80's American Horror Part Fifty - The Poltergeist Series

POLTERGEIST

(1982)

Dir - Tobe Hooper

Overall: MEH

 

A popcorn horror hallmark and one of the most popular that the genre ever produced, the initial Poltergeist represents the pinnacle of "more is more" when it comes to on screen supernatural shenanigans.  Lighter in tone than 1979's The Amityville Horror to the point of being full-blown family friendly, it takes just as bombastic of an approach with the primary emphasis being a visual effects-laden showcase.  The haunted house story which was co-written and steamrolled by Steven Spielberg is as guilty as any other of hammering home the cliche of mostly white people behaving illogically while the ghost activity itself is utterly random.  Never before though was the presentation so glossy or user friendly and the movie produced a plethora of iconic scenes, plot points, and dialog that have been parodied/ripped-off ever since.  A joint collaborative effort between Spielberg and official director Tobe Hooper, it certainly has all of the auteur trappings of the former, with sweeping, whimsical music, overt sentimentality, and a primary narrative focus on clean-cut, every day family dynamics.  Not even remotely frightening with a style that lacks any and all goosebumps-causing nuance, the blockbuster approach nevertheless proved undeniably enduring.

 

POLTERGEIST II: THE OTHER SIDE

(1986)

Dir - Brian Gibson

Overall: MEH

 

For the inevitable second entry in the Poltergeist series, Poltergeist II: The Other Side goes through most of the same motions as the first film, which is to say that it does not improve on much yet because of that, fans will have little to complain about.  Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hooper dropped out with director Brian Gibson stepping in, yet screenwriters Michael Grais and Mark Victor returned and concocted a textbook "If it ain't broke..." story that is once again an excuse to bang out a series of creative yet random special effects sequences.  The concept of Native American spiritualism, hereditary psychic gifts, and an evil ninetieth century preacher representing the malevolent force at play are all introduced to deepen the mythos and they work well enough in a melodramatic sense.  Plus Rev. Kane is rather cartoonishly creepy, which is a good thing in that nothing else that transpires is at all frightening, in keeping with the franchise's family oriented vein of horror spectacle.  There is a bit more humor for this round as well, yet the finale is pretty damn sugar-coated and silly, even with sinister elements like H.G. Giger's creature design and composer Jerry Goldsmith virtually recycling his score from The Omen.

 

POLTERGEIST III

(1988)

Dir - Gary Sherman
Overall: MEH

 

Poltergeist III wraps up the series in a somewhat lukewarm way.  Director/co-writer Gary Sherman switched the location from California suburbia to the John Hancock Center in Chicago and with only Heather O'Rourke and Zelda Rubinstein resuming their roles, the focus is on new characters as well as new scare tactics.  This does pleasantly differentiate if from the first two highly similar movies at least, even if it once again brings back Rev. Kane as the main baddie, (who is now played by a new actor with a borderline silly mask on).  The special effects work was done in house, takes center stage, and is overall pretty effective and fun, with some of the most persistent mileage gotten out of the ole "mirrors = creepy" motif.  This is really the only plus side though as the story itself is vapant and borderline terrible.  It is hard not to laugh at/get annoyed with embarrassing dialog, character's yelling "Carroll Anne" and everyone else's name hundreds of times, nonsensical plot points, and a lousy, lazy, and sappy, re-shot ending.  Two elements that were outside of the filmmaker's control was budgetary constraints and the very tragic death of O'Rourke during post-production, forcing them to use an obvious stand-in for re-shoots, with no character resolution for her.  The mess unfortunately translates to the screen as it all comes off as a desperate franchise installment that is scraping the barrel for relevance.

80's American Horror Part Forty-Nine

FEAR NO EVIL

(1981)

Dir - Frank LaLoggia

Overall: MEH

 

The debut from filmmaker Frank LaLogia Fear No Evil is a rather befuddling supernatural horror movie, one of countless to offer yet another take on the rise of the Antichrist.  Independently made and mostly shot on location in upstate New York, it is technically impressive in some respects.  The cinematography is solid and the performances are appropriately melodramatic.  There is also a barrage of punk and new wave songs on the soundtrack that are fun to pick up on, even if none of them serve any narrative purpose.  Speaking of the narrative, issues persist with the story itself which is thoroughly unengaging and often times nonsensical.  It is difficult to even remember various characters when they reappear due to the downright boring nature of the plotting and how arbitrary nearly all of the  scenes come off.  The ending which incorporates a head-scratching last days of Jesus reenactment and a bunch of zombies showing up while Not Damien practically moans and growls sexually in a distorted voice is kind of a hoot though.

