70's American Horror Part Eighty-Seven

PSYCHED BY THE 4D WITCH
(1973)
Dir - Victor Luminera
Overall: MEH

Experimental occult smut, Psyched by the 4D Witch, (Psyched by the 4D Witch: A Tale of Demonology), is the only credited anything from director Victor Luminera and one must wonder what the intention was behind such head-scratching trash.  An eighty minute montage with ADRed narration that explains the asinine story in unambiguous detail, it is a relic from the early 70s that embraces sexual hippy liberation, a sensationalized interest in groovy witchcraft, and a visual presentation that is pure counter-culture acid trip.  One can think of it as a hybrid of Kenneth Anger's Invocation of My Demon Brother, J.X. William's The Virgin Sacrifice, and the Ed Wood-penned Orgy of the Dead, minus the mind-numbingly boring dance numbers of the latter.  The dialog is hilarious as a horny girl-next-door in a bad wig invokes a demon that gives her orgasmic pleasure and various assignments, often by proclaiming the trigger phrase "Let's fantasy fuck now!" and breaking the spell by calling the demon a "Salem witch bitch".  Visually and sonically though, it is a wild ride of surreal buffoonery, using an original theme song, avant sound effects, naked people, Halloween masks, and scratchy manipulated film stock.  It becomes a chore to sit through after awhile, but it is also a mind-melting and incompetent bombardment on the senses that probably hits hard if the viewer is on copious amounts of edibles.

THE PHANTOM OF HOLLYWOOD
(1974)
Dir - Gene Levitt
Overall: GOOD

 

This straightforward spin on Gaston Leroux's often-filmed The Phantom of the Opera has the fortunate distinction of being shot on MGM's back lot which was being demolished at the time.  The Phantom of Hollywood, (The Phantom of Lot 2), originally aired on CBS in February of 1974, eerily two years before Jack Cassidy died accidentally due to an apartment fire, here playing the titular phantom who is revealed to be a deranged former actor that was likewise burned in an accident on set.  Cassidy hams it up to the heavens in a dual role and makes for a striking figure in medieval S&M gear, using vintage weapons in his quest to stop a movie studio from selling their spacious and unused back lot to make way for shopping centers and parking lots.  The material has a poignancy to it, lamenting the bygone studio system era that was well into its death throws by the mid 1970s and Cassidy's madman exemplifies a melodramatic frustration with the shifting tides of the film industry.  Veteran small screen director Gene Levitt keeps up a solid pace and the neglected outdoor studio setting provides an eerie atmosphere with its crumbling buildings and overgrown weeds devouring it.  Silly in parts, but it takes itself seriously enough to still provide some tongue-in-cheek macabreness.

 

UP FROM THE DEPTHS
(1979)
Dir - Charles B. Griffith
Overall: WOOF

One of many Philippines-shot junk heaps from Roger Corman's production company, (not to mention one of several times that Corman tried to cash-in on Stephen Spielberg's Jaws by spending as little money as possible), Up from the Depths is moronic, cheap, lazy, and uninviting in equal measures.  Director and Corman regular Charles B. Griffith siphoned-off the blame to his boss who he claimed hired an inexperienced screenwriter, a disinterested crew, and a rubber monster that looks like it was made by a blind child in third grade art class.  Also according to Griffith, he originally intended on making a straight-faced action movie, then a comedy once he saw how awful the creature looked, (hence said creature only getting a few seconds of screen time), and then Corman edited it into a horror/comedy hybrid without his involvement.  Whoever is to blame, the story is derivative and full of unlikable morons, none more so than Kedric Wolfe's pink suit-wearing resort manager who makes every impulsive move to not concern himself with a sea monster murdering people because it will hurt business, only to finally give in and announce a contest to kill the beast for the grand prize of some complimentary rum.  Horrible dialog that is dubbed just as badly plus tonal issues for days do not help.

