User reviews

I used to watch this little-known Canadian b-horror movie on Frighnight Theater with Whitey Gleason. He said he enjoyed the film because its main special effects artist worked on "The Fly". In the film, a young teenager named Amy loses her mother to a tragic car crash. Her mother was on her way to visit Amy's aunt, who was a fashion model. Soon after the funeral, the aunt moves in with Amy's widowed father and, besides hooking up with the father and brainwashing him, begins using voodoo magic to kill off Amy's friends. She intends to isolate Amy so she can transfer a snake-like voodoo vampire creature out of her body into Amy's. Apparently the aunt and the snake thing will die if she has the creature in her too long. There is a great b-horror movie death scene at the end, complete with exploding propane tanks, wet fighting women, and a snake in the pool :)

It's 2013, and there's a distinct lack of originality in the horror field at present, what with all the remakes, reboots or re-imaginings.

The Kiss is by no means a classic of the genre but it is a fun way to kill 90 minutes and (shock! horror!) it's original. The ever wonderful Meredith Salenger here is pitch perfect in the lead. (Why she isn't working more is beyond me)

Joanna Pacula is also fabulous as the villainess of the piece. She's sexy, bitchy and suitably over the top. The film has its flaws; namely a god awful puppet kitty scare, but on the whole it has the sleek polish of any 80's studio horror flick. Tri-Star had quite a good track record with horror back then.

Sure it's cheesy but at least it's fun. The Kiss also has some genuine suspense and some good gory thrills here and there.

Big hair, big scares, big effects and big performances make this one stand out a little more than it deserves to. Welcome back to the 80's...

A solid six of out ten.

Amy (Meredith Salenger) finds her world turned upside down when her mother is killed in a freak accident. Soon her mother's estranged sister, fashion model Felice (Joanna Pacula), has moved in and begins working her way into the family, starting by seducing dad Jack (Nicholas Kilbertus). Naturally she has ulterior motives as she wants to pass on an ancient African curse via a slimy demon that must be passed from mouth-to-mouth. This Canadian chiller came out during a seemingly endless supply of evil demon women flicks (THE UNHOLY, NIGHT ANGEL, SPELLBINDER, THE GUARDIAN, SATAN'S PRINCESS) and does alright for what it is. You're not going to get a horror classic, but you do get bloody killings, a pulsating medical dummy, a drooling demon cat and Pacula performing rituals naked. The end is particularly over-the-top with the big showdown in the family's pool, complete with hedge trimmer stabbing and a barbecue propane tank flamethrower (only in the movies). Tri-Star barely released this in theaters in October 1988 in the United States, which is odd as they funded a special trailer for it that features a minute or so of "trailer only" footage.

Amy's (Meredith Salenger) mother has just died in a freak automobile accident. To make matters worse, an almost unknown Aunt named Felica (Joanna Pacula) shows up and takes a fancy to Amy's dad. That's when all of Amy's friends start to meet gruesome ends and Amy starts to find voodoo spells and other assorted items in Felica's stuff. It seems Amy is the next in line to get a fatal kiss from Felica.

Fast paced, often exciting & scary film features a fun premise, solid direction, terrific effects, plenty of sexual energy & atmosphere. Meredith Salenger is appealing and Joanna Pacula is flawless in a tailor made role that plays up to her exotic beauty and mysterious appearance. However, poor supporting performances by Mimi Kuzyk & Nicholas Kilbertus nearly ruin it.

Rated R; Graphic Violence, Nudity, Sexual Situations, and Profanity.

After her mother dies in a terrible accident, pretty teenager Amy (the lovely Meredith Salenger) finally gets to meet her mysterious Aunt Felice (Joanna Pacula) but soon twigs that her mom's globe-trotting younger sister isn't as perfect as she makes out to be. Using the power of sex and voodoo, Felice controls the fates of Amy's loved ones, before attempting to pass on a very unusual 'heirloom' to her unwilling niece.

For a film about an ancient African parasite that is transmitted between female members of the same family by a kiss, this is quite the disappointment, a rather charmless movie with generic direction from Pen Densham, surprisingly poor effects by makeup wiz Chris Walas (Gremlins, The Fly), and flat performances from all except Pacula, who makes up for the other actors' seeming disinterest by really hamming it up.

