80's American Horror Part One-Hundred and Twelve

THE FOREST

(1982)

Dir - Don Jones

Overall: WOOF

 

Director Don Jones' small filmography touches upon a few different genres, The Forest being his uninspired cash-in on the slasher boom.  Shot in Sequoia National Park, California, the first act is spent with each of our four characters constantly complaining to each other, saying variations of "Are you sure about this?" and "C'mon, it'll be fine", plus bitching about the traffic, how much a mechanic charges to fix a truck, the weather, male chauvinism, why there are not more people at their camping site, how late it is getting, whose idea this all was, etc.  One can either be generous and consider such bickering as adorable and intentionally humorous, or find it annoying and stupid, but annoying and stupid is where the rest of the film spends its time.  The plot is asinine, (a guy killed his adulterating wife and now lives in the woods, eats people, and the ghosts of his family members occasionally show up), but the presentation is top-to-bottom embarrassing.  Awkward performances, dead air in between repetitive dialog exchanges, lame kill scenes, and bizarre choices like switching to black and white at irregular intervals and the ghost kids having echo on their voices.  Every other aspect is stock at best, but some viewers may find it to be a clumsy trainwreck that is worth laughing at.

AMITYVILLE 3-D

(1983)

Dir - Richard Fleischer

Overall: MEH

From the onset, the Amityville series was running on goofy schlock if it was running on anything, so after a straight adaptation of Jay Anson's huckster novel and an icky and mean-spirited follow-up, jumping on the 3-D bandwagon seemed a logical next move.  Shot in both Mexico and utilizing the same New Jersey exteriors as the previous installments, Amityville 3-D, (Amityville III: The Demon), was the stupidest entry thus far, (oh, but what was still to come), yet it also suffers from being the most dull.  The infamous lakeside house is still plagued by evil forces that the screenwriters are making up as they go along, this time involving a journalist who uncovers some seance con artists using the place and then decides to go ahead and buy it at a steal since he is going through a divorce and needs a new abode anyway.  We still have buzzing insects, the house being on top of an Indian burial ground, and people dying when they are not inside of it because who cares, but the new additions include a basement well that is both a gateway to hell and a swimming pool with a demon puppet inside of it, plus Lori Loughlin's wet ghost makes an appearance from beyond the grave.  An asinine story along with melodramatic acting and a few 3-D shots may provide something to laugh at, but the majority of the movie twiddles its thumbs and lulls one to sleep in the process.

SPEAK OF THE DEVIL
(1989)
Dir - Raphael Nussbaum
Overall: MEH

This televangelist horror spoof Speak of the Devil, (The Ungodly), arrives at long last from co-writer/director Raphel Nussbaum and it serves as the German filmmaker's final movie before his death four years later.  The first issue is that the story focuses on unlikable con-artists, ensuring that the audience feels no sympathy for their persistent hardships, all of which they recklessly bring on themselves.  This would be fine if the script was full of clever gags and/or if Thomas McGowan and Jean Carol were charismatic villains.  Well to be fair, Carol hams it up appropriately as a scumbag televangelist wife, especially once her and McGowan go full Satan worship in their new haunted house.  The film lays on the wicked cliches, (pentagrams, money-hungry preachers, altars, reckless animal sacrifices, orgies, Los Angeles high life temptations run amok, etc), but some of the silly bits warrant a chuckle or two.  Most of them are sloppy and awkward though, coupled with a lousy story that is full of idiots and seems to be making it up as it goes along.  The one-hundred minute running time is also an issue since it drags to a conclusion that is void of surprises, but at least there is some fun, blasphemous window dressing to appreciate.

80's American Horror Part One-Hundred and Eleven

THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW
(1980)
Dir - Henning Schellerup
Overall: MEH

Appropriately airing on Halloween 1980, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was part of NBC's Classic Illustrated series of family television movies, adapting the famed Washington Irving short story with none other than Jeff Goldblum in the lead.  Fleshing out the source material with town gossip, plus squires and elders contriving to marry their daughters off to the only two available men in the village, it is hardly brimming with supernatural intrigue despite the appearance of ghosts or the locals pretending to be ghosts just to haze the newly arrived school master.  Goldblum is ideally cast as the tall, lanky, and awkward Ichabod Crane, and he is joined by Meg Foster as his blossoming love interest and former Chicago Bears legend Dick Butkus as local bully Brom Bones, with unmistakable Midwestern accent in tow.  Soft in tone as to not scare away the youngsters with likeable performances and some mild comic relief, the tale of simple-minded superstition vs Yankee intellectual skepticism is not the most gripping under such a mild presentation.  Also, it is given a happy ending which is conflicting with the original tale, plus the inevitable Headless Horseman stand-off is probably the lamest one ever brought to the screen.

