MANIAC (1980)




HORRORS! 'MANIAC' ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU SICK, BUT NOT ENOUGH TO MAKE THEM STOP

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - February 27, 1981

Author: DESMOND RYAN

By Desmond Ryan

Inquirer Movie Critic

There are a fair number of films that make you want to throw up your hands in despair. Maniac simply makes one want to throw up.

To call this horror film the work of sick and irresponsible perverts is to demean the honor of perverts. In seven years of watching films for a living, I have walked out before the often-bitter end on only two occasions. This review is based on the first 40 blood-drenched minutes, which was as much of this unspeakable and genuinely depraved film as I could stomach.

Anyone ill-advised enough to venture into the presence of this disgusting venture should adopt the tactic favored by the fans of the woeful New Orleans Saints last season. This involved sitting in the stands with the head covered by a large, brown-paper bag, which afforded the double benefit of disguising one's attendance and obscuring the countless errors of the team on the field. For Maniac , it should also help with the nausea to which anyone with a claim to humanity will undoubtedly succumb.

For some time, it has been clear that, having exhausted themselves of original ideas, horror-film directors are now engaged in a blood-slinging contest. The situation in these movies is always the same - a woman alone and in peril is murdered in gruesome circumstances. Sometimes her companion - usually her lover - is done in for good measure.

In the normal run, I would ignore Maniac in the same way that one might cross the street to avoid a dead cat. However, there are aspects of this film that demand denunciation. And because the City Council and the Human Relations Commission are too busy condemning Fort Apache , to worry about what a film like Maniac does to the mental health of the citizenry, the matter has to be raised here.

I call this movie irresponsible for two reasons. First, it caters to instincts and feelings of a baseness that I don't even want to think about. This is not entertainment or the mild titillation of being scared. This is gross pandering. Secondly, the people who made Maniac - its director is a man of 26 named William Lustig - don't seem to know or care about what effect it might have on a sick or deranged mind. I have no way of proving such a connection, but the thought of certain men seeing it and then creeping off to a subway does not sit well with me.

The maniac in this instance is played by Joe Spinell. He has a penchant for selecting victims at random, scalping them and using the hair to adorn mannequins. The credits are preceded by one throat-cutting (woman) and one garroting (man). They are followed by one strangulation and scalping and one shotgun blast at a head. At this point Ileft the screening room and an ashen- faced veteran projectionist.

Beyond the specifics and a ghastly love of detail with which these killings are depicted is a more urgent issue. Maniac is the epitome of the new pornography, propaganda for an attitude about women that is obscene in a manner not found in sex films. Hard-core pornography tends to dominate women, but at least it does not exude the festering hatred of them to be found in Maniac . There is some incredibly twisted Calvinism at work in these films that says that women whose conduct is "loose" should be punished in ever more dreadful ways.

The film is doing well at the box office in New York, which means there are a lot of people who think of this as entertainment. That should terrify and appall anyone who cares about the state of our country. Mr. Lustig obviously does not. His film belongs in an abbatoir, not a theater. Space and the restraints of language imposed by a newspaper prevent me from discussing where he belongs.

THE HILLS HAVE EYES PART 2 (1985)




THOSE 'HILLS' STILL HAVE EYES

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - January 2, 1986

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Film Critic

"The Hills Have Eyes II." A thriller starring Michael Berryman and John Laughlin. Written and directed by Wes Craven. Running time: 100 minutes. A Castle Hill release. At the Duke and Duchess exclusively.

The local showing of Wes Craven's "The Hills Have Eyes II" must be some sort of marketing experiment.

The movie is being screened exclusively in only one theater (the Duke or Duchess - I've never been able to figure out which is which) and, to the best of my knowledge, it is playing nowhere else in the country. So, I suppose that the eventual national release of "The Hills Have Eyes II" depends on how well it does here.

Judging from the local reaction at the performance I attended, Craven's film won't be released.

This movie is so shallow and pointless that it goes beyond the usual horror idiocy and enters the realm of anti-humanity. Its plot is so simple I couldn't even follow it.

It goes something like this: A bunch of kids jump on a bus and, with the money made from the stud fees of their communal pet dog, Beast, they head for the desert. Why? Who knows? (Anyone who figures this much out must have serious emotional problems.)

