(1980)
Dir - Boris Szulzinger
Overall: WOOF
It is funny enough when future Oscar winners have a dud or two in their filmography, but it is another thing entirely when a FORMER Oscar winner ADDS a dud to their filmography. Enter Louise Fletcher and the painfully not-amusing and hare-brained Belgium "comedy" Mama Dracula, the last movie from director/producer Boris Szulzinger. Watching Fletcher do a Béla Lugosi accent seems like it would be a hoot on paper, but the movie that she agreed to appear in has nothing else going for it. This mostly stems from every character being an obnoxious dipshit. Jimmy Shuman is a stereotypical dork who leaps around like Daffy Duck, one of Fletcher's servants loudly grunts instead of talks, some asshole ends every sentence with the word "OK", and worst of all are the twins Marc-Henri and Alexander Wajnberg who play Fletcher's pansy undead sons as if they will spontaneously combust if they do not stop mugging at the camera. The story is who-cares-nonsense about Fletcher having the name Dracula and being a vampire, yet also being Elizabeth Báthory and needing virgin blood to bathe in to maintain her youth, even though vampires already maintain their youth by being, ya know, vampires.
(1982)
Dir - Robert Clouse
Overall: MEH
Some nature horror from Canada, Deadly Eyes, (The Rats, Night Eyes), has killer rats on the menu who terrorize Toronto after being exposed to a contaminated food supply. In actuality, the rodents are largely portrayed by dachshunds in adorable little costumes, (or poorly realized puppets during the close-ups), since getting dogs to behave on screen is presumably easier than getting rats to. An adaptation of Jame Herbert's 1974 novel The Rats, director Robert Clouse was and would continue to be more well-versed in action movies, but he dabbles in the horror genre here comparatively better than in the similarly themed The Pack, a movie that he proved ill-equipped to make NOT terrible. After taking out Scatman Crothers in an underground sewer system, the disease-bag little critters kill a guy in a bowling alley, overrun a movie theater, and make their last stand in a subway tunnel which in a movie like this is the worst place for pedestrians to get stuck in. Sam Groom playing a high school teacher who is apparently irresistible to women gives the plot something to focus on when the screeching dog-sized rats are not doing their thing, but this is the usual deal where the animal mayhem is fun, yet everything else that happens is not so fun. The way that the film sidesteps having a cutesy ending is amusing though.
(1987)
Dir - Colin Eggleston
Overall: MEH
The last movie from director Colin Eggleston was the doofy undead romp Outback Vampires, (The Wicked). which does the whole "our car broke down so now we have to stay at a creepy place in the middle of nowhere" gag, except with vampires. A little bit of The Addams Family, a little bit of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and some Lovecraft nonsense sprinkled on top, (all with actors overdoing it to the heavens), it is grandiose in scope, even if the production leaves everything to be desired. Cheap titles over a SOV opening hardly screams "cinematic", but once we get to the big house full of weirdos, Eggleston and director of photography Garry Wapshott use some fog and eerie backlighting to enhance the macabre mood. The tone stays tongue-in-cheek though, with a new wave band showing up to do a musical number out of nowhere and the vampire family in pasty makeup engaging in broad hand gestures, silly accents, flirting, hovering, climbing of walls, and overall scenery-chewing. There is too much prattling on in Eggleston and David Young's script in place of memorable set pieces or actual funny nyuck nyucks, making it all too easy to tune out of piles of exposition thrown at the mundane characters who are caught in a wacky scenario on paper.
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