 

THE WRAITH

(1986)

Dir - Mike Marvin

Overall: GOOD

 

Essentially an Arizona highway, Gothless, street-racing version of The Crow, Mike Marvin's The Wraith was one of five movies to feature Charlie Sheen in 1986 alone, the same year that both Platoon and Ferris Bueler's Day Off came out.  Sherilyn Fenn, Randy Quaid, Clint Howard, and Nick Cassavetes round out the other familiar faces in this certainly dated, quasi-horror thriller where a vengeful spirit inhabits the body of a new guy in town who drives a supernaturally charged Dodge Turbo Interceptor.  Speaking of dated in a good way, the soundtrack has Ozzy Osbourne, Billy Idol, Mötley Crüe, and two songs from Lion; a band that also contributed jams to Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and Transformers: The Movie.  The story is practically fairy tale-esque in its simplicity and framework, but it has its fair share of impressive race sequences, explosions, and otherworldly moments.  Cassavetes makes a solid, textbook ubber-bully of a villain too, one that seems impervious to intimidation and wields his authority with almost anyone in his way.  Mostly though, it is just a fun, nostalgic romp with cars, chicks, hamburgers, bad guys, fog, heavy metal, and things that blow up.

THE UNNAMABLE
(1988)
Dir - Jean-Paul Ouellette
Overall: MEH

There are one or two redeemable qualities in filmmaker Jean-Paul Ouellette's H.P. Lovecraft adaptation The Unnamable, his directorial debut.  These would be the excellent, she-demon monster makeup as well as the smart-assed performance from Mark Kinsey Stephenson as Lovecraft regular Randolph Carter, who has a young, arrogant, Sherlock Holmes quality to him the keeps the mood more on the lighthearted and goofy side despite Ouellette's persistent efforts to also have this be an atmospheric haunted house yarn with disturbing gore.  The tonal imbalances do create some issues, but by far the main problem is the catatonic-inducing monotony of the plot.  Things are set up forgivably enough in the first act, but once we establish that the only thing that all of our characters are going to do is to wander around lost before gradually getting killed inside of a creepy, dilapidated house while looking for their friends, anyone watching may as well just tune out until either Stephenson makes a funny or until the monster shows back up.

80's American Horror Part Forty-Eight

FROM BEYOND

(1986)

Dir - Stuart Gordon

Overall: GOOD

Featuring many of the same personnel as Re-Animator, (including producer Brian Yuzna and actors Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton), Stuart Gordon's From Beyond is a much less comedic though still wonderfully bizarre, messy, and over the top follow-up.  Once again quite loosely adapting an H.P. Lovecraft story, the film was shot in Italy to save on production costs where Gordon also took the opportunity to make the next year's Dolls.  Venturing into otherworldly perceptions via a machine that enhances the pineal gland which also has the side effect of making people horny, the special effects team of John Carl Buechler and John Naulin, (who likewise worked on Re-Animator), have a field day concocting mutant worm monsters and turning Ted Sorel into an evolving, fleshy abomination.  Along with all of the gross eye candy, the vibrant purple and pink colors further enhance everything visually and the movie is overall quite a triumph for 1980s practical effects work.  Throw in Crampton in a dominatrix outfit and Ken Foree stabbing a giant slug monstrosity in his underwear and it is all pretty damn fun.

MY BEST FRIEND IS A VAMPIRE

(1987)

Dir - Jimmy Huston

Overall: GOOD

 

The 1980s were ripe with almost a forth as many vampire movies as there were slasher movies, which is to say that there were a whole lot of them.  Several ended up being full-fledged comedies as well which is where My Best Friend Is a Vampire comes in, a film that has come shy of establishing a cult following despite it being better than most of its kind.  With the PG rating in tow, it dances around numerous adolescent sex jokes without ever becoming graphic.  The same can be said about any overtly horrific blood sucker moments since in this universe, the undead are rather mild mannered folk who stock up on bottled blood without ever harming anyone.  They also walk around perfectly fine in the daytime and instead of being full- blown immortals, they age a single year for every decade on earth, all representing a clever enough variation on common vampire tropes.  A handful of recognizable actors are in on the fun, including Robert Sean Leonard in the lead, David Warner as a mislead Van Helsing wannabe, René Auberjonois as a benevolent, undead mentor, and even Kathy Bates for one scene. 

