Day of the Reaper (1984)

Directed by:
Tim Ritter

Florida native Timothy Gordon Ritter began making a name for himself toward the end of the decade (at least to fans of low-budget regional productions) with such gory efforts as TRUTH OR DARE? A CRITICAL MADNESS (1986) and KILLING SPREE (1987); both of which received decent distribution deals during the VHS era. Before any of those, Ritter had sharpened up his skills with a Super 8 camera; making many shorts and finally this 75-minute slasher flick that's been inspired by Halloween, Friday the 13th, The Hills Have Eyes and numerous other then-popular films. Reaper was filmed while Ritter was still a teenager and, needless to say, the cast is comprised of non-actors (most are the director's friends), the budget was nonexistent (around 1,000 bucks), the photography and editing couldn't possibly be any worse and all of the sound was ineptly dubbed in later on. Supposedly the original video transfer was made by videotaping the projected image out of a shoe box! That all said, this is pretty much only of interest for completists and fans of this director to see how much he's improved over the years. The folks who distributed it (Sub Rosa) were at least kind of enough to add trivia about the production throughout the movie to keep us distracted.

At the Sunnyville Mental Institution in Sunnyville, Florida, a pair of orderlies have to transport a prolific serial killer nicknamed "The Reaper" (Todd Nolf) somewhere to get his just dues in the electric chair. While on a back road, the killer jabs a pen in one's eyeball and slits the other's throat with a razor blade (where did that come from?) then escapes into the woods. I will stop right here and add that the psycho is already clad in black boots, black gloves, a flannel shirt and has a black hood over his head as he's being escorted out of the mental institution. Ha! We then get a long and tedious scene of a survivor of the psycho's previous killing spree walking around as her voice-over wonders if the killer could possibly escape and come looking for her. Nah! She goes to take a nap on her couch and then we're in flashback mode that explains what happened over a year earlier to her and some of her buddies.

In the flashback scenes, our heroine Jennifer Morgan (Cathy O'Hanlon) and four of her friends; Heather (Cristy Carrington), Cheryl (Sheila Hudson), Julie (Colleen Foley) and Jill (Sherry Gibson), are driving home from a day at the beach when their car breaks down. They're then immediately ambushed by the bloody-apron-wearing killer, who's already killed 40 people and then cannibalized their corpses. Jill gets killed when her arm is ripped off. After hitting the psycho with their car (one girl wants to kill him but another hilariously says "Don't do it. That's going down to his level!"), the others manage to escape. One of the girls goes to see Detective Rosenberg (played by the director), who doesn't do much of anything. The Reaper decides to then slaughter all the rest of the girls. One goes back to the beach all by herself and gets a machete through the neck in a shot so blurry it's even harder to make out than the rest of the film. Next up is a hacksaw to the neck. Another of the girls tries to hide out in a hotel with her husband Don (Brian Todd), but the killer shows up there to gut the guy with a knife while he showers and then strangle her. The detective decides to then use Heather as bait. The ridiculous "trap" they set up in an alleyway is somehow pulled off successfully.

We're then brought back to the present day; 15 months after the original murders, and The Reaper pops back in to chase Jennifer around in the woods with an axe. She gets away again, goes to the detective again and he tells her the psycho didn't actually escape and sends her to see a shrink (Patrick Foster) who turns out to be after the (now we learn) supernatural killer himself. The detective gets dismembered with a machete, someone is stabbed in the crotch, some guy with a white sheet tied over his head does battle with the killer and we learn that The Reaper's heart must be cut out of his chest in order to stop the madness. If you make it all the way to the end you deserve a medal.

Not many will be able to watch this boring, senseless and thoroughly inept amateur video. Even the running text track (written by Ritter himself), which admittedly helps soften the blow some, keeps saying things like "ZZZZZZ. Are you asleep yet?," "This movie is a good cure for insomnia!," and "Can anyone make sense of this plot???" Somehow using this and its follow-up, the shot-on-video anthology TWISTED ILLUSIONS (1985), Ritter was able to secure a 250,000 budget to shoot Truth or Dare? (one the best-selling made for video horror films of all time according to the trivia). VHS and Beta copies were distributed to independent video stores primarily in Florida. This currently has a rating of 8.1 out of 10 on IMDb. Oh, please.

NO STARS!

