(1986)
Dir - William J. Oats
Overall: WOOF
The only film of any kind from writer/director William J. Oats is a bizarre and terrible one. Evil in the Woods is a forth wall-breaking comedy variation of The Neverending Story, meets Z-grade Bigfoot movie, meets John Waters movie, meets The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It is an abysmal and confounding watch that haphazardly bounces around between a little boy reading the book of the title, the same little boy getting captured by a witch and some redneck ogres, and a film crew getting horny, getting high, getting laid, getting gay, and making some indecipherable nonsense with a Sasquatch and aliens in it. Shot-on-video for negative dollars, these poor actors give horrendous performances, plus Oats seems to have no idea what he is doing from behind the lens or from behind the screenwriter's chair. The tone is goofy and going for meta juvenile tomfoolery, which is to its advantage since making fun of how terrible it is at least forgives how terrible it is. That said, as far as something that is fun to laugh at, sadly this is not the case. It feels nine hours longer than it is and is more grating than fascinating, (the characters are all insufferable morons and there is some unnecessary yee-haw narration that will make you want to punch the screen), but at least that kid has a Live After Death poster on his wall and a Slime Pit next to his bed.
(1988)
Dir - Carl Schultz
Overall: MEH
Some straight-faced end of days melodrama from director Carl Schultz, The Seventh Sign has a solid cast and some unwavering, dour atmosphere, but it never becomes as engaging as it pretends to be. There is a lot of Biblical mumbo jumbo in Clifford and Ellen Green's script; some stuff about a pool of souls for newborn babies that is now empty, signs of the apocalypse, Peter Friedman playing the Wandering Jew Cartaphilus, Jürgen Prochnow playing some kind of angel demon whatever, and the second coming of Christ. At the same time, Michael Biehn is a lawyer who is both trying to save his down-syndrome client from the electric chair and trying to save his wife Demi Moore from losing her mind due to a religious prophecy surrounding her pregnancy. It is all related and a lot to take in, so one cannot help but to get lost in the ambitious plotting, but at least this was given a sufficient budget to work with. The weather goes all crazy, Prochnow glows when he is stabbed, the moon turns red, we have a few nightmare flashbacks to Jesus' time, and Moore's contractions seem to usher in the final stages of God's wrath on humanity. It is shot well, acted well, and paced well enough to keep one on board, but it gets lost in its own ambition and becomes unintentionally silly in the process.
(1989)
Dir - Bob Cook
Overall: MEH
An unremarkable anthology film that came and went without any fanfare, Rock-A-Die Baby is hardly worth its catchy title. This was the debut from writer/director/producer Bob Cook who concocted something with three stories and not one but two linking segments, so that is something. One of them concerns a terrible hard rock band who is tasked with writing a song for a horror movie and does so in a cemetery for ambiance, and the other concerns an author mother who regales her daughter with inappropriate bedtime stories. The first tale is set in Vietnam where a tiger lady seduces and then mutilates a small platoon after they have repeated conversations about raping her, the next has college bimbos and mimbos playing strip poker before conducting a seance, and the third has Dick Sargent getting frisky with and then marrying a vampire. Each vignette leans more towards the side of sucks than good, and there is something terribly wrong about a little girl saying things like "That was a great one Mommy! Oo yeah, just the way I like it", after hearing such R-rated fables. There is a groan-worthy twist at the end as well as a montage set to the the band playing some hogwash presumably called "Spooky Lady", but this is a film where one of its biggest foibles, (the unseemly tone), is actually the only thing that it has going for it.
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