 

THE FLY 2

(1989)

Dir -  Chris Walas

Overall: GOOD

A somewhat troubled production that ultimately is flawed in a few respects, The Fly 2 still manages to be a slightly above average cash-grab sequel.  Producers and studio heads clashed quite a bit before a single frame was shot, with four different screenwriters taking a stab at the material, plus there were casting issues concerning the lead, which also slowed things down.  Special effects artist Chris Walas got behind the director chair for the first time and though no auteur the way David Cronenberg is, he still keeps up a solid pace and has a keen eye when it comes to the film's visual set pieces.  In that regard, this is a much more gore-ridden experience than even the previous The Fly which proves to be a good thing as both the creature design and shots of crushed, bloody, oozing, and melting faces are quite entertaining.  Eric Stoltz and Daphne Zuniga are perfectly likeable, yet nearly every other character is unnecessary villainous almost to a comical extent.  The too many cooks in the kitchen element to the script shows at times as things occasionally seem rushed and predictable, yet it hits enough of the same proper beats as the first movie while steering far enough away from being a carbon copy at the same time.

80's American Horror Party Forty-Seven

SCHIZOID

(1980)

Dir - David Paulsen

Overall: MEH

Red herrings abound in writer/director David Paulsens' textbook slasher Schizoid.  Essentially an Americanized, de-fanged giallo and therefor less interesting and ridiculous, it goes through the standard motions of setting up most of the characters we meet as the plausible murderer, yet the reveal is kind of bog standard and almost lazy.  Even the killer's choice of weaponry, (scissors), is hardly the most flashy of life-ending utensils.  Klaus Kinski is his usual, unavoidably menacing self and he does get to do unwholesome things like creep on his showering daughter and swing an axe while screaming, yet his role nevertheless subverts expectations after awhile.  On the far less batshit insane end, an early, more minor appearance from Christopher Lloyd is somewhat worth noting, but for the most part the rest of the performances are sufficient without being showy.  Gore wise, there is not much blood splatter to go around and the majority of the movie is just mildly engaging interactions between characters.  The film steers just shy of being an all-out bore, but there is also very little to liven things up.

 

TRANSYLVANIA 6-5000

(1985)

Dir - Rudy De Luca

Overall: WOOF

 

The lone, theatrically released directorial effort from frequent Mel Brooks collaborator Rudy De Luca was the astonishingly unfunny Transylvania 6-5000.  On paper, this Yugoslavic/American co-production is a horror spoof, with references to several Universal monster films thrown into an asinine plot that barely links any of them together by even the flimsiest of logical means.  Though heavy hitters Jeff Goldblum, Ed Begely Jr., Michael Richards, Jefferey Jones, Carol Kane, and a particularly babely Geena Davis are all on board, nobody on screen can salvage a solitary moment of screen time and instead, they painfully embarrass themselves while trying.  It cannot be understated how relentlessly unfunny De Luca's script is.  Literally every single joke falls pathetically flat and there are countless attempts at them.  It is almost as if De Luca was trying to make an anti-Mel Brooks satire; the same basic concept of Young Frankenstein with the same kinetic pace, except also with none of the charm and all of the "jokes" replaced with the lamest conceivable variations of what humor is actually supposed to be.

 

ALIENS

(1986)

Dir - James Cameron

Overall: GREAT

An utterly perfect action movie that doubles as one of the best horror sequels ever made, James Cameron's seminal Aliens is iconic for all of the right reasons.  A lengthy negotiation time in development and a troubled shoot both failed to get in the way of the final result where everything came together on screen.  The cast is fantastic, Cameron's script deepens the mythos of the first film while stylistically adhering to it, the production design is elaborately impressive, Stan Winston's creature work is as good as such things ever get, and it helped develop the feminist action hero by adhering to the testosterone-driven, 1980s framework for such movies.  The world building carries a lot of weight as Cameron takes the same slow boil approach to the story that Ridley Scott did with the first film.  By letting the audience soak in the details of the universe and the characters within it, tension is persistently maintained and then revved up due to the finely structured plotting.  The Alien franchise would never achieve such greatness again, yet the fact that the first two installments hit such an utterly superb watermark in the first place is rather miracle enough.

