johnquaid

Unfairly dumped onto VHS by USA Home Entertainment (and a double bill DVD with Cherry Falls) in the early 2000's, Terror Tract has held up far better than most other straight to video horror films from that era.

Boasting solid performances by John Ritter and a pre-Breaking Bad Bryan Cranston, Terror Tract tells the story of a desperate realtor (Ritter) who takes a young couple to three different houses in a seemingly quiet and peaceful suburban neighborhood, but each house comes with a catch - something horrible happened there.

The stories range from undead husbands to killer monkeys to teenagers with psychic links to serial killers. Each story is well told and acted with the best being saved for last.

Even the wraparound segment, usually a thorn in the side of most anthology films, is well done and entertaining with Ritter turning in a memorably unhinged performance.

Woody Allen is a polarizing figure these days, but it's hard to deny his talent. When he's good, he's great and Husbands and Wives might be one of his greatest and most crowd-pleasing films.

4 middle aged friends have their lives torn apart when one of the couples announces they're getting divorced, which causes the other couple to wonder if they're really happy in their own relationship. Hilarity and heartbreak follow.

The entire cast is fantastic from top to bottom, but it's Judy Davis' icy and brittle Sally who steals the show. Her frantic first date right after her divorce is an acting tour de force - both heartbreaking and incredibly funny.

You have to thank the good people at Vinegar Syndrome for bringing Hollywood Horror House out of obscurity and into the light again. While it's far from perfect and came at the end of the "Baby Jane"/crazy old dame phase, it's one of the wilder entries into that subgenre with a surprising amount of effective gore.

It all plays out a bit like Sunset Boulevard if the Joe Gillis character was a serial killer who kills older women because they remind him of his mother. He latches on to a faded film star played by Miriam Hopkins and becomes her assistant, confidant, and perhaps her lover. As various people in Hopkins' life start to suspect this homicidal grifter of ill will, he kills them.

Hollywood Horror House appears to have a had a somewhat sizable budget given the sets, quality of actors, lighting, and special effects. After all, how many of these low budget films features a Christmas parade sequence with seemingly hundreds of extras? The film does lose steam towards the end and the ending isn't the most satisfying, but the journey to get there is wonderfully wild.