll bump into Satan hanging out in Kansas, it makes plenty of sense to bring the legend to life through film.