Satanwar (1979)

... aka: Bart La Rue's Satanwar
... aka: Satan War

Directed by:
Bart La Rue

An off-screen narrator kicks things off with the following brief disclaimer: The film that you are about to see is based on real events that have taken place in the world of the supernatural. The order and sequence have been changed in some instances for dramatic emphasis but each supernatural occurrence depicted in this film has its origin in fact. Only the names and places have been changed to protect the innocent and any resemblance to anyone, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Now let that sink in for just one moment... Real events... only the names have been changed... any resemblance to anyone is purely a coincidence... Ha! In the summer of 1976, somewhere in America, Louise Foster (Sally Schermerhorn), a public school teacher, and her husband Bill (Jimmy Drankovitch), move into their new three bedroom "dream house." The home comes complete with such 1970s luxuries as a garbage disposal (ohh!), a "real dishwasher" (ahh!) and even "a backyard with trees and flowers" (wow!), but they're a little skeptical about why they got the place so cheap. As the newlyweds are moving in, neither seems to be themselves. Bill yells and curses and Louise can't stop sobbing. A cross they hang on the wall keeps turning upside down, someone knocks at the door but when they go to answer it no one is there and a coffeepot boils over with some awful-smelling thick brown substance that resembles melted chocolate. Bill keeps seeing a figure lurking around outside and a chair slides across the floor, hits Louise and knocks her to the ground. They're awaken later that night by the sounds of someone in their kitchen but no one is there, then the house shakes and lights flash. Quite an eventful first day in their new home, I'd say.

The numskulls naturally remain in the house and Bill tries to pacify his hysterical wife by explaining these clearly supernatural events away, including a cross flying off the wall right in front of them. But the strange shit keeps happening. The oven keeps getting turned on by itself, the phone rings and nobody's on the other end and a stinky substance that looks suspiciously like pizza dough mixed with green food dye leaks out of the cupboards and refrigerator. When Bill finally questions whether their home is occupied by evil spirits, Louise responds "A haunted house? I don't believe in that kind of thing!" despite earlier having her breasts groped by invisible hands while washing dishes in the kitchen. The two leave and go to the beach where Louise suddenly changes her tune about the possibility of ghosts; "... someone touched me... all over. It was like I was being molested but there wasn't anybody there." The two make a joke out of it ("I'm not going to be molested day and night just so you don't have to take out the garbage!") and return home. Louise stops thinking it's so funny when the ghost knocks her onto the bed, pins her down and then rapes her. Evelyn (Jane August), their psychic friend, swings by for a visit and immediately informs them that they need to leave because the home was built on a plot of land where dozens have died and is now overrun by demons.

Because they've sunk all their money into the home, Bill ignores Evelyn and tells his wife "We're going to stay and beat this thing!" He tries to use their crucifix to perform his own exorcism ("In the name of the father, the son and the holy ghost I order you to get out!") but a black robed figure brandishing a butcher knife shows up to chase them off. And then something truly strange happens... the story with Bill and Louise and the haunted house abruptly ends with the couple just hopping in their car and leaving at the one hour mark. And yet there's still 15 minutes left to go. To push this to the "feature film" point it needed to be, the director decided to fill up the rest of the time with a narrated, completely unrelated voodoo ritual (shot mainly from a distance) with a man playing bongo drums and dancers gyrating around for an excruciatingly long 15 minutes. You'll soon be asking to be put out of your misery or, like me, just fast-forwarding through it.

Satanwar is appealing in its rarity for genre connoisseurs, but that's really all it has going for it. The first hour is slow, repetitive and deadly dull in its familiarity. Aside from one brief scene, it's all filmed in one house. There are a hundred shots of the crucifix on the wall, dozens of the coffee pot and long scenes of the characters cleaning up messes and walking around. As for the actors, they all appear to have been dubbed in post and are terrible enough to provide a few chuckles here and there. Especially awful is the whiny, frail-sounding actress who provided Louise's voice. The synthesizer music score sounds like an annoying ambulance siren and it never seems to stop. It does however precede the later Demon Rage (filmed 1980; released 1982) and the big budget The Entity (filmed 1981; released 1982) is the 'raped by a ghost' sub-genre. Both Rage and Entity were based on the same "true" story of a woman who claimed to have been repeatedly sexually violated by an evil spirit. Satanwar doesn't credit any source, which may explain the tacked-on opening disclaimer.

