Dir - Jim Wynorski
Overall: MEH
Sexploitation schlock-peddler Jim Wynorski tackling Edgar Allan Poe? This will either warrant a "Hard pass" or an enthusiastic "Sing me up!" from the viewer, both of which are acceptable responses. The Haunting of Morella is based barely on Poe's 1835 short story "Morella", opening with a witch being condemned at the stake by a shirtless guy in an executioners mask who burns out her eyes with an iron spike, cue King Diamond scream. What follows is Wynorski's usual brand of well-endowed ladies taking their clothes off and doing softcore sexy things, period setting be damned. Though Roger Corman is credited as producer, this bares no hallmarks to his influential and lauded Poe works with Vincent Price for American International Pictures three decades prior. The plot concocted by Wyronoski and co-screenwriter R.J. Robertson has some forward momentum up until a point before it starts to spin its wheels towards the climax, and the set design is aesthetically in-line with Gothic doom and gloom, be it of the sexy B-movie variety. The music is relentless, the acting ham-fisted, the dialog predictable and hackneyed, but hey, naked boobs and resurrected evil witch ladies doing horny things is what the good people want.
Dir - Kevin J. Lindenmuth
Overall: WOOF
The first in a career's worth of no-budget dung heaps from "film"maker Kevin J. Lindenmuth, Vampires and Other Stereotypes is as bad as they get. Shot almost entirely in a warehouse in New Jersey with a cast of shlubs that were presumably picked up at a gas station mere moments before the video cameras were turned on, (oh yes, this is a SOV production because of course it is), the hallmarks of clueless first-time movie-making are strongly represented. No on on screen has any idea how to act, their dialog is redundant and loaded with cliches, said dialog is not properly recorded and completely unintelligible at times, the practical effects are bargain bin cheap, the story about being trapped in hell with different doors leading to different dimensions or who cares is too ambitious for the fifty cent budget, and it is inexplicably talky and ergo boring as all get out. Lindenmuth seems to be trying to make a quirky horror comedy here, which would be adorable if anything that happened had a sense of pacing or was wacky enough to bypass the lifeless presentation. Instead, everyone just seems as disinterested and confused as we are watching them suffer through such painful tripe. Whatever bad movie charm or goofy ideas it has on paper all fail to translate, making this the cinematic equivalent to a rock in your shoe that is only going to make you more uncomfortable until you take it out.
(1997)
Dir - Charles Band
Overall: MEH
Another Romanian-shot cheapie creature feature from Charles Band, Hideous! has the typical Full Moon hallmarks that one would come to expect. The cast is minimal, the on location shooting utilizes few actual locations, the monsters are smaller than human size, and it is knowingly goofy. There are less regular Full Moon players here than usual, sans for softcore scream queen Jacqueline Lovell who was in the similarly veined Head of the Family and The Killer Eye, once again providing some naked boobs as she spends the entire movie either topless or merely wearing an open leather vest, even when robbing a guy at gun point outside in the snow while also wearing a gorilla mask. Always a trooper that Lovell. Elsewhere, the shtick is mildly fun and concerns rival rare specimen collectors who double-cross and/or rob each other and wind up at one of their spacious castles to look for a bunch of tiny creatures that have escaped. The slimy little monstrosities barely do anything and nobody dies until an hour and ten minutes in, so most of the running time amounts to nothing more than tedious bickering between everyone. Even if some of that bickering is amusing, this is an underwhelming effort, which is saying something since it comes from a guy whose cinematic output should always be approached with low expectations.
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