Category Archives: Movies with Nudity

The Harrad Experiment (1973)

Posted on November 24, 2015 | 1 comment

the harrad experiment

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: College promotes sexual freedom.

Based on the novel by Robert H. Rimmer the story centers on a group of students who attend a socially progressive college where sex between multiple partners is expected and promoted. The school is run by Phillip and Margaret (James Whitmore, Tippi Hedren) who feel conventional marriage is an unrealistic ideal that creates the idea of ‘ownership’ over someone else, which in turn causes jealousy. They hope to end these problems and change the cultural norms by having the next generation accept more of a group marriage mentality.

The film nicely avoids the smarmy T&A factor by portraying nudity in a natural non exploitative way while also having characters that are believable and a good representation of the young generation from that era. The different ways that the students respond to the unique environment and the realization that they aren’t quite as sexually liberated as they thought remains the story’s focal point of interest.

The film also allows for a great chance to see young stars in the making. Laurie Walters, who later went on to star in the TV-show ‘Eight is Enough’, gives a sensitive portrayal of a young woman who’s still shy about her body and not quite ready to enjoy sex outside of the bounds of romance as she had initially thought. Bruno Kirby is good as well playing a student who’s so filled with insecurities that it prevents him from having any sex at all. Don Johnson though gives the best performance as a cocky student who uses the program simply as a way to ‘score’ with women only to later learn that even he needs some emotional bonding too.

The always reliable Whitmore is solid as the stoic instructor and Hedren gets one of her best roles outside of her most famous one in The Birds with her titillating moment coming near the end when she strips off her clothes and tries to entice Johnson to make love to her right out in the open and in front of everyone. Actor Ted Cassidy, who co-wrote the script, can also be seen briefly sitting at the counter of the local café.

Although the film does manage to bring out a few provocative elements I still felt even without having read the novel that is was only skimming the surface. Having the story focus on only a few of the couples isn’t as captivating as it could’ve been had it instead taken a broader look at all of the students. The low budget gives the production a cheap look and a few too many sappy love songs get thrown in an attempt to turn it into a ‘70s romance instead of keeping it more of a psychological drama that it should’ve been.

A sequel called Harrad Summer, which follows these same students who take what they’ve learned and try to implement it into their adult lives, was released one year later and that will be reviewed later on this week.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: May 11, 1973

Runtime: 1Hour 37Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ted Post

Studio: Cinerama Releasing Corporation

Available: VHS, DVD

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Posted in 70's Movies, College Life, Drama, Low Budget, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Sex

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The Visitors (1972)

Posted on November 14, 2015 | 3 comments

visitors 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: His past comes back.

Vietnam veteran Bill (James Woods) has moved back into civilian life while enjoying the quietness of the country with his girlfriend Martha (Patricia Joyce) and her infant son. One day in the dead of winter while Bill is away shopping two of his former war buddies Tony and Mike (Chico Martinez, Steve Railsback) come by for an unexpected visit. When Bill returns he is not happy to see them and when Martha asks him why he tells her of how while in Vietnam he had witnessed the two raping a woman and later he decided to report it, which got the two men sent to prison. Now that they are out he is afraid they may be looking for revenge. Tony insists that he’s forgiven Bill for what he did, but Mike’s intentions are much more ominous especially with the way he eyes Martha. As the night wears on the tensions mount until festering over into anger and mayhem.

The story is loosely based on an actual crime that occurred in Vietnam on November 19, 1966 when five American soldiers kidnapped and gang raped a 21-year-old Vietnamese woman who they later killed. One of the soldiers, who did not take part in the crime, but did witness it, reported the incident to his superiors, which eventually got the other men convicted and imprisoned.

The incident was first made into a movie in 1970 in Michael Verhoeven’s o.k. and then 19 years later Brian De Palma did another version of it called Casualties of War, which starred Michael J. Fox. This version differs from the other two in that it only alludes to the crime, but never shows it. Instead it hypothesis on what might’ve happened had those who were convicted came back to revisit the one that had turned them in.

Story wise the film works to a degree as it reveals things in layers, which helps hold the mystery and filming the majority of it inside one lonely, isolated house gives it an effectively claustrophobic feeling, but the production values are extremely low and resembles more someone’s lost home movie than a feature film directed by a one-time Hollywood legend. The background sound is mainly made up of a howling wind noise, which helps heighten the creepiness, but then during the second half director Elia Kazan inserts music, which becomes a distraction.

