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Combat Shock, Scared to Death, Vamp

Combat Shock – 1984, US, 91m. Director: Buddy Giovinazzo.

Scared to Death – 1980, US, 95m. Director: William Malone.

Vamp – 1986, US, 92m. Director: Richard Wenk.

COMBAT SHOCK (1984) There have been many films dealing with the repercussions the Vietnam War had on American troops—The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, Born on the Fourth of July. But none of those are as grim as Combat Shock, a miserable movie depicting the last day in the life of a soldier, years after returning home from the war. The vet in question is Frankie Dunlan (Ricky Giovinazzo), an ex-POW who lives in the slums of Staten Island with his nagging wife and deformed baby (the result of Frankie’s exposure to Agent Orange). Frankie loses grip on sanity after dealing with the loan sharks, drug addicts, and child prostitutes that infest his poverty row neighborhood. Like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, Frankie grows tired of the depravity that surrounds him and blows the scumbags away with a revolver. Having lost all sense of reality, he tries to save his family by shooting his wife, cooking the baby in the oven, and committing suicide. There’s a fine line between thoughtful character study and gratuitous violence, but Combat Shock can’t differentiate between the two. Genuinely grotesque—recommended only to those with a stone cold disposition. Not released commercially until 1986. C–

SCARED TO DEATH (1980) The opening shots of this film resemble those of Halloween—POV of a killer looking at a nubile woman through the window—making the viewer believe they’re about to watch another ripoff of the Carpenter film. Instead, Scared to Death takes its cue from another influential movie, Alien, by having a genetically engineered creature stalking the sewers that run underneath a suburban California neighborhood. The monster surfaces at night to maim and kill helpless passersby, which puts the population into a panic thinking the mutilated victims are the work of a Jack the Ripper-type serial killer. A super detective-turned-pulp novelist (John Stinson) is asked by the cops to help in their investigation when the clues dry up, but not before a roller skater is suffocated by the creature’s extra-long tongue. Scared to Death doesn’t have the best production values you’ll ever see—the low grade film stock looks like it belongs to a 1960’s stag flick—but it’s competently acted, and slickly directed by William Malone (1999’s House on Haunted Hill), who even manages to squeeze in a couple of scares. B–

VAMP (1986) Friends encounter a hotbed of vampires inside a night club in this moderately amusing take on movies like Fright Night, Night of the Comet, and other horror comedies of the 1980s. Looking to acquire a stripper for a college party, two frat pledges (Robert Rusler and Chris Makepeace) and a tag-along (Gedde Watanabe) invade the After Dark Club, where the ogling of T&A is interrupted by vampiric dancer Katrina (Grace Jones), who literally puts the bite on Rusler and turns him into a zombified bloodsucker. Makepeace escapes and runs into a pack of albino street punks lead by The Untouchable‘s Billy Drago. Vamp is flashy and often funny, but the characters don’t have a lot to do—especially Jones, whose charismatic presence is wasted in a throwaway role. The late Greg Cannom, who supplied the film’s makeup effects, also worked on The Lost Boys (1987) and Fright Night 2 (1988), making him the reigning expert on eighties vampire carnage. C+

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The Demon, Flavia the Heretic, Link

The Demon – 1981, South Africa, 92m. Director: Percival Rubens

Flavia, the Heretic – 1974, France/Italy, 94m. Director: Gianfranco Mingozzi

Link – 1986, UK, 103m. Director: Richard Franklin

THE DEMON (1981) A silly South African maniac-on-the-loose Halloween clone in which ex-marine-turned-psychic-investigator Cameron Mitchell hunts an unstoppable killer sporting razor-tipped gloves. Jennifer Holmes is the innocent schoolteacher the madman stalks and terrorizes with heavy-breathing phone calls. Mitchell is the Donal Pleasance/Sam Loomis of the film, obsessed in stopping the killer he refers to as “less than a man.” When he’s not dilly-dallying in dark alleyways, the killer tears up pictures of centerfolds in a failed attempt by the writers to give the character depth. The maniac is stopped in his tracks by the sound of a spoken Bible verse from a nearby radio, suggesting some kind of demonic influence—or a hatred of gospel programs. Mitchell is callously killed off (and not by the maniac) halfway through the film, proving just how pointless all of this nonsense is. A bloodless, disjointed mess that went unreleased in the States until 1985. D