 

KING KONG LIVES
(1986)
Dir - John Guillermin
Overall: MEH

The misguided sequel to Dino De Laurentiis' big-budgeted though lukewarm received King Kong remake came a full ten years later, with director John Guillermin and special effects man Carlo Rambaldi returning without anyone from the initial cast.  Instead, King Kong Lives, (King Kong 2), has Brian Kerwin and Linda Hamilton playing an Indiana Jones-type capitalist monkey hunter and a scientist tasked with revitalizing Kong by way of blood plasma and an artificial heart transplant, respectfully.  While the movie wastes no time getting both Kong and his female mate on screen, it still remarkably turns out to be a dull affair.  The giant gorilla couple is captured, then they are on the run, then they are separated, then they are reunited, and our uninteresting human leads plus some one-note military characters get too much screen time along the way.   It is still strong from a production standpoint, with the monkey suite performers doing a solid job of conveying hulking likeability, and there are numerous special effects moments that look like they cost a fortune to pull off, plus some bloodshed and profanity breaks up the cutesy tone.  With such a razor-thin story though, loud set pieces are the only thing that such dopey schlock has to offer.

 

THE PHANTOM EMPIRE

(1988)

Dir - Fred Olen Ray

Overall: MEH

One of the many bottom-budgeted and schlock-fueled genre parodies from filmmaker Fred Olen Ray, The Phantom Empire brings together a handful of familiar faces and was cobbled together quickly after the shooting wrapped on Commando Squad.  Channeling the "Hey, we're already here so why don't we make another movie?", gusto of Roger Corman, Ray along with some cast and crew members stuck around the Bronson Canyon area of Los Angeles' Griffith Park and kept on rolling with a slapped together script about some archeologists looking for diamonds where mutants in Halloween masks and Sybil Danning dressed as an extraterrestrial dominatrix also show up.  Along with Danning, Russ Tamblyn, Robert Quarry, Jeffrey Combs, and of course Michelle Bauer come along for the ride, along with Forbidden Planet's Robby the Robot and recycled stop-motion footage from James Shea's Planet of Dinosaurs.  While plenty of these cast members have displayed unmistakable charisma in better roles, the micro-budgeted presentation leaves little for them to do besides deliver smug quips at each other while standing and walking around in order to pad out the running time.  Despite the various references to other genre serials and B-movies, it fails to pay homage to its roots in either a funny or compelling fashion.

80's American Horror Part One-Hundred and Ten - (Norman Thaddeus Vane Edition)

THE BLACK ROOM

(1982)

Dir - Norman Thaddeus Vane/Elly Kenner

Overall: MEH

 

A vampire-adjacent work in exploitation, The Black Room explores both extramarital shenanigans and a sibling duo who siphon the blood from unwilling hosts due to some weird ailment that necessitates frequent transfusions.  Arriving just at the cusp of the AIDS epidemic, shots of hypodermic needles and a story revolving around a married scumbag renting out the black room of the title so that he can fornicate with as many prostitutes and college girls as possible behind his wife's back, (safe sex, what's that?), give the movie a timely agenda.  This may be unintentional, but it adds some weight to what is otherwise just a grim and sleazy genre flick, be it one that maintains a serious tone.  Co-director Norman Thaddeus Vane's script leans heavily into voyeurism and fantasy, with characters achieving unwholesome satisfaction both vicariously and through physical indulgence where a married couple face their insecurities and knee-jerk justifications all while syringe murders are happening right under their noses.  Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" is frequented on the soundtrack, and Robert Harmon's cinematography mixes unassuming domesticality with garish dread.  Too flimsy in its plotting to recommend, but it packs a nasty punch all the same.