Anyway, one of the kids, the overaged Ruby, has reservations about the desert trek because she was involved in the murder and mayhem there that laced the first film. The original "Hills Have Eyes" was a fairly disgusting to- do about the systematic extermination of a family of vacationers by a family of hermits. Ruby was one of the hermits, see; now she's a good guy.

Much of the film recaps the previous movie via flashbacks. Ruby has flashbacks. Even Beast, the dog, has a flashback or two. Honest. Meanwhile, the fresh-faced kids - Jane and Harry, Foster and Susan, Cass and Sonny and something called The Hulk (John Laughlin of "Crimes of Passion") - start dropping like flies.

The bald Michael Berryman encores from the first film, once again exploiting his birth defects as the movie's most horrific villain.

He keeps telling the rest of the cast - the victims - to "choke on your puke."

I almost did.

Parental guide: Rated R for its senseless violence.

TROLL (1986)




TROLL' MAKES A NOBLE TRY FOR A NEW TONE IN HORROR -BUT MISSES

Seattle Post-Intelligencer - January 23, 1986

Author: William Arnold P-I Film Critic

After a decade-long cycle, movie audiences seem to have lost interest in traditional horror films. Except for ''A Nightmare on Elm Street,'' it's been ages since one has had any impact at all at the box office.

In reaction to this, horror filmmakers have been trying some variations on the standard form lately, and whatever else you may say about ''Troll,'' a new horror programmer that has been playing several local movie houses this week, it is at least a stab at something different.

The film is about a family that moves into a San Francisco apartment house that is being terrorized by a troll - a gruesome creature who is moving from apartment to apartment killing off the inhabitants and using their bodies as energy to create more troll creatures.

A kindly witch who lives upstairs makes friends with the son of the family and soon explains to him that the troll is using the apartment house as a base to take over the world - unless the boy can somehow kill him first and save his family.

The movie follows this familiar horror formula closely, while at the same time it tries for a strange new tone - a combination of terror, whimsical cuteness and out-and-out comedy the like of which I have never seen in a horror film before.

Unfortunately, it never quite finds the unique tone it is searching for - the experiment is, I think, a kind of noble failure - and the film is ultimately more disorienting than charming. It also fails pretty miserably in the big test of any horror movie: It's not scary.

The special effects, on the other hand, are quite good. Director and special-effects designer John Buechler has created an impressive menagerie of trolls, and in its more frantic moments his film looks for all the world like a Scandinavian gift shop come to life.

Less impressive are the humans in the cast, which includes June Lockhart, her daughter Anne Lockhart, Gary Sandy, Shelley Hack, Sonny Bono, and the wreck of Michael Moriarty, who, not that long ago, was considered to one of the two or three most promising young actors in America.
Memo: MOVIE REVIEW * * Troll, directed by John Buechler. Produced by Albert Band. Cast: Noah Hathaway, Michael Moriarty, Shelley Hack, Sonny Bono, Gary Sandy, June Lockhart, Anne Lockhart. Empire Pictures. Several theaters. Rated PG-13.
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TENANTS HAVE CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE 'TROLL' KIND

San Jose Mercury News (CA) - January 20, 1986

Author: GLENN LOVELL, Mercury News Film Writer

THANKS to Steven Spielberg and "Gremlins," there's a whole new movie genre with which to contend. It's called family horror -- funny, cuddly, gruesome spook shows that delight and amaze Mom and Dad, as well as Sis and Little Timmy.

The latest in this line of wholesome shockers is "Troll," an ingenious U.S.-Italian fantasy that combines Brothers Grimm lore, morbid Spielbergian yocks and a magical kingdom of naughty but basically benign puppet-trolls obviously inspired by Jim Henson's Muppets.

``Troll" opens with the impossibly wholesome Potter family moving into a San Francisco apartment. Little Wendy (Jenny Beck) chases her rubber ball into the basement laundry room and is there captured by Torok, a drooling, pointy-eared troll. The ring on Torok's finger allows him to take on Wendy's likeness whenever he chooses to infiltrate the building and raise general havoc.

What follows is a cross between "Poltergeist" and "The Bad Seed," with the suddenly willful -- and abnormally strong -- Wendy turning the tenants, one by one, into frolicking elves and wood sprites.

