1989 – Jiggy's Horror Corner

The Woman in Black (1989)

Directed by Herbert Wise [Other horror films: N/A]

Many consider The Woman in Black among one of the better television horror films, certainly when it comes to those that aired in the late 1980’s. For it’s specific classic ghost story, period piece niche, I do think The Woman in Black is quite decent. However, I also have to admit that I suspect many modern-day audiences would find it a tad sluggish, and I don’t think that’s without good reason.

Based on a 1983 novel of the same name written by Susan Hill, the plot follows that of a very traditional ghost story – think The Uninvited, with some sprinklings of The Changeling. It’s not a story that possesses much in the way of surprise or anything – it’s just a mildly tragic ghost movie that reminded me at times of films like The Orphanage and Mr. Wrong.

It’s a rather methodical story, too. It’s not bogged down in details or anything, but the movie can be quite slow. There’s what seems to be a two-and-a-half minute scene of a man going around a large house, looking around the rooms, and turning lights on. It just feels quite sluggish at times, and while it can pick up nicely during some well-placed scares, and the finale itself is decently well paced, I do personally think the film could have been trimmed a bit.

Insofar as the scares are concerned, being a more classy ghost movie (not to mention made-for-television), The Woman in Black is more subtle, largely speaking. There’s maybe four scenes that I’d classify as meant to be scary, and only two actually got much of a reaction from me (and to qualify this, I should say that I’ve seen this movie once before, and had vague memory of it, but it’s been so long that much of it felt fresh).

There is a scene in a small cemetery that works quite nicely, though, along with perhaps the most famous sequence in the movie during the main character’s sickness toward the end. It’s a scene I knew was coming, but still came out very effectively. No doubt the movie, to many modern-day audiences, would feel beyond slow, but a case could be made that it’s that fact that makes the spooky scenes stand out all the more.

Oh, and the ending is rather grim, too. Nothing unexpected whatsoever, but grim nonetheless, and I can see why this frightened so many people when it first aired on that cold Christmas Eve so many years ago in the UK.

Adrian Rawlins (2000’s Blood) made for a likable, if moderately forgettable, lead. He was a pleasant-enough character, but I don’t know if there was necessarily a lot to him. Perhaps one of the other few important cast members was Bernard Hepton, who had some solid moments toward the latter half of the film, and John Cater (The Abominable Dr. Phibes) was decent too. Otherwise, though, the cast here didn’t really hold much a candle to the atmosphere.

Even with the atmosphere, though, the movie runs for about an hour and 42 minutes. I fully think some scenes are great, but to get to those scenes, there’s a lot of material that’s not exactly my idea of engaging. Because of that, it’s sort of a hard movie to tackle – I definitely appreciate what it was going for, and I largely think it succeeded, but it still just feels quite sluggish to me, and it’s a hard case for me to make to call this stellar.

All-in-all, I do think The Woman in Black is a good movie. I just can’t personally see myself watching it all that often, as it’s the type of slow-moving period piece that you’d definitely have to be in the mood for.

7/10

Intruder (1989)

Directed by Scott Spiegel [Other horror films: From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money (1999), Hostel: Part III (2011)]

I’ve seen Intruder once before, and remembered it being a pretty solid slasher for the late 1980’s. Seeing it again, it is indeed one of the best of the late 80’s, and Intruder really has a lot going for it.

It’s not perfect – the biggest issue is that with all the characters (Jennifer, Linda, Bill, Danny, Joe, Tim, Bub, Dave, Randy, and Craig), only a couple really get much in the way of personality. The average side characters of Friday the 13th had mildly more personality than most of the characters here. Luckily, the gore was good enough to sort of offset this, but it was noticeable.

Elizabeth Cox did decent as the lead character. I mean, she’s no Amy Steel or Heather Langenkamp, but she did well. David Byrnes (Witchcraft 7: Judgement Hour, Witchcraft IX: Bitter Flesh) is a good example of what I’m talking about – okay performance, but very little in the way of character until the finale. Eugene Robert Glazer and Dan Hicks (Elder Island, Evil Dead II) did well as the bosses of the store.

