80's American Horror Part Eighty-Eight

DELUSION

(1980)

Dir - Alan Beattie

Overall: MEH

The first of two full-length from director Alan Beattie, Delusion, (The House Where Death Lives), is a low key, slasher-adjacent outing that is unremarkable despite its restrained style.  Beattie co-wrote the screenplay with Jack Viertel, the latter's only such credited writing effort.  Their inexperience is forgivable given the bog-standard premise of a woman who goes to work as a nurse in a creepy old house where the concerning behavior of everyone there naturally proves to be a red herring for the true, least expected culprit.  This formula is so widely used and easily recognized that it actually makes the twist predictable since anyone familiar with the framework will put two and two together before too long.  That said, Beattie keeps the camp and humor at bay, letting Patricia Pearcy's protagonist narrate the proceedings in a toned-downed manner.  Unfortunately, said proceedings drag on at an unacceptable rate and even some occasional nudity, mild violence, and a bed-ridden Joseph Cotten collecting a paycheck cannot stop the boredom when frequent deaths are considered mere accidents, the camera lingers on poorly-lit interiors, and nothing seems to have any sense of urgency to it.

 

CRY FOR THE STRANGERS

(1982)

Dir - Peter Medak

Overall: MEH

A typically forgettable, overly talky television movie for the time period, Cry for the Strangers debuted on CBS in February of 1982 and is an adaptation of John Saul's novel of the same name.  Director Peter Medak bounced between theatrical work and TV productions throughout his career, joined here by soap opera mainstay Peter Duffy, Ferris Bueller's mom Cindy Pickett, and Karate Kid bad guy Martin Kove in a minor role.  Plagued by a persistent musical score and lazy melodrama, the horror elements are underplayed sans some thunderstorms, (which serve a significant narrative purpose), and cloudy shots of what are supposed to be Native American spectres that have a particular fondness for burring people alive in the shallow sand before the tide comes in.  Even these macabre, supernatural elements, (coupled with a kind-of-possessed kid), fail to come off as properly sinister, let alone fetching for any audience member that is craving genre-worthy chills.  Medak seems to be doing his best with the material, but whoever's idea it was to let the busy soundtrack manipulate every scene while keeping the action to a bare minimum is to blame for this fading into obscurity as mere filler to play in the background for housewives who are folding laundry while half paying attention to it.

 

WHITE OF THE EYE

(1987)

Dir - Donald Cammell

Overall: MEH

 

Though it is technically a British production, Donald Cammell's penultimate full-length White of the Eye was shot and set in Arizona with an exclusively American cast.  Allegedly, none other than Cammel's old buddy Marlon Brando convinced the MPAA to give it an R rating after a proposed X, which unfortunately is a more interesting side note than anything in the actual movie.  A solid enough staring vehicle for Cathy Moriarty and David Keath as a dysfunctional couple who have a daughter with a mullet because 1987, it is told in a disoriented style that bounces between flashback and present day without any warning.  It ends up being followable, but only after much annoyance in trying to get our barrings along with a slew of murders that point to an obvious culprit whose reveal is treated as a twist.  Keath's is a poorly written character from top to bottom who exhibits arbitrary quirks for a gun-toting hillbilly, like a fondness for opera and classical music, the desire to paint himself in kabuki makeup, and having a job as an audiophile engineer.  The motivation behind the killer is of the typically weak, "sure whatever" variety for cinematic psychopaths and Cammell seems far more concerned with the movie's convoluted style than saying anything profound with the subject matter.

80's American Horror Part Eighty-Seven

THE NESTING

(1981)

Dir - Armand Weston

Overall: MEH

 

The final film to be directed by Armand Weston, (at least in a credited capacity), also doubles as his first to not fall into the pornographic category, 1981's Southern Gothic haunted house yarn The Nesting, (Phobia, Massacre Mansion).  Two primary issues undue what is otherwise just a run of the mill genre offering.  One is the bloated running time which stagnates regularly and leaves too much room for sloppy editing, mild incoherence, and set pieces that fail to come off as creepy as they should.  This brings us to the other problem in the fact that the film regularly becomes unintentionally funny.  Robin Groves in the lead, a bed/wheelchair-ridden John Carradine in a bit part, and David Tabor as an odious scumbag each chew the scenery in their attempts at intensity and it is hit and miss where the supernatural moments are concerned as dated special effects get in the way.  The production is several steps above D-grade schlock though and cinematographer João Fernandes, (also from the adult industry), does a better job with the visual atmosphere than Weston does in trying to get from point A to point B.  A fifty-eight year-old Gloria Graham shows up at the very end in a revealing outfit as well, so that is something.

GHOST RIDERS

(1987)

Dir - Alan Stewart

Overall: WOOF

A regional horror Western with bare minimum production values, uncharasmatic actors, and one hellova boring story line, Ghost Riders steers shy of being embarrassing, but is still textbook forgettable.  Filmed at the Texas Safari Ranch om Clifton, Texas, any poor saps who saw the cover art and thought that a B-movie hoot with skeleton cowboys was in store from them probably all wrote the producers an angry letter.  In fact this barely belongs in any horror conversation whatsoever, despite the fact that the plot technically involves supernatural gunslingers who just so happen to look like regular ole actors in clean clothes and cowboy hats.  There is no ghoulish atmosphere at any time unless you count a couple of closeups of spiders and bugs in broad daylight.  Also, the finale involves a revolver disappearing and a reverberated voice over about the bad guy's souls never resting.  Director Alan Stewart only made two movies and it is understandable why as his sense of pacing revolves around shooting a couple of actors walk around to no music and exchange banal dialog with each other, a structure that is particularly torturous during the first half.  The film is far too lazy to have any accidental hilarity and instead belongs in obscurity where it shall hopefully forever remain.

