Terror in the Aisles | |
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Directed by | Andrew J. Kuehn |
Written by | Margery Doppelt |
Produced by | Andrew J. Kuehn Stephen Netburn |
Starring | |
Cinematography | John A. Alonzo |
Music by | John Beal |
Production company | Kaleidoscope Films |
Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 84 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $10,004,817 [2] |
Terror in the Aisles is a 1984 American documentary film about horror films, including slasher films and crime thrillers. The film is directed by Andrew J. Kuehn, and hosted by Donald Pleasence and Nancy Allen. The original music score is composed by John Beal.
Director Andrew J. Kuehn has excerpted brief segments of terror and suspense in a wide variety of horror films and strung them together with added commentary, as well as some enacted narrative, to create a compilation of fright-inducing effects. Halloween actor Donald Pleasence and Dressed to Kill star Nancy Allen provide the commentary on topics such as "sex and terror" ( Dressed to Kill , Klute , Ms .45 , The Seduction , When a Stranger Calls ), loathsome villains ( Dracula , Frankenstein , Friday the 13th Part 2 , Halloween I & II , Marathon Man , Nighthawks , The Texas Chain Saw Massacre , Vice Squad , Wait Until Dark , What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? ), "natural terror" ( Alligator , The Birds , The Fly , The Food of the Gods , Frogs , Jaws 1 & 2 , Konga , Nightwing ), the occult ( An American Werewolf in London , Rosemary's Baby , The Exorcist , The Omen , Carrie , The Fog , The Fury , The Howling , Poltergeist , The Shining ), cosmic terror ( Alien , The Thing , Invasion of the Body Snatchers ) and spoofs ( Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein , Hold That Ghost , The Ghost Breakers , Scared Stiff , Phantom of the Paradise , Saturday the 14th ). In one segment of the anthology, legendary filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock presents his concepts of how to create suspense in a clip from Alfred Hitchcock: Men Who Made The Movies. The advertising specifically refers to the movies that the clips are taken from as "terror films" instead of "horror films", and some of the movies used here (such as Marathon Man and Nighthawks) are not considered horror films but were included because their villains (a Nazi war criminal and a global terrorist) were considered horrifying. The most recent movie used for the 1984 release was Videodrome , which David Cronenberg brought to theatres in February 1983; the efforts of getting rights to and assembling clips was so extensive that no movies released after that were considered for usage by the documentarians.
The movie was released wide theatrically in the United States by Universal Pictures on October 26, 1984. The movie grossed $10,004,817 at the box office. [2]
Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the movie zero stars out of four, explaining, "Scary movie scenes work best when they're set up by some expository foreplay, which is why this compilation of horrors doesn't really work." [3] Vincent Canby of The New York Times thought the commentary from the hosts was "pretty dumb" and concluded, "Because 'Terror in the Aisles' is composed entirely of climaxes, it has none of its own." [4] Variety called the movie "poorly conceived and executed", adding, "Applying the rapid editing and juxtaposition techniques to a feature-length project results in simply ruining many classic movie sequences rather than preserving them." [5] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times thought the movie was "often fun" but criticized the "cornball, patently phony audience reaction shots." [6] Richard Combs of The Monthly Film Bulletin called it "The That's Entertainment of horror movies—in other words, its dexterity at pasting together clips from a selection of scaries, old and new, is not matched by a glimmer of the historical awareness, or even filmic appreciation, that would make the exercise worthwhile." [7]
The movie was released on VHS and CED Videodiscs by MCA Home Video in 1985. [8] On September 13, 2011, the movie was released to digital format as a special feature on the 30th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray of Halloween II (1981). On October 15, 2012, Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released the movie on DVD as part of its Universal Vault Series.
The movie's DVD and Blu-ray release is presented in the same 1.85:1 aspect ratio of its original theatrical release, which also cropped any segments from other movies that were originally produced using the anamorphic process. The number of terror, suspense, horror and thriller movie clips that are featured and shown from in this documentary totaled to seventy-eight clips.