The forces of good reside upstairs in the person of that feisty eccentric Mrs. Eunice St. Clair (June Lockhart). St. Clair is a good witch with a talking mushroom sidekick right out of "Fantasia." She counsels Wendy's brother, Harry (Noah Hathaway of "Neverending Story"), and sends him off to save the world from a troll takeover.

Though "Troll" is only adequately directed by John Buechler, the film comes with wondrous stop-action effects, another winning performance by Michael Moriarty as the boogaloo-ing Daddy Potter and all those chattering, snaggletoothed beasties from a parallel fairy kingdom.

Also, we get Sonny Bono as the gauche swinger upstairs, and two generations of Lockharts as the scrappy June turns before our eyes into radiant daughter Anne for the climactic face-off with Torok's giant, horned demon.

Often as enchanting as it is scary, "Troll" comes highly recommended to those families who do everything together, including raising goose flesh.

TROLL. Directed by John Buechler; scripted by Ed Naha. PG-13 (profanity). (star)(star) 1/2
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'TROLL' MIXES FRIGHT WITH FUN

Boston Globe - January 17, 1986

Author: Michael Blowen, Globe Staff

The Potters are a relatively normal American family who move into an old apartment in

San Francisco. Harry (Michael Moriarty) and Anne (Shelly Hack) have two cute children, Harry Jr. (Noah Hathaway) and Wendy (Jenny Beck). Everything seems serene until little Wendy follows her bouncing ball down the stairs into the laundry room, where a slobbering troll transforms her into a little monster. (Judging from her rude behavior, he didn't have much to alter.) That is the beginning of "Troll," a movie that's surprisingly wry for an independent, apparently low-budget horror film.

The story revolves around a troll who, centuries ago, was banished into the netherworld after losing a battle with the humans. This particularly nasty little creature, complete with a runny nose and the power to turn upstairs neighbor Sonny Bono into a pod, eventually assumes control over most of the building.

Aside from a few shoddy special effects, including a background matte painting of the Golden Gate Bridge that looks as if it was painted by Bonzo, "Troll" is an imaginative, passably frightening monster movie that never takes itself too seriously.

Screenwriter Ed Naha, author of " Horrors - From Scream to Screen," borrows from sources as divergent as "Invaders From Mars" (1953) and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1978), but it's all in good fun. In fact, "Troll" has 10 times more laughs than "Spies Like Us.

Memo: MOVIE REVIEW TROLL - A film directed by John Buechler. Written by Ed

Naha. Starring Jenny Beck, Noah Hathaway, Michael

Moriarty, Shelly Hack and June Lockhart. Produced by

Albert Band, executive produced by Charles Band. Music by

Richard Band. At the Pi Alley and suburbs. Rated PG.
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Horrors ! `Troll' nothing more than flight of fancy - MOVIE REVIEW

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - January 17, 1986

Author: RINGEL, ELEANOR, Eleanor Ringel Film Editor: STAFF

Movie review on "Troll," a horror /fantasy movie starring Michael Moriarityand directed by John Buechler.

More and more Michael Moriarity is becoming a name to look for when deciding whether to take a chance on an otherwise unheralded low-budget horror movie. He has

steered us right with "Q" and "The Stuff" and now there's "Troll," a droll little tale of the misuses of enchantment.

Moriarity is less the star here than a stalwart supporting player to a gallery of sprites, elves and gnomes up to no good, all designed with fiendish glee by John Buechler who apparently had a few creatures left over from "Ghoulies." (Remember the infamous ad with the whatz-it in the toilet?)

Harry Potter (Moriarity), his wife (Shelley Hack), and their two kids, Harry Jr. (Noah Hathaway) and Wendy (Jenny Beck), have just moved into a new apartment. Along with the usual problems of getting settled (including Harry's 3,000-record collection), there's the small matter of the troll in the basement laundry room.

Little Wendy goes on an ill-advised trip downstairs by herself and is zapped by the creature. Meaning, the real Wendy is spirited away to some fourth-dimensional fairy land and the troll assumes her human form. Her parents notice there's something wrong with their fair-haired baby when she starts behaving like a cross between the bad seed and little Linda Blair pre-exorcism. But they figure she's just a bit upset by the new surroundings.

However, Harry Jr., who exists on a steady diet of horror movies and monster magazines, knows something is up. At the very least, Sis is a pod person from Mars. At the very worst, well. . . .