 

MIDNIGHT MOVIE MASSACRE

(1988)

Dir - Laurence Jacobs/Mark Stock

Overall: WOOF

 

A misguided, alarmingly annoying genre spoof and the lone, (thank the heavens), film from directors Laurence Jacobs and Mark Stock, Midnight Movie Massacre, (Attack from Mars), is essentially what a 1950s drive-in cheapie homage would be like if the most obnoxious kids in your fifth grade class made it.  On paper, Jacobs and Stock are going for something ambitious with the script from Roger Branit, John Chadwell, and David Houston which is two different movies happening at once.  One story line involves an eccentric and painfully unfunny group of movie patrons sitting in a movie theater which is inter-cut with the secondary story line of the actual film that they are watching; an Ed Wood-style science-fiction serial called Space Patrol.  Having any interest in either narrative let alone the brain capacity to follow things later on as space aliens show up in the theater setting to eat everyone, (until the token fat lady in the audience is hungry enough to eat them that is), is a fool's errand.  From top to bottom, every aspect is wretchedly handled from the moronic plot, to the painful performances, to the inane dialog, to the purposely lazy production values, to the sanity-challenging pacing, to each and every attempt at juvenile humor simply making you want to jump out into traffic to spare yourself from enduring one second more of it.

80's American Horror Part Eighty-Six

SATAN'S MISTRESS

(1980)

Dir - James Polakof

Overall: WOOF

An incomprehensible, meandering mess, Satan's Mistress, (Demon Rage, Demon Seed, Fury of the Succubus, Dark Eyes), is as instantly forgettable as they come.  Co-writer/director James Polakof only made a handful of movies and this was his second and last to be in the horror genre as he was primarily concerned with low-rent comedies throughout his career.  While he manages to keep any and all humor out of the proceedings here as to not mangle the tone, he also forgets to put in anything that can be remotely engaging.  The story concerns a sexually frustrated woman who moves into her own beach house to get away from her husband, only to start wet dreaming about/actually fornicating with a speechless man who may be the devil or a ghost or who cares.  Also, her daughter gets possessed at one point, a guy's head gets decapitated, and John Carradine shows up for fifty seconds.  Besides these much needed and all too brief detours, the pacing is horrendously monotonous as it endlessly repeats the same arguments and uninteresting dialog exchanges between a small handful of characters as the cheap keyboard score never shuts up and former Bond girl Britt Ekland shows off her luscious boobs during softcore sex scenes.

 

THE PASSING

(1983)

Dir - John Huckert

Overall: GOOD

 

Belonging to no genre in an exclusive sense, independent filmmaker John Huckert's ambitious debut The Passing is a unique, no-budget work that tackles universally profound themes of aging and the possibility of giving life another chance.  The fact that it does so with non-actors, zero money, and all within an arthouse framework that was shot over the course of seven years, (with one of the elderly actors dying before it was completed), is an admirable, DIY achievement to say the least.  While the common, non-professional problems found in such regional films are readily apparent, (the actors awkwardly stumble through their lines, the pacing is problematically slow, and the premise is too challenging to have any business being attempted with such meager means), many of these would-be flaws work to the movie's benefit.  It has an intimacy that is made surreal due to Huckert's compassionate tone that allows for zero camp while letting two seemingly unrelated stories play out patiently until their inevitable meeting point occurs over an hour into the proceedings.  It even pulls-off its own version of a 2001: A Space Odyssey's "Stargate sequence", which fits right at home with something so refreshingly unique, beautiful, and thought-provoking.

 

GHOST TOWN

(1988)

Dir - Richard McCarthy

Overall: MEH

 

Typical, dope schlock from Charles Band's Empire Pictures, Ghost Town gets by to a point on its genre-melding and practical effects while failing everywhere else.  As the title would so properly suggest, the movie does in fact take place in a literal ghost town that springs up supernaturally in the middle of the Tucson, Arizona desert where a scenery-chewing, derivative 80s monster bad guy keeps the long-dead inhabitants there under his smirking, cliche-spewing thumb.  Franc Luz has the rugged good looks of any straight-to-video/USA Network hunk and turns in an adequate performance under the circumstances, but Jimmie F. Skaggs as the aforementioned zombie gunslinger is stereotypically obnoxious, though this can be due to the movie's groan-worthy tone and lazy script as much as anything else.  For such a tax-right-off-budgeted affair, the movie does nail the dusty, abandoned Western vibe of yesteryear just fine and Skaggs' grimy makeup is far better than everything else about his silly, textbook villainous character.  One cannot expect the story to play by its own rules or hold the audience's attention for eighty-five minutes, but it is at least not insulting in its mediocre attempts.

80's American Horror Part Eighty-Five

NECROPOLIS

(1986)

Dir - Bruce Hickey

Overall: WOOF

 

A bottom-barrel debut from writer/director Bruce Hickey, Necropolis is typically incompetent genre garbage that blows its potential as an oddball novelty.  Shot with no money and non-actors, on paper it has a generic, fool-proof premise of a condemned witch that comes back from the dead for vengeance-seeking purposes.  In execution, things could not go more wrong as it fails to establish any supernatural rules, simply taking LeeAnne Baker's lead antagonist into the modern century after a flashback prologue with non-existent production values that make such a transition clunky at best.  The dialog is painfully inept and occasionally hilarious because of it, especially when we meet a group of prostitutes who talk the way no human beings have ever talked in the history of talking.  Baker makes for a striking, punk rock vampire/witch/Satanic mistress lady, but her powers and actions are as arbitrary as they come.  She interpretive dances, fucks with people for no plot-driven reason, sucks either their blood or nondescript life goo, (the movie looks so relentless awful that it is legitimately difficult to tell what is even on screen half the time), and in easily the movie's most ridiculous scene, she flexes her muscles and sprouts six boobs for her cloaked minions to suckle on.  There is also some crap about a reporter, detective, and a drug counselor, but who cares.  Everything that happens is stupid and everyone on screen sucks.

 

DRACULA'S WIDOW

(1988)

Dir - Christopher Coppola

Overall: MEH

For his debut behind the lens, Christopher of the Coppola family made the off-beat horror comedy Dracula's Widow which is too clunky to work.  The premise is simple enough as mayhem ensues after the title character, (played by Emmanuelle herself Sylvia Kristel in a goofy wig), comes to Hollywood in a crate that was delivered to an eccentric wax museum owner, (played by Laura Palmer's agoraphobic orchid-loving friend from Twin Peaks, Lenny Von Dohlen).  Wishing to indulge in two genres at once, Coppola made the curious choice to include inconsistent, noir-style narration from a veteran homicide detective which shows up so infrequently as to be jarring when it does.  Also puzzling is Von Dohlen's performance which is odd even before he gets infected by the bite of the undead, but only becomes more so as he seems persistently on the verge of tears with his wide-eyed, bizarre mannerisms.  This acting choice was likely intentional, but it does not help to make him a sympathetic victim, plus various other plot threads seem half-baked.  These include an elderly Van Helsing decedent who barely shows up as well as Von Dohlen's girlfriend Jenny Harker, (yet another nod to the Bram Stoker novel), having some sort of psychic ability for about a scene and a half at the end.  Some of the gore is gnarly while other effects work is comically dated, but the whole thing fails to hit its spoofing mark.

