Monthly Archives: October 2015

The Initiation (1984)

Posted on October 31, 2015 | Leave a comment

initiation

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: She has reoccurring nightmares.

Kelly Fairchild (Daphne Zuniga) is a college student plagued with reoccurring nightmares as well as suffering from amnesia in which she cannot remember anything that occurred before she was nine. She meets Peter (James Read) who runs a department dealing with sleep research. She hopes he can help her interpret these dreams, but her parents (Clu Gulager, Vera Miles) are greatly opposed to the idea. As these dreams continue to get worse she also gets involved in a sorority in which as part of an initiation ritual she along with her sorority sisters are required to break into her father’s department store and steal some items, but as they do they become stalked and eventually killed by a mysterious killer.

Zuniga makes for an appealing lead and is pretty much the only good thing about the movie as the story itself isn’t too interesting. It becomes clear from the start that the man she sees burning in her dreams is really her father and that the Gulager character was her mom’s lover who is now posing as her father while her real one got carted off to the mental hospital and having to watch someone spend almost two hours trying to figure out something that the viewer already knows isn’t compelling.

The plot is also full of a hundred and one loopholes including the fact that her father had to be institutionalized after received burns over forty percent of his body even though this rarely if ever occurs with real-world burn victims. How Kelly gets her amnesia is confusing as well since we later learn she never really did fall out of a treehouse like she had initially thought. The scene where the Gulager character gets murdered in his own drive way, but the mother does not find out about it until several days later is equally ridiculous because the killer immediately drives away with the dead body with no time to clean up, so the mother would’ve seen all the blood when she went into her own car, but apparently doesn’t.

There is also a scene involving one of the sorority sisters named Marsha (Marilyn Kagan) who tells the others about getting sexually violated by an older man when she was younger, which is not necessary since she is not a main character and what she describes has no connection to the main story. What is even worse is that after telling the others about it she then ‘miraculously’ loses her lifelong frigidity and is ‘cured’ from her horrible memories while also immediately hopping into bed with one of the frat boys, which becomes an insult to rape victims everywhere.

Spoiler Alert!

The film’s ending though is the most annoying. Halfway in I thought I had figured it out by guessing that it was actually Zuniga who was doing the killing. Well it turns out that I was half-right as it is really her twin sister, but there is no indication of this with anything that occurs earlier and still does not explain how it connects to Kelly’s amnesia, nightmares, or lost father. If anyone who has watched this movie can explain how this makes any sense I would appreciate it because it comes off as really dumb otherwise.

End of Spoiler Alert!

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: December 17, 1984

Runtime: 1Hour 37Minutes

Rated R

Director: Larry Stewart

Studio: New World Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, College Life, Horror, Movies that take place in Texas, Movies with Nudity, Slasher/Gore

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The Dorm that Dripped Blood (1982)

Posted on October 30, 2015 | Leave a comment

the dorm that dripped blood

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Yet another slasher flick.

If, based on its misleading title, you’re figuring this thing will be filled with hot sorority babes having their late night beer parties ruined by an unscrupulous masked killer who does unethical things with an ax then you’ll be sorely disappointed as that is not what you’ll get here. Instead you’ll be treated to a story about five volunteers who clean out an abandoned dorm that looks more like a business building, so that it can be renovated into apartments. During the process they become menaced by a mysterious killer who begins hacking them off one-by-one.

This movie’s one and only claim to fame is that it marks the film debut of Daphne Zuniga who gets promptly killed off within the first 15 minutes by having her head run over by a car! The rest of the cast is not up to the acting standards of a high school play including leading lady Laurie Lapinski whose monotone delivery does nothing to enliven the proceedings.

The gore is okay and probably the only reason I’m giving it 2 points. The scene where the killer beats a man’s head in with a bat looks pretty realistic and the part where he drills into another man’s skull isn’t bad either. The tension though, or what little there is of it, is hurt by having long stretches that feature nothing but extraneous dialogue and wooden characters.

Some fans of the film will point to its so-called surprise ending as a redeeming element. Yes, the identity of the killer is not who you’re expecting, but you know that from the start since the character of the mentally unstable John Hemmit (Woody Roll) is too obviously pushed as being the suspect from the beginning, so you know it has to be someone else. Finding out who the real killer is not interesting as it has no real connection to anything that came earlier and was pretty much done in a random way where the writer/director choose a character you’d least expect, so it would seem like a ‘great revelation’, but with no other logic behind it.