Meanwhile Wendy/Troll is busy trollifying the neighborhood, transforming all the neighbor's apartments into one-bedrooms in the fairy kingdom. If Harry Jr. and the wisecracking witch upstairs (June Lockhart) don't do something, the entire building - perhaps, the entire world -will become one big slice of non-real estate.

"Troll" is less a fright film than a flight of fantasy put together by people who actually appreciate Spenser's "The Faerie Queene." It may be a major disappointment to the teen audience at which its ad campaign is so wrongly aimed. There's not much in the way of blood 'n' guts, but there are some very unsettling scenes - such as the transformation of Sonny Bono (the ex-Mr. Cher) into a lit eral forest primeval. However, on the whole, the movie has a relatively gentle, once-upon-a-time tone . It's more like a Muppet's nightmare than anything else.

Moriarity and Miss Hack (former Charlie Girl turned failed Charlie's Angel) are amusing as the parents blissfully oblivious to the changeling in their home. Noah Hathaway is a believably reluctant hero, and Miss Beck is fine as the possessed little girl hiding a demonic imp under her angelic features. June Lockhart, making up for years of milk-and-cookiedom on "Lassie" and "Lost in Space," has a ball as the capable conjurer who firmly believes trolls should stay where they belong: under Bill y Goat Gruff's bridge.

"Troll" has a fractured fairy-tale appeal that's scary and knowing, all at the same time. In one scene, the Potters open their door to discover a lobby filled with otherworldly flora and fauna, some of it not very friendly. A sympathetic talking tree stump tells them to get back inside immediately; even magic has its rules, and the fairy world can't intrude unless it's been invited. A properly upset Moriarity slams the door shut and says, "I don't know what's going on out there, but I'm listening to that tree."

Proving, I guess, that he has the same good taste in talking trees that he has in horror scripts.

"Troll." A horror /fantasy movie starring Michael Moriarity. Directed by John Buechler. Rated PG-13 for some graphic special effects and occasional profanity.

SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT (1984)




All definitely not calm, quiet in `Silent Night' - Movie review

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - April 1, 1986

Author: RINGEL, ELEANOR, Eleanor Ringel Film Editor: STAFF

When it was originally released in 1984, "Silent Night, Deadly Night" was just another so-so splatter film. Then certain parents in the Midwest decided there was nothing so-so about a film whose killer went ho-ho-ho. Their protests - led by a group calling itself Citizens Against Movie Madness - gave the movie an unintentional publicity boost and probably brought it a few extra dollars at the box office.

The picture is both too little and too late. Don't be fooled by the ads or by its so-called lurid past; "Silent Night" is nothing more than yet another ho-ho-hum "Halloween" rip-off that happened to pick the wrong holiday (or the right one, depending on your point of view).

When it was originally released in 1984, "Silent Night, Deadly Night" was just another so-so splatter film. Then certain parents in the Midwest decided there was nothing so-so about a film whose killer went ho-ho-ho. Their protests - led by a group calling itself Citizens Against Movie Madness - gave the movie an unintentional publicity boost and probably brought it a few extra dollars at the box office.

The distributor, Tri-Star Pictures, rode the crest as long as it was profitable but, in the face of mounting unfavorable P.R. and dwindling grosses, pulled the picture instead of opening it nationwide. "Silent Night" was then dumped on the cable and videocassette circuit, where it has slumbered peacefully until some greedy bookers figured there were still a few bucks to be made from a two-year-old non-scandal. To that end, the film has been re-released with a "Caligula"-ish ad campaign -i. e., "The movie that went too far . . . they tried to ban it . . . Now you can see it . . . uncut." - and Atlantans are "enjoying" Christmas in April as "Silent Night, Deadly Night" finally limps into town.

A kid named Billy is badly traumatized when a killer dressed in a Santa suit kills his parents one Christmas Eve. This happens just after the family has visited Grampa in the mental hospital and the loony old man has hissed in Billy's face, "Christmas is the scariest damn night of the year. You see Santa Claus tonight, you better run away."

Billy's next stop is an orphanage run by a Nazi nun (Lilyan Chauvin) who ties naughty little boys to their bedposts and says things like, "You will learn what it means to be sorry." By the time he's grown up, Billy (Robert Brian Wilson) is nuttier than a Christmas fruitcake - though it takes being forced to dress as a toy-store Santa on Christmas Eve to get his psychoses flowing.

