La maledizione del cannibale

Wow... I suspected this one to be bad... But now I find myself just at a loss for words... Honestly, no words of mine can do this movie any justice...

I'll try to say something anyway...

This truly is one unique gem. One of the worst kind.

Lash La Rue - given his background as an actor - doing a whip-fight with a Toltec sorcerer-zombie during the movie's climax...??? A true stroke of genius, without a doubt.

It rarely happens that I laugh out loud when watching a movie alone. It happened numerous times with this one.

The accents of the actors, man, the accents... And the dialogues I heard them speak... And the acting itself... I just couldn't believe what I was hearing.

That fat uncle farting so loudly (when walking up to the house together with his little nephew) for no apparent reason whatsoever...

Tits! Yes, there's titties! And female ass! There's even a naked chick in a bathtub sipping a beer...

That one "stretch his mouth over his face"-kill was the bomb! A true highlight.

The comedy-aspects were just totally bonkers. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing and hearing. For a while I even thought that they were unintentional, shaking my head in disbelief. But about halfway in the movie, I started to get the bigger picture. Guess it took me half a movie to dumb-down half of my brain, to finally get it.

I had a really hard time believing this movie... But it's good, really, I think. It had one black chick walking up to a very tiny cupboard, opening it and then saying "Wooow, look at all the storage space!". And she said it like she meant it. I mean, that's good dialogue and good acting, right?

Oh, and perhaps needless to say: Lash La Rue's whip-skills suck major ass in THE DARK POWER. It's really sad and pathetic to behold. That's all part of the comedy, of course. Or wait, I might be wrong. No, yes, I'm wrong. Lash La Rue was amazing with the whip! It was the editor's fault. He messed it up, cutting his lashes together and all. Or wait, it might have been the camera operator. He filmed from the wrong angles... Then why didn't Phil Smoot say anything? That's it, it's the director's fault.

But it's a good movie.

I'm just gonna quit talking about it. I have nothing meaningful to say anyway, except for the fact that I hope my brain will recover from this experience... some time soon.

"The Dark Power" is hardly better than a student film. It makes no sense and the acting and direction is horrible. The non-stop screaming from the girls at the end becomes very annoying, and the interminable back-and-forth "whip fight" between Lash and the Toltec desperately needs editing. Otherwise it's a totally rad 80's horror-comedy flick and an interesting way to pass 120 minutes.

The location of the house is 9080 Leisure Point Lane, Belews Creek, N.C. and it still looks pretty much exactly the same, inside and out!

This was my first movie as "Gaffer," or Chief Lighting Technician, and boy does it show. My apologies to all viewers! Director-Producer Phil Smoot, is one of the nicest guys in the film business, however, and he constantly encouraged everyone to do their best on this little film.

One of my fondest memories was working with Lash LaRue. Lash was a consummate professional, full of great stories and patient with our inexperienced crew. I'll never forget how one night, waiting what seemed like hours for a shot to be set up, Lash just sat on an applebox, casually flipping his ever-present whip. There was a roll of toilet paper hanging from the handle of the tripod head mounted on the camera dolly. Lash would flick that whip of his, neatly tearing off one sheet of TP at a time. There was a little pile of single toilet paper sheets, steadily growing as time passed by.

Funny how little memories stay with you.

Wow, what a cheesy movie this is! It starts off looking like it's gonna be a backwoods slasher, with the camera following dogs running through the woods. It then gets a bit boring and follows the story of some girls moving into some house haunted by Indian spirits. We then get plenty of shots of one partially clad girl and another naked girl in the bath. It suddenly gets really cheesy when the "Zombie Indians" arise from the earth and start terrorising the girls. We even get a samurai Indian.

This movie starts off pretty boring although I did find the story of the four Indians who buried themselves alive quite interesting. Once the Indian zombies (or whatever you want to call them for they aren't technically zombies) start terrorising the girls is when all the fun begins. This is not a special flick and can't be taken seriously, it's just something fun to watch when you're bored or when you're drinking with friends. I can't help thinking though that it would have worked better as a short story because the first half is tediously boring.

Okay, this is a mid-80's movie about the spirits of the dead returning to have their revenge on the living. So you pretty much expect cheesy-looking zombies who have no consistency in their behaviour, a bunch of stupid, screaming college students who are only there as splat-fodder, leaving the (mildly) more likable ones behind to be saved in the nick of time by a hugely unlikely hero, who utters the line "I'm getting too old for this" at least once. You also expect some pretty gory moments where hands and heads come off and blood stains the grass, and cringe-worthy dialogue like "Die, you corpse!"...and, you get it with this movie XD.

The only real complaint is that the Zombies are not really zombies, they are just menacing undead creatures who run around with sharp weapons (well, two of them do, the other two just run around and fumble at their victims while making dubbed grunt/moan noises) and kill people. This is a pretty good splatter movie to kill a hour or so with i suppose. You even see some titties!, and it features a similar racial theme to "Night of the living dead", except handled much more clumsily, with all the subtlety you would expect from an 80's splatter flick. Great viewing all round, but don't pay more than £6!

Tally (yeah, i decided to incorporate this in all my reviews): Sex: 1/10, Drugs: 0/10, Rock 'n roll: 2/10, Zombies: 7/10, Classic cars: 0/10, Splatter: 6/10