70's American Horror Part Eighty-Six

OCTAMAN
(1971)
Dir - Harry Essex
Overall: WOOF

Writer/director Harry Essex penned a few notable B-movie screenplays before he directed the Mexican/American co-production Octaman, which is a crap-fisted riff on his own Creature from the Black Lagoon.  On the plus side, the movie gets right to the good terrible stuff by showing us baby octopus toys wiggling around on the ground via strings and then lots of shots of the title monster which is a humanoid octopus creature that walks on its hind legs, is usually shot in broad daylight, and occasionally slaps some people to death with its stupid rubber arms.  The thing looks ridiculous and for unintentional comedic purposes, it is the star of the show since Essex knew that to keep it off of the screen for too long would likely result in drive-in walk-outs.  That said, he still is powerless to keep the film from being an insufferable bore, especially once the second act settles into a handful of people talking, capturing the creature, losing the creature, looking for the creature, and then finding it again at which point they just shoot it with guns until it flops back into the water.  Rick Baker worked on the monster which is something that he is probably not proud of, so maybe this can be viewed as historically significant as well as ideal fodder for bad movie night.

THE BERMUDA DEPTHS
(1978)
Dir - Tsugunobu Kotani
Overall: MEH

The second of three giant monster collaborations between Rankin/Bass and Tsuburaya Productions, (all of which were directed by Tsugunobu Kotani and initially aired on ABC in the States before getting picked up theatrically in Japan), The Bermuda Depths has wicked awesome and completely misleading poster art, plus Carl Weathers shooting a harpoon bazooka.  Combining sea sirens, a Faustian pact, the mysterious death of Leigh McCloskey's father, and a giant turtle creature, the script by William Overgard and Arthur Rankin Jr. at least deserves points for its hodgepodge of ideas.  Unfortunately it is a painfully dull watch, spinning its wheels with characters relaying irrelevant and/or repetitive information and taking over an hour to show the big-shelled reptile on screen.  Things still dilly-dally along once Weather and McCloskey are hunting the elusive new species at sea in the third act, lingering in a languid pace even when things technically get going.  The film is also peppered with inconsistent performances that bounce between the actors looking bored out of their minds and exploding in an emotional flurry at unintentionally funny intervals.

WOLFMAN
(1979)
Dir - Worth Keeter
Overall: MEH

Dull and cliche-ridden, Wolfman is the unassuming debut from writer/director Worth Keeter, who would go on to do a number of Power Rangers episodes, amongst other things.  This was one of several regional caca-fests from North Carolina-based producer Earl Owensby who casts himself in the title role as a zero-charisma schlub that inherits his father's money, only to find out that a wacky local priest has put a curse on his family because the script needed such a thing.  As bland as water-flavored ice cream, the movie goes for a period-set Gothic vibe with nightmare sequences, fog-drenched cemeteries, and eventually Owensby in cheap werewolf makeup that barely gets any screen time or close-ups.  Judging by the shoddiness of the production though, it is likely that the funds were lacking to do anything more with the paint-by-numbers material, but it somehow steers clear of being an unwatchable embarrassment.  That said, more unintentionally goofy moments could have elevated it to proper bad movie terrain.  Instead, it is played sincerely and the lousy acting, lousy script, unhurried pacing, and lack of fun set pieces just makes it as instantly forgettable as any werewolf movie has ever been.

70's American Horror Part Eighty-Five - (Jeannot Szwarc Edition)

NIGHT OF TERROR
(1972)
Overall: MEH

 

A generic if agreeably made ABC Movie of the Week thriller, Night of Terror was the first of several TV full-lengths from director Jeannot Szwarc.  Plenty of recognizable faces are scattered about, (Chuck Connors, Donna Mills, Martin Balsam, Catherine Burns, Agnes Moorhead, etc), and it concerns a woman who is relentlessly harassed by a bunch of criminals who insist that her apartment has something that they want in it.  This is after they threw a drug stooge over a ledge, followed Mills and her best friend around, and inadvertently caused the car crash that put our lead protagonist in a wheelchair and made her even more vulnerable throughout the rest of the proceedings.  Of course no one knows what the hell these criminals are after or talking about, but that hardly keeps them or the plot from following its linear trajectory.  While Szwarc keeps things moving as well as could be expected without any unnecessary dilly-dallying and the movie is professionally shot and performed, Cliff Gould's plot simply does not have enough fetching details or surprises.

