Terror in the Aisles

Compilation documentaries that showcased a particular genre from a particular studio became a thing in the home video era. These were usually specials made for TV, but occasionally, they were theatrical features like this one. The originator of the compilation-style doc was That's Entertainment!, MGM's 1974 showcase of clips from their iconic musicals from the 1920s through the 1950s written, produced, and directed by the son of the Tin Man and the husband of Liza with a Z, Jack Haley Jr. The 1980s saw the arrival of compilation films from other genres that lend themselves to having sequences pulled out to stand on their own almost as well as musicals. One I particularly enjoy is 1982's The Best of Sex and Violence, in which host John Carradine takes viewers on a tour of exploitation cinema via a compilation of scenes and trailers for various exploitation films.

1984's Terror in the Aisles is a somewhat shameless attempt by Universal Pictures to showcase their back catalog in the era of VHS rentals, though there are many clips of films from rival studios. Hosts Donald Pleasence (the Halloween films, Eye of the Devil, Wake in Fright, From Beyond the Grave, Escape to Witch Mountain, Journey into Fear, Night Creature, Halloween, John Badham’s Dracula, Alone in the Dark, and Prince of Darkness) and Nancy Allen (Forced Entry, Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Strange Invaders, The Philadelphia Experiment, Poltergeist III, and the Robocop movies) provide commentary on topics such as shock vs suspense, the many ways of depicting evil, and sex and terror. The movie professes to be wide-ranging and covers all types of "terror cinema," a term presumably used to enable the inclusion of a lengthy, somewhat ill-advised segment that spends an inordinate amount of time with the thrillers Marathon Man, Vice Squad, and Nighthawks.

Universal essentially launched the horror genre with their monster movies like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man, and The Mummy, but the segment on these classic movies is saved for near the end. The filmmakers obviously feared their target audience would be turned off by the old black-and-white films, even though the sequence is about how they're not really scary anymore, but had this film been made in any other decade, it would have started with these movies and worked it's way forward in time.

Of course, Terror in the Aisles spoils the climaxes and endings of way too many great films, somewhat unnecessarily, in my opinion. So I would only recommend this for people who want to relive the great moments of their favorite "terror movies," not as an introduction to the genre. But there is a lot of enjoyable editing of sequences made of shots and motifs that span many horror movies, like chases, demonic possessions, walking home alone, improvising weapons, running into a house and locking the door, etc. It's also fun to have our hosts sitting in a theater, interacting with a bunch of movie-watching extras. I found it interesting how unsettling it was to watch the highlights of so many horrific movies cut together rapidly over a short period of time. When watching a proper movie, or even several proper horror movies in a marathon situation, these sequences are spread out and paced in a manner that we react to more organically. Seeing them all together out of their narrative contexts diminishes their power to excite, scare, or thrill us, but it still does a number on the old nerves.