DR. CALIGARI

(1989)

Dir - Stephen Sayadian

Overall: MEH

After two avant-garde pornos, filmmaker Stephen Sayadian dropped the adults-only angle with the still perverse yet infinity more bizarre Dr. Caligari, (Dr. Caligari 3000).  A parody of nonsensical midnight movies, it is a combination of Richard Elfman's absurdist musical Forbidden Zone, (minus the songs), anything involving Andy Warhol's Factory cronies, John Waters' aggressive tastelessness, and experimental theater.  The set design is a kitsch, primitive take on that of the German Expressionism landmark film which this is a loose sequel to, (the title character played by Madeleine Reynal is the granddaughter of Werner Krauss' doctor from Robert Wiene's original), and the characters constantly vogue as they prattle off seemingly meaningless dialog, usually speaking directly into the camera with their loud costumes and tacky Goth makeup creating a jarring aesthetic to say the least.  Fans of surreal nonsense will have a viscerally gleeful reaction to the off-the-wall presentation and ridiculous subject matter, but the relentless approach taken by Sayadian quickly grows tiresome.  It is not so much that the "story" barely has enough of a through-line to follow, it is more that it is not worth following in the first place with the barrage of goofy, horny weirdness taking center stage.

80's American Horror Part Eighty-Four

DEATH SCREAMS

(1982)

Dir - David Nelson

Overall: WOOF

Opening with a clumsy and insultingly predictable kill scene involving people having sex, director David Nelson's lone horror entry Death Screams, (House of Death, Night Screams), proceeds to spend the next thirty-five minutes forgetting that it is a slasher movie in the first place so that the wretchedly boring story can continue to regularly detour at an astonishing degree.  This loathsome sub-genre is inherently problematic in such a sense where everything in between the occasional murder sequences are either far less interesting at best and horrendously dull at worst.  The latter applies here and boy does it ever, with a crop of lousy actors playing obnoxious, unnatural characters that range from hillbilly bumpkin stereotypes to loud, horny, and wretchedly unfunny youngsters.  One or two noble nitwits are thrown in to provide the film with some sort of moral compass, but nobody's personalty type has any sort of narrative payoff.  It cannot be over-stressed how laborious of a viewing experience this is, failing hard and aggressively as a piece of by-the-books slasher garbage while being more padded than even the most padded of them.

 

NEON MANIACS

(1986)

Dir - Joseph Mangine

Overall: MEH

The second and last directorial effort from cinematographer Joseph Mangine, Neon Maniacs, (Evil Dead Warriors), comes nearly two decades after his first, 1968's Smoke and Flesh.  An off-kilter monster movie to say the least, it boats a few fun set pieces and nifty makeup, but there are several awkward choices as well as pacing issues that muddle things up.  Youth-based cliches are present with a monster kid, horny teenagers, and "grown-ups never believing what these crazy kids keep saying" all on board.  While these details are innocent in and of themselves, they have also been utilized in more clever ways before.  Mark Patrick Carducci makes his screenwriting debut here and perhaps understandably, his ideas come off as half-baked with both the origin and explanation for the title/Cenobite-samurai-biker gang bad guys never being explained or logically conveyed.  Apparently existing undetected under the Golden Gate Bridge for who knows how long, they randomly just start terrorizing a single group of sexually promiscuous high-schoolers one night and then hunt down the lone survivor for the rest of the movie.  A would-be climax is staged with a battle of the bands, (which features three absolutely terrible songs no less), but then all of the tension is left dangling for another twenty minutes before the whole thing ends in one of the most abrupt fashions imaginable, as if the production simply ran out of money and called it a wrap.

 

TO DIE FOR

(1989)

Dir - Deran Sarafian

Overall: MEH

Updating Dracula into contemporary, LA yuppie culture, Deran Sarafian's To Die For, (Dracula: The Love Story), may be of mild interest to horror fans, perhaps most of all for containing the final screen performance from Duane Jones, be it in a single scene.  Though it is not completely embarrassing in its strict adherence to B-movie schlock, this still has soap opera-worthy performances, a cheap, ruining keyboard score from Cliff Eidelman, and TV-grade production values that are not likely to impress.  Wisely, Sarafian more alludes to the freaky things as opposed to actually showing them, offering up quick-cut shots of vampire faces and flashes of blood, yet he still lets the horrible music try and convey the scary tone all on its lonesome.  Things get increasingly silly as it goes on, especially when A Nightmare on Elm Street's Amanda Wyss starts behaving erratically lustrous and Bad Ronald's Scott Jacoby reads a book about Vlad Tepes and tries to convince everyone of what is of course actually going on, yet sounding like an idiot in the process with incorrect historical facts and easily-drawn conclusions.  ITtis dopey stuff that plays like an episode of Goosebumps except with more violence, slow motion/fireplace sex scenes, and "fucks".

80's American Horror Part Eighty-Three

THE DARK CRYSTAL

(1982)

Dir - Jim Henson/Frank Oz

Overall: GOOD

 

The first of two full-blown fantasy films to be directed by Jim Henson as well as being collaborator Frank Oz' debut behind the lens in any capacity, The Dark Crystal is one of several such enduring works from the 1980s.  Above all though, it is a profound achievement in animatronics and puppetry as it features no human characters and showcases a robust, fantastical world full of unique creatures and inventive set design.  The story by Henson and David Odell utilities Jane Robert's "Seth Material" and adheres to, (as the title would suggest), the darker aspects of Grimm's Fairy Tales, making this a children's movie in most capacities except with some mildly horrific elements and an imposing threat looming over the narrative.  Of course everything turns out wonderful in the end with the prophesy being fulfilled and balance being maintained, but the road to get there is punctuated by numerous obstacles by the nasty Skeksis trying to maintain control of the planet Thra, while the feeble and benevolent Gelfing's Jen, Kira, and her annoying fur-ball Fizzgig conquer the odds.  Straightforward stuff as it should be, which all allows for the wonderful visuals to take center stage.  Henson and Oz' mastery of their practical creature design medium hits its peak here and the pacing never lets up, making something that is relentlessly enjoyable.