The last 45 minutes of the film is an On Dasher-On Slasher rampage as Billy, still dressed as Santa, folds, spindles and mutilates the rest of the cast. To help get those psycho-juices flowing in the audience, the film intercuts the carnage with flashbacks to various naked breasts Billy saw while he was growing up (including those of his mother, who was almost raped by the original killer Claus).

Frankly, if you want to see a really scary movie about a psycho-Santa, let me suggest 1972's horror anthology "Tales From the Crypt," in which Joan Collins (!) tries frantically to keep an escaped lunatic in Santa-drag from getting inside her house, only to have her efforts thwarted by her own little girl who welcomes "Santa" with open arms. That film's final shot - of a slavering madman, d ressed in a red-and-white suit, with mayhem in his eyes - is more frightening than all of "Silent Night's" imbecilic impalings put together.

The director of "Silent Night, Deadly Night" is Charles Sellier Jr., whose previous credits include "Grizzly Adams." That ought to tell horror connoisseurs something. But I don't know what you tell people like the guy who sat across the aisle from me in an almost-deserted theater and explained that he was there because he was bored. His boredom means more bucks for more movies like this and more of my time wasted. I'd personally appreciate it if the other bored young men and women out there would try a movie they think they might like instead of supporting one they expect to be awful. It would make my job a lot easier - and a lot less insulting.

"Silent Night, Deadly Night." Horror film about a psycho Santa starring Robert Brian Wilson. Rated R for sex, female nudity and excessive violence.

TERRORVISION (1986)




'Terrorvision' will never be a legend in its own slime

San Diego Union, The (CA) - April 17, 1986

Author: David Elliott, Movie Critic

"Terrorvision" 1/2 * An Empire release. Directed, written by Ted Nicolaou. Produced by Albert Band. Photography by Romano Albani. Music by Richard Band. Rated PG. In local theaters. The Cast Gerrit Graham-Stanley Mary Woronov-Raquel Bert Remsen-Grampa Alejandro Rey-Spiro Diane Franklin-Suzy Chad Allen-Sherman

"Terrorvision" will be gone from local theaters by Friday. There's no review as damning as a one-week run. But I'll try.

Is it a comedy? Is it a horror film? Is it a space fantasy? No, it's just dung. Not that I expected much -- you don't go to see a movie called "Terrorvision," doubled at the Casino Theater with "Zone Troopers," expecting the movie experience of a lifetime.

Seems the planet Pluton is using monsters to scavenge its garbage. One of the mutant uglies, called Hungrybeasts, beams across the cosmos thanks to some technical foul-up and enters Earth through the TV satellite dish of the Putterman family, headed by swinger Stan (Gerrit Graham) and his slut wife Raquel (Mary Woronov). Their cute kid Sherman (Chad Allen) plays with handguns, and the cute Grampa (Bert Remsen) is a full-time paranoic, beaming into his own crackpot channel.

Right away the Hungrybeast smells out the best garbage -- bad acting -- and munches Grampa into a mess of goo. If there's art here, it all belongs to special-effects creator John Buechler, who makes the monster into a fairly lovable grotesque. The thing has enough slime to lube a dozen Godzilla pictures, and indeed we see a dozen cheapo monster movies flash by on the Putterman's TV screen.

The writer and director, Ted Nicolaou, seems to be making a satirical swing at bad television. He sinks below it, and pea-shoots upward. This is the sort of intentional spoof so bad that it doesn't give us unintentional laughs, which are the main reward of lousy movies. Though made in Italy, it won't be matched on double bills with Federico Fellini's new satire on TV culture, "Ginger and Fred."

This beauty is shot in some sort of psychedelic '60s BlazoVision, or LuridScope. The colors are so raw that after 20 minutes I put on dark glasses, and found some relief. (Better to lose some nuances than get a migraine.) To go with the retro-visuals, there are dated jokes about heavy-metal music and Sammy Davis love chains, and lines that get the big-belch treatment, such as, "Hey, he's a gross-lookin' booger, ain't he? I'd nuke that sucker!"