FLAVIA, THE HERETIC (1974) (AKA: Flavia, Priestess of Violence) Born into a life of servitude at the turn of the fifteenth century, young Flavia (Florinda Bolkan) slowly rebels against the strict nunnery her father placed her in as a child. After expressing hormonal urges, her friend and fellow sister is subjected to torture at the hands of Flavia’s cruel father (Diego Michelotti), who spills boiling tar on the woman before cutting off her nipples. Flavia escapes her harsh reality and joins forces with an invading Muslim army, trading her habit for armor and steel. She orders several Muslim men to give a Catholic rapist a taste of his own medicine before slashing his throat and bleeding him like a pig. Flavia’s bloodthirsty revenge culminates in the murder of her father and destruction of the convent—a monk’s brutal impalement via spear through the rectum is just additional gratuitous violence for the gore lover. Her fate is eventually sealed by the surviving Catholics, who brand her a heretic and skin her alive in an appropriately gruesome ending to this better than usual nunsploitation epic. C+

LINK (1986) A zoology student (Elisabeth Shue) takes an assistant’s position to an arrogant professor (Terence Stamp) at his country estate, where he lives with three chimps he’s researching, including ex-circus performer Link. Stamp treats Link as a servant, which rubs Shue the wrong way—especially when Link begins acting erratically by trying to burn the place down with matches and later brutally killing a dog. After Stamp mysteriously disappears, Link’s aggression hits a boiling point and Shue is trapped in the house with the psychotic chimp. A silly screenplay is treated well thanks to director Richard Franklin’s (Psycho II) eye for suspense—especially during the third act—and an appealing turn by Shue, who doesn’t play the role as a whimpering coward but as a smart and believable character. It’s no King Kong but Link is enjoyable enough for the offbeat simian-horror admirer. B–

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Cameron’s Closet, Night of the Zombies, Stagefright

Cameron’s Closet – 1989, UK/US, 88m. Director: Armand Mastroianni

Night of the Zombies – 1981, US, 86m. Director: Joel M. Reed

Stagefright – 1987, Italy, 90m. Director: Michael Soavi

CAMERON’S CLOSET (1989) Young Cameron (Scott Curtis) accidentally summons a demon thanks to the kid’s overzealous father (Tab Hunter), who was abusing Cameron’s telekinetic powers for personal gain. Hunter is subsequently dispatched, forcing Cameron to move in with his negligible mother. The demon eventually takes up residence in Cameron’s new digs (the closet, specifically) and waylays anybody who’s a threat to it or the boy—including the mom’s scumbag boyfriend, whose head the demon wastes no time in burning the eyes out of. A detective (Cotter Smith) must venture into dream territory in order to stop the evil from consuming Cameron in a climax reminiscent of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, which is just one of many franchises this film borrows from. The special FX are mostly impressive, but the monster, once revealed, is underwhelming. Cameron’s Closet was produced by Smart Egg Pictures, the same production company that financed the majority of the Elm Streets, which hints at the lack of originality found in the screenplay. C

NIGHT OF THE ZOMBIES (1981) World War II German soldiers transformed into zombies by chemical warfare attack any persons who enter their territory in the Bavarian Alps. When the CIA sends their best man (Jamie Gillis) to search for a couple of missing scientists, the zombies crawl out of the woodwork. The only good thing I can say about Night of the Zombies is that it’s slightly better than the similar Oasis of the Zombies (1982), which is like saying a UTI is better than an STD. Porn star Gillis performs like a low-rent James Bond but comes off more like Mark Wahlberg’s Brock Landers from Boogie Nights (1997) without the punchline. The movie is sometimes credited as Night of the Zombies II to appear to be a sequel to the more entertaining European production Hell of the Living Dead (1980), which was originally released in the US as Night of the Zombies. Watch that one, skip this. F

