Terror in the Aisles (1984)

When it was first released to cinemas in the mid-1980s, Andrew J. Kuehn’s Terror in the Aisles was something of a godsend, particularly for beleaguered British horror fans who were still reeling from the fallout from the “video nasties” furore. A cornucopia of scenes from not just horror films (it’s called Terror in the Aisles after all, not Horror in the Aisles), including The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and The Exorcist (1973), both by this time proving harder to find on UK video, it was back then a fun romp through favourite scenes from mostly still very recent releases. Today, when we can access everything in the film in better quality (and the correct aspect ratio – the film was presented in 1.85:1 regardless of the ratio of the original clips…) it’s less impressive but it retains considerable nostalgia value.

Its structure is the biggest problem. It really is just a seemingly random assemblage of clips interspersed with newly shot material set in a cinema full of rowdy patrons apparently watching the same film we are. Donald Pleasence – who occasionally slices the ham a little thick – and Nancy Allen are on hand to wander around the cinema, interacting with the audience while delivering platitudes about the nature of screen violence and philosophising about why we like these sort of films. Allen’s presences, half-heartedly pontificating about violence against women, feels awkward given her appearance only a few years earlier in Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980).

There’s no through story here, no real point being made. It’s just this series of clips that pays lip service to being a proper documentary with a banal commentary – written by Margery Doppelt who had previously written a produced a making of short to accompany fantasy film Krull (1983) – that attempts to take things more seriously than anyone wanted it to. As critic Gene Siskel pointed out at the time, the film’s key problem is that it’s all pay off, a collection of kill scenes, scares and jumps devoid of any build-up. There’s no suspense despite the best efforts of editors Bill Flicker and Gregory McClatchy to liven things up.

There are some feeble attempts at humour in the newly shot material, mainly involving Pleasence and the hammy reactions from the cinema audience are never for one moment convincing. The bulk of the clips are, at first, from more recent releases with only Psycho (1960), Strangers on a Train (1951), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), The Birds (1963), Wait Until Dark (1967) and a handful of others representing the pre-Night of the Living Dead (1968) era. In the latter half – just before a terrible rock song makes an unwanted appearance – Kuehn decides that science fiction deserves a moment in the spotlight and we suddenly get a flurry of moments from 50s classics like Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), This Island Earth (1955), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) and The Fly 1958) as well as not-so-classics like The Deadly Mantis (1957).

There seem to be at least two versions of the film in existence. The original theatrical cut ran for 84 minutes but a new, longer version was prepared for American television broadcasts. It not only censored some of the stronger language and more violent scenes but added clips from the likes of The Legacy (1978), Firestarter (1984), Frenzy (1972), The Funhouse (1981) and Fahrenheit 451 (1966) that were missing from the original cut. The cut released in the UK had several trims, most noticeably in the Vice Squad (1982), Dressed to Kill (1980) and Ms .45 (1981) clips.

By the end you’ll be none the wiser as to why horror (or indeed “terror”) films have always been so appealing and you’ll be scratching your head as to why anyone thought that a vaguely Halloween-ish sounding piano motif should be played out over clips from Halloween II (1981) instead of the original score was a good idea. It spoils the endings of both Nighthawks (1981) and Vice Squad and eventually the narrative interludes disappear altogether, notably in the aforementioned collection of scenes from science fiction films.

Today, Terror in the Aisles looks like a pointless cash-in, an opportunistic attempt to jump on the 80s horror bandwagon. At the time it was a lot of fun – and still remains an entertaining canter through some of your favourite genre and non-genre moments – but if you’re looking for insight, context or meaningful commentary this isn’t the place you’re going to find it. What it might do is inspire you to dust off those discs you haven’t watched in a while and reacquaint yourself with some old favourite and that in itself makes it worth your while. Newer, younger fans may get a buzz from it and older fans will likely recall it with a nostalgic fondness but there’s really nothing here to get terribly excited about any more. For a full list of the genre films included in Terror in the Aisles, visit the film’s page on the main EOFFTV site.

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For more details on this title, visit the main EOFFTV site.