(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.
(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.
(1989)
Dir - Bruce R. Cook
Overall: MEH
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.
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