Tag: 1987

Directed by Bill Froehlich [Other horror films: N/A]

In all honesty, Return to Horror High could have been something special. I don’t know what it would have needed to get there – maybe better direction, a more serious approach, something else – but with the meta nature of the film, along with the nonlinear plot (not to mention the plot twists), this had potential. The problem is it didn’t land at all.

And I don’t just mean the finale – I mean all of it. Certain scenes were interesting – the first time they had a scene break for us only to discover it was part of the filming threw me for a loop (I honestly thought it was a flashback), and there were a few decently artistic scenes (such as the love-making sequence, what with flashing lights from welding outside and the 80’s styles of Wendy Fraser’s “Man for Me”), but for the most part, very little in this film made an impact on me.

When I first saw this years ago, I suspect I might have found it somewhat convoluted, and while things generally make more sense this time around (aside from the “Daddy” ending), that cohesion doesn’t really benefit my views on this much. I just found it an interesting concept that was executed somewhat woefully, and not much in the way of performances save it.

Many might mention George Clooney when bringing this one up, and I guess I have also, but even knowing he was in this, I didn’t recognize his face (it doesn’t help that I know very little from Clooney – I’ve only seen two films with him in it, being Batman & Robin and From Dusk Till Dawn). More noticeable by far were Maureen McCormick (who was one of the few elements of comedy I consistently appreciated), Alex Rocco, Brendan Hughes (Howling VI: The Freaks), and Lori Lethin (who had three separate roles here).

There wasn’t much in the way of kills whatsoever. Pretty much all of them are weak save for perhaps the take on a human dissection. Everything else was forgettable, though, but that’s okay, because it fits well with the rest of the movie.

Which may have come out more unkindly than necessary, but Return to Horror High, like I said, had potential. Almost none of it really did anything for me though – not even the mystery of the killer, and that usually at least garners some mild interest from me. I found this utterly underwhelming, and despite some potentially clever ideas, I don’t think I’m going to give this one a third viewing.

5/10

Directed by Bill Rebane [Other horror films: Monster a Go-Go (1965), Invasion from Inner Earth (1974), The Giant Spider Invasion (1975), The Alpha Incident (1978), The Capture of Bigfoot (1979), Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake (1980), The Demons of Ludlow (1983), The Game (1984)]

It’s been some years since I’ve last seen this one, and though I enjoyed the film the first time around, I’d be lying if I said that I remembered a lot about it, because I didn’t. Aside from Tiny Tim’s presence and a few scenes revolving around him, I went into this without too many memories, which probably helped a bit with the enjoyment factor.

Obviously Blood Harvest is far from perfect, and it may ultimately wind up around average, if not below, but Tiny Tim (who is a singer most known for his falsetto voice and such hits as “Livin’ in the Sunlight, Lovin’ in the Moonlight” and “Tiptoe Through the Tulips”) gives a fantastically emotional performance as he plays a mentally-handicapped man who recently lost his parents and is deeply struggling with it. Some of his antics might seem a bit much, but from the scene of him singing and sobbing in the church, I was hooked. An odd, but great, performance.

Aside from Tiny Tim, though, much of the movie comes across as a bit pedestrian. They throw in some occasionally interesting elements, such as the local farmers being unhappy with someone due to the bank’s recent foreclosures, so much so they vandalize the house of the bank’s spokesperson, and certainly there were creepy moments when someone drugged the main character, played by Itonia Salchek, and then stripped her naked to take pictures of her, because that’s the type of stand-up guys we need in the world.

As far as Salchek goes, this was her sole movie, and amusingly, her IMDb profile states that, to this day, “people are still trying to find or find out what happened to her.” I don’t know if it’s as serious as all that (the profile also says that after filming this movie, she either “disappeared or died” which seems dramatic to me). Regardless of what happened with her, Salchek gives a decent performance, and is no stranger to providing some quality nudity, so kudos for that.