★

Warning to the Curious, A (1972) (TV)

... aka: Ghost Story for Christmas: A Warning to the Curious, A

... aka: M.R. James' A Warning to the Curious

Directed by:
Lawrence Gordon Clark

Part of the annual BBC series A Ghost Story for Christmas, which lasted from 1971 to 1978 and debuted a new supernatural tale (running from 30 to 50 minutes apiece) each year around Christmastime, Warning was the second of these TV specials. It was preceded by THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER (1971) and followed by LOST HEARTS (1973), THE TREASURE OF ABBOT THOMAS (1974) and THE ASH TREE (1975) - all from director / writer / producer Lawrence Gordon Clark and all based on stories by famed British author M.R. James - as well as THE SIGNALMAN (1976), which was also directed by Clark but based on a short story by Charles Dickens, STIGMA (1977) - again from Clark but based on an original screenplay by Clive Exton, and finally THE ICE HOUSE (1978), which was directed by Derek Lister and based on an original screenplay by John Bowen. The series lied dormant after that for nearly two decades, but was revived once again in 2005 for BBC Four. Warning now stands as the crown jewel in the entire early series. Not only is it the clear best of the lot, but I also consider it one of the scariest films I've ever seen.

According to legend, in the Dark Ages three sacred crowns were each buried in three separate places to protect villagers from an onslaught of Vikings who'd been terrorizing the land. As long as the crowns lie undisturbed, the land would be protected. Since then, one of the crowns had been found by thieves, who had it melted it down for the gold content, another was lost to the encroaching sea and the third has somehow managed to stay buried and undiscovered for all this time. An archaeologist (Julian Herrington) who's out excavating a plot of wooded land near the sea thinks he's going to find it. That is, until a strange, cloaked man named William Ager (John Kearney) mysteriously pops up and warns him "No digging here!" When his warnings are ignored, Ager picks up a sharp blade and starts hacking into the intruder.

Twelve years pass and Mr. Paxton (Peter Vaughan) arrives from London via train to the same secluded area of Norfolk (a popular tourist spot on off-season because it's winter) neat where the previous events took place. He gets a room at a nearly vacant, seaside hotel and then sets about exploring the Anglian legend in a small local village in Seaburg. The down-on-his-luck, unemployed former blue collar worker Paxton, only an amateur antiquarian, is hoping to turn his life around by locating the crown and prove "you don't have to have a string of letters after your name to be recognized." He goes to a cemetery and learns from the vicar (George Benson) that William Ager, a mentally-disturbed man rumored to be the crown's last "guardian," has long since passed away. Then it's off to an antique store, where he finds a book that belonged to the Ager family. From that, he's able to find Ager's former home, and learns from the young woman who now lives there that there was a specific plot of land near the home that Ager spent most of his life guarding.

Equipped with all of the information he needs, Paxton now knows just where to start digging. He isn't, however, wise enough to heed the ample warnings that he shouldn't be doing so. Not only does he ignore the legend and what the crowns represent, but he also has been spotting a figure cloaked in black silently, ominously standing off in the distance watching his every move. The night before he leaves, someone even sneaks into his room, cuts up the Ager family book and leaves his razor threatening sitting on the pages right under William's name. Still undeterred, Paxton sneaks out of the hotel late one night, goes to Seaburg, begins digging and finally locates the fabled crown. But the entire time he feels the presence of someone watching... someone drawing closer...

A perfectly-realized ghost story with no bells and whistles, no gore, no needless filler and no special effects. Instead this offers up excellent direction, fine performances, a low-key, otherworldly score punctuated by frantic violins and stark, low-budget 16mm photography that manages to brilliantly draw the eerie supernatural elements of the story out of the everyday world. I doubt you'll see many movies that utilize barren landscape as well as this one; which it does to creepy effect throughout. We only really see Ager in the brief opening sequence and from there on out, he's mostly seen as a silhouette in the distance, but his black garb and cape-like coat make him stand out prominently from the blue ocean waters, light sandy beaches and fields of long, dead, brown grass. Other shots of Ager chasing our protagonist around have been cleverly blurred to obscure him; turning him more into a faceless force of nature like the wind that blows through the tree limbs to signify his presence. The sounds of hoarse breathing can sometimes be heard and Ager's ghost can sometimes be seen by people, but he can disappear just as quickly.

The following year, Vaughan appeared in THE RETURN (1973); an excellent and, sadly, seldom seen 30-minute ghost story based on a story by Ambrose Bierce. Clive Swift (who'd previously appeared in the Stalls of Barchester entry as well as the great BBC holiday horror DEAD OF NIGHT: THE EXORCISM [filmed the same year]) co-stars as the only other guest in the hotel: a doctor there to get away from his wife and sketch.

BBC has issued this one on VHS and DVD. It's also available in a box set with the other titles in the series.

★★★★