STAGEFRIGHT (1987) (AKA: Aquarius) The cast and crew of a second-rate off-Broadway-like musical about a skid row slasher are murdered in real life by an actual killer who’s infiltrated the production. The maniac (Clain Parker), a former actor driven insane by the craft, takes his profession one step too far by going method and turning into Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Leatherface, and every other famous madman who’s come before him by donning a stage mask and turning the usual psycho-killer tricks. Parker kills one of the actors and takes over their role during a scene rehearsal where he stabs an actress on stage. The production manager has his torso skewered with a power drill while blocking a door. The show’s director (David Brandon) mistakes one of the actors for the killer and hacks him up with an axe; Brandon later gets his arm and head removed with a chainsaw. Stagefright exhibits enthusiasm for the subgenre by offering plenty of splatter and at a fast pace—most of the cast is killed off by the second act—but its characters come off more as caricatures (the flamboyantly gay dancer, the bitchy diva, the cruel theater director, etc.), which eliminates a lot of sympathy from the viewer. One of Dario Argento protégé Michael Soavi’s better films, but like the bulk of the director’s work, Stagefright is more style over substance. Co-writer George Eastman is actual Luigi Montefiori, better known to Italian horror movie lovers as cannibalistic psychopath Klaus Wortmann from the gore classic Anthropophagus (1980). C+

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Bloodrage, Open House, Prime Evil

Bloodrage – 1980, US, 78m. Director: Joseph Zito.

Open House – 1987, US, 95m. Director: Jag Mundhra.

Prime Evil – 1988, US, 87m. Director: Roberta Findlay.

BLOODRAGE (1980) (AKA: Never Pick Up a Stranger) A high-strung loser (Ian Scott) discovers his bloodlust after accidentally killing a prostitute. Scott then heads to New York City to indulge in his new favorite pastime, unaware he’s being followed by the cop boyfriend (James Johnson) of his first victim. The Taxi Driver influences seep through as we’re forced to listen to Scott’s voiceover ramblings about his distaste for humanity. The film then switches to Rear Window territory—the screenwriter is clearly a cinephile—as Scott develops a Peeping Tom fascination with the pretty street walker who lives across the way. Scott’s obsessive behavior is interrupted by his loudmouth roommate who, after berating her sleazoid boyfriend, suggests Scott is gay for not sleeping with her. In keeping with the misogynistic theme of the script, all of the women in Bloodrage are portrayed as nagging whores—the male characters aren’t depicted any better, with the majority being pimps, morons, or general scumbags. But the real moment of Bloodrage‘s complete lack of sympathy is when Scott, in a fit of rage, throws a small dog through a plate glass window. A bewildering and tasteless movie that’s not to be missed under any circumstances! From the future director of Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter. B

OPEN HOUSE (1987) The real estate agents of an upper-class L.A. suburb are done in by a psychotic vagrant in this sleazy, low-grade slasher. The opening is a doozy: a scatter-brained realtor discovers the fly-ridden corpse of her colleague in the bathtub during an open house. The lunatic, dubbed the “Open House Killer” by the press, later takes a baseball bat embedded with razor blades to an agent and her horny client—the killer even steals the man’s severed fingers. After slicing up his victims, the maniac calls in to a radio talk show hosted by callous psychologist Joseph Bottoms whose real estate mogul girlfriend (Adrienne Barbeau) is high on the hit list. Open House delivers some gory delights, but it’s everything in between that feels lackluster, especially Bottoms’ character, who comes off as a cold jerk. Barbeau is wasted in a limited role. C–

PRIME EVIL (1988) A society of devil-worshippers formed in the 14th century is operating in modern day New York City. The Catholic Church sends a nun (Mavis Harris) with prophetic dreams to infiltrate the sect, but this semi-interesting character is mostly ignored until the script needs her to speak in expositional phrases. Instead, the story centers on Alexandra (Christina Moore), an apathetic young woman targeted by her wicked grandfather (Max Jacobs) as a sacrifice for the cult. Alexandra is so oblivious to her surroundings that she doesn’t seem worried when her friends are kidnapped and/or murdered. In an unbelievable plot twist, Alexandra allows herself to be seduced by a priest (William Beckwith) who just happens to be the leader of the devil sect. All this nonsense is just another trashy opus from the queen of eighties trash cinema, Roberta Findlay (Blood Sisters, Lurkers, etc.). Since this is better acted and photographed than the majority of her work, you might call Prime Evil Findlay’s pièce de résistance. D