Dull and uninspired this is yet another in a long line of rip-off slasher flicks that adds nothing unique or interesting to the genre and unless you want to see Zuniga in an early performance it’s not worth seeking out.

the dorm that dripped blood 3

Alternate Titles: Death Dorm, Pranks

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: April 12, 1982

Runtime: 1Hour 28Minutes

Rated R

Directors: Stephen Carpenter, Jeffrey Obrow

Studio: New Image

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, College Life, Horror, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Slasher/Gore

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Death Ship (1980)

Posted on October 28, 2015 | 1 comment

death ship 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Ghost ship haunts ocean.

Members of a luxury ocean liner collide with a mysterious ship that comes out of nowhere. The liner sinks, but a few of the passengers manage to survive by boarding on a raft and going out to sea. After a few days of being afloat in the watery abyss they come into contact with the ship that they collided with. Having no other options they board the vessel only to find that no one else is on it. At first they are relived, but then creepy things begin to occur making them feel that it may be haunted. When the ship begins killing off members of the group one-by-one the remaining people look for a way off, but find nothing available.

The film starts out okay with a likable enough cast filled with veteran B-actors. The collision and subsequent sinking of the luxury liner as some definite tinges of The Poseidon Adventure to it and I’ll give props to the shot showing a grand piano crashing several stories down as well as the way the engine room quickly and realistically fills up with water. The ghost ship has a nice threatening quality and is shot in a way that gives it effective creepiness and makes it like a third character.

The performers do their best and giver earnest performances although it’s hard to believe that any of them could possibly have taken the material seriously and could only have been doing this for the money. I did not like the way George Kennedy’s character goes from being this surly prick of a sea captain to a man possessed by the evil spirits of the ship as I liked the way his character’s disagreeable personality meshed with the others and made the group dynamics a little more interesting.

The ultimate problem with the film though is the fact that there is no second or third act and the whole concept would’ve worked much better as a thirty minute episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’ instead of trying to stretch it out to feature film length. There are just so many creepy shots of the ship, foreboding music and scared reactions of the cast one can take before it all becomes quite old and redundant.  

The ending is unsatisfying and doesn’t explain anything. Yes, we understand this is a ship once used by the Nazi’s to torture victims, but why is it haunting these waters and why did it decide to collide with the ocean liner and if it has collided with other ships then why hasn’t it been detected by world governments and possibly gone under attack by armies in an attempt to subdue it? Again, as a creepy short story or an episode of an anthology series it might’ve worked, but as a film it is boring, one-dimensional and lacking any type of unique spin.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: March 7, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 31Minutes

Rated R

Director: Alvin Rakoff

Studio: Astral Films

Available: DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Disaster Flicks, Drama on the High Seas, Foreign Films, Ghost Story, Horror, Movies from Canada, Movies with Nudity

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Shocker (1989)

Posted on October 27, 2015 | Leave a comment

shocker

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Serial killer becomes electric.

Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi) is a serial killer who’s dabbled in black magic, which allows him to kill people without getting caught. Lt. Don Parker (Michael Murphy) is trying to track him down and when he starts to get too close Horace then kills Parker’s family. Parker’s adopted son Jonathan (Peter Berg), who was not present when the murders occurred, begins to have visions where he appears as Horace is committing the atrocities and he uses his new found ability to track Pinker down and eventually get him arrested, but Horace continues to dabble in black magic even in his jail cell, which allows him to survive the electric chair and go on killing people by entering into the bodies of his latest victims.

I couldn’t help but feel as I watched this that writer/director Wes Craven, in his drive to create another Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, completely sold out on this one by writing a script with a voodoo logic that may satisfy a 13-year-old, but will send any discerning adult’s head spinning. For one thing there is no real explanation of how this sleazy, low-life chump that works as a TV repair man was able to attain the powers that he does and simply saying he ‘dabbled in black magic’ says nothing as many other people have done the same, but never achieved these same cataclysmic results.

