Spirits

Year: 1990

Director: Fred Olen Ray

Written by: Jeff Falls & R.U. King

Threat: Demon

Weapon of Choice: Pitchfork

IMDb page: IMDb link

       Spirits

Rish Outfield's reviews
An interesting (if often-used) plot: a bunch of investigators investigate a haunted house. Erik Estrada plays (rather unconvincingly) a priest here, who is tempted by a super-hot ghost. I couldn't be a priest--I know, you're thinking it's the whole celibacy thing, but it's really that I sweat a lot, and black in the summertime...
Oh, where was I? There was a very interesting dirty scene with Estrada--but what was he doing in this movie? It seemed like his subplot was added later, or was culled from another film altogether. Other than that, there was nothing special here. It was cheap, not very scary, and once it was over, all tyranist and I could do was shrug.
Best Scare: I don't remember.
I'd Recommend It To: People who like horror films with nudity. A lot.

The tyranist's thoughts
This started out with a great premise and deteriorated into just another demon-free-for-all-sex-and-killing picture. My single biggest gripe is the fact that almost all of the Erik Estrada (who gets top billing by the way) scenes look like they are from an entirely different film. My theory is that they were filming something and it failed, so they came up with this new script (which kind of sucks) and made Spirits. Spirits has almost nothing to do with the plot, of course. The ending is not only somewhat anticlimactic, but it is also contradictory and makes little sense when considered with the rest of the movie. The make-up effects were pretty good, but the ooze coming out of the undead things eyes is no match for what we saw in The Evil Dead.

Sequel
Owes everything to/rips off earlier film
Sequel setup skull
Bad title skull
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
MTV Editing
OTS skull
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex skull
Death associated with sex
Characters forget about threat skull
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise skull
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door skullskull
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door skull
Toilet stall scene
Victim locks self in with killer
Killer is in car with victim
Cat jumps out
Fake scare skull
Laughable scare
Blood hits camera
Beheading
Killer doesn't stay dead
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence skull
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
No one believes only witness skull
Blood fountain
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
Music detracts from scene
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
No one dies at all skull
Death in first five minutes
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unresolved subplots skull
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
What the hell? skull

Total Skulls: 15

Other movies in this series:
None