Prison of the Dead

Yeah, this was bad...but then again, straight to video Full Moon movies usually are, so this should be no surprise to any foolish enough to rent it.

The thing that got me, however, was the "Making of" segment at the end of the flick. It was filmed in Romania? The entire thing is interior shots that could have easily been reproduced in a storage rental facility...(which would have been much more in line with the apparent budget of this tape) Why go to Romania? It makes no sense. The costumes could have been bought out of the clearance bin of any area K-Mart the day after Halloween...yet they fly the whole crew to Romania??? Now I know why that region is so troubled...

(cough) but seriously folks...mocking a movie such as this is way too easy...like stealing candy from a baby doped up on morphine. It's bad, granted, but when you spend six bucks and Romanian airfare...what can one expect? So...if you're checking IMDB to see if it's worth renting...no, of course it isn't. What's wrong with you? I've seen episodes of Teletubbies scarier than this. Peace.

I will start off by saying this is indeed the worst film ever made.The story if you can call it that,is some guy that looks like he is straight off of beverly hills 90210 pretends he is dead and sets up a fake funeral at a castle.His friends show up and he gets up out of the coffin laughing.they get p***ed,and he tells them they can win a million bucks.All they have to do is find the "talon key".So they all agree and hold a seance.One girl gets possesed by a cartoon wavy thingy and starts speaking latin.As it turns out the castle was an old witches prison and the cartoon thing was one of there spirits.This somehow wakes up three hunch back/executioners and they rise from there graves.and they repeat the scene of them getting out of the ground about 15 times.From then on everyone wanders around and a cartoon thing goes into their mouth and they just stand still and say "Sutra,Sutra,Sutra" then the 3 hunch backs come and the victim says "ah the executioners" then you see the weapons raise and a squirt of blood goes on the person.Then later when you see the bodies the wounds and blood have magically vanished!It doesnt remotely make sense however it is not as bad as bloodstorm.anywho the people just all get killed without resisting at all.It is the worst movie ever made avoid it at all cost.For anyone who has seen it I recomend flushing your eyes out with acid.And then there is the great quote "I never had sex with a zombie before,is this gonna hurt?"In closing I would like to say if I made this movie I would most likely put a bullet in my head.

Five Paranormal investigators meet(I will not tell you why they meet)at a funeral home that for some reason is in a castle. Full Moon fans will identify this castle, due to the fact that it has been used in many Full Moon productions. After they meet up they try to contact the spirit of the former Executioners that watched over the prison. Oh yeah I forgot to mention that conveniently under the funeral home is an old prison. This is the place where former witches and other villains were tortured and killed. Let's stop here and point out something that still has me scratching my head. When these group of "Paranormal Investigators", decide to contact the spirit, they pull out a Ouija board. Nothing strange here right? Well they start freaking out like they have never even touched one before. Isn't this a tool of the trade in their profession? After I set there in disbelief over this, I realized how horribly bad the acting was. I don't mean like after school special bad, I mean like 8th grade video class project bad. I thought the acting is bad but maybe the Executioners will make up for it. If a Wal-Mart Halloween mask means making up for it, than yeah I guess it did. This one is bad folks. If they threw in some gore, than maybe it could have helped out this awful story. The only resemblance to gore would be the blood squirt in the face bit. Boy did they wear that out fast to. The only reason to watch this piece of crap is to have a good laugh, and believe me there is plenty of those to be had.

I would consider myself a fan of b-movie label Full Moon Pictures. I've seen and defended many of their films, and a friend and I have an inside joke regarding this film and its rather tacky tagline, "There's No Parole... in Hell!". I decided to rent it and see if its really as bad as our jokes about the tagline suggest. Turns out it's even worse, because of disappointing villains and gaping holes in the plot.

The acting and effects, while far from Oscar-worthy are, like all Full Moon films, competent. The executioners have an interesting dark figure and profile, but their faces looked more like budget Halloween masks, particularly with those eyes; they don't have the character of, say, Puppet Master's puppet villains or even Killjoy. There might as well have been only one executioner, since their faces aren't clear enough that the differences are obvious, and, up until the ending, most of the killing scenes had but one executioner at a time (and when multiple executioners are featured, only one is really active at a time). Also, the aspect of the victims being randomly possessed and paralyzed by a mysterious force (which I recently found out is supposed to be the spirit of one of the tortured witches) before their slaughter takes away any menacing element of the executioners, as it appears that they are too slow or otherwise unable to pursue and kill any victim on their own, and can only "finish off" these "frozen" victims.

Though the executioners are pretty disappointing, the film's major problem is its poor plot. It's a great idea - an abandoned prison that is haunted by the ghosts of tortured witches and ghoulish executioners, but then all the disjointed mini-plots (for lack of a better term) are brought in. Funerals? Million-dollar rewards? Sex with a zombie? It doesn't help that the gaping holes between these sub-plots are made much more evident when the entire story seems to shift on the fly. The ending manages to tie a few together by luck, but it's also shifted to on the fly, underwhelming, anti-climactic, and abrupt (calling it rushed would be an understatement).

"Prison of the Dead" is a bad film, even by b-movie standards. Although no b-movie is perfect, and the only notable difference between this and any other Full Moon film may be just that it's easier to spot the plot holes, trying to fit the assorted mini-plots together isn't fun, and the executioners aren't as enjoyable as killer puppets/toys/dolls, ghetto clowns, or even demonic gladiator-possessed teens. As usual, the effort is there, but this time, it's just not entertaining!

I don't even need to explain it. It's awful....yet....I was compelled to buy it when it was on sale at Blockbuster for $2. Just to say I had it. There was the most obscure and awful movie ever, and I had seen it, and it was two dollars. Wonderful. Now I have another piece of junk...