Hellmaster

It's a fun film. Good story, good gore. John Saxon is great. It really captures the horror of the early 90's in my opinion. The antagonist characters are quite creative. I was surprised at how much I liked it. My wife even watched parts and had input. She doesn't watch horror. I also really liked the score. It's well done.

You could say "Hellmaster" is one of those forgotten, daft on-the-cheap b-horror films, which gains ones interest with cult actors like David "Flyboy" Emge from the original "Dawn of the Dead" and the always suave John Saxon. The premise sounds like it can be fun, but you don't expect a good film. You just hoped to be entertained. It does that… well not at all times. What starts off rather interesting and ghastly (as I was thinking it's like something out of Clive Barker's mind), despite its randomly crude handling soon it becomes a boring muddle of aimless occurrences, a real lack of exposition shows from its clumsy script and fragmented editing only confuses even more. Then tack on its preachy religious subtext. The drearily hellish activity takes place on a campus with a terrible history, as Saxon plays the demented professor Jones who tests out a drug on the homeless which genetically disfigures them turning each homicidal as they follow him back to his university in their bus of doom. They serve him, as his known as Papa (???) to them. Waiting for him is a reporter (Emge), who did the story on him that unmasked the horrific experiments he was doing on the students on the campus in the past. Now Dr. Jones is back, he plans to experiment again on a new lot of students while his army simply loiter around injecting themselves or having some fun with a use of sickle but Jones might have met his match as one of the co-eds has psychic abilities. It's completely nonsensical and choppy (Jones has projectile powers?), but where it stands out is its competent use of make-up effects and there's some creativity within some sequences. I liked the campus setting, where the director tried to install Gothic atmospherics with his use of neon lighting or at times a lack of it amongst dark, shadowy corridors. Does it work? Not all the time, but some attempts have effective visuals. Jolts are cheaply done. Performances are mainly lousy and forgettable. Saxon seems to be sleepwalking through it, Emge looks all lost and Amy Raasch is capable enough as the heroine. While it seems to cop a real shellacking, this quickly made production has few, if clunky thrills.

"They're coming."

A Michigan-lensed horror flick featuring John Saxon and David Emge ("Flyboy" from DOTD), this one shows potential but eventually just falls apart. In the 1960s, Prof. Jones (Saxon) is conducting an experiment on some coeds that goes horrible wrong. He develops a drug that turns them into mutants. He is stopped (or so we think) and flash forward 20 years where it all starts again with 80s students. This one is a real oddity. I can't for the life of me remember what the drug Saxon developed was supposed to do. On the plus side, Saxon has an interesting group of mutated helpers (a mutated boy, bald schoolgirl, nun, and homeless man nicknamed Razorface - Pinhead anyone?). Saxon gives a fine performance but is only in the film for 15 minutes tops. And Emge is good as the Reggie Bannister character who is hunting down the mad doc who killed his family. The rest of the cast is blah.

At last, this films gets a rework that it so richly deserved. Way cooler than the '92 cut. Douglas Schulze has proven that you can make really cool horror films on a shoestring budget, without sacrificing production value. Mike Goi's cinematography and color palete are reminicient of Dario's masterpiece "Susperia". Saxon is dead on as the insane college professor (we've all had a share of these types in our lives!) and David Emgee adds a "Kolchek-the Night Stalker" coolness to his role as the investigative reporter. But who can forget Ron Asheton of "Iggy Pop and the Stooges" dressed as a psychotic nun! If you dig creepy, stylish horror films, this one is for you!

I apologise in advance if this comment isn't very enlightening, but after watching the DVD, reading the blurb on the back of the box, and checking out what others have to say, I still don't know what Hellmaster is really about. Terrible editing, a confusing script, and dark cinematography, plus a plot that is almost impossible to fathom, all go to make this one a bit of a head scratcher.

I understand that the great John Saxon is some kind of scientist who has developed a drug that he tests on homeless people, and that David Emge (Flyboy from Romero's Dawn of the Dead) is trying to stop him; I can see that a bunch of students are being offed by Saxon's mutated guinea pigs (who have silly names like Joey Monkey Boy and Bobby Razor Face), but why they are doing so escapes me. Beyond that, though, I haven't a clue.

Why are the mutants all disfigured in different ways? Where did the killer nun come from? Who painted that big spiral on the wall behind John Saxon? How did they find such a dreadful actress to play the little girl (she's all grown up by now, so I don't feel too bad criticising her performance)? These are just a few of the questions you'll find yourself asking about this execrable excuse for a horror film.

Oh well, at least there are some silly gore effects, and hottie Amy Raasch, who reminds me a bit of a young Jennifer Connelly, gets stripped down to her undies (the whole gubbins, sussies and all) and then takes off her bra to flash her thruppennies!