 

THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER
(1973)
Overall: MEH

Yet again, the influence of Rosemary's Baby runs deep with another occult-fueled ABC Movie of the Week, this time being the apply titled The Devil's Daughter.  Written by Colin Higgins who would later go on to direct Foul Play and 9 to 5, this rare work in the horror genre from him shows a noticeable lack of originality, throwing in the common motifs of a clandestine Satanic cult that does whatever it can to manipulate the life of their Dark Lord's offspring.  This includes making deaths look like accidents and making accidents look like black magic was not involved, plus there are of course people who pose as friends yet are actually in on the blasphemous shenanigans.  At the on-set of the third act, Belinda Montgomery and Robert Foxworth decide to laugh and date on the very same night of his girlfriend and her roommate's sudden death, leading to a twist ending that any audience member will see coming from all of the miles away.  Still, Joseph Cotten, Shelley Winters, a mute Jonathan Frid, Diane Lad, and even Abe Vigoda showing up in such black-robed, evil-chanting silliness is worth a hoot, even if it is still not enough to elevate it above being the watered-down and derivative off-spring of much finer films.

 

BUG
(1975)
Overall: MEH

As far as nature horror goes, director Jeannot Szwarc's second theatrically released full-length Bug is one of the more dull and lethargically paced ones.  Notable as the last film that famed gimmick movie producer/co-writer William Castle was involved in before his death two years later, it is an adaptation of Thomas Page's book The Hephaestus Plague, given a surprisingly sober and sincere presentation by Szwarc.  Even with a premise of killer cockroaches running amok, the only element that is played for over-the-top hysterics is the off-putting performance by Bradford Dillman who portrays one of the biggest dipshit morons in cinema history  Why a seemingly normal teacher decides to mutate a newly discovered and highly dangerous species of killer insect right when they are on the verge of extinction is never convincingly explained, nor is Dillman's rapid mental deterioration which comes with beard-growing, complete solitude, and sweaty panic attacks that would make Oliver Reed proud.  Besides the plot line being idiotic at best, it is also aggressively boring with only a handful of firey super roach attacks thrown in to break up the monotony of Dillman losing his mind and talking to himself while conducting experiments.  The production gets a pass for taking a serious approach to something that should have been unabashed schlock, but perhaps the latter route would have actually been the more enjoyable one.

 

JAWS 2
(1978)
Overall: MEH

 

The inevitable and underwhelming Jaws sequel Jaws 2 underwent its own share of production difficulties and became the most expensive project up until that point from Universal, falling in line with the plethora of knock-offs that came in the wake of Steven Spielberg's blockbuster.  Though Spielberg left well enough alone, Roy Scheider was reluctantly finagled into returning due to some contract disputes, plus Lorraine Gray and the worst mayor in America Murray Hamilton decided that a paycheck is a paycheck.  Director Jeannot Szwarc replaced John D. Hancock who worked on the project for a year and half, only to get fired a month in.  Issues with the mechanical sharks, shooting on the windy seas, and Scheider clearly not wanting to be there further muddled things up and after all of this, a rudimentary B-movie done on a hefty scale was the results.  Nearly fifty minutes goes by with zero shark action, allowing for the plot to merely rehash the first movie as Scheider once again tries to convince authorities that there is another set of jaws on the loose.  Worry not though, we also have boring, under-written teenagers taking up screen time and screaming throughout the last act.  It is passable during the six or seven minutes of shark mayhem, but everything here was done better the first time.

70's American Horror Part Eighty-Four - (John Hayes Edition)

DREAM NO EVIL
(1970)
Overall: MEH

Writer/director John Hayes made a hefty number of genre and exploitation films throughout the 1960s and 70s and Dream No Evil, (The Faith Healer, Now I Lay Me Down to Die), is a more personal one.  It was allegedly inspired by his own sister who was brought up in a religious convent only to later suffer from mental illness.  The material may hit closer to home for Hayes, but the movie itself is regrettably dull.  Though it opens with a child having a nightmare, nothing else remotely of interest to horror fans arrives until past the halfway mark.  For the drive-in movie crowd of the day, that is a generous amount of "making out in the car" time.  Hayes's cinematically toys with some psychological aspects around a troubled woman with severe daddy issues, but his direction is persistently bland.  The talking just goes on and on and on, which would be forgivable to a point if there was an interesting pay-off.  Suspense-less and comatose-inducing, it is as forgettable as they get.

