Alucarda – 1977, Mexico, 78m. Director: Juan López Moctezuma.
The Awakening – 1980, UK, 100m. Director: Mike Newell.
The Boneyard – 1991, US, 98m. Director: James Cummins.
Shocker – 1989, US, 109m. Director: Wes Craven.
ALUCARDA (1977) (AKA: Sisters of Satan) In 1865, young Justine (Susana Kimini) is sent to live in a convent where she meets another orphan, Alucarda (Tina Romero), whose obsession with death leads them to a nearby crypt and the opening of Alucarda’s mother’s coffin. The act bewitches both girls into reciting a Satanic prayer and invoking a demonic power that possesses them. Justine and Alucarda confess their love for each other, perform blood rituals, and participate in gypsy orgies. A priest (David Silva) decides to rid the evil from the two girls by carrying out a torturous exorcism, which backfires and results in a nun being immolated and decapitated. Alucarda features enough nudity, violence, and visual imagery to fill two movies, making its scant 78 minutes feel all the more fresh and exciting. In fact, Alucarda succeeds where so many European exploitation/Exorcist-inspired movies failed simply because the makers were thoughtful enough to write a script. Avoid the heavily censored version currently on YouTube. B (Currently unavailable.)
THE AWAKENING (1980) The pregnant wife of high-strung archeologist Charlton Heston slips into a coma while accompanying her husband on a dig in Egypt. Heston’s work priorities send him back into the field, where he discovers the lost tomb of Egyptian queen Kara, whose sarcophagus is opened at the exact moment his wife gives birth to a baby girl. A series of bizarre deaths in the wake of the tomb’s opening plagues Heston and his daughter (Stephanie Zimbalist) who, come her eighteenth birthday, realizes she’s the reincarnation of the evil Egyptian pharaoh. In the tradition of The Omen, those closest to Heston meet creatively gruesome ends at the hands of the spectral Kara—including Heston’s second wife, who plunges through the ceiling of a greenhouse and is impaled on a shard of glass. But unlike The Omen, The Awakening is too sedate to get excited over. None of the characters are worth caring about, and their interactions often feel melodramatic and silly; a subplot in which everyone equates Heston’s interest in Kara to an obsession grows increasingly tired. The feature film directorial debut of Mike Newell, before he went on to make real horror movies like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. C (Currently unavailable.)
THE BONEYARD (1991) Homicide detective Jersey Callum (Ed Nelson) enlists the help of distraught psychic Alley Oats (Deborah Rose) to help solve a case involving the remains of three unidentified kids who were abducted and force fed dead flesh by a mortician before he killed himself. Unfortunately for our protagonists, the young victims are reanimated as ghoulish zombies and turn the local corner’s office (dubbed “the boneyard”) into a buffet of glistening innards as they feast on the staff during the quiet graveyard shift. The makers of this film have obviously seen Return of the Living Dead and Dead Heat. It turns out the mortician was descended from a family cursed by an ancient Chinese warlock—and the victims aren’t children but some sort of mummified demonic creatures. I think. The plot is convoluted and makes little sense, but that doesn’t matter because this movie is all about style, and luckily The Boneyard is swimming in it. Director/writer James Cummins never allows the gory action to overwhelm the story, but instead places the well-written characters at center stage and creates a few suspenseful set pieces. A highlight is Phyllis Diller’s pampered poodle being turned into an unstoppable ten-foot tall monster. Slight but inventive fun. B– (Currently streaming on Prime.)
SHOCKER (1989) A small town is torn apart by a series of vicious murders committed by a ranting television repairman named Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi). Pinker’s identity is exposed by teen Jonathan Parker (Peter Berg) after the high schooler has a dream in which Pinker slaughters his family—an act that materializes in reality and ultimately sends Pinker to the electric chair. But the unstoppable Horace comes from the Freddy Krueger generation and soon returns from the grave via black magic, subsequently body-jumping into Parker’s friends in order to enact bloody revenge. With a lack of substantial clues, and a string of bodies connected to his son, Parker’s dumbbell cop father (Michael Murphy) places the teen under arrest, and sets the third act in the tried-and-true Hitchcockian mold of the innocent-man-on-the-run. There’s some interesting ideas floating around here, but Shocker is too disjointed and silly to be truly effective, made worse by an unconvincing performance by Pileggi as Horace. He’s a good actor (proven on nine season of The X-Files), but here comes off as a cut-and-paste Krueger wannabe; a precursor, perhaps, to De Niro’s Kruegeresque performance in Cape Fear (1991). Director Wes Craven infuses the story with several inventive set pieces, although one can’t help but compare Shocker with the majority of the Elm Street sequels and admit with full confidence that Freddy did it better. Sorry, Wes. C– (Currently unavailable.)