(1981)
Dir - Tom DeSimone
Overall: MEH
While its heart is in the right place, the slasher goof fest Hell Night ultimately provides more snores than tongue-in-cheek, macabre chuckles. Released at the turn of the 80s when there seemed to be more slasher movies being made than potatoes in Idaho, the script by Randy Feldman, (Tango & Cash), is as derivative as any of them. Thankfully though, he and director Tom DeSimone, (Reform School Girls), had the good sense to not take the project all that seriously to begin with. It is shamelessly horny and has a premise where fratboys and girls deliberately try and scare new inductees in a textbook creepy, allegedly haunted house. They use recordings of screams, rigged doors, and ghostly projections and of course the house has an elaborately ghastly backstory to spook them. The creative team and cast seem to be having fun with the material, but as far as the audience is concerned, that is a different story. The problem is that the movie is cripplingly boring. Every kill scene is set up in so obvious of a manner that we are simply waiting and waiting and waiting for moments of quietness where characters say things out loud like "Hey, is that you?" or "Hey quite fooling around?" to get interrupted by loud jump scares. Linda Blair's performance is also honestly quite deserving of the Razzie she was nominated for, pour girl. At least it is a movie that you can take a bathroom break several times during and still have no problem following the nothing going on in it.
(1987)
Dir - Jeffery Obrow/Stephen Carpenter
Overall: MEH
Too many cooks in the kitchen could be a theory as to why Jeffery Obrow and Stephen Carpenter's The Kindred is such a flawed offering. Besides there being two directors and both of them having worked on the script as well, so did three more people on top of even that. With five different individuals pen in hand then, the story itself is not so much a jumbled mess, but instead completely unengaging. Something about doctors conducting experiments and the son of one of them having a literal monster brother, which is an easy enough concept to grasp but boy, what a lame one. It does not help that the pacing is dreadful, which makes all attempts to flesh out the already mundane plot troublesome. Performance wise, it is almost entirely actors that you have never heard of delivering poor dialog, save for a toupee-donning Rod Steiger of all people who is somewhat washed up and delivering poor dialog. Same as the writing, how two heads in collaboration behind the lens were able to present such flat, often embarrassing results is quite disappointing. There are some silly, gross-out special effects and nifty makeup that is a hoot, but a lot of arduous effort is needed to tolerate the D-rent presentation and all of the boring characters filling up screen time while nothing is happening.
(1989)
Dir - Robert Bierman
Overall: GOOD
Perhaps the very first instance where Nicolas Cage went full Nicolas Cage, his performance in Vampire's Kiss is one of the most gleefully absurd in all of method acting history. While the film was written by Joseph Minion while he was struggling with depression and his failing relationship with producer Barbara Zitwer, the end result here is less about any real world, potent, life-to-screen turmoil and instead becomes an utter showcase for Cage's off the rails overacting. Put any other performer in the role and it would be a completely different movie and most likely, not nearly as entertaining of one. By dominating the entire production with such eccentric behavior like doing a bizarre yuppy accent, leaping on furniture, gesturing his body and hands as if Bob Fossee is directing him, morphing his posture, comically widening his eyes, delivering dialog in cheap plastic vampire fangs, screaming the alphabet, screaming "I'm a vampire!" to anyone who will listen, trashing his apartment, and of course eating a live cockroach, anything else of possible importance happening in the film pretty much goes right out the window. It is therefor difficult to tell if this is a wildly strange, dark comedy by intentional design or if Cage just brought the crazy so full-tilt that it is a wildly strange dark comedy simply because of his doing. In either event, it is something to see alright.
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