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Prom Night and Sequels

PROM NIGHT (1980) A group of snotty seniors at prestigious Hamilton High are being targeted by a balaclava-wearing madman, the victims all having a secret connection to the accidental death of a childhood friend. The main suspect is an escaped murderer who was originally arrested for the kid’s death six years earlier, but the real maniac is most likely: a) Mr. Hammond (Leslie Nielsen), the school principal and father of the deceased child; b) Wendy (Anne-Marie Martin), the Queen Bee and organizer of the cover-up; c) Mr. Sykes (Robert Silverman), the horny groundskeeper who likes his enormous tree saw a little too much; and d) Alex (Michael Tough), the violent sibling of the aforementioned accident victim. The plot crescendos on the night of the spring prom when the killer goes axe-happy, chopping the cast to pieces, and going head-to-head with prom queen Jamie Lee Curtis. A good cast—Curtis gives one of her better post-Halloween Scream Queen performances—taut direction by Paul Lynch, and a thumping disco soundtrack help to rise Prom Night above the plethora of psycho-slashers of the time. B+

HELLO MARY LOU: PROM NIGHT II (1987) This in-name only sequel to the 1980 Jamie Lee Curtis original suggests what might happen if Carrie White came back from the dead as a Freddy Krueger-like monster. After going up in flames 30 years ago—the result of a prank gone wrong—prom queen Mary Lou Maloney (Lisa Schrage) enacts revenge by returning from the grave a spiteful ghost and going after those responsible for her death. Good girl Vicki (Wendy Lyon) is manipulated into becoming a flesh-and-blood host for Mary Lou, and allowing the Prom Queen from Hell to walk the halls of Hamilton High and slaughter at will. The perpetual bad girl, Mary Lou/Vicki doesn’t stop at just revenge, and dispatches anyone who gets in the way of her becoming prom queen all over again. (A computer nerd bribed into rigging the contest is short-circuited and turned into a human french fry.) Mary Lou’s otherworldly powers culminate when she literally rips out of Vicki’s body on stage and turns the prom upside down. It often feels like a ripoff of Carrie and A Nightmare on Elm Street, but Prom Night II is actually a clever movie filled with inventive special effects—including an impressive scene where a woman is swallowed into a blackboard that turns into a swirling whirlpool—and well-written characters who feel like authentic teens. Originally called The Haunting of Hamilton High until some brilliant distributor thought the Prom Night brand still had relevance. It didn’t, and the movie tanked in theaters before finding an audience on videocassette. B

PROM NIGHT III: THE LAST KISS (1990) Since her reign of terror in Prom Night II, Prom Queen mass murderer, Mary Lou Maloney (Courtney Taylor), has been held captive in Prom Hell. After cutting through her chains with a nail file, Mary Lou heads back the hallways of Hamilton High, where she immediately begins picking off school employees in comical fashion. “It wasn’t a person. It was a guidance counselor!” Mary Lou then sets her eyes on class nerd Alex (Tim Conlon), using him as a puppet to bring her more souls for her buffet of carnage. In return, she transforms Alex into the perfect student, even allowing him to score a touchdown for the football team. Alex eventually tires of Mary Lou’s bloodshed and wants out of their demented symbiotic relationship, but not before Ms. Maloney steals Alex away to Hell—which is 1957 Hamilton High, the night Mary Lou was crowned Prom Queen. Taylor is funny, Conlon makes for a likable schmuck, and there are several imaginative set pieces, including a flying football that turns into a metal spike and impales the school bully. Prom Night III ultimately shoots itself in the foot by offering a clever twist ending that it drops the ball on way too quickly, leaving the viewer somewhat dissatisfied. Still, harmless fun. B–