80's American Horror Part Forty-Six

THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS

(1980)

Dir - John Hough/Vincent McEveety

Overall: MEH

A lackluster "family horror film" from Walt Disney Productions, The Watcher in the Woods was one of the less successful live action products from the company around the early 1980s.  An adaptation of Florence Engel Randall's novel of the same name, it scored Bette Davis and director John Hough, both of whom had worked together two years earlier on Return to Witch Mountain.  Shot entirely in England and going in part for a traditional haunted mansion vibe, (some of the locations are from The Haunting, a film that Hough had already directly emulated in 1973's exceptional The Legend of Hell House), the production was muddled with re-shoots and re-writes, including a completely different ending in an attempt to fare better with poor initial audience reception.  The result is a movie that never produces anything remotely spooky, with a script that toys with a number of cliches without making any of them interesting.  At least the original cut had an appreanace from a ridiculous looking alien to garnish some giggles yet in its finished form, there is much more to snooze from than chuckle at.

 

FRIGHT NIGHT

(1985)

Dir - Tom Holland

Overall: GREAT

Screenwriter turned director Tom Holland's debut Fright Night is arguably the 1980's best vampire film; a sexy, clever, creepy, and funny homage to horror tropes that ups the ante for the genre as a whole.  An act of pure inspiration from the script department, Holland amused himself by concocted the story of a teenage horror fan living next door to an actual member of the undead and the finished product is one where all of the elements fell into place.  The cast is great with William Ragsdale in the relatable lead, Amanda Bearse as a girl next door turned sexually enchanted victim, Stephen "You're so cool Brewster!" Geoffreys as the hilarious dweeb with the best line delivery in the film, Jonathan Stark as an effective Renfield bully, Chris Sarandon as the irresistibly charming blood-sucker, and of course Roddy McDowall stealing the show as the cowardly, ham-fisted horror movie icon.  Richard Edlund's special effects team, (hot off of Ghostbusters), deliver one outstanding visual gag after the other, all of which hold up and some of which are positively freaky.  Similarly, the score by Brad Fiedel, (hot off of The Terminator), helped produced a killer soundtrack album to boot.

DERANGED
(1987)
Dir - Chuck Vincent
Overall: MEH
 
A unique and ambitious work in psychological horror from porn director Chuck Vincent, (who primarily worked in pornographic films though occasionally broke into more "conventional" material), Deranged chronicles a traumatized woman who further succumbs to her disturbed mental instability.  Besides one or two boom mics that are jarringly visible, some melodramatic line readings, and a stage play presentation that does not allow for much atmospheric decoration, Vincent and cinematographer Larry Revene do commendable work within a piss-pour budget, staging most of the proceedings in long takes that bounce between what may or may not be actually happening, flashbacks, and hallucinations.  Completely different actors enter the frame during single tracking shots and sometimes a plethora of them suddenly appear in certain rooms, only to vanish again while the camera is still in motion.  Set almost entirely in a spacious apartment, it properly conveys a sense of claustrophobia that heightens the wackadoo headspace of Veronica Hart's protagonist, whose mentally unstable walls are clearly closing in on her.  The results are off-putting and awkard at regular intervals as well as yucky in its subject matter, but it is also unmistakably singular in its style.

80's Asian Horror Part Six

MYSTICS IN BALI

(1981)

Dir - H. Tjut Djalil

Overall: MEH

One of the most nonsensical and ridiculous movies ever made, Mystics in Bali, (Leák), has endured as a fascinating and exploitative Indonesian export.  Though it was made by one of the less sophisticated production companies in the country, (which clearly shows in the cinematic "quality" of the presentation), it is overflowing with more memorably baffling set pieces than many others.  The story is as bare bones as they come and mostly revolves around a young German girl getting trained in the black arts by an incessantly cackling witch while her unphotogenic boyfriend and his sorcerer uncle eventually try and stop them.  Incorporating Southeast Asian and Balinese folklore with arguably the absolute worst special effects and acting in motion picture history, scenes of a decapitated vampire head with dangling entrails going down on a woman in labor, (or something), and transformations into pig and snake people, (or something), while other characters who witness such things produce no emotional reaction whatsoever are endlessly hilarious.  The film's inept production qualities unfortunately become monotonous at regular intervals yet when things are cruising on batshit crazy terrain, it is rather a gem.

