90's American Horror Part Forty-Five

HELLMASTER

(1992)

Dir - Douglas Schulze

Overall: WOOF

 

The debut from a filmmaker who otherwise really likes to put the word "dark" in his titles, Hellmaster, (Them, Soulstealer), is an incomprehensible schlock-fest for bottom-barrel genre enthusiasts only.  Though it features John Saxton and Dawn of the Dead's David Emge, they and everybody else on board are at the mercy of an insufferably dopey script where eugenics, zombie-making goo, and telepathy all co-mingle in a series of nonsensical set pieces that are horridly unmemorable.  All of the young, college-aged Caucasians on screen are indistinguishable from one another, even if some of them have bare-bones personality traits like "asshole", "cripple", and "pretty girl who can read minds kind of".  Filmed on location at an active mental institution in Detroit, writer/director Schulze strictly adheres to the era's straight-to-video aesthetic where the cheap keyboard score never stops, subtlety is nowhere to be found, and D-rent camp rules the day.  Saxton certainly appeared in no shortage of B-movies throughout his career that varied in quality to say the least, yet he is miscast here as an insultingly boring villain whose dialog is cut-and-paste cliches about god not existing, revenge, and other smirky nonsense.  The gore sequences are fine, but the plot is too murky and sluggish to even qualify this as passable tripe.

THE CHILL FACTOR

(1993)

Dir - Christopher Webster

Overall: MEH

On paper, a straight-to-video, snowbound evil possession movie that is thinly structured as a slasher one may sound interesting, but the resulting The Chill Factor, (Demon Possessed), is a poorly directed slog with little going for it outside of its wacky premise.  Hellraiser producer-turned one-time director Christopher Webster is clearly working with an insufficient budget here, judging by the unknown cast, crude special effects, and overall lack of anything remotely interesting happening on screen.  Nobody dies until halfway through the proceedings, which is a detriment if you are trying to appease genre fans that are accustomed to both frequent and inventive kill scenes.  The characters are either flatly written or annoying, which makes all of the meandering around more troublesome to sit through than it otherwise would, especially if Webster had the means or ability to convey any form of slow-mounting tension or foreboding atmosphere.  Sans a grisly snowcat death, a guy getting an icicle to the eyeball, and one scene involving fog, the rest is stuff like a cheesed-out keyboard score that never shuts the hell up, stock cinematography, and unintentionally funny attempts at creepiness such as a woman getting killed by a ceiling fan and a spinning ouija board that looks as if it was a sixth grade school project.

 

LURKING FEAR

(1994)

Dir - C. Courtney Joyner

Overall: MEH

Author/filmmaker C. Coutnrey Joyner's loose adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's The Lurking Fear falls in line with various other straight-to-video cheapies from Charles Band's Full Moon Enterprises.  Horror buffs may enjoy the on-screen pairing of Jeffrey Combs and Ashley Laurence, plus the creature design of the underground-dwelling Martense family is wonderfully striking with their skeletal-thin bodies, gangly hair, and freakishly bulbous white eyes.  Elsewhere though, this is forgettable schlock.  Joyner takes tremendous liberties with the source material, which is nothing new to the era's Lovecraft adaptations.  Yet the updated approach here never picks up riveting momentum as it is merely a bunch of largely annoying, macho-posturing characters who switch the upper hand, point guns at each other, and get violently picked off by the cool-looking monsters.  No matter how campy the proceedings, Combs is always a hoot and he gets to rock unkempt facial hair while playing an alcoholic doctor, plus Laurence gets to show off how lean her protein intake is as a military bad-ass.  There are certainly worse Lovecraft reworkings out there and just as certainly better ones, but with most of the actors enjoying the scenery-chewing along with creepy bad guys to root for, it gets a mediocre pass.