Les Forces du mal

I think i'd like to live in this world - all low rent film noir, new wave neon, coloured gels where your best friends are bikers and hookers and its full of Rastafarian mystics and cliched cops in shiny suits and dogs in sunglasses.

Dennis Lipscombe is a depressed artist who throws himself off the roof of the hotel he lives in on Halloween. He survives, but starts having visions of a small time gangster who died the same night. Soon he is having nightmares about stalking and killing strangers, and the murders he dreams of are really happening. His psychiatrist and his hooker girlfriend try to help him figure out what is going on, while cop Hoyt Axton investigates the murder spree. This is a pretty solid mid-80's horror flick with colorful photography, creative, gory deaths, and a really solid cast of recognizable character actors.

One really good episode of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE that I remember is "Dead Man's Shoes," where an average Joe finds a pair of shoes and decides to put them on. The shoes, however, belonged to a recently deceased mobster, who decides to possess the man and seek revenge on those who sent him to his grave. RETRIBUTION is just like that, only a lot bloodier.

George is a depressed painter who's had it with life. On Halloween night, he jumps off the roof of his apartment building and dies. However, he is brought back by some paramedics, but something isn't quite right with him. Whenever he falls asleep, he has dreams of killing people in gruesome ways, and when he awakens, these people are actually dead. You see, he is now possessed by a mobster who not only shared his birthday, but he was gunned down at the same time George realized he can't fly, so now, the mobster is killing those who killed him. Can George stop him before the killing begins again?

RETRIBUTION is a decent enough watch, but it could have been a whole lot better. Considering this was released in the trash-tastic year of 1987, they managed to have a really intriguing plot, great actors, and good gore effects. Unfortunately, they underplay everything except the actors.

Yes, there is a lot of talking and a lot of character building, which is both a good and a bad thing. Good, because we actually begin to like and connect with the characters. Bad, because it keeps us away from the good stuff.

The kills in RETRIBUTION are all gory, all inventive, and there aren't many of them. There are only four people who gunned down Vito (the mobster), and he doesn't even get his revenge on all of them. There is some great build-up and suspense with the deaths and the "possessed George" is frightening enough to work.

There are a lot of scenes where George's possession takes hold, like when they go to a spiritualist, or when he paints several portraits of the charred Vito (which looks eerily similar to Freddy).

Don't get me wrong; RETRIBUTION is from being a bad movie, it's just not all that great. I liked all the characters, I liked the gore, and the scares were good, it's just that each of these is either underplayed or overplayed. It's "technically" a lot better than most late-eighties direct-to-video garbage; it's just not as entertaining as it should be.

Still, it's worth watching.

Manic depressive artist George Miller snaps one Halloween night, decides he wants to end it all and jumps from the top of the inner-city fleabag motel he calls home. Across town, small-time gangster Vito Minelli finds out the hard way, what happens when you don't pay off your gambling debts, as his vengeful cronies blow out his kneecaps, then douse him in gasoline and set him on fire.

Somewhere between life and death, George's and Vito's lives intersect, and both will be changed forever. This is not a good thing for George, and even worse for Vito's assailants, as they will each discover to their horror and dismay...

As low-budget supernatural thrillers go, RETRIBUTION manages to strike a nice balance between the yen of those horror fans who like character-driven stories, and the gorehounds who like to see "folks git blowed up real good." TV and movie vet Dennis Lipscomb, who very rarely gets to carry a picture, delivers a scary and sympathetic performance as the troubled George. He has the chameleonic ability to disappear into his character, which is both a blessing and a curse to the best character actors. They make it look so easy, most people don't even consider what they do to be "work," and that's the trouble.

Another out-of-print, hard-as-hell-to-find but worthy entry into the B-movie hall of fame.

After an incident that should have been fatal, starving artist, George Miller (Dennis Lipscomb) begins exhibiting odd behavior and certain mental abilities. George sets out to use these powers to enact grisly RETRIBUTION on a few "old friends", even though he's never met them before. What's going on? Is George possessed? Cracking up? Both?

As 1980's horror cheeeze goes, this is a double mozzarella masterpiece!

IT CONTAINS: #1- Supernatural, telekinetic terror! #2- George's romance with Angel (Suzanne Snyder), the proverbial "prostitute with a heart of gold"! #3- Hoyt Axton as Lt. Ashley!

EXTRA POINTS FOR: George's glowing green eyeballs!

Drop everything and watch this right now!...