(1980)
Dir - Phillip Marshak/Tom McGowan/Gregg G. Tallas
Overall: MEH
Liberally taking some plot details from The Omen, Cataclysm, (The Nightmare Never Ends), has the Devil in the flesh who is portrayed with insufferable smirking annoyance by Robert Bristol, but at least Richard Moll plays a pretentious atheist author and Cameron Mitchell shows up and dances in a nightclub. Three credited directors were responsible for this low-budget quasi-knock-off, (Phillip Marshak, Tom McGowan, and Gregg G. Tallas, respectfully), and parts of the film would be recycled in the cobbled together and awful anthology movie Night Train to Terror. While there are numerous supernaturally-charged set pieces to laugh at due to their awkward presentation, the whole thing still ends up being a bore. This is because Phillip Yordan's script has a repetitive structure of people warning other people about Bristol's immortal evil while being systematically picked off. It is like a slasher movie in this respect, be it one with Nazis, Satan, cops, authors, priests, disco music, and poorly done post-dubbing. Faith Clift comes off the worst in this regard, rendered embarrassingly wooden due to her flat-as-a-board line-readings.
(1983)
Dir - Joe Alves
Overall: WOOF
With a thirty-plus minute first act that is both skippable and ultimately pointless, Jaws 3-D, (Jaws III), gets off to a tortuously dull start, yet it hardly picks up the pace from there. Marking his only directorial effort, production designer Joe Alves took the helm here and he is plagued by a "too many cooks in the kitchen" script that was worked and reworked by several different people, Richard Matheson's initial treatment allegedly being jettisoned beyond recognition. Of course the 3-D gimmick is wasted on any version that does not accommodate the special glasses, and for such a hefty-budgeted studio movie, the special effects leave much to be desired anyway. By far the biggest problem though is the enormous lack of shark action and a pathetically uninteresting story, with known actors playing stock characters that are impossible to give a shit about when every last person going into such a movie will simply be asking "Hey Goober, where's the jaws?". It suffices as a ninety-eight minute commercial for Orlando's Sea World, but sans one or two grisly moments that happen far too late and watching Dennis Quaid, (by his own admittance), jacked-up on cocaine in all of his scenes, it is a colossal nature horror failure.
(1989)
Dir - Richard Alan Greenberg
Overall: MEH
In the wake of Beetlejuice for which this movie can be understandably compared, Vestron Pictures did the more kid-friendly version Little Monsters. A starring vehicle for one of the decade's favorite child actors Fred Savage, it is also notable for featuring an over-the-top performance from Howie Mandel. Depending on one's nostalgia and/or tolerance for Mandel doing a borderline intolerable Daffy Duck via Michael Keaton impression, he is either the best or worst thing about the movie. That said, the story concerns a likeable yet troubled boy finding connection with an underground world of monsters engaging in gleeful anarchy, so Mandel hardly had a choice but to overdo it as a chaos demon. This is strictly geared towards youngsters even if the 1980s were a different time when masturbation jokes, a junior high kid drinking piss, and throwing darts at a restrained child all screamed "family entertainment". The first of only two films directed by visual effects man Richard Alan Greenberg, (as well as the first movie scripted by the team of Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio), all parties involved make inventive use out of a modest budget, but the ending feels rushed, some of the otherworldly rules are flimsy, the tone is inconsistent, and Mandel's incessant cackling is a bit much.
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