Most of the night crew, though – Ted Raimi (The Attic Expeditions), Renée Estevez (Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers), Billy Marti, Burr Steers, Sam Raimi, and Craig Stark – don’t really add that much. Sure, Marti’s character seems like he’ll be more important, and Burr Steers does have an oddly fun personality, but for the most part, these people are all just here to be victims of a mysterious killer.

Oh, I should probably also mention that Bruce Campbell (The Evil Dead) appears for a minute or so at the end, but he doesn’t do that much, and isn’t relevant to the story in any way, so whateves.

Speaking of the story, I appreciate the idea of a slasher set in a grocery store. I spent five years working a Meijer (a Michigan-based company that operates in six states – think of it as a higher-class Wal-Mart), and I also liked the idea of a killer knocking people off in a large store, where people can go unnoticed for long periods of time. Now, the store in Intruder isn’t some type of supermarket, but it’s still a fun idea, which brings us to the kills.

Naturally, you get your normal kills, such as someone stabbed with a big knife or a butcher knife slamming on someone’s head. Someone gets impaled on a meat hook, while another gets their head crushed in a bailer. Another guy gets their head slammed into one of those pointy receipt holders, and perhaps most well-known, there’s a band saw mishap which looks very much on the painful side. The effects for that scene weren’t necessarily great, but the idea behind that scene worked beautifully.

I do think the final scene, though, with that dramatic scream, was just a bit on the hokey side.

Intruder is a simple slasher with a prime goal of showing off decent kills. While the characters sometimes lack personality, the story is still pretty solid, and there’s plenty of suspenseful scenes and interesting camera angles here to keep things fresh. I enjoyed this one when I first saw it, and I still think it stands out quite well today.

8/10

Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge (1989)

Directed by Richard Friedman [Other horror films: Stephen King’s Golden Tales (1985, segment ‘The Old Soft Shoe’), Scared Stiff (1987), Doom Asylum (1987), DarkWolf (2003), Born (2007)]

Despite the somewhat silly title, I can say that Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge is a decent movie. It’s probably not great, but I’ve seen it twice now, and I do find it a rather fun film with a lot going for it.

The story here is about what you’d expect, being a modern-day (at least modern-day to the late 1980’s) adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera. There’s little here that’s likely to amaze anyone, but the mystery is decent, some characters and their motivations hidden well, and come the finale, we’re mostly satisfied with how everything has gone down.

Oh, and if you’re wondering why the mall in this movie may look familiar, it’s apparently also where Chopping Mall was filmed, so there’s another element of fun.

As far as performances go, the only one I didn’t really care for was Gregory Scott Cummins (Watchers III, Click: The Calendar Girl Killer, Hack-O-Lantern), and that’s more due to the nature of his character than to the actual performance.

Otherwise, the cast is pretty strong throughout the board.

Kari Whitman was never really in much, or at least much I’ve seen, but she made for a solid lead, not to mention sympathetic. Her friends, played by Kimber Sissons, Pauly Shore, and Rob Estes (Uninvited), were all decent – in fact, while Shore’s character was sort of the odd, goofy guy, he knew how to get serious. Derek Rydall (Popcorn, Night Visitor) was tragic, and knew how to do a spinning kick with the best of them.

Jonathan Goldsmith (Blood Voyage) was good as a scummy individual, Morgan Fairchild (American Horror House, The Initiation of Sarah) also good as a scummy individual, being the mayor of the town. Actually Fairchild and Goldsmith worked well together, and related, I was happy with where the movie took their characters. Other familiar faces include Ken Foree (Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, From Beyond, Dawn of the Dead) and Tom Fridley (Summer Camp Nightmare, Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI), along with a small cameo of Brinke Stevens (Blood Reaper, The Ritual, Spirits).

The kills here were never really gory – this isn’t Intruder, or anything so enjoyable. However, most of the kills were at least decent, from a decapitation and a snake in a toilet to someone being thrown out a window and impaled, not to mention someone meeting the business end of a flamethrower. There’s a lot of decent kills here, and it keeps you entertained.

Also quite nice is the fact that this movie moves at a great pace. It’s an hour and a half, but it doesn’t really feel it, and though I will say there was a small sense of dragging around the hour and ten minute mark, the finale was actually pretty solid and satisfactory.

Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge is a pretty enjoyable movie, albeit not really that special. If you’re into slashers, I can’t think of a good reason not to give this one a shot. It has a good classic feel, along with a power ballad titled ‘Heart of Darkness’ by Stan Bush that keeps popping up. Again, it may not be special, but I think it does a lot of what it was trying to do.

7.5/10

A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (1989)

Directed by Stephen Hopkins [Other horror films: Dangerous Game (1988), Predator 2 (1990), The Ghost and the Darkness (1996), The Reaping (2007)]

I’ve said before that The Dream Master is where A Nightmare on Elm Street, as a series, started going downhill. Certainly The Dream Master has some flaws, but compared to The Dream Child, it’s a fucking masterpiece.

Ever since I first saw The Dream Child, I’ve been of the opinion that it’s easily the worst in the series. And yes, for those of you keeping track, that includes Freddy’s Dead. Freddy’s Dead is a poor movie in many aspects, but at least it’s fun, whereas The Dream Child is drab and disappointing throughout.

There’s a lot that I could say, but I guess I should start with the fact I have no idea what’s going on. I get that Freddy is using the dreams of Alice’s fetus to reach out and impact the real world, but how did Freddy come back? Well, he says early on that he brought his mother (Amanda) back, so he could be born again. Now, I don’t know how you can bring something back if you’re no longer existing, which is only one of my problems.

Another is that, once he’s back (he was back before, apparently, but not back enough, or whatever), he uses Jacob’s dreams, which is whatever, but what’s his plan? Once he kills off all of Alice’s friends, he pretty much would have to leave Alice alone until she gives birth, so what’s he plan on doing in the meantime? Or, related, was he planning on possessing Alice – explaining why and how he was ‘hiding’ in her, as Jacob tells Alice toward the end of the film?

I have absolutely no idea. I also rather disliked the end – even aside from that utterly stupid baby Freddy look that Jacob briefly rocked, apparently Jacob was given a power by Freddy to destroy Freddy – it didn’t; it just took the souls of Alice’s friends and turned Freddy into a child, which Amanda (again, Freddy’s mother) then took into herself, and held him for all of three seconds.

Beyond whatever else could be said about The Dream Child, this movie is an utter mess. It’s a shame, because it might have had something to it, what with exploring Amanda a bit more (I’m sure most remember that she mysteriously popped up in Dream Warriors, mocked science, and left). In fact, we even saw a portrayal of Amanda being accidentally locked in the asylum with the 100 maniacs, which I thought was pretty nice (though having Robert Englund play one of the maniacs didn’t do much for me).

Actually, it’s that subplot, what with Yvonne and Alice needing to find the body of Amanda, that I thought the film showed the most potential. However, that brings up another question – Mark said that they thought Amanda killed herself (via hanging), but there was no body.

So let me get this straight – they find an empty room, an absence of Sister Amanda, and just assume she killed herself?

Again, this movie is a mess. The point was, though, that the deserted asylum looked rather cool both when Alice first encounters it in her dream and when Yvonne goes there in reality. It was dark, gritty, and a rather menacing building, and it was one of the stronger elements of the film.

One of the weakest elements, though, are the kills. I’d say this movie has some of the worst kills in the series. The ‘bon appétit, bitch’ kill was dreadful, but easily worse was the ‘need for speed’ kill, in which a character gets into his truck, gets attacked, wakes up (???????), looks at his truck, then steals (???) a motorcycle, becomes a motorcycle, gets injected with fuel, becomes a mutant, and rams his truck (???????) into an on-coming 18-wheeler.

My problem with that kill, believe it or not, is that I don’t know what’s going on. Dan gets the call from Alice and leaves immediately, meaning that first time he got into his truck would be the ‘reality.’ He’s then attacked in his truck by Freddy, gets his shirt shredded, and gets thrown out the window of his truck back toward the pool. He then runs out and almost gets in his truck again – but wait. Are we supposed to think that he fell asleep before getting into his truck? It looks like he dozed off before hitting the 18-wheeler, but it seems to me that there’d be no reason for Freddy to corral him to the motorcycle.

Again, this movie is a mess.