There is also the issue of Jonathan’s girlfriend’s necklace being the one thing that can supposedly ‘stop’ Horace, but why as this is nothing more than a flimsy piece of jewelry made by humans. And since when do spirits, evil or otherwise come connected with physical defects as Horace continues to walk around with the limp that he had in his old body even when he goes into someone else’s. Clearly this thing is making up its own rules as it goes along and proceeds to get even more convoluted until it gets downright confusing by the end.

Berg is a complete bore in the lead and it’s easy to see why he subsequently left acting and got into directing of which he has had better success. The role of Pinker isn’t any better, but this is more because of the way the character is written. Having a bad guy behave like a one-dimensional psycho killing machine isn’t scary or interesting and a background to the character was needed, but never comes.

The part where Pinker and Jonathan get stuck inside an episode of ‘Leave it to Beaver’ is funny as is the segment where Pinker inhabits the body of a 6-year-old girl, but otherwise it’s a complete mess. Normally it would’ve been a career killer for most directors, but it still managed to make enough money at the box office to keep Craven’s name off the studio’s black list and the film that he did after this The People under the Stairs is considered by many to be a vast improvement.

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: October 27, 1989

Runtime: 1Hour 51Minutes

Rated R

Director: Wes Craven

Studio: Universal

Available: VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 80's Movies, Black Comedy, Horror, Slasher/Gore

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Night of the Lepus (1972)

Posted on October 26, 2015 | Leave a comment

night of the lepus

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: Giant rabbits attack people.

Arizona rancher Cole Hillman (Rory Calhoun) has his property overrun with rabbits and looks to zoologist Roy Bennett (Stuart Whitman) for help. Roy along with his wife Gerry (Janet Leigh) decides to inject these rabbits with hormones that he hopes will throw off their breeding cycle, but instead one of them escapes from the testing lab and creates a whole new race of giant sized rabbits that begin terrorizing and destroying everyone and everything around.

If your thought is ‘what were they thinking’ as you read that plot synopsis then you are not alone as that was the question I kept asking as I viewed the film. What’s even funnier is that the studio feared this concept would be met with ridicule from the beginning and therefore created movie posters that carefully avoided showing the rabbits or explaining what the threatening presence was. The original title for the film, which was ‘Rabbits’ was also changed to Lepus, which in Latin means hare as another way to avoid giving away the plotline, but it all proves futile because once people view the film the secret would be out and the laughter not the scares would begin.

The special effects are the biggest issue as the rabbits never seem giant-sized and are simply photographed in extreme close-up to give the clumsy impression that they are large or shown amongst a miniaturized set. However, even when shown next to a small building it doesn’t work as they appear no bigger than a horse, which may make it big for that species, but still not giant sized. The sound effects used to represent the noise that they make comes off more like ancient tribal music that becomes increasingly annoying and overplayed.

night of the lepus 2

The shots showing the victims after an attack looks more like people lying on the ground smeared with red paint and without any bite marks or chewed flesh that you would expect. The film also doesn’t explain why these rabbits that are normally a docile type of creature would suddenly become so aggressive simply because they became bigger.

It’s fun to see some familiar faces like DeForest Kelley in one of his last non-‘Star Trek’ roles, but I’m surprised that any of these actors took part in this as I’m sure from reading the script that they knew it was ludicrous, but to their credit they perform it earnestly. Melanie Fullerton as the young girl who sets the whole thing in motion by allowing one of the rabbits to escape is the only one that got on my nerves and may win the prize for most annoying child ever to be put on the big screen.

Based on the novel ‘The Year of the Angry Rabbit’ by Russell Braddon the film never gets off the ground and is straddled from the very beginning by its absurd plot and cheesy effects. Even if it had been done as a parody I don’t see it doing any better, which brings us back to the first question ‘what were they thinking’ and my answer to that is that they clearly weren’t.

night of the lepus 4

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: October 4, 1972

Runtime: 1Hour 28Minutes

Rated PG

Director: William F. Claxton

Studio: MGM

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Disaster Flicks, Horror, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Sci-Fi

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Hard Rock Zombies (1985)

Posted on October 25, 2015 | 1 comment

hard rock zombies

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Rock band becomes zombified.