 

FRIGHTMARE

(1983)

Overall: MEH

 

Not to be confused with Pete Walker's 1974 movie of the same name, Frightmare, (The Horror Star), pokes fun at the campier aspects of horror cinema while adapting a slasher framework that was concurrent with the era.  Released anywhere between 1981 and 1983 depending on the source, this is the first solo venture behind the lens from screenwriter Norman Thaddeus Vane, who pits a ham-fisted horror thespian against some eager fans that crash the funeral home after his death, pulling off some Weekend at Bernies shenanigans with his corpse.  A young Jeffrey Combs appears as one of the said genre aficionados who does his own cornball posturing while mugging his way through cliched Dracula quotes, and The Fearless Vampire Killers' own Ferdy Mayne portrays the Vincent Price stand-in, having some postmortem fun with his hoodlum fan base after killing two film directors in the first act.  Everyone on screen is an annoying and over-acting asshole, plus the pacing is surprisingly languid for such a ridiculous premise that seems to be going for laughs yet only awkwardly achieves them, if it achieves them at all.  It has plenty of macabre window dressing done in a tongue in cheek fashion, but Vane's screenplay seems to be missing key information, and it becomes more of a meandering mess than an effective spoof in the process.

 

MIDNIGHT

(1988)

Overall: MEH

For anybody who wants to see Lynn Redgrave do an Elvira impression for eighty-five minutes, writer/director/producer Norman Theddeus Vane's Midnight has you covered.  What Redgrave may lack in the chest department compared to Cassandra Peterson, she more than makes up for with overacting pizzazz and some of the most groan-inducing quips that any screenwriter ever concocted.  Speaking of overacting, Tony Curits also gives it his all as a sleazy TV station head, and any movie that throws Frank Gorshin, Tommy Lister, and Wolfman Jack into the mix as well is worth something at least.  Watching Redgrave deliver macabre "jokes" as her on screen horror host persona where her audience yells them back at her is insufferable, but her wild costumes, embarrassing mugging, exaggerated hand gestures, and overall goofy enthusiasm is still admirable.  Unfortunately, the movie makes the gravest error that a comedy can in that it is hardly ever funny when it is trying to be and try it does.  Unfocused at best, Vane's screenplay never catches its footing as either a Hollywood send-up or a macabre spoof, even as the bodies start piling up.  The cheap production values hardly help, and it is more awkwardly tacky than anything, but this may also be exactly what entices some viewers to it.

80's American Horror Part One-Hundred and Nine

FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND

(1981)

Dir - Jerry Warren

Overall: WOOF

If you think that a schlubby asshole with an eye-patch who never, ever stops laughing, random women in jungle bikinis running around, John Carradine providing a talking head cameo from the comfort of his own home, and Cameron Mitchell quoiting Edgar Allan Poe and chewing the scenery in a jail cell all sounds great, then Jerry Warren's final film and first in ten years Frankenstein Island has you covered.  Wildly out of touch for the early 1980s, Warren was allegedly talked back out of retirement by someone who reminded him that low-budget horror still returned a profit, which he foolishly though stopped being a thing throughout the entire decade of the 1970s, apparently.  His work here has all of his clueless hallmarks, (namely zero sense of pacing, a moronic story that haphazardly tosses in macabre cliches, and pathetic production values that are Manos: the Hands of Fate worthy), as well as some past-their-prime actors who make it feel even more dated.  The movie would be unacceptable even for the 1950s, but it has an extra level of embarrassment having emerged the same year that the slasher boom was underway and after so many independent filmmakers had made actual real movies within similarly meager means.

JAWS OF SATAN

(1982)

Dir - Bob Claver

Overall: MEH

The only theatrically released film from television director Bob Claver, Jaws of Satan, (King Cobra), is unique amongst animal horror movies in that it somehow manages to shoehorn a demonic angle into its tale about killer serpents.  Shot on location in Alabama with a couple of familiar television and character actors on board, (as well as a ten year-old Christina Applegate), it is a humdrum watch.  The set pieces are consistently dopey, (a guy awkwardly falling out of a moving train, two priests running away from a serpent in a cemetery until one of them scares it away with a crucifix, a woman frozen in fear while waiting for a big strong man to show up and remove the snake in her bed, a random motorcycle rapist, etc), and as the title would suggest, Stephen Spielberg's Jaws is once again mined for plot points as local officials refuse to take the alarming number of snake bites seriously because they are hellbent on opening a dog track.  Claver keeps up a TV movie pace and even though the premise is ridiculous on paper, the presentation never leans into either its goofiness or exploitation value.  Instead, it takes itself too seriously, plods along, and ends with a whimper.