Now, admittedly, the Super Freddy death always sort of amused me. It starts out strong – a colorful guy (literally) is walking through a black-and-white factory. Of course, then Freddy starts riding a skateboard, and everything goes downhill, but even toward the end, when Super Freddy is shredding the paper guy, I can dig it. It’s horrible, but at least it’s sort of entertaining, in a way that neither the ‘need for speed’ nor the ‘bon appétit, bitch’ deaths were.

Lisa Wilcox (The Church, Dark Ritual, Savage, and Watchers Reborn) was okay here. I didn’t particularly care about her character one way or the other, really. Same with Danny Hassel’s Dan – I don’t get much in the way of emotion about him. Her friend group, though, was decently solid, what with Erika Anderson, Joe Seely, and Kelly Jo Minter. Now, it did take Minter a bit to really grow on me, but she eventually did, and Anderson didn’t really have that much to do during her appearances, but I still thought she did decent in her brief screen-time with Joe Seely.

Naturally, Robert Englund is always fun, but he’s rather goofy in this film, which isn’t itself necessarily damning, but given that this film feels like it was supposed to be a bit darker and grittier, I definitely could have done without. Nick Mele, who played Alice’s father, got a few decent scenes in there, and Beatrice Beopple, playing Amanda, was almost fine. I don’t have much to say about Whitby Hertford other than that he has a familiar face, and I’m sorry that he had to be in such a shitty movie at such a young age.

It might come as no surprise that I don’t care for The Dream Child, and I never have. It’s probably the movie I’ve spent the least amount of time with, as far as this series goes, and it just doesn’t have much I care for. Certainly, I feel it had potential – a really dark story could have been made about Alice, with the help of ghostly Amanda, trying to protect her fetus – but the execution here was abysmally weak. To quote Shuffle T during his bad bars battle with Marlo, “It’s like I’m the opposite of an industrial cooling system – not a big fan.”

5/10

Moonstalker (1989)

Directed by Michael S. O’Rourke [Other horror films: Deadly Love (1987)]

Moonstalker may not be a great movie; it’s pretty cheap, and it’s not overly memorable, but I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for it. For a late 80’s slasher, Moonstalker may not be the type of film you go back to often, but it can be a bit fun.

The story isn’t anything all that unique – a maniac runs around a campsite and kills people. At first, the maniac wears a mask (which is featured on the VHS cover, which, on a side-note, always struck me as a good cover), but that doesn’t last long, as the killer soon dons a Maniac Cop look, being a bulky man wearing sunglasses and a hat. The mask is cooler, but whateves, I can accept change.

Few of the scenes here are great, but there are a few okay kills, such as a quality impalement toward the finale, along with a decent amount of chopped off arms and limbs. Someone gets a throwing knife in their face, which was fun. There’s not much in the way of gore, but for a lower-budget slasher from this time period, I can take it.

I didn’t mind Joe Balogh (Demons 3/Black Demons, Hollywood’s New Blood, Hitcher in the Dark, and Monstrosity) as the lead, and in fact, I thought his story went to an almost interesting place. Jill Foors was okay, Alex Wexler had some moments, and John Marzilli was funny as a hardcore camp counselor, but aside from Balogh, it’s hard to say anyone stands out. Oh, and though I don’t remember her character, I wanted to mention Sioux-z Jessup because it’s a cool name.

Really, there’s not a whole lot to Moonstalker. It starts off with a family on vacation falling prey to the killer, and then the killer attacks a nearby camp, and that’s pretty much the extent to the movie. It rarely gets more complicated than that – there’s no mystery, and only marginal suspense. Even so, I know when I first saw the movie, I thought it was sort of fun, and I still feel much the same way. Plus, it was filmed entirely in snowy Nevada, so that was sort of cool.

It’s not a movie that I suspect many would find great (though the 80’s synth soundtrack is pretty damn phat), and it’s not among the best of late 80’s slashers (Intruder has to be up there), but it’s reasonably fun, and I personally have a good time with it.

7.5/10

3615 code Père Noël (1989)

Directed by René Manzor [Other horror films: N/A]

I’m not surprised this French horror film, known under various titles such as Dial Code Santa Claus, Game Over, and Deadly Games, is a good film, but I will say I’m surprised by how much I enjoyed it. 3615 code Père Noël is a pretty tense and thrilling film, and it’s certainly worth a watch.