 

GRAVE OF THE VAMPIRE
(1972)
Overall: MEH

There are several redeemable qualities to co-writer/director John Hayes' Grave of the Vampire, (Seed of Terror), a movie that is still ultimately bogged down by some of the usual low-budget genre mishaps.  Based on the novel The Still Life by David Chase, Hayes' maintains a serious mood which affords little if any humor.  He also keeps things atmospheric at regular intervals, particularly in the opening cemetery sequence which is as appropriately fog-ridden and creepy as any from the era.  The music is refreshingly low-key as well and there is a striking moment where a woman cuts her breasts in order to feed her newborn and partially undead baby.  While the narrative features such surprises here or there and it jumps ahead several decades unexpectedly after the first act, the production cannot afford enough riveting moments to keep the momentum going.  William Smith is awkward once he is introduced as the main character, maintaining a cold demeanor until he unintentionally camps it up in the finale and coming off jarring in conjunction with the rest of the tone.  Other aspects of the script do not add up and it concludes more puzzlingly than shocking, but it is also just unique enough amongst other vampire films to recommend.

 

GARDEN OF THE DEAD
(1972)
Overall: WOOF

 

On paper, the premise for John Hayes D-rent zombie cheapie Garden of the Dead, (Tomb of the Undead), should wield wacky results.  Yet unfortunately, the movie does not understand what kind of movie it is, becoming a dull mess in the process.  Shot in Topanga Canyon for only enough money to afford fog and some undead makeup, it concerns a prison chain gang who become addicted to formaldehyde, gets punished by their warden for failing to report a botched escape plan, and then said escapees come back to life as groaning corpses who are hellbent on snagging some more formaldehyde to get high on.  What sounds like a goofy comedy is instead played straight for some ill-conceived reason, with no humor anywhere, either intentional or unintentional.  While the high-as-a-kite zombies look nasty and also run, talk, and formulate plans, Hayes does nothing clever with them.  They also die by normal gunfire wounds and not exclusively from a shot to the head, raising the question of how they came back to life in the first place and why the first time that they got killed was not enough but the second time did the trick just fine.  At least it is less than an hour long.

 

END OF THE WORLD

(1977)

Overall: WOOF

Scoring Christopher Lee and equipped with a plot about aliens taking over a small convent and disguising themselves as priests and nuns in order to rid the universe of humankind, one would think that there was enough to work with here to warrant some schlocky fun.  "Fun" is the main thing that is lacking though in the D-grade Charles Band production End of the World; a disaster movie that is actually a disaster.  Coming from Band, the lack of quality is hardly surprising and Lee was still a working actor who needed a paycheck as much as anyone did in the late 70s, but even with one's expectations adjusted accordingly, this is as lazily handled as it gets.  Kirk Scott and Sue Lyon are wooden AF in the leads and hardly anything happens to them for the first half of the film, until they finally run into Lee and his clergy of extraterrestrial visitors who simply explain their plan and make nice with them.  The plot slams home the point that there is danger facing planet Earth, but as far as showing any evidence of that danger, there was no budget for such a thing.  Instead, we have a plodding waste of time with unnecessary shots going on for ages, everyone talking and talking and talking, minimal production values, stock footage, a blippity-bloopity soundtrack, and one brief shot of an alien mask.

70's American Horror Part Eighty-Three

DEAR DEAD DELILAH
(1972)
Dir - John Farris
Overall: WOOF

Try as no budget junk movies often did, hardly any of them could escape the insurmountable hurdle of having little to offer besides people delivering piles of dialog to each other.  Dear Dead Delilah is the only film to be directed by screenwriter John Farris and it adheres to such an ever-present trope, making for an unwatchably dull experience that even bottom-barrel B-movie hounds will find insufferable.  A rich southern family squabble over a buried fortune while an unrelated woman shows up having just been released from a mental institution for murdering her mother with an axe.  Agnes Moorehead makes one of her last screen appearances in the lead, but she was too ill to do anything outside of a bed or a wheelchair.  Leisurely sprinkled into proper southern-accented tomfoolery are some Herschell Gordon Lewis-worthy shots of dismembered limbs, people being axed, blood-covered bodies, and a hilarious beheading via horseback.  Regrettably though, these shots are too infrequent to make this anything worth participating in, unless someone wants an immediate cure for insomnia.

