As its on-screen caption 'HOLLYWOOD Writer's Strike. No More Movies...No More Horror! What's the Devil to do?' began, I found myself asking "What the Devil is this? This isn't the 1980 Rachel Ward movie I was searching for!"
Film opens with distorted, point-of-view shots of Hollywood Blvd, weird blue- and red- lighted smoke, soft focus; bleached-out, or just underexposed? Or was the lighting intentionally too hot, and for what reason? (That's the second film I've watched recently with this problem. The first was the non-James Cameron 'Terminator 2', from Italy)
Once guy and girl set fire to something called The Book Of Life, the smoke effects begin, the disgusting fire effects begin, and the film becomes very weird, as it is explained away as being merely a dream, from which the girl (Vivian Schilling) wakes up from and writes down, convinced it will make a good horror movie. Apparently, Schilling's character is a horror film screenwriter, and the first half hour of this student film is vignettes dreamt by her, and typed later for use as potential ideas for new horror films. A disembodied hand punches through the door of her office, then rips the door off its hinges to get to her- but it's all just another one of her dreams.
She and her friends go camping and tell each other weird stories, which she also thinks will make great material for the horror movie she's writing. Here is where the film becomes slow moving and plodding, with the typical grotesque 80s clothes only serving to annoy.
Chick's chase through checkerboard hallway mazes while being followed by a rabid dog is surreal and eerie; but its effect negated by dated computer graphics, and bizarrely out-of-place ragtime piano music, as she suddenly appears in an old west ghost town.
A twist says that the entire film is the work of Satan, telling tales around a campfire to Schilling and the rest of her friends. Schilling then wakes up, turns these events into a screenplay, and becomes a filmmaker with a huge hit from it, in a supremely bewildering ending.
"Student Produced at USC", this has a few interesting ideas and camera shots, but painfully slow pacing, and not much action for a horror flick. It would have worked better as a 30-minutes long short film.
