Dir - Bert I. Gordon
Overall: MEH
B-movie director extraordinaire Bert I. Gordon took a five year break after the one-two punch of American International Pictures' The Food of the Gods and Empire of the Ants, reemerging with Burned at the Stake, (The Coming); a tweak on the bog-standard "condemned witch back for vengeance against the town's descendants" premise. Here, it is not an actual female practitioner of the occult who reemerges in modern times, but a stupid little brat that accused an innocent girl of witchcraft back during the Salem trials, even though the not-witch actually possess witch powers while possessing Susan Swift, (who plays both roles). There is also a modern day witch, the Puritan father of the aforementioned innocent girl inexplicably shows up in his original body instead of possessing anyone, plus a handful of other head-scratching things happen to add to the confusion. Whatever Gordon was going for gets lost in the weeds, and the neutered, TV movie-style presentation leaves much to be desired, especially emerging in the year where about seven-hundred and eighty-five violent slasher films were barfed out onto the masses.
(1987)
Dir - Fritz Kiersch
Overall: MEH
An adaptation of John Norman's first novel Tarnsman of Gor in his sword and sorcery Gorean Saga series, Gor is a deliciously stupid Cannon production that basically plays out as if a socially awkward thirteen year-old Dungeons & Dragons fan with uncontrollable hard-ons somehow managed to get a movie made with both Oliver Reed and nine seconds of Jack Palance on board. Shot in South Africa with an international cast, (most of whom are dubbed more distractingly than in Italian giallos), it throws college teacher Urbano Barberini into a barbarian world where shades of brown are the only colors, women are objectified to parody levels, and everyone yells, fucks, tortures, and kills like such things are going out of style. Director George Fritz Kiersch keeps the pacing up with plenty of brawls and scantily-clad actors showing off their tans, plus the rocky desert landscape is well utilized for such a hare-brained story that is miles away from anything intellectual or modernized. This is even more confounding in considering that the source material was authored by a philosophy professor, but the resulting film is good "bad movie" fun for those who like their 80s fantasy with an extra dose of stupid.
(1989)
Dir - Michael Fischa
Overall: MEH
Director Michael Fischa's follow-up to Death Spa was the even more deliberately childish and stupid My Mom's a Werewolf, which tries and fails to be as funny as one would presume from the title. Written by Mark Pirro who made a small handful of horror comedies around such a time, it throws a smorgasbord of cliches into the mix, like the neglected housewife, the schlubby husband who is all about work and watching the game, a crappy version of "Little Red Ridding Hood" which is an already crappy song, plus obvious jokes about PMS, sex, how men never leave the toilet seat up, and how much the dentist sucks. At least they tweaked the horror movie nerd gag by making her a girl instead of a dweebish boy, and John Saxon plays a ladies man werewolf pet store owner instead of a cop. Otherwise though, surprises are few and far between. A companion piece to Jimmy Huston's 1987 nyuck-fest My Best Friend is a Vampire except not as charming, it borrows a few undead motifs like werewolves being immortal and having hypnotizing powers. Saxon seems to be enjoying himself in a hammier role than he was usually allowed, but few if any of the film's intended humor lands, and when Susan Blakely and Saxon finally show their full bestial forms at an hour and ten minutes in, their cheap Halloween masks underscore an already low-rent affair.
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