Dir - Peter F. Buffa
Overall: MEH
Native American slasher films are hardly a dime a dozen, making The Ghost Dance a unique if still unremarkable piece of work. That said, the movie takes a surprisingly subdued approach to its subject matter, at least as much as it can afford due to its minimal production means. The only movie from director Peter F. Buffa, he keeps the scary music at bay and when it is utilized, we are treated to droney chanting instead of cheap keyboard punctuations. Many scenes play out to an eerie stillness, enough in fact that this bypasses the cliche of only making things quiet when a boo scare is about to erupt. Kill scenes are minimal and there is nothing frighting or revolutionary in Buffa and co-screenwriter Robert Sutton's script, (Julie Amato digs up an Indian warrior's corpse, it possess a man, people die, yawn), but the dreary atmosphere never lets up. Because this premise has little meat on its bones though, too little happens to keep things interesting, which is shame since the care was taken to compensate for its shortcomings with an actual spooky presentation.
Dir - Worth Keeter
Overall: WOOF
1983 was the year of the 3-D horror movie and Dogs of Hell, (Rottweiler 3-D, Rottweiler, Rotrweiler: The Dogs of Hell), was the first of six of them that Earl Owensby Studios produced that decade. It is also one of several killer pooch films and a lousy one at that. Shot in North Carolina and boring as all get-out, regional director Worth Keeter has his local southern-accented cast share an endless amount of dialog exchanges with each other, all while the camera lingers on things like people driving up to a place, walking to doors, walking away from a bar, and just standing around watching other people talking. Only occasionally do we get any moments where a crashed truck full of trained rottweilers goes after a few hapless victims, and none of these kill scenes have any suspense or inventiveness to them. It makes the grievous mistake of forgetting to deliver on either its 3-D gimmick or any exploitative nature horror shenanigans, since doing so costs money and there is clearly little of that to go around within such a D-rent production as this. When almost all that you have is some dogs and no-name actors playing characters that you do not care about who discuss trivial things, presenting it as anything that anyone would ever want to sit through proves to be a futile endeavor.
(1989)
Dir - Michael Schroeder
Overall: MEH
An American giallo-styled slasher film from producer Paul Bartel and director Michael Schroeder, Out of the Dark is spearheaded by an all star cast that elevates its trash value, but it is not fully-formed from a narrative perspective. It takes a hard boiled "only in the movies" approach to its initial phone sex hotline establishment where Karen Black works as a madame of sorts and aspiring actors do the whole hot and bothered thing for their customers. While this introduces our likeable characters and eventual victims, things begin to deteriorate into a loose plot about a boring misogynistic asshole with a clown mask on, (cue eyeball-rolling), who starts murdering the callgirls. The killer reveal is lame, the killer is lame, the ending is lame, and the tone is inconsistent, with some questionable character behavior like the cops staging a botched steak-out and Cameron Dye and Lynn Danielson-Rosenthal's couple being perpetually horny even as their friends keep getting murdered around them. Still, Black, Bud Cort, Geoffrey Lewis, Tracey Walker, Starr Andreeff, and even Divine in his last screen appearance before his death, (also not in drag), add some professional charm to the proceedings, even if their characters are underwritten and/or get a limited amount of screen time.
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