La maledizione del cannibale

I had a blast watching this B movie concoction of angry Indians, sorority girls, and of course the whip action of Lash LaRue. The production values of the film add to the experience of creating that unique feeling that only a low-budget indie with a lot of passion behind it can bring. I believe this is a second film for director Phil Smoot, Alien Outlaw being the other. I think this film was shot in North Carolina. It has that feel to it, sort of like the films shot in Texas having their own look. It looks like 16mm or super16, but the transfer is of good quality. The sound mix, being from 16mm, is pretty good. Overall, i would recommend this film for cult film addicts. The sorority girl being chased through the tall grass is worth the purchase alone.

There's no use belaboring all that's wrong with this movie, as it is pretty much everything and other reviewers have already done so. Instead, I want to champion this mess as it strikes points in the entertainment department, which is what counts. And the "Toltecs" don't really look that bad-not that good, but not that bad or at least about as good as Neon Maniacs. The attempts at humor are definitely the worst thing about it, though, as generally horror and comedy are a tough mix and hardly anyone ever gets it right. A nice study in 80's interior decorating, as well.

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

I must say that I am an *INSTANT* fan of DARK POWER, an EVIL DEAD inspired bit of regionally produced horror hokum masquerading as a teen schlock craptacular. But as usual with medium to low budget movies that have not been messed around with by a studio looking to reap a profit there is more to this than may first meet the eye. The film's plot concerns itself with a group of genuinely unlikeable morons who move into a house formerly owned by a descendant of "Toltec and Aztec" shamans that is on the site of a former burial ground, or repository of ancient Native American artifacts. Offense is given to the tribal gods when one of the losers turns out to be a scab who leaves the seat up when taking a leak, invites his pathetic friends over for a beer party, and his snot rag sister starts giving the black chick in the movie racist trash. Either that or those gods are just being nasty for the hell of it.

It moves quickly: There is a local sheriff with some sort of mystical whip played by B-movie Western Whip King Lash La Rue, maniacal doggies (more like poochies: they are cute for killer wild dogs) who attack local fat kids wandering through the woods, a fat handyman dressed up like Meatloaf who's kid manages to blow up his truck, the losers run out of beer, and then out of nowhere come four re-incarnated Aztec warriors dressed up in castoff K-Mart hockey gear who butcher everyone in the house to pay them back for not having any Cheez-Whiz. In other words this is one of those movies made for people with really short attention spans that does not rely on plot to get it's message across, which is that Injun ghost warriors are nasty, mean, and kill people in surprisingly creative manners. My favorite was the chick who gets an arrow right between the eyes, but there are varieties of carnage that will likely please any hacker fan -- though be advised that DARK POWER's budget amounted to about one good semester at graduate school and the effects may not please fans of the animated computer cartoon horror hits of today, which genuinely suck compared to imaginative, well-meaning and bankrupt projects such as this. A sub-plot involving a foxy local reporter's inappropriate flirtations with the local teen book nerd doesn't go anywhere, but there's plenty of offbeat carnage, some enjoyable T&A, plenty of beer for everyone, and some appropriately tasteless humor that is funny for all the wrong reasons. This movie is an applied study in poor taste, but somehow it works.

The film also throws a few curve balls at viewers with some unexpected social commentary, such as the scene where one of the Injun Zombies decides to sample some of the snack food, condiments and booze stacked up in the kitchen. Then there is the scene where one of the losers from the beer party is being massacred and the snot-rag sister comes out of the bathroom clad in only a towel screaming at the morons to KEEP IT DOWN! I also liked the racial dynamic with the black girl, who sort of becomes one of the heroes and who's tolerance of the white trash (one of them even has a Confederate flag hung prominently in his room: cute) crackers is nothing short of admirable. The film is also strangely comfortable with it's Regional Horror look & nature, and we may have coined a new term here.

REGIONAL HORROR: Low budget, semi or outright independent thrillers from the 1970s - 1980s filmed in places like Miami, Omaha, Richmond, and St. Louis that eschewed gloss for a kind of droll wallowing in everyday suburbia, featuring everyday plain Jane actors who are cast for their ordinariness rather than traits attributable to a manufactured freak like Tom Cruise or Angelina Jolie that has no identity outside of their industry. These are everyday people, non-actors with maybe some community theater experience, called up by a director who needed a cast for a movie, offered a couple hundred dollars for a few day's shootings and usually got more than they're money's worth when compared to the baloney performances of someone like Mr. Cruise. Regional Horror features existing locations as sets like people's homes, their backyards, maybe a stretch of woods on public land, and is usually comprised of images & scenes that blue collar slobs like ourselves would otherwise see every day of our lives.

The ultimate example would probably be CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS (or NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, for that matter) but see also HOUSE OF THE DEAD/THE ALIEN ZONE, KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS, FIEND, DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE, DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT, DON'T GO IN THE WOODS ALONE and other movies with the word DON'T in their title, and I would rank DARK POWER right up there with any of those as a movie that amounted to more than the sum of it's parts, and turned out far, far better than it probably had to.

8/10, and I mean it.

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.