That whiff of Noel Coward comes from Bert Remsen, whom devotees of '70s films will recall as one of the funniest actors in Robert Altman movies like "California Split" and "Brewster McCloud." Gerrit Graham, blithely retching his way through the part of Stan, was long ago hilarious in Brian DePalma's "Phantom of the Paradise." Big, cartoon-faced Mary Woronov was once funny in "Eating Raoul," and Alejandro Rey, badly playing a Hefner-lizard called Spiro, was the amusing Cuban lawyer in "Moscow on the Hudson."

So here they all are together, making a living that looks like dying. Seeing the film is on a par with acting in it. That's like a draw in a duel where both sides get killed.

Trying to limit the damage, I caught only a section of the companion feature, "Zone Troopers." In this treat, another Italian effort with international zilch appeal, some rather pleasant space aliens beam into World War II, and give our boys a hand against the Nazis. It's "E.T. Meets Klunks vs. Krauts."

Starring such ticks on the underbelly of cinema as Art LaFleur and Biff Manard, the film gives the GI Joes lines like this (to an alien): "You have any women with ya, like blondes from Venus?" Connoisseurs will chalk that up as a nod to the 1966 cheapo classic, "Mars Needs Women."
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'TERRORVISION': FULL OF GORE AND SEXUALITY

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - February 18, 1986

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Film Critic

"TerrorVision." A horror comedy starring Gerrit Graham, Mary Woronov and
Bert Remsen. Written and directed by Ted Nicolaou. Photographed by Romano
Albani. Music by Richard Band. Special gore effects by John Buechler. Running time: 83 minutes. An Empire release. In area theaters.

The new pornography of movies - namely, aggressive violence, laced with overall inhumanity - comes to a head with something called "TerrorVision."

If you're an aficionado of junk, this one has everything - a plot about a TV set that houses a monster, ripping off "Poltergeist;" a cast of perfectly awful characters, representing an assortment of perversions; a monster made of slime and, seemingly, snot; lots of dirty jokes and bad dialogue, and a sprawling set that's supposed to be a suburban home but that looks like a studio soundstage.

Heads roll. Limbs fly. Bodies are sucked into televison sets and hot tubs. Bad taste abounds and, if you're into such things, let me assure you that there's more blood and bile here than there was in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

If you're not into such things, but just have to see "TerrorVision"
because it stars B-movie greats Mary Woronov ("Eating Raoul") and Gerrit Graham ("Phantom of the Paradise"), then by all means, go - but take a No- Pest strip along with you.

Parental guide: Rated R for its gore and leering sexuality.
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FILM: A MONSTER OF A GARBAGE PROBLEM IN 'TERRORVISION'

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - February 17, 1986

Author: Desmond Ryan, Inquirer Movie Critic

Near the beginning of Terrorvision, an undertaking that lives up to the terrible promise of its title, a boy looks at a horror film on cable TV and opines, "This is the dumbest movie I've ever seen."

That might well be true, with the exception of the movie he's in. Terrorvision is the third Charles Band production to be foisted on America in a still-young year - the others being the unforgettable Troll and Eliminators. Low in budget and lower in mind, Band's projects ally transcendent dumbness with dime-store effects. Indeed, he seems to have been listening to his accountants because the monster in Terrorvision sounds exactly like its counterparts in Troll, which is to say like a stopped drain.

Terrorvision tries to have fun with the sleazier aspects of popular culture, but only proves that it is impossible to satirize trash when you have only garbage at your disposal.

Joe Dante combined humor and horror in this vein, most notably in The Howling, which was both a homage to and a loving spoof of the genre and its conventions. But the chemistry eludes Ted Nicalou, who wrote and directed Terrorvision. His one honest idea is to suggest that his monster from outer space is the result of an interplanetary sanitation problem and that the wonders of satellite dish reception can put the creature on the screen and then in the family room.

Moving with the storied alacrity of the Philadelphia Streets Department, the sanitation people on the monster's home planet of Pluton occasionally interrupt terrestial television broadcasts to warn of the dangers. But Nicalou doesn't have the slightest notion of what to do with this premise beyond making the family in question more repellent than the creature from the landfill on Pluton.

The Putterman family boasts parents who are swingers, a pastiche punk daughter and a nutty survivalist grandfather. Their antics are the subject of some awful jokes before they provide various repasts for the monster. Nicalou has contrived to make these meals as revolting as possible.

