Cataclysm

This film has good intentions. There is something lacking, but I't hard to put one's finger on it. This tells the tale of a Satanic figure who passes through time by recreating himself. An Nobel author, played by Richard Moll, Bull from "Night Court" of all people, has written a kind of Scientology book about God being dead. It has received much attention and he becomes of interest to the Satanic figure. The movie starts out with a Nazi hunter engaging the police to help him capture the man who was responsible for the deaths of his family members during the Holocaust. The thing that is always in the way is that if Satan is so powerful, why does he need to do much of anything. If there are people who threaten him (which they obviously can't), why doesn't he just kill them outright. I know he is searching for souls and all that, but his invulnerability makes him relatively uninteresting in this film. He does some things that don't make much sense in the world of the film. The ending is kind of fun, I guess.

Ah, Cataclysm, The Nightmare Never Ends... a turkey by any other name, Romeo, would gobble just as loudly. And this one's a Thanksgiving feast of epic proportions. It suffers from production values so low you have to go digging in the dirt to find them, from the sound (awful) to picture quality (atrocious) to the acting (Faith Clift saves the rest of the cast; by giving the single worst performance I have ever seen on screen, she almost makes the rest look merely mediocre by comparison). Entire scenes are washed out in a black muddle by some truly godforsaken camera-work, the dialogue is laughable... and so on, runneth the litany of complaints. But, I kinda liked it, and part of the reason I criticize so harshly is to prevent accusations of bad taste. That said, the most startling thing about this movie is that the committed horror fan (you know who you are) will find some truly unsettling moments, some real, honest-to-God creeps. They're few and far between, but they are there, and make the rest of the movie -- let's not say "good", that's a little overboard, but at least *fun*. It's quirky and surreal enough at times to see where a little talent and a vastly reworked script might have resulted in a rare gem. It had the potential to be more Session 9 than Plan 9, and if it failed, it will at least make you nostalgic for the good old days when terrible horror movies had miniscule budgets, rather than unforgivably large ones. (Anyone here see Ghost Ship? My condolences.) Part train wreck and part cubic zirconia in the rough, bad enough to hurt but not without its occasional spark, this is one that every fan of obscure horror needs to hunt down for that late-night viewing with a bag of chips and a six-pack.

Cataclysm ranks among those weird el cheapo horror movies that boomed during the 70s and 80s when independent film-making had became common due to lower prices in movie equipments. Often with interesting stories these small movie productions tried to create cinematic moments which their small budget's barely could handle without leaving a bad taste afterwards. But, if you can look beyond the cheap impressions of these movies and understand their intentions and what they tried to achieve with a very small budget, you can appreciate the result anyway. As I use to say, as long as there is an honest intention, thought and an interesting story, movies like this one can be appreciated. It's easy to laugh about though, but one must know that these filmmakers often experimented with ideas that would probably not have seen the light if it was produced by Hollywood.

Anyhow, back to this movie. The story is quite simple actually. An old man hunts a young man who seems to have been in all kind of wars many years back in time, but this guy hasn't aged a bit since. We learn that this man is Satan or at least is a very powerful evil spirit. The old man lost his whole family in the WW2 where this evil fellow was a nazi commander. A policeman gets involved in the drama and continues the hunt after the old man dies mysteriously trying to attack the evil dude. The movie ends with the evil fellow escaping the hospital where he's been brought by a Christian woman who tries to kill him. It's pretty logical because only God can kill Satan and the evil will continue as long as God accepts this. What's more illogical is that these people tries to kill this evil man, albeit he's impossible to kill, failing one by one.

The movie itself offers a lot of wooden acting and only a few scares which actually isn't that scary. You rarely see any gruesome scenes and much of the horror is more like indications of horror. For example you see the evil man's goat leg which will have you to believe that he really is a demon or Satan himself. Things like that occurs all through the movie and it's probably because the budget was so low. So, would I recommend this rarely seen movie to anyone? Heck yeah! If you like strange horror movies, obscure occult stuff that isn't too over the top but makes you think a bit, then yeah look this one up. This review refers to the VHS release. I've seen this movie released on DVD under the name 'The Nightmare Never Ends'.

