DOOM ASYLUM (1988) Friday the 13th by way of John Waters, this garish—but quite funny—comedy-horror centers on young Kiki (future Frankenhooker Patty Mullens) and her quartet of cartoonish friends who take a day trip to an abandoned hospital where the demented Mitch Hansen (Michael Rogen) lives and kills. You see, 10 years earlier Hansen killed Kiki’s mother (also Mullens) in a car accident and was himself severally scarred, which naturally turned him into a raving maniac. Doom Asylum isn’t pretty, but its lampooning of ’80s slashers is highly amusing—right down to its pack of horror stock characters (the jock, the nerd, the ditz, etc.)—and it features some low-budget but inventive make-up effects. Funniest scene: Just before Hansen shoves her face into a vat of acid, a punk rocker admits, “I voted for Reagan!” Future Sex and the City star Kristin Davis plays a psych major who believes Hansen is a form of mass delusion, ultimately getting her face sliced open with a bone saw. Massively idiotic, but so much fun. B+
NIGHTWISH (1989) Grad students doing research on dreams and fear are assigned by their clearly unstable professor (Jack Starrett) to investigate a desert house supposedly loaded with paranormal—and UFO!—activity. After a couple of (what the professor calls) “demonic encounters,” the students become distrustful of their teacher’s intentions, especially when he chains them up in the cellar and his Igor-like simpleton assistant (Robert Tessier) begins cutting off fingers. There’s also dead bodies with pustulating sores in an underground tunnel. Are these bizarre events really happening, or is it all part of some elaborate dream study? With so many possibilities thrown into the already confusing story, the viewer gets a sense the writer (and director, Bruce R. Cook) was also confused. The questions get somewhat answered in the bogus ending, where one of the traumatized students states, “I don’t need a college degree this badly!” Or, she could just change her major. A good cast, as well as some gooey KNB effects, are wasted on bland, uninspired material. C–
ANTIBIRTH (2016) A movie that’s stillborn. Lou (Natasha Lyonne), a burned-out party girl living in a dying, drug-riddled military town, wakes up after a night of drinking with a strange illness. Her friend, Sadie (Chloë Sevigny), believes Lou is pregnant, but Lou swears she hasn’t had sex in months. When a mysterious woman (Meg Tilly) shows up claiming to have had similar symptoms as Lou, the three investigate and discover Lou may had been given an experimental drug by Sadie’s pimp boyfriend (Mark Webber). A wannabe Cronenberg horror-art film that doesn’t work on any level, Antibirth offers up supremely outrageous ideas but never follows through with a coherent—or interesting—story. The movie instead drags along to a brainless ending that’s so out of control it comes off more as unintentional comedy than horror. Serving an underwritten role with a good performance, Tilly is wasted. D–