Densham desperately tries to spice things up proceedings with a little gore and sex towards the end (Pacula going topless to seduce Amy's father), and randomly throws a hilariously naff zombie cat hand-puppet creature into the mix, but to no avail. This one could have done with a lot more gore and general outrageousness throughout in order to do the silly premise justice.

5.5 out of 10, rounded down to 5 for not going all the way with the 'necklace in the escalator' scene and for failing to get Salenger to take a shower (although, to be fair, she looks pretty great in that white swimsuit).

Pucker up and get ready to die. Teenager Amy (Meredith Salenger) just lost her mom to a freak accident. Her long lost Aunt Felice shows up five months after the death to help out. At First Amy is excited to meet Felice (Joanna Pacula) because she is a fashion model and seems hip. Then things get weird when strange accidents happen. There is a great escalator scene when Amy's friend Heather gets hurt.Amy and her dad start to fight over Felice's presence. Doesn't help that Amy's dad is sleeping with Felice. Amy tries to tell her dad and her neighbor Brenda(Mimi Kuzyk)but no one believes her that Felice had anything to do with the strange accidents. They think Amy just misses her mom. But Amy knows Felice has a secret. This is a fun film! Has a lot of gory scenes and a great cast. Mimi Kuzyk is great as Brenda who tries to help Amy.Watch it late at night with popcorn! It is sort of a supernatural reverse version of the Stepfather. I liked the soundtrack. It set the mood. death scenes are great. watch out for the worst puppet cat to ever grace the movies!

I wouldn't say this is boring, but in the end "The Kiss" didn't do too much for me. It's a commonplace witchcraft tale in what is a primitively decent little late 80's supernatural occult horror item. There are moments of creativity, from its story arches to its grisly, mean- spirited imagery (there being some neat twisted special effects on show by Chris Walas), but still evident is that it does seem to meander at times (who knew tree trimming could be relaxing), sometimes the messy plot just throws in things with no explanations (what about that ugly looking artifact statue and where the hell did that nasty looking feral cat come from?!), secondary characters are less interesting (although Mimi Kuzyk has her moments) and eventually the overall silliness takes control (wait around for the overblown climax involving a late-night dip). However it can be atmospherically tense and quite sexed-up with the mysteriously fetching Joanna Pacula seductively manipulating things to her advantage as this scarlet happens to be possessed by some sort of ancient curse that's passed on through the females of the same bloodline with a kiss.

The story opens up in the early 1960s in the Belgian Congo, where a young girl is inflicted with ancient curse from her auntie. Twenty-five years later, the girl Felice is a famous fashion model travelling the world, which suddenly turns up in New York after the strange accidental death of her older sister. There she meets her teenage niece Amy (a strong performance by Meredith Salenger), but Amy isn't so keen on her and wonders why her mum never talked about her. Yet Felice does have plans for Amy to become heir to this horrifying family legacy.

Generic and rather blotchy, but Pen Densham's direction etches out some style and Pacula has a hypnotic screen presence that not only intrudes on the family, but also the viewer.

"Amy if your curious about me, all you have to do is ask."

This movie is about an evil enity passed down from generation to generation in an unfortunate family. It's an evil snake-like creature that controls the body ( if you've seen Jason Goes To Hell, it's similar to that ). The movie opens with two young sisters in Africa. One is leaving to Europe with her Aunt. During the ride, the Aunt passes the creature into her niece's body through a "kiss". 25 years later, the other sister has a husband and daughter named Amy ( Meredith Salenger from The Journey Of Natty Gan, and most recently Lake Placid ) who live in New York. The mother dies in an accident, and 5 months later the sister, Felice ( Joanna Pacula )shows up. Now Amy most protect herself before it's to late because Aunt Felice wants to give her a deadly kiss. It's better than it sounds. Meredith Salenger and Mimi Kuzyk ( she plays a friend of the family ) are very likeable in there roles and Joanna Pacula is good at being creepy. Favorite line : Amy : " I want some fritos, I want a f**kin' diet coke " ( after her Aunt has given her all this " healthy food " crap ).

