1 line
2.8 KiB
Plaintext
1 line
2.8 KiB
Plaintext
Mediocre spoof of Horror and sci-fi features Vincent Price in a minor role as a Satanic Warlock who gathers up his town of worshipers to disrupt an obnoxious group of paranormal researchers visiting a supposed haunted house where a series of bloody murders took place. At times Monty Python-ish parodying prevails..if only the gags and one-liners were as funny as the filmmakers wanted them to be. They try really hard, but I have to say I laboured through it instead of enjoying the film from start to finish. Bizarre gore murders such as a man being pulled into a toilet, a woman's throat being attacked by a monster which emerges from the mold on a colleague's arm, a victim stabbed by a teddy bear(!), a female victim getting "raped"(..blissfully, in this case, unlike THE ENTITY)by a ghost, and one woman getting beheaded by a sword(..it glows like a Star Wars light saber, an obvious poke at the George Lucas flicks). There's a poke at Carrie where a punished girl(..she kissed her boyfriend)causes her deeply fanatically religious mom's beheading. A lot of paranormal activity where objects fly across rooms and break, along with blood coming out faucets and walls. Dopplegangers from hell killing off their human counterparts in the Headstone Manor is quite an unusual touch, I must admit.<br /><br />The film is a good-natured spoof, but I found the humor itself rather lacking in quality. I'm sure this film, though, will have a fervent following if it were to get a DVD release. Perhaps there's a reason why it hasn't, though. I guess the film's best gore gag would be a badly orchestrated surgical procedure where our lead paranormal scientist loses his monocle inside the body of a patient as his aids laugh hysterically. I'm sure Vincent Price fans will have a good time seeing him swear, gleefully theatrical, parodying his image. I wish there was more of him and less of everybody else. I admit, I was incredibly excited(..maybe, TOO excited)when I found a rare VHS copy of this at a local rental store going out of business, so a degree of disappointment was too be expected. The cast take great pride lampooning the British kind of stage acting, quite animated in their expressions, really letting it hang out unrestrained, but I didn't particularly find very much really gut-bustingly funny..maybe, I'm not part of that crowd targeted. There are lots of sex jokes and gags, even some homosexual humor. I think the film's biggest misstep is not featuring Price as the central character, even though Kenny Everett has some shining moments. The ET gag with Pamela Stephenson's body being sexually ravaged by the ghost who molested her the first time, her silhouette flying across the image of the moon is certainly a strange moment towards the end. The version I watched suffered from poor picture quality and sound so I would perhaps respond better to a remastered edition. |