(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.
(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.
(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.
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