This Lost, Hidden-Gem Slasher is Now Streaming for Free; Watch An Iconic Kill Here
Horror Twitter—and film Twitter more broadly, I guess—revisits the Blockbuster discourse every week. Nostalgia wrapped in video store visits is often conflated with the corporate behemoth that was Blockbuster. For years, I visited my local Blair’s Video until Blockbuster ran them out of town. Was I thrilled about that? No, but it did mean, for better and worse, Blockbuster was all I had. And it was broadly great, if not for Blockbuster itself, as much as the opportunity to browse aisles of slasher movies I’d never heard of (remember, this was before internet logs and digital catalogs).
One cover that always caught my attention was Greg Huson’s Shredder. The cover art featured a masked skier holding an axe with the words, “Death to Snowboarders” etched on the head. I never got to rent it, so I was thrilled when I found it streaming for free on Tubi.
Per Tubi: Shrugging off warnings from locals about the axe murderer on the loose, Kimberly and her snowboarding pals shack up at an abandoned ski resort.
I finally caught Shredder in my early twenties, so the opportunity to revisit it was incredibly exciting. Better still, Shredder holds up as an artifact of the video rental era. Its low-budget origins belie its teen slasher scale. While very much a product of the post-Scream slasher era, Shredder has all the humor, gore, and sex slasher fans would expect. Its cast, too, remains committed throughout, gamely shifting from terror to early aughts snark with ease. Yes, it features the line, “Hey! Shred this, bitch.”
In fact, I think I enjoyed Shredder even more upon revisiting it on Tubi. Alongside the likes of Urban Legend and Valentine, it’s one of the better Scream riffs to come out. There are some inspired moments, including a death by ski-lift and an almost 3D shot of a severed head bobbing toward the camera. Rumor even has it that Shredder was released in Japan under the title Jason Z with hopes of capitalizing on Jason X’s popularity. We didn’t deserve 2003.
Don’t miss this iconic kill from Shredder
Earlier this year, I cataloged several teen slashers worth checking out on Tubi. Shredder is one of the best, further proof that Tubi remains one of the best free streaming services around. Where else are you gonna watch an axe-wielding skier chase snowboarders down a hill while a pop-punk soundtrack blares in the background?
What do you think? Are you a fan of Shredder? What else is worth catching on Tubi? Let me over on Twitter @Chadiscollins.
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