An up-and-coming rock band travels to a small town for their next gig. There the lead singer falls for a young girl named Cassie (Jennifer Coe) while also catching the wrath of the town’s conservative residents who still feel that rock n’ roll is the ‘devil’s music’. The place also harbors Adolph Hitler (Jack Bliesener) who has been secretly hiding out there under a disguise while plotting his next world takeover. After the band members are killed by the evil Nazis they come back to life in the form of zombies killing everyone else and turning the whole town into one big zombie fest.

I have to admit the zombie popularity that has entranced so many people and formed its own special niche escapes me as I find the whole concept to be rather boring. However, certain films like Shaun of the Dead have managed to reinvent the formula by mixing hip humor with a good amount of realistic gore and thus satisfying both the gore hounds and those looking for a laugh. This film tries to do the same, but fails miserable as the humor is corny and the special effects are poor to pathetic.

In fact I was stunned that a well-known director who did some other successful projects was involved with this or even willing to have his name listed on the credits as it’s extraordinarily amateurish and looking like it was put together by novices while drunk. Had it been even remotely more polished, or written by someone who had actually watched zombie movies and appreciated them, it might have worked.

The members who make up the band show no acting ability and having to listen to their generic sounding songs that seem to go forever is another problem and one that almost turns this mess into an annoying music video instead. The second half in which they come back as zombies doesn’t improve things as they still continue to play their songs and worse yet begin to resemble the rock group KISS with their makeup and in fact the similarity is so extreme that I was surprised they weren’t sued.

The zombie parodies are numerous and seemingly never-ending. The majority of them aren’t very good, but this one may very well take the prize as being the worst.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: August 28, 1985

Runtime: 1Hour 38Minutes

Rated R

Director: Krishna Shah

Studio: Cannon Film Distributors

Available: DVD

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Posted in 80's Movies, Low Budget, Movies with Nudity, Parody, Slasher/Gore, Zombie Movies

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To the Devil a Daughter (1976)

Posted on October 23, 2015 | 1 comment

to the devil a daughter 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: He sacrifices his daughter.

Father Michael (Christopher Lee) is an ex-communicated priest who runs an offshoot religion called Children of the Lord that seems connected to the Catholic Church on the outside, but underneath the façade it is actually a cover for a group of Satanists. Henry (Denholm Elliot) is the father who signs over his daughter Cathrine’s (Nastassja Kinski) soul at her birth which stipulates that on her 18th birthday she will become the devil’s representative here on earth. Yet as that date approaches Henry begins to have second thoughts and hires occult novelist John Verney (Richard Widmark) to steal Catherine away from her captors and take her away to his place to hide, but Father Michael uses the power of black magic to hypnotize Catherine and force her to return to him while John tries everything in his power to stop it.

One commenter on the IMDB message boards claims this is ‘one of the worst movie to come out in the 70’s’, which only proves that he must not have seen a lot of ‘70’s movies as there is far worse stuff from that decade than this. Although it is certainly no classic it’s still not bad on the technical end and even rather slick. I enjoyed the on-location shooting done in Europe particularly the scene showing a drawbridge that could be lowered and raised manually by one person. The gore and scares are skimpy, but the scene where Kinski dreams of having the devil fetus crawl up her body and she then proceeds to stuff it into her vagina is certainly worth a few points.

Kinski’s presence is the best thing about the movie and the film became notorious in its day for showing her in full frontal nudity even though she was only 14 at the time. However, what surprised me even more was how confident she looked when she did it without any of the expected nervousness or shyness. I felt that because she was the daughter of actor Klaus Kinski and had to learn to group up fast she had a higher level of maturity than most other teens her age and therefore the scene wasn’t as awkward for her as it might otherwise have been.

Lee’s great as always as the bad guy and I particularly enjoyed his facial expressions. However, Widmark  was miscast as he was too old and I didn’t understand why being only a friend of the family he would take such an invested interest in their daughter and such personal risks to get her out of the cult, which I felt would’ve been better suited to the role of the father and cutting out the Gurney character altogether.

This was the last horror film to be produced by Hammer and for the most part it plays like a cheesy rip-off of The Exorcist, but still has enough of a budget and a capable enough cast to keep it mildly enjoyable.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: March 4, 1976

Runtime: 1Hour 28Minutes

Rated R

Director: Peter Sykes

Studio: Hammer Films

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, British Movies, Foreign Films, Horror, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity

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Village of the Damned (1960)

Posted on October 22, 2015 | 6 comments

village of the damned 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: The eyes have it.