The story here is pretty fun and original, in an early home invasion way. A precocious young kid has to defend himself and his grandfather from a madman stalking them around their house. It’s now you might think that a house isn’t big enough to last a movie, but by house, I mean mansion, because this kid is from a wealthy family, and their abode is quite humongous, complete with suits of armor and hidden passages (not to mention trapdoors – I told you, the kid is precocious).

In fact, it’s almost unbelievable, but I can buy that a kid who grew up with all the advantages this kid did would be more well-rounded in the ways of Rambo. When your mother gets you every expensive item on your Christmas wish list, not to mention additional presents, it’s not difficult at all for me to imagine this kid may be a bit more developed than others his age.

It’s not an overly violent film or anything, but once the action starts going, it’s rather tense. Partially it’s because the grandfather (played by Louis Ducreux) is so vulnerable – not only is he older, and unable to move too quickly, but he needs insulin shots and has rather atrocious eyesight, and he’s such a good character too, playing Dungeons and Dragons with his much younger grandson. You don’t want to see him anywhere close to hurt, which ratchets up the tension.

Alain Lalanne is decent as the lead. I don’t generally care for kid actors, but Lalanne is quite believable. I do think that Louis Ducreux’s role as the grandfather humanizes him, though – giving him someone that he has to protect gives Lalanne a deeper character as opposed to having him just defend himself. We never learn too much about Patrick Floersheim’s character, but I really dug the opening scene with him in the snowball fight, and I think we learn all we need to about his mental state as the film goes on.

Among my favorite scenes in 3615 code Père Noël would be when Lalanne’s character tries to escape on the roof. This is a tall structure, and that scene was filmed quite well (think Halloween 4, only more intense), and again, it’s tense, as the roof is covered in snow, and the kid indeed does slip once. It’s a good time. There’s also a montage of a dog later on – it’s a small thing, but somewhat emotional, as the dog was another of my favorite characters.

This film has a lot of Christmas feeling to it, and now that I’ve seen it, it’s probably among one of my favorite Christmas horror films, which include Gremlins, To All a Goodnight, Don’t Open Till Christmas, and Santa’s Slay. 36.15 code Père Noël is a fantastic film, and while it might be low on bodycount, this French film isn’t low on suspense. Definitely worth seeing for fans of the genre.

8.5/10

Batoru hîtâ (1989)

Directed by Jôji Iida [Other horror films: Kikuropusu (1987), Tokyo Babylon 1999 (1993), Naito heddo (1995), Rasen (1998), Anaza hevun (2000), Hoshi Shin’ichi Mystery Special (2014)]

Known as Battle Heater, this Japanese film deals with a kotatsu heater that goes around and kills people. It’s not a bad movie for it’s sort of goofy niche, but therein lies the problem for me, which is that the movie is just a bit goofy for me.

Sometimes that doesn’t matter. Hausu is a pretty silly movie, but not only do I rather enjoy that, but I consider it a classic of Japanese horror. Bio-Zombie (or Sang faa sau see) is still fun despite how goofy it can be. Tokyo Zombie (Tôkyô zonbi) is the same way, though I do think that one trends more toward average.

My point is that sometimes I can deal with goofy elements in my movies, but at other times, it just comes on way too strong, and Battle Heater is an example of that. It’s okay in it’s niche, but from the goofy characters to the silly set-up, it’s not really my type of thing. From a giant rock hitting a character to indicate the end of the film (the rock says ‘end,’ so it feels like Monty Python) to an electrical-based superhero suit being made to battle the heater, it’s humor is highly silly.

I can appreciate portions of the film, though. A killer kotatsu is a wild concept, and for those who don’t know (myself included before I started the film), a kotatsu is a type of electric heater used almost exclusively in Japan. It looks sort of comfy, and deciding to make that thing some type of homicidal entity is amusing in of itself.

Also, some of the comedy is okay. There’s a scene early on in which two characters stare at each other for a ridiculously long time. At first it was just awkward, but as it spanned into a longer scene, it was just amusing, and had me laughing come the end of it. There’s also a miscommunication regarding a map, which leads to a bunch of crying Japanese high school girls winding up at a low-budget apartment complex for a concert. It’s random, but funny.