PROM NIGHT IV: DELIVER US FROM EVIL (1991) In 1957—the same night Mary Lou Maloney perished in a fire; see: Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987)—a psycho priest (Jimmy Carver) with chiseled abs and bad hair slaughters two teenagers in the backseat of their car. Three decades later, the maniac (who’s been kept in a drug-induced coma by a secret society of priests) awakens and goes after a group of kids on prom night. Believing he’s doing God’s work, Carver punishes the libidinous teens by ramming a knife fashioned out of a crucifix through their skulls and afterward atoning for his sins with self-flagellation. Prom Night IV diverges from the series by offering a new storyline unrelated to the previous films, but the script is often predictable and the direction too dry to muster much excitement. That’s not to say the movie doesn’t have its moments; it does in the form of two characters nailed to crosses and immolated to the horror of their friends. If anything, Prom Night IV proves to be a serviceable final entry in the Canadian franchise before Hollywood came a’knockin’ in 2008 with a pitiful remake. C+

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The Alien Factor, Ghostkeeper, Swingers Massacre

The Alien Factor – 1978, US, 80m. Director: Don Dohler.

Ghostkeeper – 1981, Canada, 89m. DirectorL: Jim Makichuk.

Swingers Massacre – 1974, US, 100m. Director: Ronald Victor Garcia.

THE ALIEN FACTOR (1978) Inhabitants of a small town are stalked and maimed by a trio of stranded aliens that have crash landed in the nearby woods. Shotgun-toting hicks venture out to look for a missing friend and come face to face with one of the insect-like extraterrestrials that kills the humans within a few seconds. A friendly alien arrives in the form of a man to track and capture the rampaging beasties and discovers the murderous aliens were part of an intergalactic specimen convoy that got lost in transit before crashing to Earth. No-budget monster movie auteur Don Dohler’s first feature film is a wonder of inept backyard filmmaking, but much like the director’s later efforts, The Alien Factor is hypnotically entertaining—and would make a good double feature with Dohler’s own semi-remake, Nightbeast (1982). B–

GHOSTKEEPER (1981) Three boring friends on a boring snowmobile excursion find themselves stranded in an abandoned ski lodge in this boring Canadian hodgepodge that borrows heavily from The Sentinel and The Shining. The characters are forced to spend the night in the lodge unaware that the place is occupied by an old woman (Georgie Collins) and her sons—one of whom kills the travelers and uses their bodies as a food source for his disfigured brother who’s locked away in the basement. Throats are slashed and torsos are impaled until the last woman standing (Riva Spier) discovers she’s next in a long line of human guardians who must protect the population from the Wendigo, a cannibalistic spirit that is currently being kept at bay within the cellar-dwelling brother. Stiffly acted and flatly directed—don’t be surprised if this one puts you to sleep. C–

SWINGERS MASSACRE (1974) (AKA: Inside Amy) A lustful divorce lawyer (James R. Sweeney) brings his uptight wife (Jan Mitchell) to a swingers party where she becomes the star attraction—and he’s left with blue balls and jealous rage. The experience turns Sweeney impotent, fueling his psychosis and psychopathic urges, which he ultimately takes out on the men from the party. He straps two of them to the front seats of their cars and pumps in exhaust fumes. A detective asks the wife of one of the victims if her husband was involved in a homosexual suicide pact, to which the cop adds, “We’re living in the land of fruits and nuts.” (And that’s the best scene in the movie!) Sweeney continues his massacre while thoughts of his wife’s newfound sexuality run through his mind, culminating in Sweeney taking a sniper rifle to the man who called Mitchell an animal in the sack. Swingers Massacre is ugly, and not just because of the early seventies fashions. The screenplay is humorless and the characters are not worth giving a damn about, making the production feel like a pro-monogamy message movie, or an anti-feminism vehicle. Either way, the viewer loses. D

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The Beast Within, Graduation Day, TerrorVision

The Beast Within – 1982, US, 98m. Director: Philippe Mora.

Graduation Day – 1981, US, 95m. Director: Herb Freed.

TerrorVision – 1986, Italy/US, 85m. Director: Ted Nicolaou.

