Truth or Dare?: A Critical Madness

A million dollars... A million dollars... I could have made a better slasher flick with the Blair Witch budget! I was having a pretty peachy day when I found out that my favorite bad movie cost approximately one million dollars to make. What kind of idiot gave this guy a million dollars? And to make thing worst he made two sequels. It is the best worst movie of all time, but it was a lot better when I thought an amateur adult film director made this flick with about the same amount of money his past projects cost. Sorry if I have insulted anyone, but after all my pick for the worst film of all time is not even on a single list.

This is a true gem and, unfortunately, one that can never be duplicated due to the ease at which low budget films can be made very high quality today. The creativity in the use of many types of killing weapons is very unique-everything from a chainsaw to a mace(that wooden stick with the spikey ball on the end). There are some decent examples of stunts/dummy heads being blown away as well. What really blew me away was the fact that an original song was composed and performed for the end credits of the film.

The movie is about a total psycho and the original song is performed by a gospel choir-very strange. On a sidenote-see if you can spot a future member of the backstreet boys as he is killed. Here's a hint-chainsaw.

After reading the other reviews of this film, it seems many people measure quality by the amount of money that went into a production. Go figure... Truth or Dare? - A Critical Madness was indeed made on a shoestring, but writer/director, Tim Ritter displays more imagination in 5 minutes than any of today's big budget horror films can manage in 2 hours. Ignore the naysayers and see this little gem from the 80s. Serious horror fans need only apply.

My review was written in July 1986 after watching the show on Peerless video cassette.

"Truth or Dare?" (subtitled "A Critical Madness") is a subpar horror film aimed rather crassly at the gore market. Though touted as a feature made expressly for home video, "TOD" features 16mm lensing not much better than video-lensed forerunners in the genre, such as "Copperhead" and "The Ripper". It certainly isn't interesting or professional enough to warrant a theatrical release.

John Brace overacts portraying a man whom we learn via psychological mumbo-jumbo to be suffering from a childhood trauma traceable to the kids' game Truth or Dare? In which he imagines an alternate reality and is given to both self-mutilation and dishing out ultra-violence to other folks. Opening scene of him catching his wife (Mary Fanaro) in bed with another man triggers his craziness.

Film derails quickly via poor continuity and no credibility generated by Tim Ritter's script. Driving away from home angrily, Brace picks up a voluptuous hitchhiker (Kerry Ellen Walker) and improbably decides to go camping with her, tent and all. Around the campfire she insists on a game of Truth or Dare? And dares him to cut off his finger after she has poked out her own eye.

Brace is hospitalized, but typical of the film's sloppiness he has all his fingers undamaged for the rest of the picture. Conversely, when he goes on the rampage at a mental home with a hand grenade, survival knife, chainsaw and even a machine gun, it seems as if these are fantasy items but they turn out to be real. Where'd he get them?

Nonsensical episodes are just an excuse for gore footage, some of it left mercifully off-screen but also incorporating poorly done explicit violence. Filmmaker Yale Wilson botches most key scenes, such as making the simple finale of Brace versus his shrink needlessly confusing. Tech credits and supporting cast are weak, particularly the monotonous synthesized musical score.

This was a masterpiece in film making. Well, not really. For all of our self indulgent films of crap then we should all take notes from this film. This is a "horror" movie that takes says that it is not. It is funny, clever, gruesome, and bad, but its badness makes it what it was. The over acting, extremely bloody death scenes, and the gratuitius nudity, make it an entertaining film. Nothing now can hold its own weight because they take themselves too seriously. This was, is, the true film that make made horror movies, not Scream or I Know What You Did when you were trying to scare me, fun. Attention all horror movies of our time, either do something that no one else has, or be creative and make us laugh. If you can't do that, then release this movie, as bad as it was.