THE MUTILATOR

(1984)

Dir - Buddy Cooper/John S. Douglass

Overall: WOOF

 

As forgettable of a slasher movie as was ever made, writer/producer/co-director Buddy Cooper's The Mutilator, (Fall Break), plays by all of the sub-genre's derivative rules to detrimental effect.  The characters are all in their early twenties, most of them are horny, and they are all obnoxious, holding up in an isolated beach house where it is easy for a deranged maniac to cut the power and pick them off when the couples break up to have sex with each other.  One such ridiculous moment involves the killer drowning and removing a naked woman from a swimming pool while her particularly chiseled doofus bro nonchalantly swims in said pool at the same time and of course sees absolutely nothing that transpires.  The soundtrack is another problem where most of the time it is just a primitive, ominous keyboard score which may as well be the same one found in every other slasher film, but occasionally, (and far more perplexing), a terrible, faux-Billy Joel styled ditty is used which creates as inappropriate of a tone as you could imagine.  The only "plus" side is that it is all too boring to be aggressively insulting, so hopefully you will be uninterested enough as to not even pay attention to how predictable and moronic it truly is.

 

NIGHT LIFE

(1989)

Dir - David Acomba

Overall: MEH

 

Comedy is often harder than horror and in this respect, Night Life, (Grave Misdemeanors), proves that sometimes a movie can fail at two genres simultaneously.  The last theatrically released film to be directed by David Acomba, (who had and continued to have a steady career behind the lens in television), the script was by Keith Critchlow who has only this on his resume as far as screenplays go.  He gives it a solid try by combining high school bullies, a likeable nerd protagonist, and zombie tropes played for laughs together, but there is not a single funny moment in the entire eighty-nine minute running time.  Even more silly/not-silly is how the zombies come to be in the first place, merely springing to life during an electrical storm because whatever.  Acomba does a better job than the lazy material deserves though, staging some fetching atmosphere and gnarly gore in the final act.  The practical effects are on the low end of the spectrum from a budgetary standpoint, but they get the job done and provide a moment where we get to see Gomez Addams, (John Astin himself), get his head exploded by a mechanic's pump.  Also, Scott Grimes is ideally cast as the good-natured mortuary assistant and Cheryl Pollak makes her second appearance in a horror comedy after 1987's My Best Friend is a Vampire.

80's American Horror Part Eighty-Two

SUPERSTITION

(1982)
Dir - James W. Roberson
Overall: MEH

The "video nasty" Superstition, (The Witch), from cinematographer-turned-director James W. Roberson suffers from a weak script and inadequate pacing, but it still manages to offer up some striking visuals.  Shot independently in Silver Lake, Los Angeles with one or two recognizable faces in an otherwise unrecognizable cast, it cobbles together elements from Italian giallos, witch curse movies, and The Amityville Horror into something that is more of an unfocused hodgepodge of genre ideas than a cohesive, unique whole.  As only his second feature behind the lens, Roberson unfortunately pads the film with predictable, "music gets quiet for a jump scare"/drawn-out kill scenes that are far too derivative of the era's slasher boom.  When the spookiness takes a backseat to characters trying to get to the bottom of a mystery that has already been explained to the audience in an early flashback, it becomes too easy to check out of the proceedings.  That said, there are some nasty, oddball kills like a buzz-saw supernaturally projecting and still spinning in a priest's stomach, as well as a guy getting his severed head microwaved, plus a solid combination of a fog machine on overdrive and silhouetted specters with creepy monster fingers.

 

MUTANT

(1984)

Dir - John "Bud" Cardos

Overall: WOOF

Staggeringly dull in every capacity, Mutant, (Night Shadows), is a crystal clear example of a boring story being filmed in the most equally boring manner possible, padded out to feature length with zero regard or ability to uphold any audience's interest.  Even with B-movie mainstay Wings Hauser in the lead, his powers of over-acting are rendered null and void with a script that offers up absolutely zero tension of any kind besides several rednecks who act like total assholes for no reason until a zombie shows up after fifty-eight minutes in.  While the last act finally broadcasts that this was all supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek, quasi-goofy bit of ghoulish camp, the snore-inducing trek to get there is not only insulting, but more than enough to make the average viewer turn the whole thing off long before it pathetically attempts to deliver the genre goods with some fog and actors in grey makeup lurching towards the camera.  Considering that John "Bud" Cardos was brought in by the production company after initial director Mark Rosman was not doing a sufficient enough job for their liking and yet it still managed to turn out like this, just imagine how terrible it could have been in its initial form.  Sometimes it is such minor miracles that we need to be grateful for.

BAD DREAMS

(1988)

Dir - Andrew Fleming

Overall: MEH

 

One of the more deliberate A Nightmare on Elm Street clones to emerge during the franchise's heyday, Andrew Fleming's directorial debut Bad Dreams even managed to score Dream Warrior's Jennifer Rubin in the lead, held up in a mental institution with other unhinged characters who sit around in therapy circles and get systematically picked-off by a supernatural being with excessive burn victim makeup on.  While these details to Freddy Krueger's shenanigans are unmistakable and presumably intentional, the story itself, (which revolves around a suicide cult leader back from the dead), is inherently creepy enough in its own right, plus the usually sinister Richard Lynch is ideal casting as said Jim Jones stand-in.  Other familiar character actors round out the cast with Chainsaw himself Dean Cameron playing a wise-ass inmate who eventually goes cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs in grisly fashion.  Fleming and screenwriter Steven E. de Souza do not put their narrative pieces together in a coherent manner though and the plotting is too predictable to engage with, all of which does not leave much to champion besides a few nasty death sequences and overall competent production values.  They also scored "Sweet Child o' Mine" during the closing credits and for the cheap, right before the song broke through to the mainstream and would have cost a considerable amount more to license.

