Point of Terror

Tony Trelos is a slick crooner at a nightclub called the Lobster House. Screaming and waking up from a nightmare (of his own terrible, terrible nightclub act) on a secluded beach he meets evil- looking and decadent Andrea (Dyanne Thorne) who's wearing a tasteless bikini. They get involved, as she's the wife of the crippled and bitter head of National Records. After one night of love- making in the pool she kills her defenceless wheel chaired husband. When the beautiful Helayne (daughter of the crippled homicide- victim) arrives, Tony falls in love with her, and he's torn between the two women. Things get outta hand and Tony throws a foul- mouthed Andrea off a cliff when she puts pressure on him for witnessing the murder and refusing his upcoming record contract. Things get even worse when Tony is suddenly shot dead by his waitress ex- girlfriend Sally, who's pregnant with his child. And then the magic starts... Tony screams and wakes up at the beach (it was all a bad dream), Andrea comes up to him, and highlights from the movie follows, only to be topped by Tony waking up and screaming once more!!! THE END. Very original.

This is not a good film. The Lobster House is decorated with tinfoil, Tony Trelos looks like a disturbing mixture of Tony Curtis and musician Herb Albert, and a lot of screen time is used showing him with his shirt off. Note that Carpenter who plays this ambitious Vegas sleazebag is also writer and producer. Scenes of Helayne and Tony horseback- riding is pure (and poor) excess, and Tony's crazy/ridiculous songs are downright awful. Pointless scenes of flashbacks to Tony's unhappy and clichéd childhood are seemingly endless. The ending with it all being a bad dream, and then a bad dream within a bad dream is not clever, just stupid. Some sequences appear experimental. I guess this isn't intentional, but proves a laughable lack of basic filmmaking skills. A clumsy and boring movie. Avoid. Avoid.

Tony Trelos is a club singer at a seaside bar. Wanting more out of his career, he is approached by a woman on a beach who owns a record label with her crippled husband. Tony's involvement and exploits with her are more dangerous than he's aware of, however, as she's guilty of a murder, and capable of another.

The second piece of celluloid sleaze that Peter Carpenter wrote and starred in after the atmospheric (and underrated) "Blood Mania," "Point of Terror" is a significantly less thrilling picture—far more talky and significantly less moody. It also seems to be cribbing elements of "Blood Mania" in a lot of ways, as it follows borderline identical plot arcs that have been minutely tweaked: Man becomes involved with wealthy woman. Woman is unstable and a murderess. Family member enters the picture and complicates matters further. Same formula, different canvas.

The film is peppered with some of the most ridiculously "seventies" musical numbers you'll ever see, and also boasts a significant amount of skin from a buxom Dyanne Thorne and the hunky Carpenter. There is a nice doubled-over twist at the end of the film that is clever but rather cheap, and the general impression I got after it was over was that Carpenter seemed to have wanted to do-over "Blood Mania," but this time invoke as much of Jess Franco's "Succubus" as he could.

All in all, "Point of Terror" is a middling thriller that, while mildly amusing, is more or less a rehash of Carpenter's prior (and better) film. It is, like "Blood Mania," relatively well-shot, but it lacks the performances and moodiness that made the former so watchable. For a piece of grindhouse sleaze, "Point of Terror" is watchable, but it's lacking both in spirit and inventiveness. 5/10.

I got this at a dollar store several weeks ago. It's the EastWestDVD edition that pairs it with James Earl Jones' Blood Tide.

After reading the other reviews here, I feel the need to warn people away from dollar store versions of this film because the nudity has been completely edited out and this movie has nothing else going for it.

To give an example of just how shoddy a product the EastWestDVD print is, there's a section that's five or more minutes long that repeats in its entirety.

I don't know what annoys me more, that the print was mutilated, or that I'm going to have to track down a uncut version and suffer through it again. Why do I do this to myself?

Avoid!!!

Point of Terror (1971)

BOMB (out of 4)

I need to admit that I have no idea what this film was about or what it was trying to say but here's the so-called plot. Tony (Peter Carpenter) is a nightclub singer at the Lobster Lounge where he's hoping to catch a break but most of the time he ends up in the beds of older women. Lately Tony has been having grisly nightmares of women being brutally murdered. Soon, one of these older woman (Dyanne Thorne of Ilsa fame) offers him a record contract. Tony, thinking he's going to get popular, starts acting like a star, which upsets the older woman.

Make any sense? I really don't know what the horror elements are doing in this film because it's mostly about Tony and his record contract. The horror elements are mainly shown through the nightmare images but trust me, hearing Tony sing is a lot scarier than anything we see violence wise. I kept watching this movie and expecting it to turn into a horror film but it remained a record contract film with a few doses of mystery, which were just downright boring and hard to follow as well.

The director at least knew to make the women get naked and yes boys, that includes Ilsa herself. Dyanne Thorne might not be the best actress around the block but she's got a lot of what the others don't have, if you get my drift. There's also another silly sex scene on a huge boulder (wouldn't that cause bad scratches to the back?) that the director shows using split screens. The film is bad enough to get a few laughs, especially the look at the bar, which seems to be decorated out of colored tin foil. Point of Terror fails on all other levels but I'd recommend you giving the soundtrack to someone you really hate.

A woman cowering in fear. A masked madman brandishing a butcher knife. "Demons long locked in the depths of the mind come out to destroy the weak and believing!" Explore "the outer limits of fear". That's the poster. I don't think I've ever seen a movie so misrepresented by the advertising. Or happier about it. Not another tired, early 70s slasher film by any means, this riot is about a sleazy side-burned lounge singer (Peter Carpenter) picked up by a sleazier female record promoter (Dyanne Thorne) who sees something special in the guy. We can guess what it is, since most of the movie is shot at Carpenter's crotch level. Meanwhile, Thorne's jealous wheelchair-bound husband isn't going to take his wife's infidelity sitting down. Enter Thorne's kittenish daughter Lots of wonderfully bad faux 70s pop songs, over-heated dialogue and teeth-gnashing, and two outlandish murders. Dig it.