Remade in 1995 and based on the John Wyndham novel ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’ the story centers on a small English village where one day everyone mysteriously falls asleep for several hours while under the spell of some invisible, odorless gas. When they awaken everything seems normal, but later on all the women become pregnant, even those that were not married or were still virgins. When the babies are born they are found to be different from their human counterparts as they have a higher intelligence, odd shaped heads and bright blonde hair. Later on these same children gain the ability to read other people’s minds and dispose of those that they don’t like penetrating them with the spell of their glowing eyes. As the rest of the village panics one man (George Sanders) feels that he may have the ability to stop them, but only if he can somehow control his own thoughts, so they won’t be able to tell what he is actually up to.

As a sci-fi thriller it’s not bad. The film’s short running time has a nice compact style to it with a story that evolves at a fast pace and continues to add new twists. The special effects for its day are realistic enough to be passable and the violence is surprisingly high. Sanders is effective in the lead and Martin Stephens as the leader of the children is quite creepy.

I found it a bit baffling though that the townspeople wouldn’t have quarantined the strange children from the start as it becomes quite obvious from the beginning that they aren’t normal. Instead they are allowed to roam freely even as they become increasingly more sinister. I would’ve also have thought that some of the mothers who gave birth to these strange beings would’ve disowned them and even refused to take care of them once their unnatural and frightening oddities became apparent.

The ending is frustrating as the film does not supply any answer as to who these kids where and what type of alien presence impregnated the women and why. The movie tells us that other places have been effected with these strange children as well, which leads one to believe that this is only a part of some other more sinister plot with far reaching consequences that never gets tackled. Instead we get left with a short film that acts like a small chapter to a fascinating idea with broad potential variables that unfortunately never gets followed through on.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: July 5, 1960

Runtime: 1Hour 17Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Wolf Rilla

Studio: MGM

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 60's Movies, Black & White, British Movies, Foreign Films, Horror, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with a rural setting, Mystery, Sci-Fi

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Deadly Friend (1986)

Posted on October 20, 2015 | 1 comment

deadly friend 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 1 out of 10

4-Word Review: He resurrects his girlfriend.

Paul (Matthew Labyorteaux) is a teen with a genius I.Q. who teaches classes on robotics at a local university. His next-door neighbor is Samantha (Kristy Swanson) a beautiful teen girl who is tormented and abused by her alcoholic father (Richard Marcus). When she becomes brain dead after falling down the stairs during one of her father’s rages Paul tries to bring her back to life by implementing the microchip from his robot’s brain into hers. However, instead of the pretty, sweet girl that she once was she is now a killing machine getting back at anyone who ever wronged her and Paul becomes unable to stop her.

The film suffers severely as a result of the studio having a different idea on the direction they wanted to take it versus what director Wes Craven or its screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin had. Craven and Rubin wanted an offbeat love story while the producers pushed for the conventional ‘80s horror. The result is a mishmash of different genres that throws in everything from blood and gore to silly robots that do cutesy things and look better suited for a kid-friendly Disney movie.

The plot has a logic loophole as well as the reincarnated Samantha somehow gains super human strength, which makes no sense. She may have the robot’s brain, but it’s still her same body, so whatever strength the robot had would not transition to her since he was made from mechanical parts. The part where she lifts a biker dude over her head would probably have broken her back and I wasn’t sure what the dark circles around her eyes was so supposed to mean. Was this to represent that she was slowly dying and decaying? If so then her skin should be rotting and peeling off and not just looking like someone who went a little overboard with the eye shadow.

The misguided nightmare segments are another issue. The scene where Samantha dreams that she stabs her father in the stomach with a broken glass vase that causes blood to rush out of him appears more like an erect penis pissing out blood. The moment where Paul sees Samantha’s dead and burned father’s head popping out of his bed is too reminiscent of A Nightmare on Elm Street and comes off looking like Craven was going to the same well too often.