I’ve already mentioned that Tiny Tim is the best performance here, but I’ll reiterate that I really felt an emotional punch at times throughout the movie due to him. He may look silly with clown make-up on, and his “Gary and Jill went up the hill” song that pops up here and there, but what a performance. The sheriff, played by Frank Benson, was occasionally amusing, and while Lori Minnetti (who was also in the odd 1984 film The Game, or The Cold) didn’t add a lot, I did like her appearances on-screen. Dean West didn’t really leave an impression either way.

None of the kills here are stellar, but I do sort of enjoy that oppressive mystery that surrounds Itonia Salchek’s Jill – she gets back home, but her parents are missing, and with no way to contact them, she’s just sort of lost. What’s even creepier is that some of the action is taking place at a barn pretty close to home, and yet she’s not aware of it. The violence here was certainly okay, but I think the mystery is probably the moderately more interesting aspect (aside from the fact that most of the red herrings fail pretty miserably).

Sometimes it can feel like not that much is happening, though, and in that aspect, I think Blood Harvest fails to fully engage the audience (which is a bit of a shame, because the director Bill Rebane also directed The Demons of Ludlow, from 1983, which, despite it’s current 3.4/10 rating on IMDb, is a pretty fun movie), and though the movie is by no means long, I do think it drags at parts.

None of this is to say the movie is bad. For a late 80’s slasher, it can provide an okay time, and though there are plenty of others I’d prefer to watch, such as Iced, Moonstalker, or Intruder, I could see myself watching this one again, even though I find it a little lacking.

6.5/10

This is one of the films covered by Fight Evil’s podcast. Listen below as Chucky (@ChuckyFE) and I discuss Blood Harvest.

Directed by Greydon Clark [Other horror films: Satan’s Cheerleaders (1977), Without Warning (1980), Wacko (1982), Dance Macabre (1992)]

So I’ll give the poster credit for being decent, but boy, this movie definitely has some issues. That doesn’t make Uninvited any less entertaining, but I suspect that this film, while somewhat fun once around, might suffer deeply with revisits.

Even seeing it once doesn’t lead to the best time, but the dialogue and acting is so awful, it’s almost good. The cat itself is fine, but the ill-defined creature that exists within the cat that does most of the killings doesn’t look particularly impressive whatsoever.

I do personally appreciate that this film takes place mostly on a yacht (and a few years before Jason Takes a Long Boat Ride), because more enclosed spaces theoretically should increase the tension. Of course, it never really did, but being lost out at sea without a working engine did hold with it a certain despair.

Alex Cord was appropriately campy here, and his character, of course, quite a dick. He did have a slimy charm at times, but by the end, he got somewhat hard to appreciate. Clu Gulager (The Return of the Living Dead and Freddy’s Revenge) was sort of nice to see, but he didn’t have a heck of a lot of screen-time. Better was George Kennedy (Just Before Dawn and Death Ship), who was Cord’s serious-minded right-hand man.

Shari Shattuck and Clare Carey never really caught on with me (they were cute, sure, but they weren’t winning any IQ tests). Likewise, neither Beau Dremann nor Rob Estes (Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge) blew me away, but I did really like both Eric Larson (Demon Wind) and Toni Hudson. Hudson was maybe a bit more generic, but Larson’s character was pretty interesting, and one of the only ones on board to really root for.

Toward the end, once the surviving characters get into a lifeboat, the cat-creature-thing attacks them twice, with this ridiculous music playing. The sequence was a good example of what to expect from this movie. It’s not overtly silly (though like I said, some of the performances are more than a little camp), but it almost reaches into the realm of comedy with as bad as some of these scenes are.

When it’s all said and done, Uninvited isn’t anywhere near a great movie, but it can be entertaining, and if that’s your main concern, I think you could certainly do a lot worse than this, as bad as this can get.

5.5/10

This is one of the films covered on Fight Evil’s podcast. If you want to hear Chucky (@ChuckyFE) and I discuss this one, then look no further.