Add this one to you horror collection, in the obscure section that is!

What can be said about THE NIGHTMARE NEVER ENDS? Well, it's NOT a quality film. Everything about it is bad: acting, dialogue, script, cast, cinematography, etc, are all way below average. It's a truly wretched film of cataclysmic proportions. For instance, take the dialogue: Cameron Mitchell says at one point, "I see swastikas swimming in my oatmeal!' which had me rolling on the floor. It's my new all time favorite line of dialogue. In another scene, a vigilante sorts named Papini wants the Nazi war criminal killed. He's been stalking a doctor (played by Faith Clift) and wants her to kill the criminal. One day, Papini storms in her office without her permission and asks her why she didn't kill him when she had the chance. So how does she answer? "I'm a doctor, I cannot kill." That's it. No anger or anything. It's priceless. Faith Clift is the worst actress of all time.

With that being said, the film is totally unforgettable, not just because it's so wonderfully bad but because there are some truly effective moments in it. Yes, even with its staggeringly inept quality there are several moments that elicit real horror or shock. More so than any horror film made these days. The state of horror films today is truly sad when a disaster like this is more effective than 90% of all horrors films made today.

The effective moments come out of nowhere: when someone takes his shoe off...didn't expect that! A nightmare inducing scene; the nightmare sequences are so bizarre and weirdly shot that they're oddly effective; the discotheque is...eh, weird. It makes me more uncomfortable than anything else in the film; the actor who plays the Nazi war criminal is just weird; and last but not least the ending which has to be seen to be believed. My jaw was on the floor.

Needless to say even with those effective moments the film is still crap. Well worth watching if you're a fan of obscure horror flicks or "so bad it's good" movies. Everyone else should abstain.

I had originally seen this on video as The Nightmare Never Ends, and recently watched it on video as Satan's Supper. Evidently these two versions, and the version titled Cataclysm are all slightly different. Additionally, this movie was edited down to form one third of the wretched horror anthology Night Train to Terror.

Night Train to Terror can be found on DVD. Nightmare Never Ends is on DVD in a "Troma Triple B-Header" box with two other movies.

I'm not sure how the versions all differ. Evidently Cataclysm begins with James and Claire Hanson going to Las Vegas, where Claire gets hypnotized and had visions of Nazis killing some musicians at a dinner other Nazis are having. I don't recall if Nightmare Never Ends began that way; Satan's Supper begins without the Vegas trip and with the Nazis, and Claire waking up from it as a nightmare.

A Jewish Nazi hunter sees Mr. Oliver on TV who looks like the head Nazi from Claire's dream. He gets a police detective played by Cameron Mitchell to take him to see the man in person. They must spend ten minutes with the Jewish guy insisting he's found his man, and Mitchell saying the man is too young to be the guy from the photo he was shown. The Nazi hunter is incredibly annoying, the worst sort of Jewish stereotype personified x100. He repeats himself incessantly, stuttering and gesturing like an idiot. Not that Mitchell is on the top of his form here either.

Of course, their bad acting has a lot of company in this movie. Moll is pretty dreadful as James Hanson, and Faith Clift playing his wife is like a lobotomized deer in headlights.

The guy playing Mr. Oliver is pretty awful too. He's evidently Satan himself. The monk who tries to warn Hanson is quite awful as well. A number of these people acted in other movies together, including a movie about Joseph Smith and Brigham Young! I can't imagine the horror! James Hanson has written a book "God is Dead" that took him four years. It's a runaway best seller, and he's even allowed time on TV to pitch his message, which is hardly new. Whole families appear to watch him.

For some reason, Mr. Oliver thinks Hanson would like to work for/serve him. Since an atheist no more believes in the devil than god (as Hanson in fact repeatedly says), this makes not a lick of sense.

The movie is terribly shot, terribly edited, terribly acted, and at the base of it all, terribly scripted. It is a worthless movie. I'm quite curious as to the story behind its making, how it wound up with three directors, and how there came to be so many versions of it.