ALABAMA'S GHOST
(1973)
Dir - Fredric Hobbs
Overall: MEH

A tonally wild exploitation movie from small-scale writer/director Fredric Hobbs, Alabama's Ghost is dated, goofy, loud, and cheap, but it is loaded with so many conflicting details that it is able to maintain one's interest for significant portions of its running time.  An ambitious stage manager comes across a box belonging to a long-dead and famed magician, leading said stage manner on a trek through superstardom as he strikes up a bargain with the magician's elder sister, (who is a guy in drag), and another manager who kicks his career into the stratosphere.  There is also a meglomaniacal vampire-controlling Dr. Caligari with a robot-making machine, wailing ghosts, hippie musical numbers, ole timey ragtime jazz musical numbers, slapstick gags, a Mad Max-styled car that looks like it is made out of dinosaur fossils and a bulldozer, stock footage, nightmare drug trips, voodoo rituals, an elephant, and a showdown in the desert which suggests that the filmmaker's lost their goddamn minds while shooting this.  Every performance is cranked up to eleven and whatever semblance of a "plot" is hiding in there gets steamrolled off of a cliff.  Whether this is the best or worst movie about a magician's rise to power is debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is easily the weirdest.

PARTS: THE CLONUS HORROR
(1979)
Dir - Robert S. Fiveson
Overall: MEH

The 1970s produced a handful of dystopian-styled sci-fi thrillers and Parts: The Clonus Horror, (The Clonus Horror, Clonus), is an independently-made one that takes itself seriously yet is predictable and less than memorable.  This was the directorial debut from producer Robert S. Fiveson, co-writing Bob Sullivan's story along with two other credited screenwriters; a story that takes its obvious cues from Michael Anderson's Logan's Run, Michael Crichton's Coma, and George Orwell's seminal 1984 novel.  The film has a unique enough angle, focusing on a clone farm where wealthy people harvest their doubles for body parts, all in the name of immortality.  It raises the question of whether or not artificial humans should be treated as "real" humans, which is a weak excuse for those in power to utilize and those in power are the ones who are persistently portrayed as villainous.  Presentation wise, it has clumsy acting and dialog which should produce some unintended chuckles from the audience, but its sense of paranoia is matched by a fun and dated aesthetic that fits the times well enough.

70's American Horror Part Eighty-Two

NIGHT OF THE COBRA WOMAN
(1972)
Dir - Andrew Meyer
Overall: MEH

 

Another in a long line of snake lady films, Night of the Cobra Woman is also another in a long line of American B-movies that were shot in the Philippines to save a buck.  Marlene Clark appeared in two such similar properties, (1974's Black Mamba was the other), and this one at least had the good sense to keep John "stick in the mud" Ashley out of the proceedings, though Roger Garrett is his own brand of stiff as the head Caucasian guy who looks perpetually bored while having two different women at his disposal to have sex with.  Vic Diaz is of course present though, this time as a mute invalid with a deformed face.  Such nasty, reptilian-produced ailments lie at the heart of writer/director Andrew Meyer's poorly thought-out story which has Clark's native lady bedding men and then in turn making them addicted to her youth-granting venom or something.  A New World Pictures production with Roger Corman held at least partially responsible, the presentation is curious to say the least.  The sound goes dead at regular intervals and most of the actors even besides Garrett seem to be stumbling around in a haze as nonsensical things happen around them.  It must be something in the Filipino water then.

 

THE MILPITAS MONSTER
(1976)
Dir - Robert L. Burrill
Overall: WOOF

As technically inept and aggressively terrible as any film has ever been, The Milpitas Monster, (The Mutant Beast), is Z-grade garbage made by local yokels who clearly have no idea what movies are, but also seem to be enjoying themselves while throwing their hat into the ring.  The only movie of any kind from director Robert L. Burrill, (who handled multiple levels of production along with other friends and community folks), the results are adorable on paper considering the non-existent budget and lack of skill set for anyone involved.  A giant monster movie with a goofy agenda, it goes for a 1950s throwback vibe that unfortunately channels the abysmal work of Bill Rebane instead of anybody else who would have been preferable to emulate.  Everyone's lines are post-dubbed and rarely match their lip movements, the cast of non-actors only embarrass themselves, there are but a handful of shots of the giant garbage stealing creature and hardly any before the fifty-five minute mark, the pacing is slower than a nine inning game of baseball played by geriatric patients, and the plot is too stupid to mention.  More than anything though, the movie is relentlessly annoying.  Whether its yahooing teenagers who look thirty, "stupid wino fall down and be drunk" gags, or scene after scene of nothing funny happening yet everyone pretending that funny stuff is happening, it has a baffling tone that is equally aggressive and mind-numbingly boring.