80's American Horror Part Eighty-One

10 TO MIDNIGHT

(1983)

Dir - J. Lee Thompson

Overall: GOOD

One of several Cannon productions to feature Charles Bronson as the archetypal tough guy that he made a habit out of, (phoning it in), playing during the last working decades of his life, 10 to Midnight has a sufficient amount of audacious sleaze to appease B-movie trash fans.  Focusing on an aggressively unlikable, nude serial killer whose hatred for women not only compels him to murder them, but also compels him to openly creep on them in movie theaters and prank call them with such romantic, poetic waxing as "Kiss my ass, cunt! I love to stick it to you, that's what I love! Your father's a pig, your mother's a whore!".  In fact, William Roberts and director/co-writer J. Lee Thompson load up the dialog from top to bottom with zingers, plus Bronson's line readings are particularly hilarious as he is in delightful, barely-putting-in-an-effort form.  The running time feels padded here or there and it ridiculous that Gene Davis' over-the-top scumbag villain gets away with as much as he does even when the cops are well onto him at an early stage.  That said, nothing here is any more or less logically egregious than pick-your-80s-action-flick and there are some recognizable faces, nasty violence, and wonderful scene chewing to go around.

SCARED STIFF
(1987)
Dir - Richard Friedman
Overall: MEH
 
Filmmaker Richard Friedman's cinematic output has been exclusively in the schlock terrain and his sophomore effort Scared Stiff delivers the cliches in a predominantly boring and even aggravating manner.  The set up and all of the future plot points are taken from hundreds of other equally unimaginative works where a couple and a child move into an old, large house that is haunted by a deep, dark secret.  On top of this, the male is a complete asshole who never believes anything that his "hysterical" girlfriend says about all of the random and gradual supernatural things that transpire, said male becomes possessed, said child is a quiet damn wiener kid, and there are nightmare psych-outs to name only a small handful of hackneyed tropes on display.  Some of the freaky moments, (though still nonsensical), are visually interesting at least with puppet and/or beast-like zombie things showing up from time to time.  It eventually takes on a more surreal agenda that is clearly inspired by Lucio Fulci's Hell Trilogy and in this respect, the last twenty minutes at least break up the obnoxious laziness of everything else that went on beforehand.

HIDE AND GO SHRIEK

(1988)

Dir - Skip Schoolnik

Overall: WOOF

Another brainless, piss-pour slasher movie in the decade ripe with oh so many, Hide and Go Shriek, (Close Your Eyes and Pray), pits eight horrendously obnoxious, horny teenagers against a deranged killer who obeys all of the deranged killer rules to a tee, this time in a closed-up furniture shop owned by one of the ding-bat victims.  The only feature film from Skip Schoolnik, all of the characters rotate taking their clothes off and getting laid after deciding that they cannot turn any of the lights on in fear of getting caught for crashing such a place of business.  There is a creepy guy living in the basement who is the crystal clear red herring as soon as we meet him and the ultimate reveal of who the murderer actually is ends up being as classy as you would expect, (spoilers, it is a cross-dressing homosexual who hilarious finds his demise by clumsily tripping down an elevator shaft, except no wait...he survives without a scratch so that he can smile into the camera at the very end).  Some of the performances are embarrassingly over dramatic and nearly all of them are annoyingly loud, so as usual, there is no one on screen to root for or care about since they are merely moronic caricatures of every other person in every other movie that adheres to the exact same trajectory.

80's American Horror Part Eighty

WHITE DOG

(1982)

Dir - Samuel Fuller

Overall: GOOD

 

Samuel Fuller's adaptation of Romain Gary's novel White Dog is a heady examination of learned vs incurable racism, manifested in a K9 who was trained as a puppy to attack black people.  Various changes were made by Fuller and fellow screenwriter Curtis Hanson, switching the African American dog trainer from a more hateful Muslim to a benevolent character determined to utilize the opportunity to experiment on de-conditioning, plus the ending here is much more tragic in slamming home the fact that racism and hatred in general is such a troubled and deep-seeded sickness that cannot be so easily eradicated.  It is a deliberately uncomfortable watch, not just for its universally relatable themes of prejudice which sadly still linger in the several decades since both the book and film's release, but also for animal lovers in general.  A scene in a euthanizing animal shelter and images of a beautiful White Shepherd playfully interacting with Kristy McNichol only to be snarling its teeth, caked in blood after murdering innocent black people are both direct and profound in their impact.  The film pulls no punches in its heartbreaking depiction of such sensitive material and is as far from a feel-good movie as a major Hollywood studio production can get, but it would be dishonest and sugar-coated any other way.

 

TOO SCARED TO SCREAM

(1985)

Dir - Tony Lo Bianco

Overall: MEH

An American giallo except without the pizazz, (and released four years after it was filmed on account of the independent production company going out of business), Tony Lo Bianco's first and last directorial feature Too Scared to Scream, (The Doorman), still would not have made much of a memorable dent in any part of the slasher era.  While the killer reveal is ridiculous enough and Ian McShane turns in a sufficiently "on the spectrum" performance as a Shakespeare-quoting bellboy, the structure is predictable and humdrum.  The kill scenes are liberally spread apart and are hardly inventive, plus the killer of course displays his victims in nonsensical ways for the sole purpose of getting a jump out of both the people who find them and the viewer.  Also, producer/star Mike Conners looks exhausted as the lieutenant out to get to the bottom things and his flirtations relationship with fellow detective Anne Archer, (who is twenty-odd years his junior), comes off more awkward than not.  Worse yet though is poor Maureen O'Sullivan who came out of her fifteen year retirement to play an elderly woman in a wheelchair with no lines.

WITCHTRAP

(1989)

Dir - Kevin S. Tenney

Overall: WOOF

 

The third feature Witchtrap, (The Presence), from straight-to-video maestro Kevin S. Tenney plays more like an impractical joke than a sincere attempt at base-level horror schlock.  Not since the laughably inept days of Ed Wood Jr have more staggeringly  wooden performances been captured in something that is otherwise presenting itself as a "real" movie.  The exclusively ADRed dialog is distracting enough as is the repetitive, insultingly stupid nature of the actual words that these painfully moronic characters are forced to say.  In this respect, it is hardly any wonder that all of the actors put in the most minimal effort possible and come off like they are inconvenienced by being on camera in the first place.  Bouts of melodramatic buffoonery do start to take over in the third act which give such portrays something beyond monotone indifference, but Tenney's script and his embarrassing lack of creating the, (possibly?), intended tongue-in-cheek tone is torturous to endure.  Making a bad movie on purpose is a task that several filmmakers have taken over the years and supernatural horror is as deserving of a genre for parody as any, but Tenney makes the grievous mistake of not letting his audience in on the joke by structuring this trainwreck as a would-be campy, suspenseful, and creepy hybrid as opposed to something that John De Bello or Lloyd Kaufman would simply throw the kitchen sink of stupid at.