 

NIGHTWISH

(1989)

Dir - Bruce R. Cook
Overall: MEH

One of only two directorial efforts from Bruce R. Cook, Nightwish combines mad scientists, haunted houses, Indian burial grounds, nightmare hallucinations, UFO shenanigans, bug parasites, Satanism, and Brian Thompson running over animals on the highway.  Even amongst other "stupid people in horror movies" behavior, the personnel here exhibit some embarrassing laps in judgement, allowing themselves to go along with the blatantly shady experiments of Jack Starrett's clearly unhinged parapsychologist who at one point manages to handcuff them all together while raising an ectoplasm demon, even though one of the students is fully aware of the doctor's past indiscretions that got him kicked out of two universities.  After this incident and further torture and murder, everyone continues to work with Starrett because this movie assumes that anyone watching it is as dumb as the characters are.  Despite its inconsistent tonal shifts plus how insulting the "everything but the kitchen sink" script is, it has enough desperately silly ideas to keep one invested.  Also, Sean McLin's cinematography has some flare to it and the production design makes solid use out of gooey practical effects, green backlighting, and severed body parts.

80's American Horror Part One-Hundred and Eight

THE DUNGEONMASTER

(1984)

Dir - David Allen/Charles Band/John Carl Buechler/Steve Stafford/Peter Manoogian/Ted Nicolaou/Rosemarie Turko

Overall: MEH

An odd dark fantasy/horror anthology from Charles Band, The Dungeonmaster, (Ragewar: The Challenges of Excalibrate, Digital Knights), has a conventional presentation, just with seven different creative teams stepping in along the way.  This is unusual for a linear tale that finds Jeffrey Byron's computer programmer and his girlfriend getting trapped by Richard Moll in a flamboyant cape and a widows peak wig who chews the scenery as if he is at gun point.  Byron then has to embark on a series of arbitrary challenges, each one with a different writer and director behind them.  The structure is unique in this capacity since it is a series of set pieces instead of individual stories, and all of them are interchangeable from each other stylistically.  In other words, one would not be able to guess that so many hands were involved here unless they saw the credits.  It is a knowingly goofy film with some solid monster make-up and set design, plus dated special effects that along with the movie's title and cyber Dungeons & Dragons premise both firmly root it in the mid 1980s.  Even if nothing memorable happens besides W.A.S.P. randomly showing up, it at least cruises along agreeably.

 

ALIEN OUTLAW

(1985)

Dir - Phil Smoot

Overall: MEH

Phil Smoot only directed two full-length films in his career, (both of which were released in 1985), and Alien Outlaw serves as a hillbilly Western/sci-fi/horror/action movie with a female hero that is nowhere near as fun as it sounds.  It suffers by way of some of the same problems that Smoot's Native American zombie romp The Dark Power does, namely that the story is hare-brained and takes too long to get going.  The writer/director at least keeps the doofy tone in check, with purposely silly dialog, a horrendous keyboard score that plays uninterrupted, and none of the actors taking things seriously.  It picks up by the third act when Kari Anderson's leggy gunslinger babe finally starts doing battle against the crashed water-dwelling extraterrestrials that also know how to use six-shooters and ride horses in this universe, but the large crop of local yokels are given too much screen time before that.  They have such distinguishing qualities such as "fat", "horny", and "old", and Lash LaRue does not even get to use a whip in a scenario that would have been completely appropriate to do so.  It stays in its lane better than most regional pieces of hogwash, (plus there are naked ladies and Predator-esque bad guys blowing up), so one cannot complain too much.

