31 Horror Films To Watch This October

Even a low-budget sci-fi epic needs stars and good make-up to succeed, so when you’re shooting a picture in your backyard with your half-brother in the floppy creature suit, the odds are stacked against you before you burn a foot of film. For all its home movie production values, amateurish performances and third-hand ideas, though, this time capsule of vintage pleasure is mounted with such genuine, straight-faced sincerity that it’s worth its weight in goofy charm.

This was Don Dohler’s fourth such opus, and as in all the others there’s an ET loose in suburban Baltimore, only this time it’s a benevolent creature and the rednecks are the bad guys. He immediately regrets choosing Hicksville as a vacation spot when he meets the soft-bellied locals who, fortified by Dutch courage, establish First Contact through Messrs Smith & Wesson.

Dollar signs flash in their eyes when they come into possession of the glowing ball strapped around the being’s waist, prompting the rounding-up of a drunken posse for a hunt-and-capture mission, much to the dismay of anthropologist Richard Dyszel (aka horror host Count Gore De Vol), who argues that it’s an important scientific find. So they shoot him. Then they take off after the creature anyway and get picked off one by one etc etc etc.