80's American Horror Part Seventy-Nine

MADMAN

(1982)

Dir - Joe Giannone

Overall: WOOF

Equally dull and forgettably formulaic, Madman is  the only film from writer/director Joe Giannone and is specifically interchangeable with the first two Friday the 13th movies and The Burning from the same year.  It opens with yet another goddamn campfire scene telling the tale of the bad guy who is of course going to start slowly, (make that very slowly), picking off sexually promiscuous camp counselors who do things like split up for easy pickings and keep hopping into cars that refuse to start.  Worse yet is that this time, said campfire kicks off with a wretchedly stupid a cappella song sung by some asshole which everyone just awkwardly smiles at while us poor audience members are left fighting the urge to stab pencils into our ears.  Worry not though, there is another even more horrible song that shows up on the soundtrack later during a boring hot tub scene.  Speaking of boring, the drawn-out "suspense" sequences are typically comatose-inducing, each one of them going for white-knuckled tension yet because they are so insulting unoriginal in their construction, the only emotion that they cause is yawns.  Some positive, differentiating qualities are that the very first kill is, (gasp), actually surprising, the characters are for the most part not painfully obnoxious, and Dawn of the Dead's Gaylen Ross makes her second of only two lead performances in her entire career before retiring altogether from in front of the screen after George Romero's Creepshow from the same year.

 

RETURN TO OZ

(1985)

Dir - Walter Murch

Overall: GOOD

 

As part of Disney's live action, dark fantasy period during the 1980s, Return to Oz has little to do with the seminal, 1939 film The Wizard of Oz aside from a handful of homage winks.  Instead, the lone film to be directed by George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola collaborator Walter Murch is aligned with Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal, except omitting any musical numbers and mixing kid-targeted whimsy with sinister details and nasty villains.  In this light, it is an engaging enough success as Murch and fellow screenwriter Gill Dennis adapt the second and third L. Frank Baum novels in the Oz series, The Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz respectfully.  The source material offers up a slew of fresh characters, including a mechanical man, Jack Pumpkinhead, a talking chicken to replace Toto as Dorothy Gale's pet, wheelers on all fours to replace the winged monkeys, an evil Queen who has a collection of different heads to wear, a ramshackle sleigh with a taxidermied moose at the helm, and a King made out of stone.  Dorothy herself is played by a much younger actor in ten-year old Fairuza Balk, (making her cinematic debut), Will Vinton provides stop-motion animation, and the practical, puppetry effects are exceptional, all of which create an effective, enchanted atmosphere.

 

THE VIDEO DEAD

(1987)

Dir - Robert Scott
Overall: MEH

 

Part incompetent, amateur mess and part deliberately stupid zombie spoof, The Video Dead is a frustrating yet periodically amusing entry into quirky 80s genre tomfollery.  The only directorial effort from Robert Scott, he goes for and achieves the right tongue-in-cheek tone that is impossible to take seriously with a premise of bad actors playing stupid people who are terrorized by walking corpses that have the ability to emerge out of a black and white television set.  Several moments particularly defy all laws of logic and physics, such as a zombie being able to hide inside of a washing machine and another one turning into a sexy babe, (an undead superpower which is never referenced to or utilized again).  The fact that this particular brand of zombies seem to possess mild levels of ingenuity and intelligence, (plus that they are repelled by mirrors ala vampires), are two more unique attributes as well.  The gore and makeup effects are gruesomely effective without being all that convincing and while it is appreciated that the plot actually moves forward, the characters are too dopey and the performances too lousy to withstand any sequences where ridiculous nonsense is not transpiring.  There may be just enough of said ridiculous nonsense to appease the schlocky horror buff though who is out looking for more fringe content to devour.

80's American Horror Part Seventy-Eight

DR. HECKL AND MR. HYPE

(1980)

Dir - Charles B. Griffith

Overall: GOOD

 

One of the goofiest horror spoofs to remain persistently under the radar since its release was Roger Corman collaborator Charles B. Griffith's Dr. Heckl and Mr. Hype.  Initially pitched to Cannon Film's Menahem Golan as a hippie version of Robert Louis Stevenson's source material titled Dr. Feelgood and Mr. Hype, Griffith wrote, shot, and edited a very different end product in about two months worth of time ,which is noticeable upon watching the slap-dash presentation.  The makeup is crude, the humor hit or miss, (and usually juvenile), plus the plotting is asinine as it relies on characters behaving irrationally as to move things along to the next ridiculous, comedic set piece.  There is a saving grace present though in that none other than Oliver Reed plays the title characters and does so in an appropriately committed manner.  Taking its cue from the Hammer adaptation which skewed the formula by having Jekyll be the physically unattractive one and Hyde the dashing monster, Reed dons an American accent and an almost puppy-dog innocence as the former with a comically absurd wig and cheap prosthetics that look as if they took five minutes to apply to his face.  Then as Hyde/Hype, Reed hilariously just plays himself with his trademark, intimidating, British gentleman demeanor on the verge of fury.  The film itself is a mess, but a laugh out loud mess as well as an utter treat for Reed fans who get to see him indulge in comedy, which he rarely did to such absurd effect.

 

BOURDINGHOUSE

(1982)

Dir - John Wintergate

Overall: WOOF

 

Taking incoherence to a profound level, writer/director/lead slimeball John Wintergate's vanity project debut Bourdinghouse has the unfortunate distinction of being the first SOV horror film to get a theatrical release, be it a graciously limited one.  To be fair, Wintergate certainly goes for it with his $10,000 budget in creating a number of both sleazy and supernaturally ambitious set pieces, loading the screen with naked women and bizarre, nightmarish visuals.  The entire presentation looks and sounds absolutely horrible of course and Wintergate is ultimately more concerned with showing off his lack of body fat in a speedo than figuring out how to frame a single shot competently.  Predominantly though, the problem lies in the butchered edit which was done at  the insistence of the distributors.  Originally running an unforgivingly criminal two-hours and thirty-eight minutes and being shot as a comedy, all, (intentional), humor was taken out to get it to an agreeable eighty-eight minutes so it could fit into the D-rent horror cheapie market.  So most of the scenes just awkwardly end mid-sentence or quickly fade-out before any jokes can be uttered.  Viewing it in its finished form is the equivalent of suffering brain damage though as the barrage of stumbling performances, horrendous visual aesthetics, claustrophobic anti-cinematography, tonal ineptitude, and a hilariously non-decipherable narrative makes it a trainwreck of the highest, (meaning "on drugs" highest), variety.

