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VCR of Death, Chicago, IL (2026)

09/16/2026

VHSeptember Day 15: Tragically Ludicrous

Today I am watching Waterworld, but not because this movie is tragically ludicrous. No, I’m watching it because it’s tragically ludicrous that this movie isn’t held up as a classic. The Odyssey came out this summer, and everyone correctly labeled it as a landmark in movie making. People lauded its use of practical effects. They celebrated the challenges and difficulties the filmmakers had to overcome to create something epic and groundbreaking. These same plaudits belong to Waterworld. I know it’s a wild comparison. Homer did not write Waterworld. It’s a movie where Dennis Hopper describes someone as “a turd that won’t flush.” But from a movie making perspective, this is one of the most insane and impressive things that’s ever been pulled off. Back in 1995, a time when CGI was an intimidatingly expensive new technology, these maniacs decided to make a movie where sold ground is extinct. They built one of the most impressive sets ever made and they built it in a way to where it could rotate and float. Oh, and then they rebuilt it after a hurricane destroyed it. Kevin Costner, fresh off an ugly divorce that only fueled the media’s hit job for this movie, does some truly bonkers stunts here like a man trying to give out a life insurance settlement instead of a divorce settlement. The number of scenes and moments where they had to film things in such a way to where no land is visible miles into the background is astonishing. And the action completely rips. There’s a reason the Waterworld Stunt Show still plays at Universal Studios now, some 31 years after this movie came out. When you combine guns and jet skis and explosions and harpoons and ziplines and bungee cords and swimming and planes and balloons and diving and more, it makes for some really compelling moments. This movie has a 6.3 on IMDB, which means it’s found some of the respect it deserves over the years. I encourage all of you to watch it and marvel at a group of people taking the hardest imaginable road to make something awesome. I love this movie.

09/14/2026

VHSeptember Day 14: Creepy Crawly Chaos

Today I am watching The Seventh Curse, which is filled with a ton of chaos and a nice amount of creepy crawly weirdness. This movie is completely insane and completely awesome, but what else would you expect from Ngai Choi Lam, the man who gave us other completely insane and awesome movies like The Cat and, most notably, Riki-Oh. This is a movie where an evil sorcerer controls a small creature that resembles a fetus, only to unleash it on his enemies when needed. It’s called “The Little Ghost” and it devours its way through them. Oh, and the only way to conjure this tiny creepy crawly monster is to get the blood of 100 children. There’s even a scene where they show some bad guys throwing kids into a giant press, like some kind of evil juicer. This is a movie where a long dead skeleton king rips of a man’s head and drinks from his spine. This spinal fluid then gives him the strength to become a winged, bulging monster that resembles both a kaiju and THE xenomorph. This is a movie where they spend an hour and 20 minutes force feeding you spells and other awesome magical things, only to have Chow Yun Fat finish off the last bad guy with a rocket launcher. This is a movie where a man has a blood curse put on him, only to have the curse delayed one year because a naked woman cuts some flesh from her breast and feeds it to him. Y’all, THIS is a movie. There are like 5 different movie’s worth of awesome stuff packed into this one. It doesn’t always make sense, but you don’t care because the visuals are so consistently incredible. I love this one so much that I have two copies: A Japanese version that is fully uncut but features no English anything and a UK version that weirdly cuts the b**b flesh scene, but has some glorious English subs. There’s also a beautifully restored version from Vinegar Syndrome out there. I recommend you all watch this movie, whether on one of these three versions or somewhere else. It’s a great one.

09/14/2026

VHSeptember Day 13: Be Gay, Do Crime

Today I’m watching The Newlydeads. This one starts with a cross-dressing, gay man being murdered. Then 15 years later, that same cross-dressing gay man comes back to haunt the man who killed him. Like all City Lights horror movies, this one completely rules. The kills are abundant and creative, the production values are amateur in all the right ways and there are plenty of WTF moments to keep you interested. Doug Jones even shows up in his first ever film role, only to be stabbed while having s*x. Oh, and it’s Shape of Water Doug Jones, not Alabama political candidate Doug Jones. This is a great watch, so if you get the chance to see it, do.

09/12/2026

VHSeptember Day 12: Action Packed!

I had to post the best to ever do it today with Deadly Prey. This is my latest international copy from South Korea and it may be my favorite. The audacity to label it as Rambo makes me so happy.

Remember that Prey Day is coming back again on November 2. It’s an annual celebration of the day Deadly Prey came out in video stores back in 1987. Stay tuned for more details.

09/12/2026

VHSeptember Day 11: Based on the Novel By…

Today I’m watching an old favorite, Tenebrae aka Unsane aka Shadow as seen on this delicious Japanese release. This movie is all about an author and the brutal killer who is inspired by his novels. It’s Argento operating at full power, creating an incredible vibe while painting every kill scene red with rivers of blood. We get John Saxon. And an unforgettable kill featuring the most blood packed arm of all time. It’s a great watch. This one is streaming all over, including , so give it a watch this weekend and enjoy the show.

09/11/2026

9/11 and the Super Mario Bros. movie.

09/10/2026

VHSeptember Day 10: Come Visit the Carnival of Carnage!