Out of the performances, I’d say the best ones were Pappara Kawai and Gorô Kishitani. Kishitani is probably the straightest character, and I appreciated that, but he’s also a bit of a dick, so that takes some enjoyment away. Pappara Kawai does grow on me over the course of the film, as he starts off quite shaky, but he does sort of grow into himself.

This is a pretty obscure movie, and I sense that the right audience would definitely enjoy this movie. It’s a film I’ve wanted to see for a while, though I knew I probably wouldn’t be in the audience this was directed toward. It’s not my type of thing, but if you like Asian horror, especially wacky Asian horror, than you should definitely check this out.

5/10

Massacre (1989)

Directed by Andrea Bianchi [Other horror films: La tua presenza nuda! (1972), Nude per l’assassino (1975), Malabimba (1979), Le notti del terrore (1981), Maniac Killer (1987), Incontri in case private (1988), Gioco di seduzione (1990)]

This offering of a late 80’s giallo leaves a lot to be desired. It’s not an exceptionally poor movie, but it is an exceptionally generic and forgettable one, and save a few scenes, I don’t know if it’s worth it.

Which is a bit of a shame, because the director here is Andrea Bianchi. He’s probably best known for Burial Ground, but he also directed Strip Nude for Your Killer and Malabimba. He’s not an extremely big name, but I will admit I was expecting a bit more from this one once I saw he directed it (and the fact this was apparently produced by Lucio Fulci didn’t help).

The story isn’t a terrible one – a film crew working on a horror film are being killed off by a mysterious killer. Admittedly, it takes something like 40 minutes to really get moving, and the finale isn’t particularly great, but the basic story has potential.

As far as the kills went, they were okay when they popped up. The film opens with a woman being attacked, one of her hands getting cut off, and then being decapitated. And this happened in the first two minutes. It takes a while after that, though, for more kills to take place, and none of them (including a throat-slitting and someone getting stabbed multiple times with a spike) are quite as striking as the first.

One thing I really think hurt the film were the characters. We’re sort of just thrown into the cast and crew of those making a horror film, and it takes a bit for them to really stand out, and I’m not sure that some of them (including one of the leads, Patrizia Falcone) ever did. There’s only one character I really took notice of (played by Danny Degli Espositi), and that’s not particularly ideal.

In fact, because of that, performances are close to impossible to really discuss. I’d say that because he stood out, Danny Degli Espositi was pretty decent (despite not really doing that much), and I guess that Gino Concari made an okay detective, but despite having a nude scene, Silvia Conti was pretty much just there, and Lubka Lenzi was pretty much interchangeable with everyone else.

By the mid-80’s, giallo was pretty close to dead, and in the latter half of the decade, they weren’t easy to come by. Massacre is a pretty low budget film, and stylistically it seems far more akin to some SOV slasher like Night Ripper! than it does something like Lamberto Bava’s You’ll Die at Midnight (which was a reasonably solid giallo from the latter half of the 1980’s). I can’t blame Andrea Bianchi too much for that, but that ending, man, was just painful.

I won’t say that Massacre has been a film I’ve wanted to see for years, but it has been on my radar of movies to take time with. I can’t say I’m that surprised by how forgettable the movie tended to be, but at least I saw it in Italian as opposed to dubbed, which I could only imagine would make it worse. Even so, Massacre wasn’t a particularly great time.

5.5/10

Heavy Metal Massacre (1989)

Directed by Steven DeFalco [Other horror films: N/A] & Ron Ottaviano [Other horror films: N/A]

Well, this is about as inept as a movie can be. Heavy Metal Massacre is one of those SOV horror films that can be amusing, but ends up more tedious than anything else.

Part of it is a lack of story. No doubt, there is a story – there’s just not much of one. Some metalhead (played by David DeFalco, though credited as Bobbi Young) is killing women, and the police are looking for him. And that’s about it. There’s a little more, primarily revolving around two friends (played by Sami Plotkin and Michele De Santis) who run afoul of the killer, but really, there’s no conclusion to the story, and things just end.