THE DEAD PIT

(1989)

Dir - Brett Leonard

Overall: MEH

 

Fog, Dutch angles, bloody/moist zombies, eerie lighting, barren corridors, a wide and/or red-eyed bad guy, creepy basements, an incessant musical score, wailing lunatics in an asylum; there are oodles of macabre visual and audio ambiance to go around in Brett Leonard's debut The Dead Pit.  Story wise, it hits some of the usual beats involving a poor Cheryl Lawson spending most of her hallucination sequences in as minimal an amount of clothing as possible, saying "I know it sounds crazy" a lot when she is told that the secrets to her trauma are hidden deep within her subconscious mind and blah, blah, blah.  Fusing this with a rogue, wacko surgeon who is supernaturally back from the dead for revenge, (and raises a horde of walking ghouls with him), merely throws one familiar motif on top of another, but there are at least some memorably freaky moments and crude gore to appease genre fans.  The performances are strictly on the corned-up, melodramatic side, there is unintended doofiness here or there, and the hour and forty-one minute running time could easily lose at least fifteen to twenty of those minutes for a more agreeable flow.  Still, it is better than the schlocky material deserves and the priority to go for relentlessly morbid atmosphere is appreciated.

80's American Horror Part Seventy-Seven

HANGING HEART

(1983)

Dir - Jimmy Lee

Overall: WOOF

An incoherent, homoerotic fever dream thinly disguised as a trashy slasher film, Hanging Heart is quite the singular entry and not in a complimentary way.  The first of only two movies of any kind from South Korean filmmaker Jimmy Lee that unsurprisingly never found proper distribution in the US, the rambling, arbitrary structure of scenes is fascinating to a point as if all of the footage was tossed up into the air and then the editor was held at gunpoint to put it all together before the sand in an hourglass expired.  Lee, (also the screenwriter), not only has no grasp on how criminal law or police policy works, but he also seems just as oblivious to the laws of attraction or genuine, natural human behavior.  The lead protagonist is lusted after by nearly every woman and man that he encounters no matter how many times he seems to be the logical suspect of multiple murders and he gets let out on bail throughout his on-going trial.  Meanwhile, another lunatic randomly pops up now again to do mentally unhinged things, (and shoots heroin into his arm because that is what bad guys do), yet nobody seems to pay him any mind.  Not that there is any room for said character in the already bloated, hour and forty-three minute running time since that would mean that way too many other haphazardly tossed together moments would have to be either logically omitted or reconstructed into some semblance of intellectual deciphering.

 

THE ZERO BOYS

(1986)

Dir - Nico Mastorakis

Overall: MEH

The third straight, genre-starring vehicle for 80s scream queen Kelli Maroney, The Zero Boys is another dull snooze-fest of a slasher movie that is indistinguishable from the several other thousand that came out that decade.  Greek filmmaker Nico Mastorakis was no stranger to garbage, (as his 1976, juvenile, exploitation, anti-masterpiece Island of Death can attest to, just to name one), and he lays the sadism on sufficiently enough here where Joe Estivez embarrasses himself as usual, playing a mostly unseen, knife-wielding lunatic that likes to tie women to chairs and film himself cutting them up.  Of course because slasher movies, he also likes to needlessly play cat and mouse with his victims and defy the laws of physics at regular intervals, all while nobody can make their car start, keep the lights on, or get the phone to work when they want it to, though of course Estivez has no problem getting the phone to work whenever he wants it to.  Adding to the list of lazy as ever cliches to check off, it features sexually promiscuous bimbos and mimbos held up in an isolated log cabin, just to insure that anyone familiar with such derivative tripe can multitask without missing a beat while watching.  On the plus side, the third act slightly breaks up the formula by going full jungle survival mode, the music by Hans Zimmer and Stanley Myers is decent, and Mastorakis stages some ambitious tracking shots on occasion.

THE DEAD NEXT DOOR

(1989)

Dir - J. R. Bookwalter

Overall: MEH

 

Considering that it is essentially a home movie, J.R. Bookwalter's debut The Dead Next Door is impressive for what it manages to pull off.  Shot over four years on Super-8 film, it amazingly looks better than most SOV trash heaps and Bookwalter even swings a few cinematically ambitious shots here or there, including a zombie attack on the White House, (or at least the gates of the White House).  While the pacing is agreeable in the sense that it is not padded with people merely sitting around and talking, the fact that it is instead peppered with gore sequences every three minutes still renders it as monotonous.  The story is moronic and barely worth paying attention to, throwing religious nonsense and George Romero plot points together in a laughably silly, (and at least partly intentional), tongue-in-bloody-cheek manner.  With Sam Raimi serving as a financier and Bruce Campbell dubbing two different character's voices, (all of the voices are ADRed actually, all terribly, and all of the dialog relentlessly stupid), the movie is merely a shameless, low-rent homage.  Just to slam home the point, one guy is shown watching The Evil Dead and going on and on about how cool it is, plus most of the characters are named after notable horror directors and whatnot, a nod used both before and since in other films.  It has nothing unique to offer besides being kind of innocently fun for what it gets away with, but that is probably enough.

80's American Horror Part Seventy-Six

PARASITE

(1982)

Dir - Charles Band

Overall: MEH

 

The first horror entry in a career's worth from D-level schlock-peddler Charles Band, Parasite is consistently unremarkable.  Set in a post-apocalyptic, nuclear fallout future where drifters and rummagers struggle for survival against government agents who conduct moronic experiments, it is a laborious affair with noticeably minuscule production values and flat pacing.  Considering the meager budget, the creature effects are halfway decent in a adorable sense as the slug-like, razor-teethed monster lunges towards the camera a few times to allow for some 3D jolts, but it mostly just wiggles around when largely not on screen.  Some of the faces are recognizable, from character actors Tom Villard and Scott Thomson to Demi Moore in her first lead role and Cherie Currie in her second minor one.  The story seems to hint at more ideas than are affordable and it ultimately just resorts to a small crop one-dimensional bad guys and good guys getting in minor altercations with each other before the parasitic entity starts taking people out in occasionally gruesome ways.  Vivian Blaine's death, (or that of her prop dummy, to be more accurate), is a gnarly hoot, plus one schmuck gets set on fire at the very end, but otherwise this is only a couple of notches more exciting than watching paint dry or all nine innings of a profession baseball game.

