BLUE SUNSHINE

Director Jeff Liberman's "Blue Sunshine" (1978). I caught this movie on HBO one night when I was about six or seven years old and it scared me to death. I had been looking for this movie forever. It had been out of print for years. Synapse films finally brought this movie back in print a few years ago and I quickly snagged a copy. It did not live up to the memories I had of it. It is not really very scary, but is still an entertaining piece of cinema.

Blue Sunshine is about a group of people who took some bad blue sunshine acid about ten years ago. Now, they find themselves becoming very irritable, with intense headaches. They pop and eat aspirin like mad, to no avail. Eventually they find themselves losing all their hair and going on a berserk killing spree.

This movie is more of a suspenseful mystery than a horror film. One man, Jerry Zipkin, finds himself at a party where one of the murder sprees take place. He is wrongly accused, and he must piece together the puzzle of what is exactly going on. He wants to clear his name. As he gets more deeply involved in the mystery, he realizes how dangerous these people can become and vows to stop these murder sprees. I don't want to give away too much more because I don't want to ruin the movie for anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

"Blue Sunshine" succeeds as a psychological suspense film, with a well-paced plot that keeps you glued to the screen. Where it fails is as a horror movie. There is very little of the red stuff, and the effects are laughable. When someone loses their hair, it is blatantly obvious that they are wearing a wig. With that being said, some of the murder scenes are still very intense. There is one gruelling scene where a woman is babysitting. The children are screaming out of control, and the woman starts eating aspirin...she cannot take anymore. Suddenly, she loses her hair and goes for the knives, chasing the children around the house.

"Blue Sunshine" is a movie that is well worth your time. For me, it just did not live up to the memories I had of it as a kid. It's still in print, and is pretty easy to find. The soundtrack is especially eerie, and comes packaged with the DVD.

TOBE HOOPER'S "THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE"

Tobe Hooper's "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974) is a landmark film in the world of horror. There is a reason why this movie has spawned so many sequels and one remake. It is hard for a movie to come even close to this film's intensity. Filmed at a frantic, nerve wracking, nightmarish pace with bizarre camera angles and creepy sound effects laced throughout, this movie hits you hard every time. It is about a group of teenagers who make a pit stop for gas and what have you in the middle of nowhere in a creepy, small, hillbilly town. A violent hitchiker, old country music played in the background and blank creepy stares are all you are greeted with from the locals. Of course they wind up sticking around a while and snooping where they shouldn't be, and all hell breaks loose. And this is where the fun begins.

All of the sets in this movie convey an unsettling sense of desolation and decrepitude. The suspense and tension that buids with shock after shock as we watch these teens brutally murdered one by one is superb. They only had about 10 days to film this movie and it shows in the atmosphere. Working long days with little or no sleep keeps the tone of this movie on edge and delirious...the intensity of this movie never lets up, and by the end you are emotionally drained.

If you are wary of watching this movie because of all the sequels it spawned, don't be. This the one you need to watch. It is one of the best 1970's horror movies ever made, and one of the horror movie genre's greatest movies of all time. Go rent or buy this one now if you haven't seen it already. And if you have...well, watch it again.