Terror in the Aisles (1984)

 

 

'Terror in the Aisles' is a strange one among the many horror movie documentaries out there. If you've ever seen one of those infamous clip show episodes of 'The Simpsons', you'll know what I'm talking about here. The film is a compilation of what was considered at the time the most scary and intense movies of all time with far too many to list here. So why bother with watching various clips from hundreds of scary movies when it's easy to do so on YouTube in 2020? Well, I won't say that 'Terror in the Aisles' is necessarily a convinient way to view these movies but the context of when it released does give it some merit.

 

Now I did say that the film is comprised mainly of various clips and scenes, but it does have a skeleton so to speak with the narration and newly shot footage of actors Donald Pleasance of the 'Halloween' series and Nancy Allen of 'Carrie' who provide eerie dialogue that comes off as pure cheese these days but gives the movie an extra boost with its fun and silly nature. Having Pleasance and Allen talk about the horrors of the world, movies, and various other related topics while trying to act scared in a movie theater of patrons is quite amusing and keeps the film from getting dull. You also get some fun moments where various audience members are shown as cliches such as the stoners and the ones who yell at the characters on screen.

While it's not a documentary in the traditional sense, the film does at some points bring up various topics such as the classic Universal Monsters era, the evolution of makeup effects, and asks the audience why do we seek out horror films? They sadly gloss over this material very quickly in favor of getting as many clips from various films in as possible but the highlight is a famous interview with director Alfred Hitchcock as he goes over a couple of the techniques he would use to scare his audience, including the famous monologue about the bomb under the table. The lack of information of these various horror movies really drags down 'Terror in the Aisles' for me, especially when we have 7 hour docs on just one film series these days. The film also oddly chooses to take scenes from a ton of movies that aren't considered "horror" such as 'Nighthawks' and 'Marathon Man'. With so many films being utilized here and even more if you see the television cut of the film, bringing in these random clips are a bit odd to me.

I've always enjoyed 'Terror in the Aisles' but I will also admit that it's far from the best horror documentary out there. If you grew up renting tapes in the 80's and 90's like I did, you probably have already seen it and it was a good way to get a taste of all these famous horror films at the time but my nostalgia clashes with the facts, and the facts are that a 90 minute clip show does not age well in the era of YouTube or other video sharing sites. It's a fun little movie overall that won't bore you, but it won't wow you like it did to my generation either.

 C

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