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

Directed by Joseph Sargent [Other horror films: Nightmares (1983)]

Before touching on any details, I want to get this controversial viewpoint out of the way: I actually like this movie more than the first Jaws. Not that it’s a better movie, necessarily, just that I had more fun with this. It occasionally drags, and there’s not near enough action, but hey, Michael Caine is fun here.

Caine appeared in few horror films, among them a starring role in The Swarm, which is perhaps his most notable one. His role here isn’t mind-blowing or anything, but he has a consistently fun personality, which melds nicely to most others’ rather somber attitudes. I’m glad that Lorraine Gary came back as Ellen Brody, but the fact that neither Dennis Quaid or John Putch return as Mike and Sean (instead, there’s Lance Guest and Mitchell Anderson) was disappointing.

Not that Guest is actually that bad here, though he does have a few moments of mediocrity. That’s probably more the film than his acting abilities, though. Mario Van Peebles was decently fun as Jake, but really, Caine held most of my attention, which is fine, because he was probably one of the most interesting people here.

I get a lot of why this movie gets a bad rap – the idea that a particular shark is specifically going after the Brody family (why is never made clear – perhaps the sharks killed in the first and second movies were it’s parents) is pretty laughable, especially coming to an environment that isn’t ideal for it. More so, the movie’s goofy at times. The seemingly-psychic way Ellen knows that the shark is hunting her and her family is pretty bad, and that finale wasn’t near as dramatic as you’d hope (in fact, the whole the finale had an improbably positive outcome for all involved).

Still, though there isn’t nearly as much action as there should be (the shark chasing Michael was decent, but aside from that, there weren’t many action sequences of note), I think Jaws: The Revenge is reasonably fun. If it’s only because of Van Peebles and Caine, so be it, but it undeniably had more life than the often-dull Jaws 3. I’m not saying that this film is great, but I can’t deny that I enjoy it more than I probably should, and probably find it somewhere just below average.

6.5/10

Directed by Michael Gornick [Other horror films: Stephen King’s Golden Tales (1985, segment ‘The Word Processor of the Gods’)]

The first Creepshow is an interesting one, because while most of the stories aren’t great, the package as a whole is a fairly enjoyable anthology. Creepshow 2 isn’t that far removed from the pleasures of the first movie, but it’s certainly nowhere in the same league.

I’ve always thought the best story here was the first one, ‘Old Chief Wood’nhead.’ It’s not perfect, mainly because Holt McCallam’s character is so damn unlikable (can he not shut up about his hair?), but it does have George Kennedy and Dorothy Lamour as a wonderful couple who you can’t help but feel for. The deaths aren’t that special, but they do have just a dash of charm to them, and it’s a story that always made me feel good.

The other two are somewhat lackluster, though. ‘The Raft,’ based off a Stephen King short story from Skeleton Crew, is an okay story, a somewhat interesting premise, but entirely unmemorable characters. Also, as well-known as the ending is, I just feel meh about the whole thing. And as for ‘The Hitch-Hiker’? Sorry, but though I’ve seen this many times in my life, I’ve never really liked the story at all.

With only one story that’s really that good, what helps Creepshow 2 out a bit is the animated framing story, in which an odd kid gets back at his bullies with the help of his love of the Creepshow comic book. The animation is a bit rough (this is the late 80’s, what more would you expect?) but I always loved the conclusion to the movie. Just brings a smile to my face. It’s not quite as memorable as the framing story for the first movie, but it’s still decent.

Like I’ve said, I’ve seen this one multiple times in my life. And through it all, I’ve always thought Creepshow 2 was just an average movie. I wish they had more than just three stories (which was apparently originally the plan), but as an anthology flick, it’s not bad. Just nowhere near as enjoyable as the first.

6.5/10

This is one of the films covered by the Fight Evil podcast, so if you want to hear Chucky (@ChuckyFE) and I discuss this one, check out the video below.