Rish Outfield's reviews
Not a slasher. You know when I first started writing these reviews, I would often start them out by mentioning if they were not slashers. When we came up with the categories (Skulls), they were designed to make slasher movies more fun. Sometimes, when a movie was not a slasher, it made the categorization a little difficult. After a while though, I stopped pointing out when a movie was not a slasher, simply because slasher movies started becoming the exception, rather than the rule. Well, in this case, I feel very justified in mentioning that it's not a slasher, because the previous three films in the series very much are. No, this was more of a Run-in With The Occult horror film. This had nothing to do with the previous films or even Christmas. I remember that John Carpenter had the idea to make a series of films that take place on or around Halloween but not be related to one another. I suppose this could be that same idea only done on Christmas. I guess that makes it okay. But still...
Directed by Brian Yuzna, who has made a couple of fairly good horror movies, the story of this one involved a cute feminist reporter investigating a strange death involving spontaneous combustion. She stumbles upon a group of Lilith-worshiping lesbians and a bunch of strange stuff happens as they try to recruit her. Often surreal and peculiar things happened or appeared with no explanation, which I generally hate (this was no exception). Feminism played a major role in this one, but it was so fascist and unattractive that it shouldn't convert anyone. A lot of it was laughable, too (why did they keep calling her "Daughter of Isis?"). Neith Hunter, the star, was really pretty, but she was so bitchy I found it immensely difficult to like her character nonetheless. Their leader is two-time Bond girl, Maude Adams. Alyce Beasley also makes an appearance. There was one terrible child actor seemingly thrown in at random, and I thought, "is that the producer's kid or something?" Upon watching the credits, I was not at all surprised to find out he was Conan Yuzna, the director's kid. The music was by Richard Band, but this didn't measure up to the output of his brother's company.
This was a gross, unpleasant film that featured cockroaches, a giant maggot, and other assorted vermin, not to mention sustained puking...and Clint Howard. He played a big ole part. Even with the above, it was so dull, I really wanted to turn it off, but somehow I managed to keep watching. This was a bad movie (very dumb and sickening) but occasionally cool--which made the other 80% all the worse.
Best Scare: Did I mention there was a giant maggot?
Note: The villains of the piece were a cult of Lilith-worshipers, yet I listed Devil Worshipers as the Threat. The reason behind this was at one point one of the evil women mentions that it was Lilith that tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, so hey, same difference.