The Outing aka The Lamp (1987)

 The great genie movie has yet to be filmed (sorry, Kazaam) but this one comes pretty damn close. Filmed mostly in Texas, raggedly assembled and zigzagging in and out of camp—sometimes between scenes, sometimes between sentences—it feels like the wilder, weirder country cousin of the glossier Hollywood horror classics of that same year. (Let’s just say that A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II are skipping the family reunion.) And that, my friends, is what makes it so awesome—when you’re already playing outside Hollywood’s rules, there’s plenty of room to surprise viewers conditioned by years of tropes. That includes a Pepsi product placement jump scare and a gleeful lack of mercy for certain characters who would otherwise have survived a major studio film. (Price of admission on this rebel ride, sadly: a dash of racism and a brief, horrible and unnecessary rape scene, all courtesy of one of cinema’s most repellent evil teens.)

If you can handle the griminess though, there are so many incredible elements all fighting each other for screen time. Each one is colorful enough on its own but taken all together, it’s like the ultimate 1980s horror movie fever dream. Don’t blink or you might miss: A hard-living and harder-loving criminal blonde named Faylene (FAYLENE!! We need her origin story now!!) trashing an old woman’s house! Said old woman exacting revenge despite the axe in her head! Cursed wind chime jewelry! A breakfast of Life cereal and Diet Pepsi in a vintage white can! A Bess Armstrong lookalike with seriously crazy eyes thrashing a butterfly knife-swinging student with a teacher’s pointer like Donatello using his bō staff! A Tiffany lookalike with her eyes and hair flashing Argento green in front of several wind and fog machines! A hungry mummy named Tracy! Cobra bathtime! Cobra pants-time! Opera-loving security guards!

 And, of course, a genie for the ages!! Both it and its lamp design are awesome—you’ll still be hearing its voice bellowing “KEEPER!” long after the film ends. This one definitely is that. 5 out of 5 sacs of blood.

—Jonathan Riggs