THE HEARSE (1980) City girl Jane (Trish Van Devere) moves into her deceased aunt’s home in the middle of Hicksville, USA—actually, Bradbury, California—and experiences not only hostility from the locals, but strange goings-on in the house. When Jane isn’t spotting ghostly apparitions, she’s being tormented by a 1950 Cadillac hearse that nearly runs her off the road her first night in town. In the obligatory rummaging-through-the-attic scene, Jane finds her aunt’s diary and makes it a nightly page-turner—as well as convenient exposition for the viewer. After reading the diary, Jane has a dream of a Black Mass where she’s the sacrificial guest star. Former Hollywood star Joseph Cotten (Citizen Kane) phones in his five minutes by filling in the plot gaps as a local gossip who informs Jane of Auntie’s unsavory lifestyle. The Hearse skates the edges of the old “Room for One More” ghost tale, but offers an even more salacious account of Satanic worship in a small hamlet. It might be riddled with cliches, but The Hearse is an atmospheric chiller worth your time. B
LURKERS (1988) Haunted by ghosts and ghouls since a child, a cellist (Christine Moore) is once again tormented by grotesque apparitions in the weeks leading up to her wedding. Moore seeks help from her estranged brother, a priest, who callously dismisses her. We get murky flashbacks to Moore’s dysfunctional childhood at the hands of an abusive mother who murdered Moore’s father for reasons never explained. Moore’s philandering fiancé (Gary Warner) is too busy sleeping around to notice her constant whimpering. There’s also a maniac running around the streets with a sledgehammer, a ghostly hitchhiker, and a gang of punks who look like rejects from The Warriors (1979). What could all this mean? It’s another disjointed Roberta Findlay movie, and her worst of the lot, which also includes turkeys Blood Sisters, and Prime Evil. F
THE SOULTANGLER (1987) A modern day mad scientist—not unlike Lovecraft’s Dr. Herbert West—creates a serum that can temporarily transfer a person’s soul into the body of a corpse, thus reanimating the dead. This concoction is the brainchild of Dr. Lupesky (Pierre Deveaux), a demented fiend who was laughed out of the country by his peers, and who returns months later after having perfected his invention. Lupesky sends out his devoted followers to kidnap people for experimentation, the disappearances of whom alert a local journalist (Jamie Kinser) writing a story on satanic cults. A once forgotten backyard splatter flick that was made for the home video market by people with half a brain (and even less money), The Soultangler was briefly lifted out of cinematic obscurity when Bleeding Skull—a website dedicated to trash horror—released the movie on DVD in 2014. The film features the usual zero-budget moviemaking accoutrement (amateur acting, crude editing, plastic makeup effects), and even though its sense of humor helps salvage some of the story, The Soultangler never feels like anything other than a low rent Re-Animator. C