Not a very good horror offering. There was actually some fairly inventive gore. I am a fan of Joanna Pacula, and she was one of the rare bright spots in this film. She is lovely, and a marvelous actress. I wish she had gotten some of the better roles in Hollywood, because I think she would have become a superstar. But I suppose that, at her age, that opportunity will never come to pass. Meredith Selenger and Mimi Kuzyk did as well here as the material allowed. I was very unimpressed with Nicholas Kilbertus. And most of the other criticism I've read about this film is warranted, the gaping plot holes, the over-direction, etc. And, oh, yeah, the evil cat thing looked about as real as the Caddyshack gopher. I can only recommend this to fans of Pacula or Selenger. Grade: F

The Kiss (1988) - It's no wonder that Joanna Pacula was irritated at Meredith Salenger from almost start to finish in this movie.

She wasn't used to being the second-most attractive one in the room.

Ha ha... just kidding. They were equally attractive. But I can say without question that Joanna was the ugliest one in another way.

I'm talking evil personified.

This is a pretty intense horror story about curses, fatal kisses, endangered daughters and one of the dumbest dads in history.

In brief... Pacula plays Felice Dunbar, who as a child in the Belgian Congo is separated from her sister Hilary. She is victimized by an aunt who is into voodoo rituals involving a cursed talisman.

Auntie seals her niece's fate with a fatal and bloody kiss, killing herself and turning Felice into an undead kind of creature.

Many years alter, Felice, a successful (but still undead) model, tracks down her sister Hilary in New York. What she's really after is Hilary's daughter Amy (Meredith Salenger) and her husband Jack (Nicholas Kilbertus).

After Felice engineers the accidental (and gruesome) death of Hilary, she worms her way into Jack and Amy's life, with the intention of eventually planting a fatal kiss on Amy and sucking out her life essence.

Amy smells a rat almost from the get-go. But dad... hmmm...what an idiot. He falls for Felice hook, line, and sinker.

So who can save Amy? There are a few candidates, but Felice does a good job of eliminating them in voodoo-influenced and violent ways.

Pacula put in a performance worthy of Barbara Steele. That's a HIGH compliment, because no female actress (in my opinion) did evil better than Babs. Pacula's cold eyes, the snarl on her lips when she was angry with Amy, the devious passion with which she seduced brainless Jack, and the devilish delight when she was caressing the cursed talisman... just the perfect temptress.

Salenger was excellent as well. This kid has her wig on straight, and isn't afraid to face off with Felice - and her dad - in her valiant attempt to survive.

A very honorable mention should go to Mimi Kuzyk as Jack and Amy's neighbor Brenda. She is loving and caring and a fierce defender of Amy.

Finally? There's this black cat from hades that pops up from time to time and attacks people. It's so silly-looking... but I'd still feed it some Friskies.

Really disturbing horror flick that has Joanna Pacula terrorizing a family with a strange witch-like curse that has been passed on through the generations of her ancestors. Some really steamy sex scenes involving Pacula take away from a couple of creative deaths. Overall the film is a typical 1980s horror mess that is stylish to an extent, but still totally uneven and lacking in cinematic merit. 2 stars out of 5.

Suburban teen, mourning the recent death of her mother in a freak accident, is suspicious of her mother's estranged sister, an exotic model who comes to stay with the girl and her father; turns out this dangerous woman harbors an evil bloodline that must be passed down to a female relative by a kiss. Despite 'shock' deaths and a heavy-breathing feral cat (who pops up with alarming reliability), this entry in the '80s horror cycle is pretty bland. Director Pen Densham juices the proceedings with sex and voodoo--and a menacing mall escalator--but to no avail. Most of the cast is so laid-back, they evaporate on the screen, particularly young Meredith Salenger (a typical movie kid feigning a modern ordinariness that borders on laziness). As the villain, Joanna Pacula gives it a go, but the silliness of her role (and of the movie's entire concept) defeats her. *1/2 from ****

