Netherworld

Hunky Michael Bendetti plays Corey Thornton, a young man who receives an inheritance from his late father Noah (Robert Sampson, a.k.a. Dean Halsey in "Re-Animator"). He travels to the family estate in Louisiana, where he gets caught up in local mumbo jumbo involving plans to resurrect the dead and a connection between humans and birds.

It's commendable that writer / director David Schmoeller would go to so much trouble to create something different than the usual run of Full Moon product. This is by turns erotic and romantic, with an appealing soft jazz soundtrack by Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan (and on screen appearances by Bryan and Edgar Winter). He injects this with as much flavourful New Orleans atmosphere as he can, and that helps, but the movie is still fairly dull.

There's just not that much here to engage the viewer. It moves along at a snails' pace, and none of the characters are all that interesting. The ladies are quite lovely; the plotting involves a nearby brothel named Tonks' where the ladies either look like deceased celebrities, or just might *be* deceased celebrities. There's one that resembles Marilyn Monroe (Holly Butler), and another who claims to be Mary Magdalene (Alex Datcher, 'John Carpenters' Body Bags').

Bendetti is somewhat blank in the lead, but the supporting cast - including veterans Sampson, Anjanette Comer ("The Baby"), and Robert Burr ("Ghost Story"), the likable Holly Floria, and the extremely enticing Denise Gentile - comes off reasonably well.

Director Schmoeller cameos as the bartender, making use of his talent for spinning a bottle on his finger.

Five out of 10.

Poor movie, some nasty special effects and several beautiful girls are the ingredients of a horror movie that makes you smile, unintentionally, at how bad it was done.

"Netherworld" is a typical Full Moon's horror flick-entertaining for a while,but not really memorable.The cast is decent,the photography is pretty good and the story is okay.Basically it's about one guy,who with the help of a sexy witch tries to re-animate his dead father.Not very violent,although there are two or three gore scenes made by Mark Shostrom("The Mutilator").The film is also quite atmospheric and relatively well-made.David Schmoeller("Tourist Trap")is definitely a talented genre director.Anyway,if you like horror movies I would recommend this one.Not the greatest horror flick ever made,but worth checking out.

Another disappointing effort from Full Moon, once of those films which promises plenty but ends up delivering very little. This one has a stand-out opening sequence involving a young man entering a brothel for the first time and the bizarre events that take place there, but this has very little to do with the rest of the movie, which just sort of meanders along for a long time. It's a typical story about a young guy moving into his ancestral home and the strange events that befall him, but this is a long-winded talker of a movie in which very little happens of interest, and the chief entertainment comes from a few moments involving a floating hand.

This movie seems to be a surprisingly gentle film for its genre.I think the sound track lures you into this feeling.With the music luring you into such a tranquil feeling. There are a few surprises in the form of rushes that will catch you totally off guard.I found that my main interest focused on the sound track.Some very " comforting" sounds.On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give the movie an over all rating of 7 1/2 to 8.I would also like to locate a copy of the sound track for home use.