Shocker

Year: 1989

Director: Wes Craven

Written by: Wes Craven

Threat: Psychopath

Weapon of Choice: Electricity

Based upon: nothing

IMDb page: IMDb link

      Shocker

Other movies in this series:
None

The tyranist's thoughts
When this started rolling through my VCR, my first thought was "God bless the '80s." Unfortunately, by the end of the movie I wasn't having such a good time.
A psychopath (as always) is slaughtering families and getting away with it until he starts in on the family of the cop that is chasing him. The cops football star son starts to have psychic dreams about the killings and the chase is really on.
This one stars everyone's favourite Assistant-Director in a brutal role that is really well conceived until his transformation into the title villain. I was really enjoying the movie up to that point in fact. It doesn't help that the transformation didn't come until halfway through the movie or that the villain is pretty pedestrian after that point. What was a pretty fun horror flick degenerates into the kind of fantasy that A-Pix commonly turns out. Cousin Wes let us down here and that's too bad.
I wouldn't really recommend this even to fans of Wes, which is too bad because it could have been a lot of fun.

Total Skulls: 17

Sequel
Sequel setup skull
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie skull
Future celebrity appears skull Mitch Pileggi
Former celebrity appears
Bad title skull
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut skull
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer skull
Victims cower in front of a window/door skullskull
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene skull
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare skull
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence skullskull
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness skull
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night skull
Killer doesn't stay dead skull
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots skull
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell? skull