On October 13, 2020, the movie received its own Blu-ray release courtesy of Scream Factory. As with the previous releases, it was presented in its original aspect ratio; unlike the earlier releases, the Blu-ray includes all-new bonus features, including a new interview with Nancy Allen and the alternate broadcast television edit of the movie.
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is a 1948 American horror comedy film directed by Charles Barton. The film features Count Dracula who has become partners with Dr Sandra Mornay, in order to find a brain to reactivate Frankenstein's monster ; the ideal brain they find belonging to Wilbur Grey.
Frankenstein is a 1931 American pre-Code science fiction horror film directed by James Whale, produced by Carl Laemmle Jr., and adapted from a 1927 play by Peggy Webling, which in turn was based on Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The Webling play was adapted by John L. Balderston and the screenplay written by Francis Edward Faragoh and Garrett Fort, with uncredited contributions from Robert Florey and John Russell.
A parody film or spoof film is a subgenre of comedy film that lampoons other film genres or films as pastiches, works created by imitation of the style of many different films reassembled together. Although the subgenre is often overlooked by critics, parody films are commonly profitable at the box office. Parody is related to satire, except that "parody is more often a representation of appreciation, while a satire is more often...pointing ...out the major flaws of an object through ridicule." J.M. Maher notes that the "difference is not always clear" and points out that "some films employ both techniques". Parody is found in a range of art and culture, including literature, music, theater, television, animation, and gaming.
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Herman Cohen was an American producer of B-movies during the 1950s, and helped to popularize the teen horror movie genre with films like the cult classic I Was a Teenage Werewolf.
Jeffrey Kramer is an American film and television actor and producer.
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Sneak Previews is an American film review show that ran for over two decades on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). It was created by WTTW, a PBS member station in Chicago, Illinois. It premiered on November 26, 1975, as a monthly local-only show called Opening Soon...at a Theater Near You and in 1977 was renamed Sneak Previews. In 1978 it became a biweekly show airing nationally on PBS. It grew to prominence with a review-conversation-banter format between opinionated film critics, notably for a time, Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel. By 1980, it was a weekly series airing on over 180 stations and the highest-rated weekly entertainment series in the history of public broadcasting. The show's final broadcast was on October 4, 1996.
The Universal Monsters media franchise includes characters based on a series of horror films produced by Universal Pictures and released between 1913–1956.
Comedy horror, also known as horror comedy, is a literary, television, and film genre that combines elements of comedy and horror fiction. Comedy horror has been described as able to be categorized under three types: "black comedy, parody and spoof." It often crosses over with the black comedy genre. Comedy horror can also parody or subtly spoof horror clichés as its main source of humour or use those elements to take a story in a different direction. Examples of comedy horror films include Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), An American Werewolf in London (1981), the Evil Dead franchise (1981–present), Gremlins (1984), Shaun of the Dead (2004), and The Cabin in the Woods (2011).
Halloween is a 1978 American independent slasher film directed and scored by John Carpenter, who co-wrote it with its producer Debra Hill. It stars Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, P. J. Soles, and Nancy Loomis. Set mostly in the fictional Illinois town of Haddonfield, the film follows mental patient Michael Myers, who was committed to a sanitarium for murdering his teenage sister one Halloween night during his childhood; he escapes 15 years later and returns to Haddonfield, where he stalks teenage babysitter Laurie Strode and her friends while his psychiatrist Dr. Samuel Loomis pursues him.
Fear Itself is a 2015 British documentary film about horror cinema, directed by Charlie Lyne and narrated by Amy E. Watson.
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The history of horror films was described by author Siegbert Solomon Prawer as difficult to read as a linear historical path, with the genre changing throughout the decades, based on the state of cinema, audience tastes and contemporary world events.
Postmodern horror is a horror film related to the art and philosophy of postmodernism. Examples of this type of film includes George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and John Carpenter's slasher film Halloween.