THE GHOST OF FLIGHT 401
(1978)
Dir - Steven Hillard Stern
Overall: MEH

A sensationalized interpretation of the 1972 Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 disaster, The Ghost of Flight 401 examines the documented alleged ghost sightings that followed the crash and the psychological toll that was felt by rational professionals who were faced with unexplained phenomenon.  This is a age old concept for horror films and nothing unique is done with it in such a setting, but the ABC Movie of the Week steers clear of exploiting a real life tragedy for the sake of genre adherence.  This is due to the serious tone, one that is too serious in fact since the whole thing suffers from major pacing issues and only a scant few supernatural encounters are shown on screen.  These moments are also never frightening, since even the best actors or director in the world cannot convey the scary in merely seeing Ernest Borgnine sitting or standing silently with his co-pilot uniform on.  Borgnine is delightful during the first act as a happy-go-lucky family man who likes overdoing it on the cologne and he is joined by a cast of familiar TV faces, as well as a young Kim Basinger in one of her earliest roles with significant screen time.  Even if director Steven Hillard Stern fails to make the material gripping, the production's sincere intentions seem to be correctly aligned at least.

70's American Horror Part Eighty-One

THE CREMATORS

(1972)

Dir - Harry Essex
Overall: WOOF

 

This antiquated killer alien monster movie is based on Julian May's short story "The Dune Roller" which had already been adapted twenty years earlier in a Tales of Tomorrow episode.  Why director Harry Essex decided to do a full-length version at this point in his career when such generic sci-fi yarns were old hat is anybody's guess and the resulting The Cremators suffers from all angles of its production.  This was the last time that veteran teleplay writer Essex would be behind the lens and judging by the snoozable results, hardly anyone could lament his retirement.  The film starts off sluggish and never recovers, featuring bland Caucasian characters delivering bland dialog as a giant ball of alien energy ravishes the countryside, though it is given far less screen time than the bored actors sitting around looking bored at each other.  Essex tries to spice things up with some cheap special effects shots that are interjected at random intervals and this would give the movie an aura of tacky surrealism if not for how stone-faced and tiring the presentation is.

 

WICKED, WICKED

(1973)

Dir - Richard L. Bare

Overall: MEH

 

A gimmick movie that utilizes a split-screen device throughout almost every shot, (here given the William Castle-worthy title of "Duo-Vision"), Wicked, Wicked is more quirky than watchable.  This was the last theatrically released work from veteran television director Richard L. Bare who concocted the novelty, penned the screenplay, and produced it himself.  Unfortunately, the "watching two versions of the same movie at once" gag is the only thing that it has going for it.  As far as the plot goes, it concerns a wacky bellboy who murders blonde women because of mommy issues and every other character on board is as uninteresting as the next.  While there are one or two garish flourishes to the proceedings, Bare tries to balance tongue-in-cheek goofiness with exploitative nastiness and bland melodrama, doing so with mixed results.  Some moments, (particularly the ending and frequent shots of a mugging old lady playing organ), and hilariously stupid, but the dual-screen presentation becomes more annoying than clever.  Basically, this is a poorly paced comedy/horror bit of schlock that disguises how lame it is by making you pay attention to different things being shown simultaneously.  The distraction works to a point, but only just.

 

SCREAMS OF A WINTER NIGHT
(1979)
Dir - James L. Wilson
Overall: MEH

The only film to be directed by James L. Wilson, Screams of a Winter Night is both one of the decade's many to be in the anthology horror vein and one of many to be regionally made.  Shot in Louisiana with local actors that no one has ever heard of, it revolves around a bunch of boring white people who tell campfire stories at a remote cabin in the woods.  The results are more inconsistent than outright terrible.  Story-wise, each of the tales is instantly forgettable, (a dwarf creature attacking people in a car, a couple of schlubs spending the night in an abandoned haunted hotel, a woman going crazy after stabbing her rapist, and a supernatural Native American force that terrorizes the main characters), but the presentation has its moments.  Whether unintentional or not, several scenes dip their toes into the surreal and Wilson makes effective use out of suggestive sounds, alluding to more freaky things than he has the budget to show.  That said, the finale goes full-tilt with violently howling winds driving everyone to screaming hysterics.  Unfortunately, the whole thing is paced like a bucked of molasses trudging through a swamp full of molasses, plus the characters are as annoying as they are snore-inducing to tolerate.  If one can forgive the shortcomings and also has enough caffeine in their systems though, there is some weirdness here to appreciate.