Cavalcade of Awesome

Today I’m going to take a look at a couple of examples from Fangoria‘s video review column, The Video Eye of Dr Cyclops.  Dr Cyclops was a VHS video review column and it was a fixture in the magazine for years.  It was one of my favorite places to check because I’d see movies covered in the column that I’d never heard of or that I’d never seen because they’d never showed up in my local video store.

At first, like most of the magazine content, the column was in black and white.  Below is an example of the column from Fangoria #67 (1987).  It’s still in black and white and you get reviews of two of my favorites; Troma’s The Toxic Avenger and Hammer’s Curse of the Werewolf.  Also check out reviews for the bizarre Italian horror flick The Horrible Dr Hitchcock as well as the awesomely named And Now the Screaming Starts.

Next up is a color version of the article from Fangoria #81 (1989).  In this column you can see reviews for the Lyle Alzado serial killer epic, Destroyer, the fourth Jaws film, Return of the Killer Tomatoes, Cheerleader Camp and Joan Collins in The Devil Within Her.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the movies in this particular article. I actually have chosen tomorrow’s Fangoria Movie Friday review from here.  Like my other Fangoria Movie Friday choices, I have been fascinated by the movies in this article for years.  That Destroyer cover with an oiled up Alzado and a jackhammer looks amazingly bad, but I’m in LOVE with the Cheerleader Camp cover.  And the Devil Within Her cover looks like it could be a porno film.  Plus, I’ve never watched any of the Killer Tomatoes movies.  So they’re all fair game.  HOW DO I CHOOSE?!  I’ll give you a hint, I’ve already seen Jaws the Revenge.

More hints.  for much of the time I was having trouble deciding, I was going back and forth between Cheerleader Camp and Destroyer.  The latter stars football all-star Lyle Alzado as a serial killer who comes back from being electrocuted as a “half dead” monster who stalks the crew of a horror movie that is filming in his old prison.  Oh, and it also stars Anthony Perkins.  Sounds awesome, right?  The former stars Leif Garrett and Lucinda f**king Dickey, my friends. Yeah, Cheerleader Camp has Lucinda Dickey three years after she starred in the most awesome ninja movie in the world.  That alone would be enough to choose Cheerleader Camp, but if you look at the cast list, you’ll also see other cult 80s names like Betsy Russell, Lorie Griffin, Teri Weigel and Rebecca Ferratti.  It’s a veritable cornucopia of 80s ladies awesomeness.  So, after days of deciding, I actually wound up picking the no brainer and decided finally to review Cheerleader Camp.  But it was close.

As you saw, the cast of this movie was too good to pass up.  Plus it’s a slasher movie at a camp for cheerleaders.  Oh, and mascots.  Lucinda Dickey is actually the mascot.  *shakes head*  Yeah, I need to see this insanity.

Catch you tomorrow, friends.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

This entry was posted on October 30, 2014 at 8:00 am and is filed under Fangoria, Genres, Halloween, holiday, horror, magazine, movies, nostalgia, pop culture with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2014, Elvira, Fangoria, Halloween, magazines, movies, nostalgia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.