 

LOVELY DEVILS

(1982)

Dir - Nobuhiko Ôbayashi

Overall: MEH

 

The television movie Lovely Devils, (Kawaii Akuma), is essentially famed surrealist filmmaker Nobuhiko Ôbayashi's idiosyncratic version of The Bad Seed.  Though it was written by Machiko Nasu, the story adheres closely to Ôbayashi's whimsical interests and follows an otherworldly sort of logic where an eight-year old girl can live out a warped, fairy-tale existence where her presumed innocence allows her to murder those that threaten her material wants.  Narratively, it plays with the cliche of no one believing a "hysterical" and "tired" woman who just so happened to have spent the last several years in an institution.  The way that characters disregard Kumiko Akiyoshi's repetitive insistence that her niece is diabolical could be seen as a comment on people's nonacceptance to fully embrace those, (particularly women), with mental illness back into society.  Elsewhere, arbitrary and playful classical music runs throughout every second of screen time, almost with one complete song following the next as if a random record is playing over all of the action and dialog.  While this becomes grating rather quickly, it does seem to be deliberate in setting the highly unnatural tone.  Still, it is a bit more streamlined in other areas and by not going balls-out bananas like Ôbayashi's earlier masterpiece Housu, it is more frustrating of a watch than probably intended.

 

EVIL CAT

(1987)

Dir - Dennis Yu

Overall: MEH

A typical, kung-fu, slapstick horror hybrid from Hong Kong genre director Dennis Yu, Evil Cat, (Hung mao), is a hyper-fast bit of silliness.  Written by the much more prolific filmmaker Wong Jing, (who also plays an annoying police detective), the story is primarily nonsense, with lousy dialog and failed attempts at humor throughout.  The pacing is so ridiculous that the entire movie seems to be in fast forward, but thankfully the plot is elementary enough that it is consistently easy to keep up with.  Yu has an over the top, atmospheric eye though.  Things are photographed rather compellingly with eerie blue light permeating most scenes, plus the ambient soundtrack creates a fittingly unnatural mood.  There are also some moments of logic-defying violence, yet not enough to qualify it as a full-blown gore movie.  Lots of yelling, wind, flips, and feline growls make it a cacophony on the senses, but the outrageousness works in small doses when the tones are not too clashing or obnoxious.  Plus the finale delivers for the most part, even if the wickedly fun cat make-up could have afforded to make more than just a few minutes worth of an appearance.

80's Foreign Horror Part Thirteen

INCUBUS

(1982)

Dir - John Hough

Overall: MEH

 

This messy, Canadian production from British filmmaker John Hough takes its subject matter seriously, yet it ultimately spins itself in aimless circles.  An adaptation of Ray Russell's 1976 novel of the same name, Incubus, (not to be confused with the infamous, Esperanto-languaged 1966 film with William Shatner), deals with a rape demon or something that is very vaguely linked to a young man who dreams of the attacks without performing them.  Also John Cassavetes is the surgeon who is trying to get to the bottom of things and looks as frustrated as we are watching the movie.  There are a handful of side-plots that are never resolved and the twist ending is laughably dumb let alone just as random as many of the other previous details.  Also the monster is barely shown and save for one somewhat nasty scene with a farmer, it is mostly bloodless.  While this old school, "less is more" tactic is certainly fitting to many exceptional horror movies, the script here is too poor and the proceedings too boring overall, so a little or a lot more violent camp probably would have actually helped.

REFLECTIONS

(1987)

Dir - Goran Marković

Overall: GOOD

 

A rare psychological horror film from Yugoslavia, Reflections, (Već viđeno, Deja Vu), explores the unbroken cycle of a traumatic upbringing.  Book-ending in modern day, the bulk of the movie is told in two earlier timelines that seamlessly parallel each other, cutting between them from scene to scene.  The political aspects of the story center around classism and poverty in a Communist backdrop, but the central theme goes deeper than just how these imbalanced episodes effect the troubled psyche of the main protagonist who essentially never gets a substantial enough break throughout his life.  Mustafa Nadarević is primarily impish and pathetic throughout the movie, yet he makes a menacing impression once he snaps in the final set piece.  As the gorgeous, ambitious, and ill-tempered object of his desire, Anica Dobra seems damaged enough in her own right, yet the story allows for each character to maintain a level of sympathy for the audience.  Writer/director Goran Marković's flashback/flash-forward style is ambitious at times yet in a fulfilling way the emphasizes history repeating itself with unavoidably tragic results.