THE BEAST WITHIN (1982) The rape of a woman by some kind of insect-like creature produces a seemingly normal child who, seventeen years later, begins to exhibit daddy’s complexion and habit of drinking human blood. The backwoods town where the rape was committed tries to conceal the truth about the origin of the monster until its teenage offspring (Paul Clemens) shows up and goes on a killing spree. The Beast Within isn’t a werewolf story but it functions in many of the same ways by drawing inspiration from the classics—the father/son relationship is ripped straight from The Wolf Man (1941). The movie mixes its old school elements with modern tech by offering lots of bloody deaths, and the centerpiece “transformation” scene that’s a showcase for Tom Burman’s drastically overused bladder makeup effects. An interesting idea created from bits and pieces of other movies that never materialized into a cohesive film, The Beast Within is a missed opportunity. Director Philipe Mora would go on to tackle similar themes in Howling II and Howling III, both of which make this one seem good by comparison. C

GRADUATION DAY (1981) A killer seeks revenge against the members of a high school track team after one of their own dies of a heart attack during a meet. Those with a motive to kill include the high-strung track coach (Christopher George), the military-trained older sister (Patch Mackenzie) and the moody boyfriend (E. Danny Murphy) of the heart attack victim, and the school principal (Michael Pataki) who keeps a collection of switchblades in his desk. The eventual unmasking of the murderer comes as no surprise to anyone with half a brain, which is just one of the many bumps in this uncreative slasher featuring some of the lamest splatter effects this side of Friday the 13th. Dull and highly moronic. C–

TERRORVISION (1986) A television-obsessed family receives an alien transmission through their new satellite dish in the form of a slimy monster. The creature liquifies the grandfather into a puddle and laps up the bodily remains with its giant tongue. The clueless parents (Gerrit Graham and Mary Woronov)—wannabe swingers who still think it’s 1975—don’t believe their son (Chad Allen) when he tells them about the alien, which can somehow zap itself back into the TV set whenever its convenient. Allen and teen sis Diane Franklin try to domesticate the alien into becoming the family pet, until the critter realizes it prefers the taste of humans to frozen dinners. Terror wins in the end when the monster turns an Elvira-like TV host into its puppet with plans of using her television studio to enter living rooms throughout America. TerrorVision is often funny and its depiction of a dysfunctional, post-modern nuclear family predates The Simpsons and Tim Burton by several years. The film’s concept, while amusing, runs out of ideas and at a certain point becomes a one-note joke. Still, this is one of Empire’s better offerings. C+

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Alien 2, Faceless, New Year’s Evil

Alien 2: On Earth – 1980, Italy, 91m. Director: Ciro Ippolito.

Faceless – 1988, France, 97m. Director: Jess Franco.

New Year’s Evil – 1980, US, 85m. Director: Emmett Alston.

ALIEN 2: ON EARTH (1980) (AKA: Alien Terror) An excruciatingly bad Italian production that tried to hoodwink audiences into thinking it was a legitimate sequel to Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), but in actuality was nothing more than a lousy ripoff. Alien eggs arrive on Earth and release parasitic creatures that gestate inside humans before ripping out of them for no reason other than for the special effects people to show off some cheap but graphic gore. The budget of Alien 2 was obviously very low, which explains why eighty percent of the movie takes place in underground caverns—the dark environment is a clever way of imitating an outer space-like atmosphere, but in terms of advancing the plot it’s more of a dead end (just like this movie). 20th Century Fox sued the filmmakers of Alien 2: On Earth for blatant misuse of the Alien title, but were unsuccessful. Luckily, Alien 2 was ignored by audiences and has since been mostly forgotten, which, in this day and age of cult movie fervor, says a lot. F

