Spine

Vicious and deranged psycho Lawrence Aston (a creepy and convincing portrayal by R. Eric Husley) stalks nurses and removes their spines after killing them. Ashton breaks into a house where two women reside while the police try to find and stop him.

Writers/directors John Howard and Justin Simmonds relate the absorbing story at a steady pace, ground the premise in a believable workaday reality (for example, we see the cops on the case using a primitive 80's computer to search for Ashton), maintain a grimly serious tone throughout, take time to develop the two nurse characters as people the viewer can really care about, deliver a decent amount of gore (although this film could have gone much farther in this particular department), and generate a good deal of tension that reaches a nerve-rattling fever pitch in the harrowing last third. Moreover, Janus Blythe of The Hills Have Eyes fame and Lise Romanoff both do solid and credible work as the hapless lasses Ashton singles out as deserving of his lethal wrath. The rough shot-on-video cinematography provides a suitably scroungy look. Don Chilcott's flesh-crawling score does the shuddery ooga-booga trick. Alas, the filmmakers punk out on the gratuitous nudity angle even though one gal does take a shower. No lost classic, but enjoyable enough for fans of obscure micro-budget fright fare.

"Spine" is rather spineless. An extremely cheap and mechanical straight-to-video slasher released in 1986, and directed by John Howard and Justin Simmonds. John Howard also stars in the leading role as Detective Meadows, a scruffy and belligerent officer who looks more like something that would be cooking crystal meth in a trailer park than anything else. He is assigned to track down a serial killer who has been butchering nurses. The killer has a thing for nurses and ties them up before exposing their spines and murdering them. He calls them all 'Linda'. So who is Linda? Probably his mother, but all shall be revealed. The acting, surprisingly is not even the worst thing about this one. But in saying that I have seen better acting on "Home and Away". The writing and directing is absolutely atrocious. It's also quite tame, in terms of the violence and exploitation, which was something I did not expect. Usually when something like this is weak on the technical side of things, it usually over-compensates with the violence etc. Overall, this highly obscure slasher should remain that way. Extremely amateurish and without any redeeming qualities, and as blunt and dull as a butter knife, to boot.

"Spine" is a very low budget slasher flick that appears to have been shot on video. The sound is noteworthy in that it is especially bad. Though I am willing to take the low tech approach into account, this film is, frankly, uninspired and covers ground that has already been dealt with by innumerable films. Worse, this makes the film moderately dull which is perhaps the greatest fault any motion picture can have. Despite all of its warts, I did appreciate some of the performances to some extent, taking into account of course the pocket change available to recruit a cast.

People always over rate the term "The worst movie ever made". I dare them to sit through this! I double dog dare them. After seeing this film there's no way on god's green earth that someone can watch anything and proclaim that what they saw was the worst movie ever.

Spine (1986) is a video masquerading as a movie. It look like it was shot with one of those bulky 80's camcorders acted by a bunch of people who are pretending to be actors and it was made by a couple of people calling themselves "directors". I've seen grade school plays that have higher production values than this "movie". I had the horror of seeing this video when a cousin of mine rented it ignoring pleas from the family. A quick synopsis, a balding weirdo torments women. Please avoid this video!

Zero, doesn't deserve a grade

"Spine" is what happens when you combine a video camera, a free weekend and two weeks of acting lessons. It's pathetic, and the video quality brings that point home. Pathetic movie shot on pathetic video. Not film, video. Even awful films like "Murderlust" were shot on film, but not "Spine". Basically a guy stalks and kills nurses but you don't see a lot of that in the beginning, only hear that it's happened. The cops are clueless (of course), probably because all their scenes appear to be filmed in an office building rather than a police station. If real police operated this way, I fear for the nation. So the villain, who looks kind of like an evil Jim Henson with aviator sunglasses, terrorizes two women in their home while dramatically posing and spouting off awful dialogue. Does this sound like an interesting, fun movie? It isn't. It isn't even fun to laugh at because there's no real action, mostly just talking and menacing gestures.