 

HOWLING III

(1987)

Dir - Philippe Mora

Overall: MEH

After the botched and universally panned Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf, director Philippe Mora gave the franchise one more go in an attempt to redeem himself with Howling III, (Howling III: The Marsupials).  A stand alone entry in the series that exists in its own quasi-meta universe, the last to be theatrically released, and the only one to be given a PG-13 rating, it bares zero relation to Gary Brandner's third Howling novel even though it is credited as being based on it.  What Mora instead concocted is a part spoof, part anti-horror film; one that makes it a primary objective to sympathetically portray werewolves and their culture as a misunderstood anomaly.  The script is highly unorthodox though as it bulldozes through its random plot, introducing and then quietly ignoring mild conflicts along the way.  The last act in particular rushes over about two decades and concludes with an ending that is more awkward than funny, if the latter was indeed what was intended.  Special effects wise, it is a considerable step down from the standards set up in the first film, yet the unconvincing makeup, exaggerated bladder swells, and Halloween dog masks may also be part of the joke.  It is a mess, but at least not an insulting one.

80's Foreign Horror Part Twelve

DEATH SHIP

(1980)
Dir - Alvin Rakoff
Overall: MEH

A borderline confounding British/Canadian co-production from director Alvin Rakoff, Death Ship has an unintentionally goofy charm that occasionally jives "well" with its seriousness.  The premise of a haunted freighter that was once a Nazi torture vessel or something is quite solid and the earlier moments spent upon it contain some effectively creepy atmosphere.  Gradually though, the wheels start to come off when consistently clumsy editing and a mostly aloof performance from George Kennedy undermine the intended spookiness.  While the third act gets positively nonsensical, that is also when viewers may be prone to the most chuckles with scenes like a woman comically thrashing around in a shower that is pouring blood on her, a room where a projector keeps playing Nazi footage that causes one character to somehow teleport to an entirely different party of the ship while the other character collapses while holding his ears, and Kennedy ranting, raving, and getting crushed by machine equipment.  All pure nonsense of course and poorly executed, yet it is also occasionally amusing.

BAD TASTE

(1987)

Dir - Peter Jackson

Overall: GOOD

 

The full-length, splatter-fest debut Bad Taste from Peter Jackson is a delightfully disgusting triumph of very low-brow, DIY cinema.  Jackson produced, shot, stared, directed and co-wrote an alien take-over/action parody where bulbous extraterrestrial beings disguise themselves as humans in order to harvest people's flesh to use in their intergalactic fast food chain.  It is hard to go wrong with a premise so sublimely silly and even from his humble jumping off point here, Jackson had an undeniable skill for kinetic pacing and laughably clever set pieces.  Several of the cast members, (including Jackson), take on multiple roles and admirable mileage is gotten out of the paper-thin budget where gross-out, cartoon-level violence is the star attraction.  The effects work is undeniably primitive, but it has the same cheapo charm that Sam Raimi's Evil Dead helped popularize and the squishy sound effects certainly enhance close-up shots of blood, drool, guts, brains, puke, and animal feces.  It is all done in a deliberately shock-worthy fashion and as the title clearly suggests, the movie is not for all tastes.  Furthermore it is probably not for MOST tastes, but those who want a ridiculous, wretched laugh at borderline ingenious, amateur filmmaking will have plenty to munch on.

THE MOONLIGHT SONATA

(1988)

Dir - Olli Soinio

Overall: MEH

 

The sloppy, one-note Finnish horror film The Moonlight Sonata, (Kuutamosonaatti), is a backwoods redneck/isolated in the woods mash-up that fails to pull off whatever the hell it is trying to pull off.  Writer/director Olli Soinio makes a number of standard blunders.  The plotting is borderline terrible, none of the characters are remotely fleshed-out, the structure is entirely monotonous, and the sinister musical score plays throughout almost all eighty-six minutes which undermines the intended humor.  In the lead, Tiina Björkman spends all of her scenes bouncing between two facial expressions, (angry or unsettled), while her on-screen brother says maybe five words and literally only affords ONE facial expression, (unsettled).  This leaves their mountain man pursuer to just grin like a pervert and very lazily try to either molest, flirt with, or murder them depending on his random mood.  Mostly though, it is just an awkward and boring ordeal that goes in seamless circles, retreading the same lackadaisical, cat and mouse set pieces that advance absolutely nothing story wise.  There sure are a lot of scenes of characters making faces without talking though.

