larsan111

It is getting longer and longer between the movie experiences: Woow. Got to say that this film was laying around in a year before I put in my player - didn't have any higher expectations. Gordon's, Wendt's and Baldwin's names draw me to it as the thought of it being a Them 2 or something. When there is a lot of reviews about the storyline and the movie in general I skip that part. The movie makes the thoughts wander towards "The Lord of the Flies" in retrospect and is a very believable "version". Whenever violence really feels in your seat or when a killing makes you squirm because of the tormenting knowledge of just how very wrong it is it's just Good directing. On to that, one's moral compass is challenged more than one time - and that is brave movie making. There are some things one might be curious of: is that drooling man at the mission the same man that got that cement block...? what are in those papers? To that I will say: Kudos to Stuart Gordon that Knows that that kind of information is just best left out (I'm so tired of getting every single fact written on my nose whenever I see movies by nervous Hacks!) The man knows that the viewers brains do have the ability to imagine stuff - and the brain works more effective when it doesn't know everything. A movie about Humans and what humanity contains. Every dog has it's day - and every average guy can be king.

But it is not a "nice" film. Caution.

I saw this film in 1984 and at that time the effects really made an impact - SO even today (for me who saw it young remember that late evening alone). One can always say that the special effects are bad but the special effects are bad in 2001, King Kong, The Birds, The Hunchback of Notre Dame , Metropolis (-27) too - by TODAYS standards. So if you discard the past and it's techniques you'll end up with all of this often boring and cheap cgi. Someone thought "Superstition" was a follower after "Freddy Krueger"? very difficult to beleive since this film is made in 1982. It's quite slow at the beginning when the two buddies gets lost from each other, but after a bang and a slicing it's very much fast paced. Albert Salmi is seldom a letdown, nor here. The little girl, the witch, the NON-heroic father and all the grizzly murders/accidents/flash-backs are all reasons to this movie (if you like horror-films). The use of the Gregorian Chant "Dies Irae" I must confess is highly enjoyable and a great plus (although maybe a little bit too often played) and give the movie deph - but not to the extent so it's being pretentious. The Amityville and Poltergeist is named too, yes, that's two more haunted houses - so what, hundreds of movies contains haunted houses. This house was not built over an ancient indian burialground, that's a plus. Overall ***of*****