In each case, the creature leaves only the head and sucks out the brains. This leaves a terrible mess on the carpet, but at least serves as fair warning that Terrorvision is strictly for the empty-headed.

TERRORVISION *

Produced by Charles Band, directed and written by Ted Nicalou, photography by Romano Albani, music by Richard Band, distributed by Empire Pictures.

Running time: 1 hour and 23 minutes

Stanley Putterman - Gerrit Graham

Raquel Putterman - Mary Woronov

Grandpa - Bert Remsen

Suzy Putterman - Diane Franklin

Parent's guide: R (violence)
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`Terrorvision' misses mark

Houston Chronicle - February 15, 1986

Author: JEFF MILLAR, Staff

Nothing would please me more to say that "Terrorvision" (rated R) is a little jewel of a comedy that I have discovered, just for you. I can't. The movie's made by B-teamers and has all the characteristics of same. If a laugh is located at 34 degrees north, 27 degrees south, they spud in at 38 degrees north, 22 degrees south. They try, but they just can't produce. That's why they're B-teamers. Like the basketball coaches say, you can't teach height.

To characterize the film: It's a facetious gross-out horror film. By error, an extraterrestrial is teleported into an American living room via a backyard satellite dish. The ET squishes people with pincers, injecting a solvent which turns flesh into multicolored gelatin, which the ET then slurps up. He's actually rather cute. Introduced to Earthling television, the ET becomes quickly becomes addicted, sitting in a Jacuzzi and gurgling, "Tee-vee, tee-vee."

But the film was made so much on the cheap that the ET is virtually all the filmmakers have to offer in exchange for a ticket. After 20 minutes, you've seen all the cleverness the filmmakers have on their shelves. The dialogue and direction, both by Ted Ninicolaou, are just close enough to funny to make you wish this premise had been taken up by the A-teamers who could have made it actually funny.

It would do none of these actors - one is genuinely talented and may have done this because of financial distress - any good to list their names, so I won't.

KILLER PARTY (1986)




Horrors mix with humor in MGM's `Killer Party'


Houston Chronicle - May 14, 1986


Author: BRUCE WESTBROOK, Staff


"Poltergeist II" may be looming enticingly on the horizon, but for now the horror genre is getting no respect.


In Austin, independent producer Cannon Films is making a cut-rate sequel to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" with almost none of its original stars, a fact that has set fans howling.


And in Houston, MGM has just released a miserable indie production it picked up for distribution called "Killer Party," a horror potboiler that rarely rises above a simmer. The movie was made in Toronto with a cast of unknowns, save for nominal stars Paul Bartel and Martin Hewitt. Bartel has earned some respect for the black comedy "Eating Raoul," but Hewitt starred with Brooke Shields in the classically bad "Endless Love," and if that film didn't finish his career, this one will.


Metro is touting "Killer Party" as a horror movie with humor, though the film is really more of a feeble campus comedy with horror trappings. The filmmakers seem to change their minds about tone and thrust with every reel, starting with the opening scenes, which turn out to be a horror movie within a heavy-metal music video within the movie proper, which is then scored with hopelessly dated and prissy pop. The "raison de scare" is an April Fool's party in a decrepit old frat house where, as any viewer of the "Halloween" or "Friday the 13th" films can guess, a pledge died from a hazing incident 20 years before. Old ghosts die hard and, naturally, someone is stalking the stupid students.


After much scene-setting with hysterically overwrought high jinks and hormonally imbalanced kissy-face, the corny conventions reign, with an inevitable array of heavy-breathing point-of-view shots, followed by the usual decapitations, impalings, disembowelings, electrocutions and bathtub drownings. For the most part, these slayings are all good, clean fun, in the sense that they're almost bloodless - an oddly innocent incongruity for an R rating.


But the film turns seriously sinister toward the conclusion, with some respectably good "Exorcist-"style possession scenes, followed by more prissy pop ("These are the best days of our li-i-i-ives") over the end titles. Say what? The acting is monumentally bad - grossly overplayed and obnoxious enough to merit a new chapter in "The Golden Turkey Awards" book.


As for the production staff, they tout such credits as "Funeral Home "and "Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter," which tells you where they're coming from. They may mix the brew a bit differently here, but if they think they are giving the teen slash-'em-up genre a new dimension with this mindless melange, they are sadly mistaken. "Killer Party" isn't worth crashing - just trashing.