THE OUTING
(1987)
Dir - Tom Daley
Overall: MEH

Director Tom Daley only made one movie in his career, the dopey supernatural slasher The Outing, (The Lamp), which takes the concept of a malevolent djinn and does lackluster things with it.  Shot in Huston with a cast of people that nobody has ever heard of, (save for Deborah Winters who at least has a couple of other things on her resume), it comes up with one half-assed excuse after the other for a magical lamp to start arbitrarily doing things.  At first, it is discovered in the wall of an old lady's house who forgets how to talk when a bunch of scumbags decide to rob and murder her, then it ends up in a museum where a curator's daughter puts on a necklace and invites her friends over to sleep in the basement, only for more deaths to pile up long before we actually meet the diabolical genie in the bottle.  Besides the aforementioned criminal gang from the opening, we are also blessed with two rapist, racist, thirty year-old high school sociopaths who at least have some personality compared to the other stock characters on screen who merely serve as murder fodder.  The kills have no rhyme or reason to them and are also lame, plus the practical effects are of the bad make-up/rubber puppet variety.

80's American Horror Part One-Hundred and Seven

DRAGONSLAYER

(1981)

Dir - Matthew Robbins

Overall: GOOD

 

Notable as the first non Lucasfilm movie to utilize ILM for its special effects as well as one of a handful of more adult-themed Disney co-productions that were made in the early 1980s, Dragonslayer is a formulaic dark fantasy effort that has the usual pluses and minuses of such works.  It is namely the special effects that deserve the most praise, with a forth of the budget allegedly going towards the four-hundred year-old dragon Vermithrax Pejorative alone.  Though the creature fails to blend into the background convincingly, the motion control automation and mechanical design is top notch and easily represents one of the best on-screen dragons that there ever was.  Since the story is set during the sixth century and the primary theme is that the old ways of magic are now giving way to a new form of superstition in the form of Christianity, the production design is well-lived in and unromanticized, far removed from the type of otherworldly glamor found in other fantasy epics.  With so much emphasis spent on the film's visual detail, unfortunately the story by director Matthew Robbins and co-screenwriter Hal Barwood takes a backseat and largely revolves around cliches with the underdog sorcerer's apprentice, his wise old master refusing to tell him pivotal information until the time is right, a no-nonsense woman parading as a boy to avoid detection, a proud princess with a sentimental king, and a stock bad guy who is just there in order to give the audience someone to hate.

THE DARK POWER

(1985)

Dir - Phil Smoot

Overall: MEH

The first of only two full-lengths to be directed by cameraman Phil Smoot, The Dark Power takes such an unforgivably long time to get to anything that is remotely interesting that when it does, the damage is done and it delivers too little too late.  Shot on location at Belews Creek, North Carolina, its cast is almost exclusively made up of local folk, except for old school Western star Lash LaRue who dusts off his whip against a horde of Native American zombies that do not show up until forty-eight minutes in when an undead hand emerges from the ground.  Before that, good luck not bailing on the entire thing.  Several either lame or obnoxious characters hold up in a newly acquired house that was owned by a recently deceased shaman while LaRue and some reporter lady make small expository dialog talk that is about as exciting as it sounds.  One of the young ladies is a flagrant racist which is hilarious in its ridiculousness, but her brother is the epitome of horny douche bro and sadly, it also takes way too long for him to die a grisly death.  The zombie make-up and eventual gore is fun, plus Smoot sometimes remembers to keep the tone light and stupid, but this needs to be about half the length to be feel tolerable.

 

HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN

(1988)

Dir - Donald G. Jackson/R.J. Kizer

Overall: GOOD

"We're gonna get 'em out and then you're gonna get 'em pregnant".  This line of dialog crystalizes the ridiculous premise of Hell Comes to Frogtown; a movie that should hardly take itself so seriously on account of its title alone.  In this respect, Roddy Piper 'twas a silly man and he is ideally cast here as a nomad with a golden appendage who is tasked by the government to head into mutant territory after a nuclear fallout in order to rescue fertile women so that he can knock them all up in order to perpetuate the human race.  Piper breezes through the witty banter, females throwing themselves at him, (including a frog lady), and some less than awe-inspiring action sequences, joined by a small handful of familiar faces including Rory Calhoun and Sandahl Bergman.  The reptilian costumes and make-up are hardly convincing, but they slam home a tone that is more shameless B-movie than sleazy exploitation, even if the plot has some eyebrow raising details to it, (i.e. Piper is instructed by his scantily-clad superior to rape a drugged women in the middle of the wilderness).  Still, directors Donald G. Jackson and R.J. Kizer, plus producer/co-writer Randall Frakes all make the most out of their small budget, and even if the film is clumsy at regular intervals, it stays in its lane and has its goofball heart in the right place.