80's American Horror Part Eighty-Two

SUPERSTITION

(1982)
Dir - James W. Roberson
Overall: MEH

The "video nasty" Superstition, (The Witch), from cinematographer-turned-director James W. Roberson suffers from a weak script and inadequate pacing, but it still manages to offer up some striking visuals.  Shot independently in Silver Lake, Los Angeles with one or two recognizable faces in an otherwise unrecognizable cast, it cobbles together elements from Italian giallos, witch curse movies, and The Amityville Horror into something that is more of an unfocused hodgepodge of genre ideas than a cohesive, unique whole.  As only his second feature behind the lens, Roberson unfortunately pads the film with predictable, "music gets quiet for a jump scare"/drawn-out kill scenes that are far too derivative of the era's slasher boom.  When the spookiness takes a backseat to characters trying to get to the bottom of a mystery that has already been explained to the audience in an early flashback, it becomes too easy to check out of the proceedings.  That said, there are some nasty, oddball kills like a buzz-saw supernaturally projecting and still spinning in a priest's stomach, as well as a guy getting his severed head microwaved, plus a solid combination of a fog machine on overdrive and silhouetted specters with creepy monster fingers.

 

MUTANT

(1984)

Dir - John "Bud" Cardos

Overall: WOOF

Staggeringly dull in every capacity, Mutant, (Night Shadows), is a crystal clear example of a boring story being filmed in the most equally boring manner possible, padded out to feature length with zero regard or ability to uphold any audience's interest.  Even with B-movie mainstay Wings Hauser in the lead, his powers of over-acting are rendered null and void with a script that offers up absolutely zero tension of any kind besides several rednecks who act like total assholes for no reason until a zombie shows up after fifty-eight minutes in.  While the last act finally broadcasts that this was all supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek, quasi-goofy bit of ghoulish camp, the snore-inducing trek to get there is not only insulting, but more than enough to make the average viewer turn the whole thing off long before it pathetically attempts to deliver the genre goods with some fog and actors in grey makeup lurching towards the camera.  Considering that John "Bud" Cardos was brought in by the production company after initial director Mark Rosman was not doing a sufficient enough job for their liking and yet it still managed to turn out like this, just imagine how terrible it could have been in its initial form.  Sometimes it is such minor miracles that we need to be grateful for.

BAD DREAMS

(1988)

Dir - Andrew Fleming

Overall: MEH

 

One of the more deliberate A Nightmare on Elm Street clones to emerge during the franchise's heyday, Andrew Fleming's directorial debut Bad Dreams even managed to score Dream Warrior's Jennifer Rubin in the lead, held up in a mental institution with other unhinged characters who sit around in therapy circles and get systematically picked-off by a supernatural being with excessive burn victim makeup on.  While these details to Freddy Krueger's shenanigans are unmistakable and presumably intentional, the story itself, (which revolves around a suicide cult leader back from the dead), is inherently creepy enough in its own right, plus the usually sinister Richard Lynch is ideal casting as said Jim Jones stand-in.  Other familiar character actors round out the cast with Chainsaw himself Dean Cameron playing a wise-ass inmate who eventually goes cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs in grisly fashion.  Fleming and screenwriter Steven E. de Souza do not put their narrative pieces together in a coherent manner though and the plotting is too predictable to engage with, all of which does not leave much to champion besides a few nasty death sequences and overall competent production values.  They also scored "Sweet Child o' Mine" during the closing credits and for the cheap, right before the song broke through to the mainstream and would have cost a considerable amount more to license.