FACELESS (1988) A plastic surgeon (Helmut Berger) kidnaps women to his private clinic where he experiments in removing their skin in order to restore his sister’s disfigured face. The victims are kept half-clothed in padded cells, giving the film an ample number of gratuitous tit shots. When the imprisoned act up they’re quickly dispatched by the surgeon’s henchman (Gérard Zalcberg), including one woman whose hands are chopped off with a meat cleaver. Zalcberg rapes a model (Caroline Munro) and is reprimanded for ruining the “product.” One of Berger’s nosy patients gets wind of the doctor’s criminal activities and ends up having a hypodermic needle shoved into her eyeball. Berger hires Josef Mengele’s protégé (Anton Diffring) to help graft living flesh onto his sister, which ends in a failed and genuinely gross experiment—the patient’s head is later chainsawed off while still alive in a scene that would make Art the Clown from the Terrifier movies proud. The culmination of this fantastically trashy European gore epic comes when a woman’s face is removed Face/Off style while the poor girl is still conscious. The late Berger (who was infamously known for being Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti’s lover) is authentically chilly, which is more then I can say about Chris Mitchum (Robert’s son), whose performance as a private eye is about as lively as a rock. B

NEW YEAR’S EVIL (1980) A serial killer who calls himself Evil (Kip Niven) is running around murdering women whenever the clock strikes midnight in each time zone on New Year’s Eve. After shedding blood, Evil calls into a live televised holiday show hosted by a popular rock DJ (Roz Kelly) to brag about his homicidal activities. Niven played psycho cop Astrachan in the Dirty Harry classic Magnum Force (1973) and seems to relish in the role of Evil, which makes his character feel authentically deranged. Kelly, on the other hand, feels unconvincing and mostly pulls her punches in a role that should exude energy. (Kelly is known for being Henry Winkler’s girlfriend, Pinky Tuscadero, in a short-lived stint on Happy Days before she was written out of the TV series for creative differences.) The rest of New Year’s Evil is fairly engaging hokum featuring more than its share of suspense and thrills, as well as the required splatter, and a plot twist that actually works. B–

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Frankenstein Unbound, Lady in White, Nightbeast

Frankenstein Unbound – 1990, Italy/US, 85m. Director: Roger Corman.

Lady in White – 1988, US, 113m. Director: Frank LaLoggia.

Nightbeast – 1982, US, 81m. Director: Don Dohler.

FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND (1990) A ridiculous interpretation of the Mary Shelley novel (based on a 1973 paperback) that involves everything from time travel to futuristic talking cars. Scientist John Hurt is zapped from 2031 Los Angeles to 1817 Switzerland where he meets Shelley (a miscast Bridget Fonda) just when she’s about to write her masterpiece, Frankenstein, or the Post Modern Prometheus—a novel based on the real Dr. Frankenstein (Raul Julia) and his monstrous creation (Nick Brimble). Naturally, the monster is just misunderstood and resents Dr. F for having created him, but that doesn’t stop Brimble from ripping people to pieces whenever he feels threatened, particularly in a scene where the monster is confronted by an angry mob. The monster threatens Frankenstein with more violence unless he’s given a female companion, something Frankenstein does begrudgingly before Hurt (who despises what Frankenstein represents) sends them through time with his computer-age tech. Julia and Hurt are good, but the story is mostly preposterous, and the monster’s makeup more distracting than effective—something that would be handled much better in the bloated 1994 Kenneth Branagh-directed version. Even Hammer’s splatter-strewn Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974) has more soul than this empty vehicle. C–

LADY IN WHITE (1988) A well-done mystery in which horror writer Frankie Scarlatti recalls how in 1962 he saw a ghost and subsequently became embroiled in the activities of a child murderer. Witness‘s Lukas Haas plays young Frankie, a sweet-natured kid who’s locked in a school’s closet over Halloween night and sees the decades-old murder of a little girl reenacted by the spirit of the victim. As events unfold, Frankie believes he can identify the killer—and that he’s being watched over by an enigmatic (and possibly ghostly) woman in white (Katherine Helmond)—putting his life in danger. Haas is good, and the script, while often melodramatic, is effective, with an old fashioned storytelling narrative—a fact that may have led to the film’s failure to find an audience during the height of more FX-fueled fair like the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. A thoughtful, character-driven chiller. B

