The second weekend of October 1981 is so big we're cutting it in half

And even that feels overstuffed! Holy cow!

Aaaaaaaaaaand we’re back!

I’m not kidding when I say that the whole reason I chickened out on October 1981 the first time around was because there are just so… many… movies. I mean, there are five freakin’ Fridays. That’s not fair.

And it was this weekend in particular that took the wind out of my sails. 11 films in one weekend. That’s a crazy weekend. Can you think of the last time you had that many new movies to pick from in one weekend in theaters? We’re lucky if we get 11 films in a whole month these days. And we’re just in 1981 here. By 1985 and 1986, we’re routinely going to see nine and ten movie weekends. Admittedly, not every one of those movies played at every theater, but it is astounding just how many films there were as more and more theater screens were being built around the U.S.

Multiplex theaters used to be this amazing space where all these different audiences would collide because you had so many different things playing side by side. Theater hopping could give you whiplash, and part of the pleasure of this newsletter format is seeing how all of these things lined up next to each other for context.

So here we are in the first half of this weekend. We’re two weeks into October. It’s the spooky season, right? Everyone’s starting to see horror as a Vegas slot machine, and they are pumping in the coins hoping for a Halloween or Friday the 13th sized payout. It’s interesting to note that by this time, we’re already two Fridays deep, but it’s not until later this month that there is finally a sequel to the Carpenter film that kicked off this particular teen-flavored push in ‘78.

There’s a totally different kind of Larry Cohen this weekend… but is that good thing? And there are certainly options besides horror. But the movie that feels the most special this issue is a very strange horror film that doesn’t feel like anything else that was coming out at the moment. It’s certainly not “just” another slasher movie, and that makes it refreshing when writing about this era.

Let’s get into it with this first unpronounceable oddity…

OCTOBER 9

Antropophagus aka The Grim Reaper aka The Savage Island
Tisa Farrow, Saverio Vallone, Serenea Grandi, Margaret Mazzantini, Mark Bodin, Bob Larson, Rubina Rey, Simone Baker, Mark Logan, George Eastman, Zora Kerova
cinematography by Enrico Biribicchi
music by Marcello Giombini
screenplay by Luigi Montefiori
story by Luigi Montefiori & Aristide Massaccesi
produced by Joe D’Amato, George Eastman and Oscar Santaniello
directed by Joe D’Amato
Rated R
1 hr 32 mins

A cannibalistic monster stalks and eats everyone who visits a small isolated Greek island.

This is the kind of Euro-trash that feels like it was designed to play on a drive-in screen no one is watching because they are too busy having sex.

I love movies that were clearly filmed without any sound on location and then completely created as ADR after the fact. The opening scene of Antropophagus takes place on a beach where a pair of young tourists are murdered, and it all sounds like it was recorded in a public restroom. Even though the actors are all clearly speaking English, it still feels like the entire thing was badly translated. I also love movies that star the far-less-famous sibling of a celebrity who was clearly cast because of their last name, and Tisa Farrow was a poster child for that for a while. None of this should be a surprise with Joe D’Amato at the helm. This thing just screams “low-rent” from the jump, and if you’re in the mood for that exact flavor of ultra-low-budget cheese, you really do owe yourself at least one viewing of this one.