Today I’m watching Slayground. This is a pretty awesome little movie. Peter Coyote leads a trio of thieves. They take down an armored car, sn**ch the cash and speed away. Unfortunately, on their way out they crash into a car, killing a young girl in the process. This isn’t just any girl; this is the daughter of some undefined rich guy who turns around and hires a hitman in a wide-brimmed hat to track the trio down and kill them. This is where things really get fun because this hitman character takes over every scene he’s in. I haven’t seen a hitman this magnetic since Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. We see this guy ruthlessly hunt down Coyote’s two accomplices, so Coyote gets the hell out town. He goes to London, where the whole movie takes a turn. For like 20 minutes, we meet a bunch of British criminal characters that felt like some of the legendary weirdos from Guy Ritchie’s early movies. Sadly though, we meet a lot of these guys and then we never see them again as the story shifts to Coyote finding an old friend who now runs a past-its-prime amusement park. Of course, the hitman is still hot on his tail, killing everyone in his way and delivering incredible dialogue in the style of a comic book supervillain. That “Welcome to your funeral” line on the cover is one of his and when he said it, I knew s**t was about to go down. The movie ends with a lengthy showdown between Coyote and the hitman inside the amusement park. We get creepy animatronic characters being shot down. We get a funhouse pursuit. And we get an anti-climactic finish. I didn’t know anything about this one going in, but I had a great time watching it. It’s well made and there’s a ton of interesting shots and choices throughout. Sadly, the pacing is weird. It never slows down or lets you get bored, but I almost wish there was another 20 minutes of movie here because I wanted to know more about the characters. I almost never feel that way about obscure movies like this, so I think that’s as high of a compliment as I can give. Check this one if you get the chance.

09/09/2026

VHSeptember Day 9: There Were Never Such Devoted Sisters…

I’m going very literal with today’s theme and watching Psycho Sisters aka So Evil, My Sister aka The Sibling. I had no idea what to expect from this one but based on that trippy cover I thought this might be a cerebral horror flick about some, well, psychotic sisters. Then I did some digging and found some other artwork for this movie from other releases (see the other images) and I got even more excited. There’s a scary zombie lady. An axe murder being compared to Hitchcock’s Psycho. There’s even a foreign poster showing a bunch of wild s**t. But sadly, this is marketing at its finest because this is just a plain thriller about a man faking his own death and the chaos that ensues between his wife (who was in on it) and her sister. There is no zombie lady to be found here, no Psycho-level axe murders, just a pair of sisters manipulating each other to get control of a $700,000 fortune. There’s a groundskeeper character who plods around and serves as a red herring multiple times. There are some weird dream sequences and hallucinations, but they’re always tame stuff like someone thinking flowers are snakes. The biggest highlight was a Halloween mask with a bulging eye that makes several appearances in the movie. The sisters are not psycho. They’re not evil. If anything, they’re just as****es, which is also the word I’d use to describe the carnival barkers who bait and switched this TV movie-level production into becoming the next great horror phenomenon. And as bitter as I may sound, I do kinda love it. It’s something that’s so indicative of the VHS era that getting duped by a misleading title and box art feels like a warm hug from the past. Beyond that weird hug though, this movie is unremarkable. Watch something else instead.

09/09/2026

There’s some controversy around the makeup effects in Nightmare. The director claimed that Tom Savini designed and created all the main makeup effects in the movie. He’s even credited as the “special effects director” on this release. However, Tom said he only consulted and didn’t get too close to any of the final effects. He even threatened to sue because he was being used to promote the movie.

Regardless, this decap is world class.

09/08/2026

VHSeptember Day 8: Was it All a Dream?

Today I’m watching Nightmare aka Nightmares in a Damaged Brain. I love this grimy, greasy, sleazy, sweaty, gnarly, nasty slice of video horror. The plot is simple. A boy walks in on his dad engaging in some rough play with a woman. The boy then kink-shames them both in the brutalist way possible by beheading the woman and splitting the dad’s head with an axe. Understandably, the boy isn’t all good in the head, but some therapists and scientists develop a drug cocktail that removes his homicidal tendencies. He grows up and the drugs stop working as persistent nightmares about what he did as a boy keep getting worse. Eventually he skips town and goes on an east coast road trip from New York City to Daytona Beach where his estranged wife and kids are. Along the way he murders people and sweatily stares at himself in motel room mirrors. He finally gets to Florida, there’s a showdown and the movie ends in a pretty typical slasher way. The real magic of this movie is the tone and the vibe that it maintains for most of its runtime. From the early scenes of George (that’s our main man) watching peep shows in 1980s Times Square to the scenes of him driving while the radio announcers let us know how close he’s getting to his final prey. There are a few dips in the pace, but for the most part I was all in for every terrible maternal choice, every frustrated babysitter gripe, every over-indulgent closeup on a wound. And the sequence I mentioned above where young George slaughters his father and his father’s friend is an all-time gore sequence that REALLY works. This is a movie made for VHS. Outside of sitting in an authentic grindhouse back in ’81, I think watching this with the grain and strain of VHS is the most authentic way to see what these maniacs intended you to see. This is a great one. Check it out if you get the chance.

VCR of Death

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