80's Lucio Fulci Part Four

SODOMA'S GHOST

(1988)

Overall: MEH

Lucio Fulci spent the last two years of the 1980s working in the direct-to-video/television film market and the first of these projects was Sodoma's Ghost, a pretty lackluster, borderline softcore pornographic bit of sleaze.  Utilizing a story that both Fulci and screenwriter Carlo Alberto Alfieri concocted of several years earlier, it has a silly enough premise of a haunted house inhabited by hedonistic Nazis that make people horny.  The end product though is more dull than amusingly tasteless and is hampered by cheap production values.  Plot wise, it is a monotonous cliche fest with stupid characters supernaturally trapped in a single location who slowly get picked off and/or sexually tempted.  The days go by, they argue, they try to leave, a few pairs of naked boobs are shown, there is some typical Fulci-worthy gross out gore, and the ending is very lazily underwhelming.  Even Fulci himself considers it his weakest film and allegedly walked off during the shoot, resulting in Mario Bianchi stepping in to finish it.

TOUCH OF DEATH

(1988)

Overall: MEH

 

Though it is comparatively the best and most unique out of Lucio Fulci's late 80s television/direct-to-video output, Touch of Death, (Quando Alice ruppe lo specchio), is not without its shortcomings.  Part of the I maestri del thriller series as was his previous Sodoma's Ghost, (and filmed immediately after it), it has no supernatural elements and is instead a psychological black comedy which was an area Fulci seldom explored in his filmography.  The attempts at humor are pretty amatuerish and the filmmaker's script plays out like a less clever, much smaller budgeted Tales from the Crypt episode if it were stretched out to ninety-odd minutes.  This pleasantly differentiates it from his usual haunted, single location, quasi-slasher movies as we instead witness a crazy, causally cannibalistic con-man who hooks up with comically unattractive, wealthy women with little to no effort before killing them and feeding the scraps that he does not keep for himself to his stable of pigs.  It is all a bit too monotonous and poorly paced to benefit the silly premise, plus gore and nudity is less prominent than one would expect so it ends up being forgettable.

 

THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS

(1989)

Overall: MEH

 

The first of two television films that Lucio Fulci made for producer Luciano Martino's series The House of Doom, (La case maledette), was the therefor appropriately titled The House of Clocks, (La casa nel tempo), a largely messy endeavor that borders on incoherent.  Shot on 16 mm, primarily in one location, and within four weeks, the ambitious plot revolving around a wealthy elder couple who somehow manage to rewind time or something is rather poorly conveyed.  What are meant to be creepy supernatural occurrences instead come off as just confusing and unatmospheric which is partially due to the low production values.  Fulci manages to pull off one or two gore sequences that are fun, but the soft lighting, lousy, misplaced romantic music, and uninteresting setting provide nothing remotely otherworldly to go along with the typical Euro-horror, nightmare logic.  Something possibly could have been made with a better script and more time to put the whole project together, but wherever the fault lies, this is hardly Fulci at his most engaging.

 

THE SWEET HOUSE OF HORRORS

(1989)

Overall: MEH

Filmed immediately after shooting on The House of Clocks wrapped up, Lucio Fulci's second movie for Luciano Martino's The House of Doom television series suffers from the same visual and narrative issues as its predecessor.  The Sweet House of Horrors, (La dolce casa degli orrori) fares a tad better with proper macabre atmospherics and unintentional weirdness, but the somewhat cutesy approach is relentlessly unfrightening.  Sans an opening kill sequence that is particularly gruesome, the rest of the film focuses on two obnoxious, incessantly crying and/or whining children who eventually cheer up when the ghosts of their murdered parents manifest themselves as either tiny flames or in their normal human appearance.  There is also a blue light that represents some other kind of spirits, (or something), but such details hardly matter.  The final set piece involving a hammy spiritual medium and others trying to bulldoze the kid's house is just laughably stupid and overall, the film stumbles between clumsy slapstick, light sentimentality, and uninteresting storytelling.  Both this and the filmmaker's previous TV installment were shelved for a number of years which was probably for the best, but Fulci fans may only appreciate the infrequent gore as everything else going on is hogwash.