Bone Eater : L'Esprit des morts

1986 brought us Chopping Mall from director Jim Wynorski, a classic in the genre. This here, Bone Eater won't be remembered. It contains a lot of very cheap and bad CGI but it's worth watching for the old thespians to see.

I guess that the budget went to the casting in stead of the effects. Main lead is by Bruce Boxleitner (Tron legacy (1982 and 2010)), but there are others to recogniz, Willam Katt from House (1986), Walter Koenig (from the Star Trak saga as Chekov),Veronica Hamel from Hill Street Blues (1981-1987) and Jim Storm from Dark Shadows (1966).

The story itself was rather okay and the acting was also okay but the CGI teared it into a funny flick. To give you an example of cheap effects, the earthquakes were done by shaky camera's and you could easily see that the trees weren't moving.

If you want to see the old brigade again than this is surely one to watch as a starter on a horror night with your pals. But if you think it will be a scary flick, forget it.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 0,5/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

It's a low budget creature feature. Hundreds of them have been made over the decades with the same simple mindset. But people seemed to be entertained by them.

But lets get the facts straight. The movie was shot in California in an area called the Alabama Hills near the base of Mount Whitney.

We were diligent in getting script approval from the local Paiute Shoshone reservation to shoot a scene on their property and the co star Michael Horse is a Mescalero-Zuni Apache. None of these Native Americans had a problem or were offended by the story. I'm offended that you guys print something that is not based it fact and leads people to believe that we are somehow insensitive.

Call the movie what you will but the truth needs to be told about the people involved. A critique is one thing but to print statements that are untrue is another. Come on guys this should not be a PC courtroom.

I'm not really sure where to begin. From start to finish, bad, stinky bad, like stepping into a port-a-john on a 100 degree day. If you force yourself to watch this as I did, keep some Vicodin handy for the pain. I will never understand how flicks this bad make it past the cutting room without the entire reel ending up on the floor. The movie is a cross between Gumby rides Pokey, meets the terminator, meets Wally Beaver playing cowboys and Indians without the cowboys. I've seen better animation in the original cut of the Blob. You will get more entertainment from watching Gone with the Wind while suffering from the puke and poops. Bad acting and hokey lines will have you squirming and wishing you had rented Peewee's big Top or watched every episode of Gilligan's Island back to back. UGH..I'm going to go slit my wrist now.

A great cast, a fantastic CGI monster and a brilliant script. If this film had had any of those things then it might not have been amongst the worst films I've ever wasted an hour and a half on. Infinite chimpanzees with infinite typewriters have not yet written the complete works of Shakespeare but along the way this has appeared in their waste-paper bin and somehow it got made into a movie. You can tell the the actors regret signing those contracts with every word they mutter directly into camera. The CGI is amateurish in the extreme and they might have created more tension of the cast had been attacked with the Sinclair Spectrum it was created on. I wanted to like this film, it has nice cameo appearances by Gil Gerard and Walter Koenig so I expected a fun horror movie that didn't take itself too seriously. It actually does try to take itself seriously but is about as much fun as trip to the dentist. Do yourself a favour. Don't watch this movie, you'll only encourage them to make more.

Another Indian legend you never heard of before is let loose. As the name implies, this is a vengeful wraith who likes to absorb the skeletons of people while they're still using them. As usual, ancient burial grounds (can you say, "Poltergeist?") have been disturbed by clichéd greedy land developers building stuff.

The CGI, if it had been better, might have made the effect more treacherous looking, but they skimped on the budget, and it shows--to comical effect. The unleashed creature probably should have been kept off stage during its first several killings-that might have added some mystery or impending doom atmosphere-but the inept director decided to show us in the first five minutes what it looks like, and it wasn't impressive. The deaths are just poorly done, again with shoddy CGI. I guess ancient spirits always kill by using cheap special effects. As for the "victims," they look they're going to laugh any moment while they do goofy screams. It's always obvious who's going to get it: a character with only a few lines shows up, strange noises are heard, CGI dots fly, exit character. Repeat (several times).

Still, there's a few chase scenes featuring the monster that actually made this thing watchable. Unfortunately, the director seems to be using these as a device to fall back on (so it's used too often) when he can't think of anything else for his characters to do. Overall, it's pretty silly, but I've seen worse. This flick is cheap, but it's oddly fun to watch.