Criminally Insane 2 (1987)

Directed by Nick Millard [Other horror films: Criminally Insane (1975), Satan’s Black Wedding (1976), Doctor Bloodbath (1987), Death Nurse (1987), Cemetery Sisters (1987), Death Nurse 2 (1988), Dracula in Vegas (1999), The Turn of the Screw (2003)]

The 1975 Criminally Insane would never win any awards, but I liked it well enough for it’s pure grind-house aesthetic. This sequel, though, has to be among one of the worse straight-to-video horror flicks of the late 1980’s (and no doubt there’s plenty of competition).

Partially, this is due to the fact that a third of the film is made up of flashbacks from the first film (mostly in the form of Ethel’s dream sequences). I enjoyed the first film, but just reusing various scenes (sometimes multiple times) in order to pad the already short running time (this clocks in at about 70 minutes) is just weak sauce. It’s not as bad as Puppet Master: The Legacy, but it is definitely weak.

With the story we’re given, though, of Ethel being moved into a halfway house following budget cuts to mental institutions, it’s okay. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s really, really dry, boring as all hell, and leads only to a collection of weak kills and stilted conversations (the tea conversation between Ethel and some guy she was trying to kill, for instance), but hey, they tried.

As it is, the movie actually could have been fine if only they had cut back on the amount of flashbacks they inserted and instead added a bit more story and maybe character background (also, there’s a scene here which indicated there are four patients at this halfway house, but we only ever see three). I mean, Priscilla Alden came back for this, and the least you could do for her is give her a script worth shooting.

Honestly, this film is pretty much an insult. Some of the conversations here are amusing (for all the wrong reasons), but there’s really not much charm at all to be found here. The quality is that of a homemade movie from the 1980’s, and the very dull sets and stilted dialogue just make the whole affair laughable.

I can’t think of any good reason to go out of your way to seek this out. The first movie, as I said, was pretty enjoyable for it’s time, but this one is just beyond pathetic, as the IMDb rating (a hefty 1.9/10 at the time of this writing) can attest to. I don’t rate it quite that lowly, if only because I was personally amused at some of this, but boy, talk about a poor film.

4/10