(1980)
Dir - Danny Steinmann
Overall: MEH
The first non-porno film from director Danny Steinmann, (who would go on to do Savage Streets and the fifth Friday the 13th installment), The Unseen is a mediocre, predictable, quasi-slasher offering. Featuring Barbara Bach and an amusingly hammy performance from character actor Sydney Lassick as a deranged museum curator, it has familiar aspects to David Schmoeller's Tourist Trap yet it is hardly as inventive. There are some perverse elements to please exploitation fans though, (incest, nudity), but the gore factor is relatively tame. Besides one or two eccentric scene-chewing moments with Lassick, the movie is predominately dull. Bach's character is given a side-arc with an ex boyfriend that brings everything to a boring stand still and the entire last act is incredibly monotonous and one-note. Nothing here is particularly bad and it is certainly passable for a low-expectation, sleazy B-movie, but it is a lot of the same stuff that has been done more memorably elsewhere.
(1987)
Dir - Arthur Penn
Overall: MEH
This quasi-remake of the 1945 noir film My Name Is Julia Ross has an interesting build up with a hum-drum resolution. Dead of Winter was initially directed by co-screenwriter Marc Shmuger, then producer John Bloomgarden, and finally Arthur Penn who was given official and sole credit. Despite the changing of behind the camera personnel, it is tight from a production standpoint. Mary Steenbergen technically plays three roles, though only one of them as a duped actress is given primarily screen time and she makes a solid victim there. Roddy McDowell is his always excellent self in a more sinister turn than usual, though his polite, English charm still manages to come through, (which in fact makes him all the more unsettling). A few tense revelations are well staged and it successfully plays off of the "no one believes a hysterical woman" motif, yet once Steenbergen gets the upper hand against her two kidnappers as well as herself, (long story), it delivers more of a yawn than a gasp. It is still enjoyable in normal doses if one can forgive some more forgettable aspects.
(1987)
Dir - David DeCoteau
Overall: MEH
The first horror movie from the ridiculously prolific, D-rent schlock peddler David DeCoteau was the ultra cheap, ultra dumb Alien knock-off Creepozoids. DeCoteau was one of countless Roger Corman protegees and it certainly shows as his work here is more a triumph of low-budget will than anything else. Filmed entirely in a warehouse over a fifteen day shooting schedule and with a minimal cast of the world's most sort of passable actors, (including the always charming Linnea Quigley who of course delivers her obligatory nude scene), it has a serious tone which is probably the oddest thing about it. The creature effects are certainly embarrassing, (sans a weird, creepy monster baby at the end), yet DeCoteau at least tries to obscure them in darkness and through quick cuts. It is only atmospheric in an amateur hour sense though as the director's chosen style is primarily to stage long takes in boring mid-shots and with standard lighting. If the film leaned into its stupidity a bit more as several of DeCoteau's other entries in his exclusively B-movie filmography would, then it could be more of a hoot. Instead, it is just kind of cheap and pathetic.
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