Movie Reviews

Terror in the Aisles | Reelviews Movie Reviews

Published

2 years ago

February 19, 2024

Terror in the Aisles is a clip-fest. With excerpts
from nearly 80 horror movies that run the gamut from classics to long-forgotten
duds, the film provides glimpses of cinematic scares and gore covering the
period between the 1930s and the early 1980s. With an emphasis on the then-new
slasher genre and its best-known representatives (particularly Halloween
and its sequel, Friday the 13th and its sequel, and The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre), the film offers an unexpurgated (none of the
R-rated material is censored for violence, gore, or nudity) trip down memory
lane. Although largely made obsolete by YouTube, this was a surprisingly
popular theatrical release around Halloween 1984 and was frequently rented when
it appeared on VHS the following year.

Unlike many similar movies (almost all of which were either
direct-to-video or direct-to-cable), this one doesn’t attempt to provide any
deep philosophizing about why horror movies are popular. (The closest it gets
is when narrator Donald Pleasence intones: “We all carry around a certain
amount of resentment and rage, because we can’t let it out. In the movies, we
can.”) It also doesn’t provide a lengthy chronology of horror in the cinema,
preferring to group the clips by category rather than year of release.
Interestingly, Terror in the Aisles never calls any of its titles a
“horror movie,” preferring instead the terms “terror movie” or “scary movie.”

I’m unsure of the movie’s budget but it had to be at least
several million dollars even though 90% of this was the work of others. In
addition to paying for the rights to show clips from films not owned by
distributor Universal Pictures, actors Donald Pleasence and Nancy Allen were
recruited for roles as tongue-in-cheek hosts. Hunkered down in a movie theater
alongside other patrons watching moments of horror unfold on-screen, they
provide minimalist commentary. Most of what they have to say is unmemorable,
but their dialogue isn’t the point.

The list of clips found in Terror in the Aisles is
quite extensive and incorporates not only snippets from some of the classic
Universal monster movies (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, and The
Wolfman) but excerpts from various Alfred Hitchcock titles (notably Strangers
on a Train, Psycho, and The Birds) as well as material from Jaws and
Jaws 2. Other select movies samples include Creature from the Black
Lagoon, Konga, The Fly, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, The Omen, Carrie,
Rosemary’s Baby, Wait Until Dark, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead,
Play Misty for Me, The Thing, The Exorcist, Midnight Express, The Deer Hunter,
Alien, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Fog, When a Stranger Calls, The Shining, The Howling, Dressed to Kill, Vice Squad, Cat People, Poltergeist,
Videodrome, Firestarter, Marathon Man, and dozens of
others.

Terror in the Aisles should not be considered
definitive. Two notable absences are kaiju films (although there is a short
clip from King Kong vs. Godzilla) and vampire movies. Although one could
explain away the first as a rights-issue problem, it’s difficult to make the
same argument for the bloodsucking brood since Lugosi’s Dracula was a
Universal film (as was the popular 1979 version starring Frank Langella). I
guess vampires were on the outs in 1984. We are treated to werewolves however.
There’s a sequence in which the transformation scenes from The Wolfman
and An American Werewolf in London are compared – it’s instructive to
see how much things had changed in 40 years.

Viewed by today’s audiences, what Terror in the Aisles offers
may appear quaint, outdated, and incomplete. Its 1984 release date means that
many of the most popular horror film franchises (A Nightmare on Elm Street,
for example) weren’t available at the time. And, although the linking scenes
with Allen and Pleasence represents “new material,” it’s neither abundant nor
insightful. In 1984, however, this offered a 90-minute nostalgia binge on par
with no other. With no Internet and with VCRs still having minimal household
penetration, a clip show like this provided viewers a chance to see their
horror memories projected onto a big screen. In the 21st century,
this is a throw-away but what it offered at the time of its release was
substantial.

Terror in the Aisles (United States, 1984)

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Movie Reviews

1986 Movie Reviews – Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit | The Nerdy

Published

3 hours ago

May 9, 2026

Press Room

1986 Movie Reviews – Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit | The Nerdy

by Sean P. Aune | May 9, 2026

Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1986 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.

We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.

Yes, we’re insane, but 1986 was that great of a year for film.

The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1986 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.

This time around, it’s May 9, 1986, and we’re off to see Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit.

Dangerously Close

I would love to tell you what the point of this film was, but I’m not sure it knew.

An elite school has turned into a magnet school, attracting some “undesirables,” so a group of students known as The Sentinels take up policing their school, but will they go too far?

The basic plot of the film is simple enough, but there is an oddball “twist” toward the end tht served no real purpose and somehow turns the whole thing into a murder-mystery. Mysteries only work when you know you’re supposed to be solving them, and not when you’re alerted to one existing with 15 minutes left.

Decent 80s music, some stylistic shots, absolutely no substance.

Fire with Fire

Oh wait… I may want to go back and watch Dangerously Close again over this one.

Joe Fisk (Craig Sheffer) is being held at a juvenile delinquent facility close a high-end all-girls Catholic school. One day while running through the forest as part of an exercise he spots Catholic schoolgirl Lisa Taylor (Virginia Madsen) and the two fall immediately in love because… reasons.

This film is just so incredibly lazy. The ‘love story’ really can just be chalked up to ‘hormones.’

