Fiend

OK, so I have a soft spot for low budget indie movies with typical 70's effects.

Alien Factor, the director's first movie, seemed to me to have one major problem: It was much bigger than its budget. The story had too much to accomplish. It seems to me that with Fiend writer/director, Don Dohler realized that a "smaller" movie would be better suited to his resources.

The script is pure genius at staying within its means. The main cast and locations are kept simple, the F/X aren't stupendous but they do the job and the storyline is out there enough to keep it interesting.

If you like movies with heart that just want to entertain you for 90 minutes or so, FIEND may be worth a watch. It's certainly worth having on your online video rental list or picking up on the cheap at a convention.

If you're looking for tons of gore and naked women, this one's not for you. In fact, big scares aren't really present either, but it did illicit a certain nostalgic feeling for me.

"Fiend" is definitely one of the better examples of low budget "z-grade" horror. When I put this on, I expected it to be one of those "so bad it's hilarious" horror films, and even though the first scenes initially had me in fits of laughter, it's not one of these films.

Once you've seen 5 minutes of the atrocious acting, jumpy editing, bad frame composition, laughable special effects and poor lighting and colour matching, its humour wears off. However, it actually creates a surreal and dreamy atmosphere reminiscent of the classic "Night Of The Living Dead" that will linger even when the film is finished.

The story revolves around a married man trying to prove that his neighbour, a "fiend" that is an evil spirit in the body of a corpse who must feed on the living to retain his youthful appearance, is responsible for the spree of murders that have been occurring in the neighbourhood.

"Fiend" will brilliantly draw you into that neighbourhood yourself and make you suspend your disbelief and the unnatural dialogue and amateur acting soon appears normal as you become a part of the surreal world the film creates.

The surreal atmosphere, predictable yet intriguing story, and climatic ending make "Fiend" a forgotten gem that I'd recommend to all fans of low budget horror.

FIEND is an indisputably anorexic little presentation, but it does have a certain something...a hard-to-pin-down eerie quality that makes it click, if only in a small way. The elementary bubblegum story could easily have been lifted from a classic EC horror comic, and concerns a ghoul who kills people in order to claim their souls, sustenance which he requires to perpetuate his own abominable existence.

The special effects in this dime-store spook-show are expectedly primitive, most notably the cartoon neon-blue lightning zaps(a cheap effect which was tremendously overused in tight-budget 80s horror flicks). No worries, though...the murky atmosphere makes up for it.

As with most dirt-floor regional cinema, your average Joe Anyman is unlikely to have an especially positive experience with FIEND. Horror fans of a more lax and forgiving savoir-faire, on the other hand, should have some good fun with it.

5.5/10...Dohlericious!

Is this movie really as bad as the former comments made it out to be? Personally I don't think so. Sure, the acting is (sometimes painfully) bad, the special fx are laughable and the lightning sucks (some parts are so dark you can hardly follow what's happening) but who rents forgotten curiosities like this for it's production values? And does a minimal budget, inexperienced crew and a very 'functional' script necessarily result in cheezy, grade Z 'good for laughs'-kind of movie? I strongly disagree. Somehow the B movie seems to have got mixed up with the grade Z-movie...

Anyway, to the film: the plot is about a devilish fiend (some kind of evil spirit in a human form) that has to kill people and steal their 'lifeforce', so thats it's stolen human body won't decompose. The fiend is a pathetic walrus-looking guy who spends his time giving violin-classes and listening to bad synthesizer music in his lonely apartment. The only people who get in the way of his killing spree is a nice, typical smalltown, middle class couple who of course starts playing detectives. The couple works great, and gives the films greatest performances. The actors are no professionals, but they act and look so normal it gives the film a genuine feel, and even moments of real warmth. The film has no fright or speed, so you'll have to have both patience and appreciation for the rare glimpses of creativity, dreams and simple humanity that sometimes surround B-movies like this one.

I somehow kind of ended up liking this little oddity, but don't take my recommendation too seriously - I often end up liking this kind of nice-spirited, slow horror-sleepers that nobody seems to remember. Also worth mentioning is that there is no gore or nudity, so gorehounds and fans of euro-horror cinema better stay far away.

I'll give it 5/10 for it's heart and humanity. Failure can be beautiful.

FIEND is awful. It's hilarious. It's about a dead guy who strangles people and takes their lifeforce away from them in order to replenish himself with blah, blah, blah. Who cares about plot? This cheese ball is good for only one thing. Ridiculing it. Dig the scene where the woman gives her friend a ride home and conveniently drops her off a mile away from her house. Another priceless piece of entertainment from Prism Pictures.