The ending leaves open a wide array of unanswered questions along with a lot of murky character motivations that makes the whole thing seem pointless and ill-conceived. The only interesting element to get out of it is seeing Woods and Railsback in their respective film debuts. Railsback is especially good in a part he seems born to play and one he honed to even greater success years later in The Stunt Man.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: February 2, 1972

Runtime: 1Hour 28Minutes

Rated R

Director: Elia Kazan

Studio: United Artists

Available: Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cold Climate/Wintertime Movies, Drama, Low Budget, Movies Based on Actual Events, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

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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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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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Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972)

Posted on October 17, 2015 | Leave a comment

don't torture a duckling 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: Who’s killing the children?

The setting in this Italian giallo is a small, rural village where the children of the townspeople are being murdered. At first the police suspect and arrest a mentally handicapped man (Vito Passeri), but the killings continue. Soon even more suspects turn up including Maciara (Florinda Bolkan) the mother of a dead child herself who secretly practices voodoo using dolls made by her father and yet every time the authorities believe they’ve found the culprit more clues arise that leads them to someone else creating panic in a town already steeped in fear, suspicion and the superstitious.

As a story detailing a police investigation it’s not too bad. The plot works in a linear fashion that’s easy to follow without entering in too many subplots or red herrings although it’s still no better than your average episode of ‘Murder She Wrote’. I did enjoy the rural Italian landscape and the bird’s eye shot of the village whose decrepit, rundown buildings visually hit home the stifled, bleak nature of the residents and why they would turn so heavily to the spiritual world as their sole escape.

Balkan’s performance as the nutty lady is effective particularly when she has a seizure during her interrogation and the scene where she gets surrounded by men who belt her with chains is quite graphic and realistic.

The film though, like with a lot of Italian productions from that era, does have dubbing issues particularly director Lucio Fulci’s use of adding in all the sound effects giving it a certain over-the-top cartoon quality. For instance when a victim is being slapped by a man’s hand it sounds more like the lashing of a whip and even simple stuff like the shoveling of dirt comes off wrong because the sound effect is not in sync with the action on the screen.

The film also has a uncomfortable moment where an adult character (Barbara Bouchet), who is one of the protagonists, walks around naked in front of a 12-year-old boy and even asks him how many women ‘he’s done it with’.

Spoiler Alert!

Guessing who the real killer is was easy and I had the whole thing figured out after about 30 minutes making the rest of the mystery predictable and boring. The idea of a priest killing children might’ve been considered shocking at the time, but now as with Fulci’s criticism of the Catholic Church it comes off as heavy-handed and redundant.

The close-up, slow motion shot of the priest falling down a cliff at the end is the film’s most controversial moment as it is clearly a dummy whose blank eyes and unnaturally agape mouth looks incredibly fake. Some have argued that this was Fulci’s attempt at revealing the ‘inner ugliness’ of the character by showing something with such a distorted face, but since a similar looking mannequin is also used to portray one of the boy victim’s submerged in a tub of water earlier I think it can safely be said that it was more just the cheapness of the production than anything else.

End of Spoiler Alert!

don't torture a duckling 4

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: September 29, 1972

Runtime: 1Hour 42Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Lucio Fulci

Studio: Medusa Distribuzione

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video

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Posted in 70's Movies, Cult, Foreign Films, Horror, Italian Films, Low Budget, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity, Mystery

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Deadly Blessing (1981)

Posted on October 12, 2015 | 1 comment

deadly blessing

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 5 out of 10

4-Word Review: Murder in bible country.

When her husband is killed in a mysterious tractor accident Martha (Maren Jensen) must try to forge on alone while living on an isolated farm surrounded by a religious sect known as The Hittites who show great disdain towards her due to the fact that she is not one of them. Lana and Vicky (Sharon Stone, Susan Buckner) are two of her friends who come to visit and offer solace. Soon more deaths and strange events begin to occur convincing them that the feared incubus, which is a male demon who descends onto female victims as they sleep, may soon be approaching.

This low budget foray, which was filmed in both Ohio and Texas and directed by Wes Craven, is competent enough to hold the viewer’s attention despite a convoluted story that goes on longer than it should. The best part of the film is its female cast, which to date marks the last acting role for both Jensen and Buckner as well as the first speaking part for Stone. Jensen, whose nude scenes were done by a body double, is okay, but Stone is the better actress and looks just as beautiful today as she did back then. In case you thought that actors didn’t earn their pay she certainly does here by allowing a live spider, albeit with its teeth removed, to fall into her mouth during a creepy nightmare segment that I’m not sure I would’ve been up to myself. The film also features Lisa Hartman and the ageless Lois Nettleton as her mother.

