The Strangeness

My boss at the time and showed it to us at a Halloween party at our office. He is the Chris Huntley that co-wrote and acted in it. He knows it's bad, we know it's bad and we all agree that the monster looks WAY too much like a vagina to be coincidence. Maybe it was from a gynocological experiment gone wrong.

It was a VERY low budget and the actors were all friends so what you have here is a case of "hey gang, lets' put on a show".

Nobody got hurt and it was a first attempt. Nothing wrong with that. It gave us all a good laugh and it's a great film to watch with friends and make fun of. :-)

I want to say I liked this film, I really do, but when it boils down to it it was just far too boring. It starts off looking promising, and even once they get inside the mines the creepy atmosphere and mood is great. The problem is the monster, or lack of it. As people have said it's a stop-motion monster, but that's not the problem (stop-motion can look great if done properly). The problem is that we don't see enough of it and we don't get to see any deaths. This is meant to be a horror film so a lack of monster and a lack of deaths equals boredom. There were some scenes I liked, such as when one girl is using her camera in the dark and the monster is coming towards her. There are also a few other creepy scenes but they are far too few to hold your interest and definitely not worth watching the film for. It's a shame, because I can see that had it been handled correctly it would've been an effectively creepy horror flick. The saddest thing is that films like this will never be made again, because film makers over-polish their films these days and rely on crappy CGI effects.

THE STRANGENESS is about an abandoned mine, it's valuable contents, and the hideous whatsit that lives there.

After an earthquake, and a pair of mysterious disappearances, a group of six surveyors / geologists and their guide head for the mine. For the snotty, greedy head of the team, gold is more attractive than science. Unsurprisingly, horror and death ensue.

The story is straightforward, and plays like the second cousin of BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE. The characters are fairly familiar, 1980's monster fodder. The monster itself, apart from a few noises and glimpses, takes forever to show up! Until then, semi-drama, clunky "humor", and general ding-a-ling dialogue pad things out.

About the creature: It's a stop-motion, H.P. Lovecraft-type nightmare, complete with squiggly tentacles and an oozing, vertical mouth! Is it worth the wait? Sort of. There's an awful lot of extra-thick cheeeze to wade through before we get a -brief- look at this thing.

EXTRA POINTS FOR: Some of the gooey death scenes.

Worth a watch...

Some movies are just … unlucky. These are the films that obviously thrived on a lot of goodwill and a handful of potentially great ideas, but simply didn't have the budgetary means and/or professional cast and crew members at their disposal to make it happen. "The Strangeness" definitely belongs in this category. You really want to like it, but even the most tolerant and undemanding 80's horror fanatics will have to admit the film barely reaches the level of mediocrity due to its atmosphere of cheapness, clumsy stop-motion effects and impenetrably dark cinematography. "The Strangeness" has a fairly original plot and setting (okay, it's similar to "The Boogens" but I sincerely doubt that director David Michael Hillman intentionally ripped off a fellow insignificant 80's B-movie) and the players deliver enthusiast performances even though they're all miscast. An assembly of amateur speleologists go on an expedition to explore the infamous Gold Spike mine. Many years ago, several miners mysteriously died there and the place has abandoned ever since, but there's supposed to be too much gold hidden there to remain closed forever. Shortly after they descended into the mine, the group members one by one encounter the slimy ruler of the Gold Spike mine; a Lovecraftian monster with tentacles and an incredibly cheesy way of moving forward. Throughout most of its running time, "The Strangeness" is a boring and incompetent mess that is difficult to follow due to the complete lack of lighting. The characters are uninteresting and the mine remains a mystery because the only lighting effects come from the helmets of the speleologists. There's very little action or horror to experience in the first hour, but director Hillman cleverly grasps the viewers' attention by showing bits and pieces of the monster at regular intervals. As soon as you catch the first glimpse of the monster's tentacle, you're doomed to keep watching till the very end. The creature is realized with stop-motion effects, which I usually adore and worship, but here in this case they look extremely weak and pitiable. The person responsible for the special effects should have paid more attention to the work of Ray Harryhousen. The death sequences largely occur off-screen and there's very little suspense throughout the whole movie. A horror flick with a setting like this should benefice from claustrophobic atmosphere and unidentifiable sound effects, but "The Strangeness" lacks all this. The biggest trump of the film is unquestionably the beautiful appearance of blond actress Terri Berland. She resembles a speleologist as much as I resemble Mother Theresa, but she surely looks good in her tight white top and beige pants.

A geological expedition of an abandoned mine becomes a living nightmare when its members find themselves trapped underground with a hulking, tentacled vagina monster. The interesting looking beast is brought to life via stop-motion animation(with marginal success). This creature, of origins which are never conclusively deduced, appears to digest its victims externally by covering them with a thick, enzymatic slime.

This unjustly overlooked monster movie was clearly produced on breadcrumb rations, but well-maintained suspense and a dark, foreboding atmosphere make up heartily for its bush-league deficiencies. Not a classic, perhaps, but certainly deserving of a more prominent placement within the annals of horror cinema.

6/10... Recommended.