eminkl

Another of Roger Corman's classic Poe films. While the first half an hour is a little long to watch, the rest of the film builds into a macabre and mad piece of horror. It's twisted and devilishly creepy. What I found amazing about this flick is the amazing and colorful sets. And good old Vincent Price is fiendishly unnerving as ever in this pic. And while maybe not equal to Corman's later Poe film The Raven (1963), which was much more amusing rather than scary, this film sticks well to the scary Edgar Allan Poe tone.

This movie was very disappointing. It started out as intriguing and unsettling, but later just turns into this tedious and crazy mess. Satanic, burnt-out hippies spreading murderous havoc had a lot of potential for a good horror film. It felt like a mix between Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Cronenberg's Rabid (1977). But unfortunately, the script is a mess, the acting is pretty bad, and it just makes the flick boring. The only things that redeem it a little is the buckets of enjoyable, cheap gore, and surprisingly, the music is actually pretty good.

The theme material is very interesting, and the fact that it tackles a partially real life event was something that should've given it a real shot at being a good movie. And yet, it's a very bad one. The acting is a little dry, and the film just relies on quirky camera work, something that has been done countless times before, in order to scare us. But it barely has any moments worth watching, and the pic loses its credibility quite quickly. And the third half also feels quite half-assed. Overall, this alien themed rip off of the scary The Blair Witch Project (1999) is disappointing and just not worth seeing...