That’s not exactly what makes Heavy Metal Massacre tedious, though. It’s more the constant dull heavy metal (many of the songs performed by an artist credited as The Electric After Burner Band) and really amateurish special effects. I don’t mean special effects as in CGI or anything, I mean in pointless aesthetics that can apparently be done with a video camera, such as changing the contrast or superimposing some scene on top of another, or even a corny blood dripping thing to convey a scene switch.

Really, I’m not a filmmaker, so I don’t have the vocabulary to describe exactly what they do here, but it’s something I’ve never seen in a movie before, and I don’t think it’s hard to figure out why after seeing this.

If I have to give credit for performances, I guess I can say that David DeFalco, despite a complete lack of character, did okay. I mean, he posed in his leather and spikes, staring into the camera with the best of them (that’s literally the first four minutes or so of this movie). Michele De Santis and John Thayer were okay, I suppose. Otherwise, there’s not a whole lot of strong points here.

Apparently filmed in Providence, Rhode Island (a fact you can tell by the police cars in the film), Heavy Metal Massacre isn’t a movie without charm, and if someone out there listed this as a guilty pleasure, I could sort of see it. Honestly, the kills weren’t awful – someone getting hit in slow motion with a giant sledgehammer was pretty decent (and in fact, this is the fate that befell two people), and another got #FuckedUp with a chainsaw, so that was all fine and well, but I don’t think that’s near enough to make this palatable.

For a long time, I knew this film would probably end up being a mess, and by all means, Heavy Metal Massacre is. The story is quite uninspired, and given there’s not really much of a conclusion, unsatisfactory. Maybe it’s worth a watch if you’re into SOV horror, but for most people, I think turning it off halfway through, if not sooner, is a more likely fate for this one.

4.5/10

Puppet Master (1989)

Directed by David Schmoeller [Other horror films: Tourist Trap (1979), Crawlspace (1986), Catacombs (1988), The Arrival (1991), Netherworld (1992), Possessed (2005), Little Monsters (2012), Puppet Master: Blitzkrieg Massacre (2018), Death Heads: Brain Drain (2018), Carnage Collection – Puppet Master: Trunk Full of Terror (2022)]

The Puppet Master series is an interesting one, partially because it’s actually a pretty good batch of movies, and mirroring my opinions on the Friday the 13th series, I think the first movie is one of the weaker entries.

And the funny thing is that’s not even that much of a knock against this one, because Puppet Master is still decent. No doubt it has a quality atmosphere, and with a nice location and moderately enjoyable story, it’s a decent movie. It just doesn’t do as much for me as some of the sequels do.

I always have loved the variety of puppets here. Some of them don’t get too much into the action (such as Jester and one named Shredder Khan), but plenty get some stand-out scenes, such as the most strikingly designed one named Pinhead (picture a tiny head on a damn strong body) and my personal favorite Blade. I never really liked Leech Woman, but Tunneler is damn awesome, and what makes all of this better is that the effects behind the puppets looks great.

I think part of the reason I don’t care for this one quite as much as later films is the fact this feels a decent amount more somber and atmospheric. I don’t mind the atmosphere, to be sure, but it takes a little bit to get going, and it’s never quite the zany fun you might have with future films in the series.

Even so, most of the cast did pretty well. I can take or leave Paul Le Mat (who was also in the underrated Grave Secrets) as the lead, but Robin Frates, Irene Miracle (Inferno), and Kathryn O’Reilly were solid. My favorite non-puppet character was played by Matt Roe, who had such a business-focused mind. And though he only got the opening scene, William Hickey did great as André Toulon, and really sold the fact he cared for the puppets.

None of the deaths in the film are amazing themselves, but there’s a certain enjoyment in seeing a woman beaten to death with a fire poker by a puppet, or seeing the aftermath of a puppet’s drill head drilling into another character. None of these deaths are all that gruesome (aside from maybe the leech one, but that’s because I hate leeches), but some may stick out in your memory well enough.

I think Puppet Master is a decent movie in a pretty decent series. I’ve only seen these films, at least at the point of this writing, up to the 2010 Axis of Evil, and there’s really only two flops that I can remember (2003’s The Legacy and 1999’s Retro Puppet Master). It’s a generally-solid series, and though this beginning isn’t my favorite, it’s a well-made movie, and is worth seeing nonetheless.

7/10