Trick or Trailers: Terror in the Aisles (1984)

These days, with so many different avenues for movies to be released, even movies that are toplined with fairly big stars can bypass theaters and go straight to Redbox or VOD or whatever. But in 1984, a collection of clips could garner a wide release, like it was a real movie or something. Of course, putting out a "greatest hits" of horror right before Halloween seems like a pretty safe move and sure enough, Universal did fine by releasing Terror in the Aisles on October 26th, 1984, as the movie grossed just over 10 million.

I actually saw this in theaters and, even as a young horror fan, I recognized it as a missed opportunity. Director Andrew J. Kuehn and writer Margery Doppelt are clearly not knowledgeable about horror and when the movie isn't asking dippy, perplexed questions about why on earth do people enjoy being scared, it's wasting way too much time on non-horror thrillers like Nighthawks and Klute. Great movies, sure, but do they belong in a horror documentary? One with an already brief running time of 84 minutes, no less?

On the upside, this did give me the opportunity to see clips from many classic movies on the big screen - many from movies I hadn't even seen on TV yet (I only knew the likes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dressed to Kill, and other R-rated features by reputation) - and Terror in the Aisles also exposed me to several films I hadn't heard of, like Alone in the Dark. Unfortunately, thanks to the fact that none of the clips were identified, it took me forever to figure out what some of these movies were.



What the trailers for Terror in the Aisles didn't bother selling was the real reason it's great - the priceless hosting segments starring Donald Pleasence and Nancy Allen as they sit in a theater full of sketchy dirtbags and ponder aloud about the meaning of horror. Pleasence is especially great as he relentlessly hams it up (you've never heard anyone say "It's only a movie!" the way he says it here).



Forget the movies. Sitting next to someone acting as unhinged as Pleasence does here would likely force even the most hardened of horror fans to nervously flee up the aisles.

Terror In The Oscar Aisles

When Terror in the Aisles, a feature-length compilation of horror highlights, was released in 1984, it was greeted by genre fans as a film that didn't have much insight or knowledge about its subject. While the idea of a film celebrating the best of a chronically underappreciated genre was a welcome one, the execution was lacking. It was hard to find much good to say about a tribute to horror films that spent so much time on peripheral genre titles like Marathon Man (1976) or films that, even by the most generous definition, were not horror at all (such as the 1981 Sylvester Stallone cop movie Nighthawks).

The Oscars delivered their own version of Terror in the Aisles during last night's awards ceremony with a 'tribute' that seemed to be assembled by people with only a dim affection for, and only a passing familiarity with, the horror genre. I'm not a hater of the Twilight series (I have no strong feelings about it - more power to those that love it but it's just not for me) but I also feel that assigning two of the stars of that series (Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart) to handle the tribute's introduction got things off on a bad foot - especially when Academy honoree Roger Corman would've been a more apt choice. It was also galling that Lautner and Stewart wrongly cited The Exorcist (1973) as the last horror film to receive attention on the Oscar stage. It's not Lautner and Stewart's fault that whoever wrote their intro forgot about 1991's The Silence of the Lambs (directed by Corman grad Jonathan Demme) but the oversight was an immediate signal that horror was already getting slighted in the midst of its own tribute.

As for the clips themselves, it was a perplexing grab-bag that bumped classics like Jaws, The Exorcist, and Psycho up against Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (at least the original TCM was accounted for as well), Twilight: New Moon (if a recent vampire film had to be included, shouldn't it have been Let The Right One In?), and Marathon Man (Terror in the Aisles flashback!). While I'm all for stretching the definition of what a horror film is and I'm all for spreading the love to marginal genre titles (and I'm also all for time-wasting trash like Leprechaun), with only about five minutes to honor the history of horror, should any non-horror films, or any titles that weren't A-class examples of the genre have been included at all? Also, with clips from Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands (?!?), and Sleepy Hollow, director Tim Burton earned the distinction of being the individual filmmaker with the most films represented in this 'tribute' to horror (only one film apiece made it onto the reel for Romero and Carpenter, two for Craven, and none at all for Argento, Fulci, Bava, or Cronenberg) and that's just wrong. Best Director winner Kathyrn Bigelow's vampire classic Near Dark (1987) should've merited an inclusion as well.

Maybe some love is better than none but this tribute to horror was the definition of a missed opportunity. A once-in-a-lifetime chance to give the zombie vs. shark fight from Zombie (1979) a venerated place in Academy Awards history was missed last night and to me, you can't call a shout-out to horror that doesn't include any Fulci a real shout-out at all.

Terror in the Aisles

It's hard to imagine that a film comprised entirely of clips from other movies would be granted a wide theatrical release but that's the case with 1984's feature-length compilation of horror and thriller highlights (hosted by Donald Pleasence and Nancy Allen), Terror in the Aisles. Presented as an overview of fear on film with an emphasis on modern terrors, Terror in the Aisles (directed by Andrew J. Kuehn and written by Margaret Doppelt - who's responsible for penning such insightful lines as "perhaps we invent artificial horrors to help us cope with the real ones") is at best a scattershot affair that lacks any kind of focus or insight. But yet for fans of a certain age, it remains a fondly remembered snapshot of a past era.

Younger genre fans who have - thanks to the advent of home video, DVD, and the internet - always enjoyed near-instant access to virtually the entire history of film might wonder how a film like Terror in the Aisles could ever be regarded as useful. But at one time even a poorly put-together compilation like this served a valuable function. Before almost every film was readily available on VHS (and before VCRs themselves were a common part of every household), Terror in the Aisles was an HBO staple and it provided many young horror fans an initial glimpse of films that remained out of their reach.

And as Terror in the Aisles didn't specifically note where each of its clips originated from, novice viewers were left to puzzle out for themselves what many of these films were. And even if they had the ability to identify which clips belonged to such lesser-known titles as Alone in the Dark and Ms. 45, it was unlikely that kids would have the immediate opportunity to see the complete films themselves.

Even if the presentation was lacking (the film leaps from one montage to the next with no rhyme or reason, making a series of unrelated points - People love villains! Hitchcock was the Master of Suspense! Crazy horror audiences talk back to the screen!), these clips still offered younger horror fans an intriguing taste of films that were largely unavailable to them. If only Terror in the Aisles had been assembled with a sharper eye towards the genre and had spent less time dwelling on thrillers like Nighthawks, Marathon Man, Klute, and Vice Squad (all great movies - but not horror).

Still, just for its host segments with Pleasence and Allen - who deliver their narration while sitting in a theater watching a film along with an audience that would give the seediest 42nd Street crew a run for their money (my favorite audience member is the fat Hispanic dude with the bandanna) - it's easy to harbor plenty of affection for Terror in the Aisles. With these host segments, it's clear that the makers of this film were out to caution viewers about the possibility of some real terror in the aisles as they portray the horror audience as being far scarier than the actual movies with narration that delivers digs like "There's no question about it - some terror films go too far. But so do the audiences." The irony is that as intimidating as the audience in Terror in the Aisles is supposed to be, they seem normal compared to Donald Pleasance. No matter how many thugs, stoners, and prospective serial killers they place around him, Pleasence is always more alarming than they are, blurting out lines like "It's only a movie!" at random junctures. Terror in the Aisles proves that Pleasance couldn't even host a compilation of clips without chewing the scenery and that alone makes it awesome.

The posters for Terror in the Aisles read "If you can handle more than one hundred jolts of one hundred percent pure terror, then you might be ready for Terror in the Aisles." but while that promised a film aimed at the advanced horror fanatic, Terror in the Aisles was more like a set of training wheels for those fans just learning how to get up to speed.