Halloween Month is nearly over, and Balladeer’s Blog is here with a review of what is often called the worst Australian horror film ever made.
HOUSEBOAT HORROR (1989) – “Mullets ahoy!” would make a good alternate title for this Shot on Video disaster from Down Under. Star Alan Dale of Neighbors fame leads a cast of untalented actors and barely adequate musicians who get chopped up by a disfigured slasher.
Ignore reviews which claim this flick is a Heavy Metal Horror Movie. Whatever the awful band in Houseboat Horror may be, they are definitely NOT Heavy Metal. If they were, I’d have covered this movie in my look at over Thirteen Heavy Metal Horrors from the 1980s. The band here is called a “disco group” multiple times, which made me wonder if Australians really still considered disco “cool” by 1989.
Taking things from the top, Houseboat Horror is set in Victoria, Australia at Lake Eildon going by the fictional name Lake Infinity. Alan Dale stars as director Grant Evans, who will be making a music video with a supposedly hot new Aussie band on a houseboat.
Text onscreen tells us it is October, which in Australia should be Spring, but the Aussie filmmakers for some reason have the characters keep saying it’s Winter. Guess they forgot what month they claimed it was.
The destined slasher victims proceed in multiple vehicles to Lake Infinity to shoot their video. The car with the musicians and a couple of groupies in it actually shows sense enough not to pick up a creepy, oddly dressed hitchhiker who turns out to be the movie’s slasher, Acid Head. Continue reading
Halloween Month continues with this review of one of the zombie movies of French Director Jean Rollin. Balladeer’s Blog’s reviews of Rollin’s films always point out that his works range from brilliant and artistic to just plain awful. 
RABID GRANNIES (1988) – This review of Rabid Grannies applies ONLY to the original uncut edition, NOT the edited version distributed by the Troma Team. The uncut version is well worth watching but the cut version is awful.
THE VIDEO DEAD (1987) – This gory low-budget zombie movie plays like an unused segment of Creepshow expanded to feature length. Long before The Ring, this production presented creepy zombies from an old black & white horror flick climbing out of a tv set and slaughtering anyone and everyone.
Can you believe it’s just one week until Halloween! 
BARTHOLOMEW 
MISTER RABBEY
WAXWORK (1988) – I’m often surprised at how comparatively overlooked Waxwork is when it comes to 1980s horror films. It’s played straight, packs in a variety of menaces, fun Easter Eggs and sufficient scares and gore for that decade of Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees and Pinhead. A sequel followed in 1992.
OGROFF aka The Mad Mutilator (1983) – This thoroughly bizarre French movie whose maker somehow conned horror icon Howard Vernon into appearing is easily one of the worst films ever made. Norbert G. Moutier owned a video store in France and published a horror fanzine. 
CROSS OF THE SEVEN JEWELS (1987) – This Bad Movie Classic may be my favorite non-
TALES FROM THE QUADEAD ZONE (1987) – The second and – to date – final movie written and directed by Chester Novell Turner. The man’s films became so renowned for being legendarily bad that in 2014 a documentary about their making was released under the title Return to the Quadead Zone. 
Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at my top horror movies of the past fifty years. It is NOT a list of my all-time favorite horror films, just the ones that fall within the round number of fifty years. 
