Darkroom

My review was written in July 1990 after watching the movie on Quest Entertainment video cassette.

Slasher film "Darkroom" starts well but sputters once the killer's identity has been revealed midstream. Direct-to-video feature is merely okay for target fans.

Best thing here is the opening credits sequence, imaginatively using frames of film to display the title cards as if magnified.

Film proper has a maniacal killer preying on victims in a family setting and taking photographs of same. Incest is the key plot gimmick as a childhood trauma solves the mystery.

As long as the characters and suspects are introduced in opening reels and the killer is confined to stalking footage, the film holds up, but once the cat's out of the bag it becomes boring. Finale has two characters thought to be dead bouncing back for a hokey fight.

No-name cast is game.

A psycho-killer is on the loose at Janet Templeton's family farm.When Janet's sister is brutally murdered,her boyfriend and her family become targets of the killer's psychotic and passionate aggression."Darkroom" is a fairly routine slasher flick that offers literally nothing new for the fans of this sub-genre.The pace is painfully slow and almost all the killings are committed off-screen.The acting is bad and there is absolutely no suspense."Darkroom" was produced by Nico Mastorakis,but his sleazy and infamous "Island of Death" is much better than this piece of mediocrity.Give it only a look,if you are a collector of obscure and forgotten slasher flicks.5 out of 10 and that's being generous.

I saw this recently for the first time and what a waste of time.

Generous with a 4 cos of the settings of that of a remote farmhouse, nestled deep in the countryside and the only neighbors is a couple and they disappear very early, making the area even more secluded.

This is a boring slasher with almost zero nudity inspite of a shower scene, clothes changing scene n a sex scene.

Wait, even the sex scene is offscreen.

The guy with the mullet hair looked like a slimmer version of Brian Thompson. He gets injured in an offscreen scene but pops up in the end as a hero.

Ther is absolutely no the character development n we dont feel anything for any victims.

Produced by Nico Mastorakis, of Island of Death infamy, but directed by Terrence O'Hara, Darkroom is an obscure late-'80s horror that owes a debt to the Italian giallo genre in in its opening scenes, but which descends more and more into tired American slasher territory as the plot progresses.

The giallo elements are evident in the opening double murder, in which an unseen photographer, who has been spying on a married couple with his high-powered lens, dons yellow rain coat and rubber gloves before picking up a hatchet to kill his subjects. The maniac then sets his sights on the family of pretty teen Janet (Jill Pierce), who has gone to visit her folk at their remote farmhouse. One by one, the family members are picked off, leaving Janet and her mulleted boyfriend Steve (Jeff Arbaugh) to try and stay alive until help arrives.

With pedestrian direction, a weak script featuring dreadful dialogue and obvious red herrings, and most of the deaths occurring off-screen, Darkroom is, for the most part, predictable trash, O'Hara even seeing fit to throw in a gratuitous shower scene (for which I am grateful - it helped to alleviate the tedium). Admittedly, I was impressed by the number of family members who fall victim to the killer, and surprised by the film's flirtation with the taboo subject of incest (although, thinking about Mastorakis's debut movie, I shouldn't have been), but the majority of the film is so by-the-numbers that it all proves rather mundane.

4.5 out of 10, rounded up to 5 for the creative opening credits, which were apparently the work of Mastorakis.

Dark Room was produced by Nico Mastorakis who himself has directed a number of underground genre pieces. His credits include Island of death, Edge of terror and the stalk and slash themed thriller Blind Date. This obscure late eighties effort generally keeps its roots in the murder-mystery sub-category that Mastorakis is so fond of working with. It includes enough of the typical clichés to make it one of those slasher/thrillers that were commonplace throughout the decade, although the cover description would lead you to believe that it's ‘a tale of sexual repression and revenge.'(!)

Janet (Jill Pierce) is an attractive teen that's returning home to her family farm after a long stay with her outrageously mulleted boyfriend Steve (Jeffrey Alan Arbaugh). She's picked a bad time to come back, because an unseen someone has just murdered a cheery blonde and her husband with an axe, only a few miles away. The killer watched his victims through a camera before hacking them up and then taking photos of their bloodied corpses as they lay lifeless on the floor. When Janet arrives we get to meet the rest of the Templeton family that consists of a whole heap of likely suspects or would-be-psychopaths. Firstly there's Steve the boyfriend (mullet), who's a professional photographer by trade and makes strange disappearances every time someone gets killed. Mark (Allen Leiberman) is Janet's cousin who apparently ‘… wanders of all the time and disappears for hours on end.' His brother Perry (Aarin Teich) seems a little mysterious and likes to keep quiet. Paula's (Abigail Lenz) apparently gone missing, whilst her boyfriend George (Timothy Hicks) ‘was always a little on the wild side.' Grandpa (John O' Connor) takes an incriminating runner every time the Sheriff stops to talk to him, and their mother Nora (Stella Kastner) seems to be a little too tense for my liking! Cindy (Sara Lee Wade) is the cute and cheeky blonde younger sister that's hardly mass-murderer material but says, very saucily, that she would ‘… like to help Steve find his fishing pole!' Hmmm, sounds like trouble! After they all share dinner, Janet takes a shower (well someone would have to) stripping completely naked with only a thin window net to cover her modesty. With timing that train passengers would kill for, up pops the psycho photographer, brashly leaning a ladder against the porch so he can climb up and get some snaps of the soap splashed teen in all her glory. He then proceeds to get in the house and open her suitcase, before playing touchy-feely with her underwear (luckily he refrained from sniffing them!) The next day, relatives' start getting murdered by the mystery cameraman who seems to have his eyes (or lenses) on Janet, which means that she must be the true object of his insanity…

Dark Room is one of the ever-increasing numbers of yawn-inducing whodunits that have very little - if anything – to redeem taking the time to watch them. The basic problem is that Terrence O'Hara has spent so much time trying to make an intriguing mystery that he's forgotten the fundamental elements that are necessary to make a good film - Structure and pace, and this doesn't have either. The puzzle may have rated this higher if the killer wasn't clearly shown on the front cover, which pretty much ruins any point in seeing this at all. Woeful amateur porn-star acting didn't help matters and the only character with any charisma was the charming little Cindy. Her cheeky flirtatious persona was rather appealing, she was at least a lot better than the bimbo left to battle the killer who lacked any allurement whatsoever.

You've got more chance of seeing Jill Pierce win an Oscar than you have of finding any gore or suspense in this rubbish. Most murders are committed off screen and on occasion you'll see a shot of the corpses splashed in blood after the deed has been done. (Wow!) The movie could have ended quite satisfactorily at the sixty-minute mark but instead it drags on for another twenty-two, which was not only unnecessary, but it was also extremely unpleasant. At least the pathetic script managed to spawn the odd inadvertent giggle by its outright stupidity. The movie is rife with dialogue like `I don't trust air that I can't see' (what?), but even so, it's hardly worth paying for.

The fact that this is an obscurity from the eighties will invite most completists to hunt it down for nothing but the fact that it's rare. But be warned it really doesn't warrant a purchase when the murders are so lackadaisical and the dramatics are simply horrid. It's not even really a teen-kill movie; it's more thriller than Halloween inspired hack and slasher. It's not only really bad, but it's also painfully boring, so I really recommend that you give it a miss. Try one of Mastorakis' better efforts instead.