Last Resort

Once again I am baffled how Charles Grodin kept getting work so much through out the 1980s.

George Lollar (Grodin) is a salesman in Chicago in need of a vacation. He loads up the family and takes them to Club Sand, which turns out to be a swingers resort as well as surrounded by barbed wire to keep rebels out.

There are a lot of talented people in this movie such as Phil Hartman and Megan Mullally, but the film lets them down at every turn with half-baked ideas of jokes. Supposedly, Grodin rewrote nearly the entire script and I think that explains a lot about how this film feels like unfinished ideas. It’s a Frankenstein monster of a script with half-complete ideas that feel like they are from completely different movies.

Short Circuit

Lets just get this out of the way: What in the world was Fisher Stevens doing?

NOVA Laboratory has come up with a new series of military robots called S.A.I.N.T. (Strategic Artificially Intelligent Nuclear Transport). Following a successful demonstration for the military, Five is struck by an electrical surge and finds itself needing ‘input.’ After inadvertently escaping the lab, it wands into the life of Stephanie Speck (Ally Sheedy), who cares for animals and takes Five in. Dr. Newton Crosby (Steve Guttenberg) is trying to get five back, while the security team wants to destroy it.

Overall, the film is thin, but harmless. The 80s did seem to love a ‘technology being used for the wrong reasons’ theme, and this falls into that camp. What is mind-blowing, however, is Stevens as Ben Jabituya, Crosby’s assistant. Not only is he wearing brown face, but he’s doing a horrible Indian accent and later reveals he was born and raised in the U.S.

His whole character is mystifying.

Honestly, a couple of decades ago I may have recommended this movie, but it’s a definite pass now just for being offensive.

1986 Movie Reviews will continue on May 16, 2026, with Sweet Liberty and Top Gun.

Movie Reviews

Movie Review: AFFECTION – Assignment X

Published

15 hours ago

May 9, 2026

Press Room

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: May 8th, 2026 / 08:34 PM

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Jessica Rothe, Joseph Cross, Julianna Layne
Writer: BT Meza
Director: BT Meza
Distributor: Brainstorm Media
Release Date: May 8, 2026

AFFECTION is an odd title for this tale. While it is about a number of topics and emotions, fondness isn’t one of them. Obsession, definitely. Love, possibly. The kind of general warm fellow feelings associated with “affection”? No.

There have been a lot of movies lately in which characters – mostly women – are grappling with false identities and/or false memories imposed upon them, mostly by men.

Let us stipulate that the protagonist (Jessica Rothe) in AFFECTION is not an android or in an artificial reality. However, we can tell something is way off from the opening sequence. A car is stalled on a tree-bordered highway. Rothe’s character is lying face down on the asphalt beside it, possibly dead.

But then the young woman rises, dragging a broken ankle. She experiences a full-body seizure. Fighting to recover, she sees oncoming headlights and tries to run, only to be hit by a car.

The woman wakes up in a bed she doesn’t recognize, next to a man (Joseph Cross) she likewise is sure she’s never seen before. One big confrontation later, the man says his name is Bruce – and that the woman is his wife, Ellie.

Ellie insists that her name is Sarah Thompson, and she is married to someone else, with a son. When she sees her reflection in a mirror, she doesn’t relate to the face looking back at her.

Bruce counters that Ellie has a rare neurological condition that causes her to block out her waking life and believe her dreams are real. This is why they agreed, together, to move to this isolated house, without the kinds of interruptions that can hinder Ellie’s recovery.

The set-up is presented in a way where we share Ellie’s skepticism. But Ellie and Bruce’s little daughter Alice (Julianna Layne) immediately identifies Ellie as “Mommy!” Alice appears to be too young to be in on any kind of deception, so what is going on here?

AFFECTION eventually explains this via a helpful videotape, though it’s so convoluted that viewers watching on streaming may want to replay the sequence to make sure they understand the exposition.

Writer/director BT Meza musters a sense of menace and lurking weirdness, as well as making great use of his location.

We still have a lot of questions, many of which are still unanswered by the film’s end. It may not matter to the points AFFECTION is trying to make, but a better sense of exactly how all this started might help our investment.

As it is, despite a heroically versatile performance by Rothe, a credible and anguished turn by Cross and appealing work from Layne, we’re so busy trying to piece together what’s important and what’s not and how we’re supposed to feel about all of it that it can be hard to keep track of the action as it unfolds.

Agree or not, Meza’s arguments are lucid and illustrated clearly by AFFECTION’s events. However, the movie is structured in a way that becomes more frustrating as it goes. We comprehend it intellectually but can’t engage viscerally.

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Movie Reviews

8News Reel Talk: ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ movie review

Published

1 day ago

May 8, 2026

Press Room

8News Reel Talk: ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ movie review

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — In this episode of 8News Reel Talk, digital producer Julia Broberg is joined by anchor Deanna Allbrittin and reporter Allison Williams to talk about “The Devil Wears Prada 2.”

The hosts gave their reviews and assigned the following star ratings:

Deanna: ★★★★.5

Allison: ★★★.25

Julia: ★★

To watch more livestreams and digital video content, head to the WRIC+ Originals page. You can also watch full on-demand videos on your smart TV using the WRIC+ app.