The Lamp (1987) – Tom Daley.

It frequently proves interesting revisiting moderately neglected horror titles that are, perhaps, inextricably linked to the VHS home rental boom of the 80s. Much like The Kindred, even after all these years, The Lamp still flickered dimly in my video shop haunted memory. Inevitably, nostalgia plays a dominant role in the enjoyably goofy pleasures supernatural slasher The Lamp fitfully provides. 2 parts generic collegiate slasher, and 1 part creature feature mayhem, plus a frantic frisson of home invasion nastiness, it is this lively admixture of B-horror tropes that maintains The Lamp's lurid luminosity. Happily, the boomingly baritone-voiced genie trapped within the ancient, rather spiffy-looking Lamp is violently antithetical to the one popularized by Disney!

Following a brutal home invasion, the mysterious, undeniably ominous lamp is shipped to a museum, and once ensconced therein, it very soon unleashes its malevolence in an entertainingly schlocky series of gruesome, Djinn-delivered death scenes. The Lamp isn't going to win any belated awards for innovation, yet it remains a playful romp, a boisterously bloody reminder that the 80s were emphatically a heyday for gory, exploitative, mostly by-the-B-numbers teen splattering. Not unlike X-Ray, or Hide and Go Shriek, The Lamp benefits from its eerie location, and the divinely silly, The Gate-esque finale is still pretty neat! I've never related to the concept of a guilty pleasure, you either dig something, or you don't, no need to get all fancy schmantsy about it. Enough sermonising, go check out The Lamp, as, hey!!! you never know, it still might turn y'all on!