"The Kiss" is actually just a rudimentary & simplistic witchcraft story about supernatural powers getting passed through the female members of the same bloodline, but director Densham neatly polishes up the concept with impressively explicit make-up effects (courtesy of Chris Walas' company), adequate supportive character drawings and atmospheric building up towards the death scenes. The story opens in the early 60's in the Belgian Congo, where two sisters become separated at the train station. The youngest one, Felice, is seriously ill but her aunt miraculously cures her by passing an alien-like creature into her body through a kiss. 25 years later the other sister tragically dies in a car accident, leaving behind a husband and a stunningly beautiful adolescent daughter named Amy. Aunt Felice shows up again (in the ravishingly matured version of Joanna Pacula) and quickly works her way into the family by seducing her widowed brother-in-law. Auntie Felice is clearly just interested in Amy's body as the host for the inheritable creature, and she won't hesitate to use violent voodoo tricks against anyone that stands between her and the young girl. "The Kiss" is one modest class above the majority of 80's witchcraft-movies, because it features a little more directorial flair and style. There's a continuously pleasing level of suspense and film is suitably gruesome, including images of people burning alive, losing body parts underneath trucks and getting strangled on escalators. Felice has an OTT grotesque wild cat assisting her to kill people and there's a bizarre (but macabre) montage showing Amy menstruating in class whilst her father makes love to the sinister aunt. That was quite an awkward moment, and I'm not entirely sure about the symbolic significance/importance of that sequence. In fact, there's quite a lot of sexual innuendo that appears to be a bit lost in the wholesome of the story. Anyway, the story grows increasingly sillier near the end, resulting in a highly implausible and chuckles-inducing finale. Meredith Salenger was truly adorable girl in the late 80's (and still a gorgeous woman today) and I severely regret the fact her career didn't skyrocketed after this film. Recommended to watch at least once, particularly if you appreciate feminine beauty and graphic gore.

Well, I didn't go into this film expecting anything great; I was really just hoping for a decent timewaster along the same lines as Wes Craven made for TV opus 'Summer of Fear', and that's more or less what I got; though it cant be said that this film isn't as good as Craven's. The film is a mix of two very basic and very common horror themes; namely, the insider who works their way into a family unit, and of course the idea of witchcraft. After the first fifteen minutes, I feared the worst because = the way that the plot is set up is very messy; and that's never a good sign in a simple film like this one! However, it soon settles down and once I got an idea of what to expect, I found that the film became easier to enjoy. The film starts with two sisters in 1963 that get split up. One of them goes off with a relative who passes onto her a strange curse via a kiss. We then cut to twenty five years later, and the other sister has died in a car accident; leaving her husband and daughter behind. Then onto the scene comes the cursed sister, who wants her niece to bear her curse...

It has to be said that this film could have been better if have handled by someone more adept, and if it had a better focus. The plot soon becomes predictable, and there are several things about it that don't make sense, and the film often veers off on a tangent with certain things that aren't really relevant. The Kiss seems to have taken a bit of influence from The Omen with regards to the way that the death scenes are carried out; mostly excessive and random, but also quite imaginative: the death scene on an escalator is well done...though the clues preceding it spoil the surprise. None of the characters are particularly interesting, which is a shame considering that the main one is a conniving witch. However, the film never becomes too boring. The special effects aren't over-used, but what we do get is generally quite realistic; the only exception to this rule being an aggressive cat, which looks like a stuffed toy. It all boils down to an exciting and explosive finale, which also happens to be the best ten minutes of the film. Overall, I won't be going round recommending this film to people; but there's worse ways to spend ninety minutes of your life.

This movie is about the Church and Lesbians, and how some lesbians are evil vampires. Not all lesbians are vampires but enough lesbians are so the Church recommends just not being a lesbian, but also it's a horror movie. It could have been one of those horror movies that was good but instead it's a thinly veiled metaphor about how the Church is good and sexuality is bad, especially if that sexuality is not hetero. So you want to know things about this movie? You want me to tell you stuff about this movie, like my theories and opinions? Nope. This is a garbage movie, the time when it was made is irrelevant and nobody did a good job. If you want to redeem this movie start with lighter fluid and matches.