The characters are dull and poorly fleshed out. Paul is too clean cut and the fact that he is super smart at everything becomes annoying. Samantha seems overly passive and sheltered and her loathsome father becomes nothing more than a walking, talking cliché trucked straight in from Redneckville.

Spoiler Alert!

The ending is by far the worst part as it features Paul coming into the morgue after Samantha has been killed and then having her inexplicable and without explanation turn into a robot. Whether this was simply a dream or a misguided attempt to turn the plotline into some sort of sequel is unclear, but it helps cement this as a complete catastrophe despite its good production values and a perfect testament to what happens when the producer and director are not on the same page.

End of Spoiler Alert!

deadly friend 2

My Rating: 1 out of 10

Released: October 10, 1986

Runtime: 1Hour 31Minutes

Rated R

Director: Wes Craven

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: VHS, DVD, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube 

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Posted in 80's Movies, Adolescence/High School, Horror, Movies Based on Novels, Romance, Sci-Fi, Slasher/Gore

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The Changeling (1980)

Posted on October 18, 2015 | 6 comments

the changeling

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Dead child haunts house.

Still grieving from the sudden loss of his family in a freak accident composer John Russell (George C. Scott) decides to move to the Pacific Northwest where he finds a large stately mansion to move into. He feels it would be the perfect place to reflect and continue with his work, but instead realizes that it is haunted by a child who was murdered there years earlier. With the help of Claire (Trish Van Devere) who had procured the property for him they investigate its history and find that there is a connection between the killing and an influential senator (Melvyn Douglas).

One of the aspects about this film that I did like was that it was given a big budget and the on-location shooting that was done from New York, Seattle and even Toronto gives it a strong visual backdrop and makes it light years ahead of the average horror film that is usually crippled from the start by its meager funding. The mansion is impressive at least the outside of it, which was actually only a façade that was constructed when they couldn’t find a real one to fit their needs. However, the idea that a single man would move into such a large place seems ridiculous and there’s nothing that says ghosts can’t haunt small homes that would be more practical place for one person to live in.

Scott gives an unusual performance in that he shows little of a frightened reaction when the scares occur. To some extent I liked this as the screams and shocked expressions in most horror movies become overdone, but when a vision of a ghostly boy appears in a bathtub and all Scott does is calmly back away it seems to be underplaying it a bit too much.

I also felt that Van Devere’s character was unnecessary and was put in only because she was Scott’s real-life wife at the time, but it seemed unrealistic that a real estate agent who was merely an acquaintance to John would get so wrapped up in his quandary or even believe him to begin with. No relationship is ever implied, but it would have made more sense had the character been written in as a girlfriend.

I realize there are those that consider this to be a ‘really scary’ movie, but I found it to be pretty flat. The ‘scares’ as it where consist of nothing more than a child’s ball rolling down a staircase twice, whispery voices, a runaway wheelchair and a few doors slamming. There is also a fiery finale that borders on the hooky and a tacky séance and if that is enough to keep you up all night then have at it.

Spoiler Alert!

The idea that this child, who was sickly and if he died before his 21st birthday the family fortune would go to charity, so the father kills him and has him replaced with another child who later grows into being this powerful aging senator, didn’t make sense in that I didn’t see where the ‘justice’ was in getting back at the senator who had nothing to do with the killing or even knew about it. He was simply an innocent child taken from an orphanage and the product of a nefarious scheme by the father, so why not go after the dead soul of the murdering father and leave the senator alone? The senator dies from a heart attack that we are lead to believe was caused by the ghostly presence of the angry child, which to some extent makes the protagonists look like the bad guys since they were the ones that precipitated the meeting that lead to the death and instead should’ve tried to prevent it.

I was also confused by the whole backstory about John’s family being killed in a roadside accident that begins the movie since it really didn’t have much to do with the main plot and could’ve easily been left out completely.

End of Spoiler Alert!

I first saw this film over 20 years ago and wasn’t all that impressed with it then and I’m still not. I realize it has its legion of fans, but to me it’s just an average ghost story and far from being a classic.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: March 28, 1980

Runtime: 1Hour 46Minutes

Rated R

Director: Peter Medak

Studio: Associated Film Distribution (AFD)

Available: VHS, DVD

6 Comments

Posted in 80's Movies, Foreign Films, Ghost Story, Horror, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies from Canada

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