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QUIZ

Maple Syrup Mayhem

Test your knowledge of Canadian horror movies

By Sean Monkman

It was a golden age for Canadian horror films in the ’70s and early ’80s, thanks to government funds that sought to liven up our homegrown film biz. Cheap slasher pictures were a popular way to make a quick buck. The formula was simple: Canadian screenplay and/or director + Canadian location + fake blood + one star, either to kill or be killed = profit. (Well, hopefully.) The genre took a dip once the stream of government cash dried up, but slick and high-profile releases such as the Ginger Snaps series and the recent psychological thriller The Dark Hours are reanimating the Canuck horror scene.

1. What seminal Canadian horror film— directed by Bob Clark, who later made Porky’s and A Christmas Story — is often credited with creating the slasher subgenre that includes Hollywood’s Halloween and Friday the 13th franchises?
	Psycho Girls
	The Playgirl Killer
	Rabid
	The Clown Murders
	Black Christmas (a.k.a. Stranger in the House )

2. What Canadian singer and bodybuilder (he is a former Mr. Canada and Mr. Teenage U.S.A.) wrote, produced and starred in the 1987 film Rock ’n’ Roll Nightmare, in which his heavy metal band, the Tritonz, is picked off one by one by the forces of evil?
	Jon Mikl Thor, the Legendary Rock Warrior
	Bryan Adams
	Gowan
	Geddy Lee
	Neil Young

3. What fictional locale was the setting for 1981 Canuck horror classic My Bloody Valentine?
	Fort St. Valentine, an Alberta oil town
	Valentine Mills, a Saskatchewan Mennonite settlement
	Valentine’s Bluff, a Cape Breton mining town
	Bobby Valentine’s, a Toronto sports bar
	Port Valentine, a B.C. fishing village

4. One of these is not an actual Canadian horror movie. Which is it?
	Creature of Comfort (giant amoeba-like entity absorbs mean and selfish people when they use it on their beds as a comforter)
	The Carpenter (phantom carpenter uses his tools to mount a killing spree during a home renovation)
	Murder by Phone (telecom employee kills by zapping his victims through their phone lines)
	Graveyard Shift (vampire finds his victims through his job as a cab driver)
	Antler Frenzy (haunted house sits atop ancient moose burial ground)

5. What music icon played the role of radio psychologist Nicki Brand in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome?
	Patti Smith
	Siouxsie Sioux
	Belinda Carlisle
	Debbie Harry
	Anne Murray

6. What connection does Oliver Stone have to Canadian horror history?
	His directorial debut feature, Seizure, was a psychological horror filmed in Quebec
	He was Eugene Levy’s stunt double in Cannibal Girls
	He co-produced Pin: A Plastic Nightmare
	He wrote the screenplay for Graveyard Alive: A Zombie Nurse in Love
	He appeared as an extra in Shivers: Unleashed

7. Jamie Lee Curtis gained a scream queen reputation when she launched her career with roles in Halloween and The Fog. She boosted that rep by surviving to the end of what 1980 Canadian film?
	The Brood
	Prom Night
	Death Ship
	Incubus
	Visiting Hours

8. What staple horror baddies are the basis for the Ginger Snaps series?
	Zombies
	Vampires
	Ghosts
	Werewolves
	Killer tomatoes

9. Four of these are Canadian “rural revenge” films, featuring backwoods yokels as murderous villains; one, set in rural England, is an Oscar-nominated thriller directed by Hollywood maverick Sam Peckinpah. Identify the U.K. interloper.
	Death Weekend
	Vengeance is Mine
	Straw Dogs
	Rituals
	Shoot

10. What magician’s only credited acting role came in the 1980 movie Terror Train, playing a magician (of all things) who is killed with his own swords?
	Doug Henning
	James “the Amazing” Randi
	Harry Blackstone Jr.
	David Copperfield
	David Blaine