Death by Invitation

I agree with the other reviews - so why am i writing. Because watching this actually made me angry. I've dabbled in low-budget filmmaking and its a real challenge. But there is no excuse for two things: 1. an absolute crap script. 2. Tedium in the locations you choose. Follow the rules set down by low-budget filmmakers from the past and don't do what Herschel Gordon Lewis did and shoot against ugly walls in boring living rooms. This film has one scene after another take place at a dinner table. Also, did anyone have any fun whatsoever in making this film? There is little joy in evidence. Hard for me to believe our writer/director went on to write White Line Fever. there is no talent whatsoever in evidence in this ludicrous, uninteresting, incomplete, incompetent script.

Reborn in modern times, the ancestor of a crucified witch begins a path of vengeance against the descendants of those who targeted her as the burgeoning body count forces a skeptical police officer to stop the rampage.

This is one of the most bland and lifeless of the kind of films of the genre. This is merely due to one important factor where it's so light on horror hardly anything really happens here. Instead, this one turns into such a talky, drama-centered film that this one eats up nearly a third on its running time on several different monologues that just eat up time here doing nothing but generate extreme boredom recounting a story about her encounter with the Devil that would've been better served as an on-screen flashback instead of a dialogue-only sequence, or even the unimportant tale about the female warrior tribe which is just endless, tiresome and has little to do with the movie itself which all combined together make it's inclusion an incredibly weird one but the decision to make it last so long is really puzzling and troublesome for the film as a whole. The revenge tactics employed here are mostly done off-camera and quite rarely make for interesting viewing as to how it plays out here with such a decided lack of interesting moments as the entire film goes through the notion of not following through with anything of value. The attempts at building suspense by focusing on the family around her going about their lives are just flat-out boring, the scenarios presented here are even more so and it really features nothing even remotely engaging or enjoyable. The only remotely tolerable part is the finale, where the full revenge is accomplished in a remotely engaging manner, but it really is just the one scene here that works while nearly everything else here is a disaster.

Rated R: Violence and Language.

Back when I was involved in the film industry circa 1980 I used to see many unreleased films, and they often had common defects accounting for their being shelved. Though it actually achieved a release in 1971, DEATH BY INVITATION displays similar problems.

It's a case of poor execution -the standard horror theme of centuries-old-curse leading to lame-duck revenge is trotted out, but delivered so crudely as to have no effect on the viewer. Films operate through tension and release, and when it's all flat (like this baby) or all tension/no release (as in the current sci-fi stinker NEVER LET ME GO) the viewer is left high & dry.

After a truly clumsy opening sequence set in times supposed to suggest the Salem Witch Trials (but on a zero budget), film settles into a rather tedious family drama set in modern Staten Island. It's a corny format of an outsider (striking looking Shelby Leverington, whose career as a character actress managed to overlook this unfortunate debut assignment) preying on a family. Script does a poor job of establishing her relationship, and the subsequent grisly murders are very poorly done, offering little meat for a genre fan to nibble upon.

It devolves into a shaggy dog exercise, not unlike what one would expect if the Coen Bros. made a send-up of low-budget horror films, including the usual cryptic elements. The story is neither compelling nor suspenseful, at best creating a sense of dread. The musical score tries to whip up some tension, but one can't help but gravitate towards a "who cares?" position. I saw THE CURSE OF THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN and CARNIVAL OF BLOOD from the same producer/distributor at drive-ins back in the '70s, but never saw this one get booked. It would have to be shown early in the evening when the sun was still out, because if it was shown late in the program no one would have stayed to the end.

And the climax is very clumsily edited, with a terrible fight sequence and poor sound. As with many films that never made it out of the lab, one feels that the needed re-shoots or coverage of a "scene missing" were not provided for in the low budget.

Telling is a pointless sequence where our hero wanders around an office building, given the runaround by secretaries, and finally arrives at patriarch Vroot's office only to have their inane conversation drowned out by loud Muzak that Vroot proudly has piped in. This idiotic footage goes on & on and gives one the impression that the director had strayed off the set.

Almost as bad is a preposterous gimmick wherein the detective investigating the family's murders is written to be not merely incompetent but aggressively stupid, so as to prevent the culprit from getting caught, and to keep the story's pot boiling. Even Something Weird's resident presenter Frank Henenlotter cannot alibi this lousy development, which is even worse than some of the outlandishness he tries to slip into his own horror films.

Ironically, I did see director Ken Friedman's next film, MADE IN U.S.A., in first run in 1987 and enjoyed it immensely. He never got a directing career going, but did write a number of very entertaining screenplays like MR. BILLION and WHITE LINE FEVER. So chalk this misfire of a supernatural effort up to lack of experience.

Yes, much of the film is awkward, it's full of plot holes and script deficiency...but it has a persistent, understated tone of menace that keeps a viewer involved. This low-budget chiller deserves a lot more credit than it gets. There are several horrific murders of youngsters perpetrated by the vengeful witch with no-one catching on to her precisely because of the rather dull and commonplace behavior she exhibits when around other people. That's exactly how real life serial killers get on with it...they can appear quite normal most of the time. Shelby Leverington delivers this quality brilliantly, resembling a near-somnolent Shelley Long. Those heavy-lidded eyes and that sly smirk that appears on her face hint at the triumphant evil underneath the nice girl-next-door facade. Norman Parker is very good as Jake, as well. A prime target for victim-hood, you keep wondering if he's going to wind up in a dripping body bag himself. Only the fact that he's not one of the marked descendants and has sufficient machismo to nullify this female's blood urge allows him to short-circuit his vulnerability, but he still winds up being manipulated into struggling with the justifiably crazed father who comes after the witch with an axe, only to be nearly decapitated during the melee. With much of the plot involving gruesome child murders it was actually a pretty brilliant move to maintain a pedestrian feel to the film. On a bigger budget it could have been done much more effectively, but even sans slick cinematography and a coherent script it still has lingering chills, solely due to the skills of Leverington and Parker.

There are only two saving graces here, the great soundtrack of oddball library prog-rock-ish music and the smoking hot lead (who is still a terrible actress). Everything else is amateur hour, the editing, the direction, the sets, the effects, EVERYTHING. This is boredom central and should be avoided at all costs.