NIGHTBEAST (1982) A vicious alien crash-lands in the boonies and goes on a killing spree. A trio of flannel shirt-wearing bumpkins are vaporized by the alien’s ray gun, followed by a man getting his eye gouged out after he pulls over to take a leak. Another has his intestines ripped out right before a couple of kids are ray-gunned. And all of this is within the first fifteen minutes! After a failed gun battle with the extraterrestrial, the police accept their loses—which includes most of their deputies—and go back to the station for a cup of coffee before recruiting more good ol’ boys with shotguns. An obvious lack of finances keeps the majority of the action in the woods, including a brawl between the hero and a beer-guzzling hick. Most of the townsfolk are wiped out by the beast, leaving the sheriff and his deputy girlfriend—the two have a protracted and howlingly awful love scene—in charge of trying to destroy the creature with electricity. Like the acting and special effects, the production as a whole is strictly amateur, although one can appreciate the amount of care that went into the film no matter how bare-bones it may seem. It’s all sophomoric and dumb, but entertaining nonetheless. Lost‘s J.J. Abrams co-wrote Nightbeast‘s musical score when he was a teenager. B–

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Bride of Re-Animator, He Knows You’re Alone, Night of the Werewolf

Bride of Re-Animator – 1990, US, 96m. Director: Brian Yuzna.

He Knows You’re Alone – 1980, US, 93m. Director: Armand Mastroianni.

The Night of the Werewolf – 1981, Spain, 92m. Director: Paul Naschy.

BRIDE OF RE-ANIMATOR (1990) Demented Dr. Herbert West is up to his old tricks again in this lively but unnecessary sequel. Continuing his experiments in the creation of life, Dr. West (Jeffrey Combs) discovers that his “re-agent” serum works best in reanimating individual body parts, which gives him the idea of becoming a modern Dr. Frankenstein by building a female mate for his partner in crime (Bruce Abbott) by using the heart of Abbott’s deceased fiancée (played by Barbara Campton in the first film). Meanwhile, a nosy colleague over at West’s old stomping ground of Miskatonic University uses the serum to reanimate the rotting head of Dr. Hill (David Gale) to uncover the truth behind the events of Re-Animator. The special makeup effects supplied by Screaming Mad George and K.N.B. EFX are inventive and genuinely disgusting, but they don’t advance the plot like they did in the Stuart Gordon original, instead they serve to distract from the lack of story in the screenplay. The bride of the title doesn’t even appear until the last 20 minutes of the movie, but thanks to Kathleen Kinmont’s performance, it’s worth the wait—as is the appropriately gore-drenched climax. A worthy if underwhelming follow-up. C+

HE KNOWS YOU’RE ALONE (1980) A frightened woman watching a horror movie about a killer is murdered in the theater by someone with a large knife—he stabs her by pushing the blade through the back of her seat. This effective opening is one of the highlights of an otherwise routine slasher film about a maniac targeting brides-to-be. The killer (Tom Rolfing) escapes the theater and moves on to terrorizing a college student (Caitlin O’Heaney) who’s about to take her vows. The screenplay uses shadows and suggestion instead of graphic violence (a decapitation notwithstanding) to arouse suspense—a trick used more successfully in Halloween, which this film imitates in many ways. But that shouldn’t prevent one from enjoying He Knows You’re Alone, which is slickly directed and features more characterization than your normal body count production. B–

THE NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF (1981) (AKA: The Craving) This ninth entry in the Paul Naschy/Waldemar Daninsky werewolf saga from Spain offers fans something different in that Naschy himself wrote and directed Night of the Werewolf. Daninsky is a sixteenth century wolfman who’s brought back from the dead in modern times to once again serve his evil mistress, the infamous Elisabeth Bathory (Julia Saly). She’s also resurrected, and forms a small army of vampire servants to bring her fresh blood to bathe in. After many nights of feeding on peasants and grave robbers, Daninsky falls in love with a young traveler (Azucena Hernández) and, in a change of heart, turns against Bathory and her vampiric ways. A watchable concoction of gothic horror atmospherics and eighties splatter makeup that doesn’t always makes sense, but is nicely directed by Naschy and effectively photographed—the final showdown between Daninsky and Bathory is particularly exciting and well staged. B–