 

THE RIPPER

(1985)

Dir - Christopher Lewis

Overall: WOOF

 

The second SOV crapfest from director Christopher Lewis, The Ripper is somewhat notable to horror buffs for featuring Tom Savini in the title role, who was allegedly hired for $15,000 for one day's shooting and ever since, has taken all opportunities to disown and apologize for his involvement.  Scripted by Bill Groves whose only other credit in the film business was as a crew member on Rumble Fish, the story is about some college teacher who gets possessed by Jack the Ripper when he puts on a ring, which truth be told is no more stupid of a concept than any other direct-to-video, super cheap horror movie from the 1980s.  Besides Savini for a couple of seconds, the rest of the cast is made up of people that you will never see again, trading awkward dialog exchanges in painfully meandering scenes.  These include a jazzercise dance sequence with a fog machine and a wretchedly terrible song that appears more than once to insure that the filmmakers got their money's worth with it.  We also have couples sitting on couches while playfully arguing with each other, two trips to an antique store, as well as a professor and student talking about Vincent Price movies over the phone while completely incorrect audio from The Conquer Worm is heard in the background.  Everywhere else, it is the usual, distracting, amatuerish SOV aesthetics, piles of cliches fighting for screen time, and what should be an illegal hour and forty-two minute running time.

SCARECROWS

(1988)

Dir - William Wesley

Overall: MEH

 

While the limited budget is undeniably noticeable due to the minimal cast of unknowns, single, isolated setting, and primitive action sequences, the rudimentary story in the aptly titled Scarecrows cannot withstand the sterile, potboiler presentation.  The first of only two feature length films from director/co-writer William Wesley, it was shot mostly on location in Davie, Florida and for a B-movie with little going for it besides the bare minimum of production values, it A) does not look embarrassing and B) has competent if unremarkable performances.  Part of the problem though is how merely acceptable it all is.  Plot wise, this is remarkably simple stuff.  Mercenaries steal money, one of them jumps out of their plane with it, the rest of them land and look for him, supernaturally-powered scarecrows occasionally pick them off slasher style, the end.  Yet merely pointing the camera at such things, having the actors deliver their lines without messing up, and throwing a persistent, ominous violin score over the whole thing is not enough to raise it above being a staggering bore.  Speaking of not enough, the only "impressive" aspects are that it was actually shot at night when it needed to be and has a small handful of sufficient gore sequences, none of which stand out amongst other far ballsier and/or more atmospherically eerie DIY genre films that had already set the template by 1988.  It gets a pass; no more, no less.

80's American Horror Part Seventy-Five

THE LAST HORROR FILM

(1982)

Dir - David Winters

Overall: GOOD

 

Notable for being shot largely on location and without permits at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival, David Winters' The Last Horror Film, (Fanatic), reunites Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro from William Lustig's 1980 slasher mainstay Maniac.  While the comedic elements are too clandestine at times due to the tongue being planted very firmly in cheek, the guerilla style tactics of Winters and his movie-within-a-movie, meta framework make for some inventive results that are persistently amusing in an intentional fashion.  As an exaggerated, deranged commentary on showbiz obsession and delusions of grandeur, it is on the nose in its presentation, but considering that Winters made such a low-budget horror film about low budget horror films and practically illegally at that, it gives the whole thing an admirable charm that is easy to fall for.  Best of all though, Spinell fully and wonderfully commits to the role of a shlubby, New York taxi driver on a quest to nab his favorite scream queen by any means necessary to make the greatest work in genre cinema, no matter how many wacky hallucinations crack his psyche.   These include yet are not limited to him battling his own pretentious/doppelgänger director, performing a striptease, or fondling himself in front of a projection of Munro's scantily-clad images before kidnapping her to shoot the last scene in his Dracula epic.

THE NEW KIDS

(1985)

Dir - Sean S. Cunningham

Overall: WOOF

 

After a brief detour with the boner comedy Spring Break, director Sean S. Cunningham went back to at least quasi-horror terrain with High School Bullies Are Assholes and Get Away with It for Far Too Long - The Movie AKA The New Kids.  People who have little to no tolerance for witnessing yet another crop of unrepentant douchebag teenagers committing illegal atrocities one after the other while the script does not allow for teachers, parents, or authority figures to do anything about it will find this to be a grueling ninety-minutes.  The 1980s were brimful of this nonsense and using such a hacky premise mixed with the worst country bumpkin cliches for thriller purposes wields annoyingly miserable results.  Though it is not a slasher movie, it may as well be since every act of wickedness is as easily foreseeable as the next, making all attempts at suspense as well as the inevitable comeuppance suffered by the southern-fried antagonists both obnoxious and unsatisfying.  An "I'm gonna stand up for myself and be strong like my dad" montage to one of the most jaw-droppingly terrible songs ever performed, (one of several daft soundtrack choices present), certainly does not help either.  Complaining aside, it has early performances from Lori Loughlin and Eric Stoltz, a cameo from Tom Atkins, (amazingly NOT playing a cop), and most curious of all is a twenty-five year old, bleach-blond James Spader with a hillbilly accent who is his usual, effortlessly sleazy self.

 

SPELLBINDER

(1988)

Dir - Janet Greek

Overall: GOOD

 

The second of only two full-length films from director Janet Greek and the first from screenwriter Trace Tormé, Spellbinder is a mostly engaging, yuppie-centered occult thriller sans a few clunky bits in the third act.  As a dangerous, Satanic coven tries to hone in one one of their escaped flock, (played by Kelly Preston, just a few short months before Twins was released), Greek manages to stage a few creepy moments and maintains an atmosphere that is more stern in its diabolical intentions than the inherent campiness of the material would otherwise dictate.  Hooded figures, the word "Satan" spray-painted on cave walls, goat skulls, fire pits, horned-masks, goblets of blood; the details read more like a laundry list of occult cliches than anything profoundly scary, but the sinister build-up is peppered with solid performances, likeable characters, and has an agreeable pace.  The inevitable plot twists are more foreseeable than intended, (as well as being particularly convoluted for gasp value), yet they are still successful in their rug-pulling agenda due to the sheer bleakness of the finale.  As a contemporary Wicker Man focusing on attractive LA types with some by-the-books, macabre window dressing thrown in, it is sufficient.