(1988)
Overall: MEH
Whereas foreign producers had attached the "La Casa" title onto Sam Raimi's first two Evil Dead films for non-American markets, Ghosthouse, (La casa 3 - Ghosthouse), was the first actual Italian movie to get the moniker, even though it was an Italian movie shot in Massachusetts. Written and directed by Umberto Lenzi as a typical, (and most of all, nonsensical), haunted house yarn, it has many of the hallmarks of low-budget Euro-horror from the 1970s and 80s. This includes a memorable and persistent score that leans heavy on a genuinely disturbing, gibberish nursery rhyme ditty, laughably incompetent performances, bizarre set pieces, and a story line that makes no attempts at having any logical footing. Though the middle act drags, things start off strong where a creepy kid and her creepy clown doll inexplicably, (maybe?), manifest some kind of slasher demon that murders her father, turns light bulbs into pulsating balloons, and shatters a mirror that sends shards of glass into her mother's eyeballs. Boatloads more head-scratching moments occur, and characters make asinine decisions, inexplicably turn up at different locations that the editing never bothers to explain, and come to conclusions that they would only arrive at because they read the script. So yes; wacky and hilariously stupid Italian nonsense.
(1989)
Dir - Umberto Lenzi/Harry Kirkpatrick
Overall: MEH
A deliciously dated, sleazy, and stupid Miami Beach slasher movie, Nightmare Beach, (Welcome to Spring Break), was embarrassing enough for initial director Umberto Lenzi to ask for both his services and name to be removed from the finished product. Accounts vary as to how much Lenzi was ultimately involved in the production, with some saying that he co-directed it with screenwriter Harry Kirkpatrick, (James Justice), and Lenzi himself insisting that he backed out early and only stayed on as a technical consultant. In any event, there are some delightful hallmarks of 80s Euro-crap cinema on display, including horrendous acting, laughable dialog, the same two heavy metal songs played upwards of ninety billion times, John Saxton of course playing a cop, a derivative script that is loaded with cliches, and plenty of naked boobs, male chauvinism, and tasteless kill scenes. Though the opening sequence sets up a vengeance-seeking biker from beyond the grave, (the only scene in the movie that is played without any jacked up music or in-your-face schlock), it quickly becomes apparent who the actual masked killer is, making the final reveal land with an unintended and pathetic whimper. On that note, the film is accidentally amusing at times and plenty trashy for fans of such doofiness.
(1989)
Overall: MEH
Sluggish and repetitive, Umberto Lenzi's Le porte dell'inferno, (The Hell's Gate), goes through a small handful of hackneyed motions while sticking all of its characters in a cave so that they can painstakingly stand next to each other delivering slight variations of the same dialog for ninety minutes. The script by Lenzi and wife Olga Pehar, (who also co-penned the same year's Hitcher in the Dark), throws together a poorly explained experiment where a man is trying to beat the world record of how many days he can live in a cave or something, all with resurrected, occult-practicing monks who start picking off everybody without showing their faces until the last six minutes. While the finale is fun in an illogically silly sense, it is also foreseeable and hardly constitutes as a worthy payoff for the lackluster boredom that came before it. Lenzi seems powerless to build up any tension within such a scenario, simply letting the characters complain, argue, and grow more despaired as they find themselves trapped underground where every attempt at escape proves fruitless, and it takes far too long for everyone to even be properly convinced that supernatural shenanigans are afoot. We also have one of the slowest and least exciting spider deaths in cinema history, for anyone keeping track.
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