I guess the atmosphere is the best thing to date in such a movie. That's because the acting is terrible and the screenplay is based solely upon a climax of anguish and terror. There's an ancient curse but we don't know anything about it but the fact that we have to fear it, and escape from it! That's what 90% of horror movies are about: action, thrill and never an explanation. If you have nothing to say, say nothing. Anyway, there are worst movies than this one and for the horror fans this should be a nice title to rent.

"The Kiss" follows teenaged Amy (Meredith Salenger) whose mother has just died in a gruesome car accident. To complicate matters, her estranged aunt Felice (Joanna Pacula) arrives in town, who was separated from Amy's mother during their childhood in the Belgian Congo. Little does Amy know, Aunt Felice is under the thumb of an ancient curse, one which must be passed on to Amy before Felice's vessel disintegrates.

I won't attempt to make "The Kiss" sound like something it's not—it is an absolutely absurd romp that stirs all of the '80s horror fixings into a melding pot and serves up a ragbag medley of witchcraft, African magic, mysterious talismans, and monster parasites passed on from mouth-to- mouth. Oh, and did I mention a therianthropic rabid cat?

Derivative and impossible to take seriously, "The Kiss" is still a fantastic film in that it makes the most of all of its derivative elements, and has plenty of fun doing it. In some ways, it is a feminine answer to "Fright Night," and actually makes an intertextual reference to that very film. It evokes the small-town atmosphere which is ripe for teenaged terror, and the weird ancestral/incestuous undercurrents in the film are grotesque and utterly bizarre. The special effects team behind this is something of a technical powerhouse, having done the work for "Gremlins" among other things, and while some of the effects are dated (the cat, for example, is just ridiculous), there are also some impressive and legitimately gruesome effects that supersede the sillier ones.

The film follows a familiar narrative trajectory that was seen before and would be seen again, especially in writer Stephen Volk's followup script, "The Guardian" (1990) which ended up being directed by William Friedkin two years later. There are some loose threads in the film (we, for example, are provided no significant followup to the recovery of Amy's friend Heather after she is nearly mangled to death by an escalator), but there is significant suspense in spite of some sloppy technicalities. Joanna Pacula is fantastically evil in the film, and Meredith Salenger plays your everyday likable teenage girl very well.

Overall, I found "The Kiss" to be sublime, even in its most absurd of quandaries. It essentially epitomizes the entire landscape of '80s horror films, specifically the supernatural thrillers, and is undeniably fun. It offers solid performances, some fantastically gross (and other times hilariously bad) special effects, and a poolside finale that is perhaps one of the most thematically and aesthetically chaotic things I've ever seen. 8/10.

A 90 minute suspense thriller with only 1 minute worth watching. The very young and very beautiful Meredith Salenger is the only reason worth watching. The pool scenes in the movie is the only reason why this forgotten gem is rented by young teenage boys. Salenger is true eye candy for the audience. The movie had something to do with revenge or murder, or something. I couldn't tell you what the plot was about because its wasn't worth finding out. Every time Meredith Salenger wasn't on the screen made the movie less enjoyable. Then again, every time Meredith Salenger walked into a scene and walked across the camera was film worth watching. This will never make it to DVD for its unpopularity. Then again, Meredith Salenger never looked so good.

When her mother dies in strange and pretty shocking circumstances, Amy and her father meet her Aunt Felice, a beautiful model, but one with a dark secret. Soon after Felice arrives, Amy's loved ones start dying.

One of those movies that if you were lucky enough in the late 90s or early 00's, that you'd have caught at 1pm on a Saturday night, corny, cheesy, but you'd want to see it through.

It's close to being one of those movies that's good, but by nature of being pretty bad. Worth sticking with to see the ending, where we have hijinks at the swimming pool, and flames flying around the place.

The acting varies from decent to poor, and the sex scenes are amusing to say the least. However, one or two of the scares work pretty well, and the basic special effects were used effectively, not too much is shown thankfully.

It's a low budget, 80's horror, you know what you're getting, expect to be amused, not thrilled.

5/10.