Reel Horror

Have you ever bought a movie for a buck, watched it in disgust for an hour and a half (by God, I paid for it I'm gonna watch it!), removed the DVD from your player immediately afterward and threw it in the garbage so that all traces it ever existed would be gone? If you've never had such a reaction to a "film", you haven't seen Reel Horror.

I love bad cinema- I scour the bargain bins and half-price bookstores looking for those forgotten gems (usually horror or science fiction) that are a tribute to low budgets, lousy acting, cheesy special effects, unbelievable plots, and terrible scripts. Then a movie like Reel Horror comes along and gives all those things I love a bad name.

This "film" takes a bunch of low budget horror movies, hacks them into little pieces so that none if the original "badness" of those films is allowed to shine through, and throws them randomly them into a middle school-quality production about a haunted movie studio. This is presented as high camp and uproariously bad, in a "Rocky Horror Picture Show" vein , complete with a bunch of idiots dancing at the end.

Trust me when I tell you it's almost enough to discourage me from investing my hard earned dollar the next time I run across a potential classic, but I'm going to fight through it. Don't put yourself in this position. Avoid the temptation and put down that copy of Reel Horror.

My gosh I don't know when I have seen a movie worse than this one.I actually bought this on Ebay for a buck plus 4 bucks shipping.And most of you thought RENTING this for a dollar was bad.I would rather watch a close family member being autopsied than to see this movie again.I think the director made the plot as he went along.He probably asked the cast members to help him out as he went.The crazy old guy in one of the opening scenes that looked like Grandpa from the Munsters actually said" I don't mind dying,I just don't want to be there when it happens".That is a joke they stole from Woody Allen.Give me a break.I spent the whole 2 dreadful hours trying to figure out the plot and how to connect the short film clips and the other bad acting into some form of artistic merit.Couldn't do it.I will lend the DVD to my friends to watch but will warn them in advance.

Waaaaaaaaay back in the 80s , when vhs ruled the world, there was a strange genre of horror movie clip show tapes that circulated through video rental stores. Terror on Tape, Zombiethon, Terror in the Aisles just to name a few. The people reviewing this film clearly are too young or too uneducated to remember this. Yes, it's a bunch of clips of old movies. Yes the wraparound is poorly made and badly acted. THATS WHAT THE FOLKS THAT LIVED IN THAT ERA LOVED ABOUT THESE! They were stupid but showed you clips of other dumb movies for you to track down! Like an extended trailer reel. I always love the people that say movies like this is "the worst thing they've ever watched ". You just dont get it. Sorry.

Ross Hagen...shame on you. Seeing your name listed in the credits of exploitation and action flicks has always meant sure-fire B movie fun. And then...this. What the Hell is THIS?! You've gone and scraped some detrius from a bunch of crummy 70s films, tied them loosely together with witless SOV wraparound footage, and then had pompous audacity to expect people to PAY TO SEE IT?? Yes, I know one dollar won't make or break most people, but c'mon Ross, it's the principle of the whole thing.

Please...retract your name from this abomination. You're still "the man" in my book, because I figure everyone's prone to a momentary lapse of reason once in a while. This is a big one, though, Buddy...

1.5/10...at least Catherine Bach's topless moment from NICOLE is presented, which *alone* makes this a dollar well spent.

Reel Horror (1985)

1/2 (out of 4)

If you rented movies back in the VHS era then you'll remember several compilations that were put together to show off movies. Usually titles like THE BEST OF SEX AND VIOLENCE and ZOMBIETHON featured various trailers and they were made in an attempt to make people interested in renting the actual films.

Then you've got something like REEL HORROR, which is downright awful in just about every way imaginable. In this film, film canisters become possessed and they "come to life." By coming to life I mean that once the prints come to life we then see clips from a variety of movies and in between the clips there are some hosts to tell some jokes.

This here is a really awful movie on many levels but I'm going to guess that a majority of people came to it because it was advertised as featuring John Carradine. Clips from his movie BAD CHARLESTON CHARLIE are shown and that's the only connection that Carradine has to this picture. We also get clips (according to IMDB) from UP YOUR TEDDY BEAR, THE BLOODY SLAYING OF SARAH RIDELANDER, NICOLE, PIGS and NIGHT CREATURE.

The problem with this film is that the hosts are incredibly annoying and nothing they do or say is funny or interesting. Another problem is that the clips from the films are showing without any rhyme or reason and it seems as if someone was too lazy to create an interesting trailer or an interesting segment of scenes so they just showed large chunks of the actual movies. Out of the clips shown, I've only seen PIGS and it was a pretty good movie but you wouldn't know it by the scenes selected here.

I'm really not sure why these films were selected but REEL HORROR was meant to be rented by horror fans yet the horror elements in the movie clips are very tame and it's doubtful anyone would watch this movie and then want to go out and rent these other films.