The shocks are trite and the creepiness at only a minimum. However, the segment where a large snake crawls into the bathtub while Jensen is in it had me creeped out and the scene involving Buckner having her car set on fire while she is still inside is good too, but both of these segments are similar to ones that Craven used in his later films making me believe that his horror concepts had a definite limit.

The Hittites, which are presumably so strict that they make the Amish look like ‘swingers’, are too one-dimensional and their leader, which gets played stoically by Ernest Borgnine, seems unusually hateful.  I can’t say that there aren’t religious sect leaders that are like him, but I don’t believe they would be so outwardly hostile to people from outside his group and would try to put on more of a kindly façade. I also thought the idea of the Buckner character starting a relationship with one of the Hittite boys, which is played by Jeff East, was unrealistic as they came from such vastly different backgrounds that trying to form any lasting bond or connection would be expectedly slim.

Michael Berryman as one of the more aggressive sect members gives an energetic performance and the fact that Craven advertises another one of his other projects, the TV-Movie Summer of Fear, on a theater marquee during a segment shot in the town, deserves a few merits, but what I really liked was the completely unexpected surprise ending that helps the film rise above the usual ‘80s horror and was something that was forced onto Craven by the producers and not actually of his own devising.

deadly blessing 2

My Rating: 5 out of 10

Released: August 14, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 42Minutes

Rated R

Director: Wes Craven

Studio: United Artists

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

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Posted in 80's Movies, Horror, Movies that take place in Texas, Movies with a rural setting, Movies with Nudity

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Eyes of a Stranger (1981)

Posted on October 5, 2015 | Leave a comment

eyes of a stranger

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: News reporter stalks killer.

Jane Harris (Lauren Tewes) is a Miami TV-news reporter who takes a special interest in a local story involving a serial rapist/killer in the area since her younger sister Tracy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) was attacked years earlier that left her without the ability to see, hear, or speak. She starts to suspect that the killer may actually be her neighbor (John DiSanti) who lives in an apartment across the courtyard from hers. She begins sneaking into his apartment when he is away in order to collect evidence unaware that the man has already set his sights on Tracy.

The story was originally conceived as a thriller and the Rear Window-like element adds some interest, but the tension is ruined when it takes out the mystery angle completely by making it quite clear early on who the killer is. The silly gory effects by Tom Savini aren’t up to his usual standard and pretty sparse. The scene where a victim’s head is chopped off his body like a cork popping out of a wine bottle with only one swing of a meat clever looks quite fake. The idea that a killer would    be able to sneak up behind a victim without them ever knowing, which is a common trait in ‘80s slasher films, is also hard to believe as I think most anyone can sense when someone is right behind them without actually having to see them.

Tewes, who is better known for playing Julie McCoy on the long running TV-series ‘The Love Boat’ does an okay job even though she’s never starred in a film since. Leigh, whose first major film role this was, also does well despite the extreme limitations of her part. The only issue that I had with the casting is with the children who were hired to play the women when they were younger during the flashback sequences. Both girls look nothing like their adult counterpart and in the case of Amy Krug who plays Tewes as child she doesn’t even have her same color of eyes.

The motivations of the characters are another issue. In the case of the killer he discards the body of one of his victims along beach, but then gets his car stuck in the sand. A man who was making out with his girlfriend nearby offers to help, but instead of accepting it he kills him, which makes little sense. Some may argue that he stabbed them because he didn’t want to be identified later, but if that was the case then why not at least accept their assistance and then kill them as someone at some point was going to have to offer him a hand and it’s never made clear how eventually he manages to get his car out.

The Tewes character acts equally stupid including when she makes anonymous phone calls to the killer without attempting to disguise her voice even though she is this famous news lady heard all over the city.  She also busily breaks into the bad guy’s apartment twice looking for evidence, but then doesn’t bother to take his blood soaked shirt that she sees him stuff in a parking lot trash can, which could’ve easily connected him to his last victim.

Spoiler Alert!

The film manages to be marginally gripping despite some agonizingly prolonged sequences involving watching the victims slowly become aware that they are being stalked before predictably and routinely getting offed. The segment at the end though where Leigh’s character ‘miraculously’ regains her sight and speech while she’s being attacked after losing it during her previous encounter with a rapist is pure corn and something that happens only in movieland and nowhere else.

End of Spoiler Alert!

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: March 27, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 25Minutes

Rated R

Director: Ken Weiderhorn

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube 

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

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