Reviewed By: Scabboy
Directed by: Kristine Peterson
Released by:

3 out of 5 skulls

On a Christmas Eve, Alex has a run in with a serial killer wearing a wolf head for a mask after he killed his neighbors. A few years later his parents have passed away and now Alex is in college and having a very hard time. Alex is now seeing visions of the wolf-masked killer everywhere he goes. His dreams and reality become blurred and he feels he is going insane until everything starts to come together.

Later in the movie we meet his big brother, and Alex’s new girlfriend (Juliette Cummins) who turns out to be his big brother’s girlfriend. It was revealed that Alex was left part of his family fortune from his parents passing and Alex’s brother has enlisted his girlfriend to try and get the rest of the fortune by any means possible. This means by either having him killed or driving him insane in a neat little subplot that sort of takes the movie over.

It’s pretty hard to classify this under horror- it’s more a thriller with some kills. Not many kills, and it relies more on visuals and atmosphere to scare you. Every now and then Alex has visions of the wolf-masked man (who turns out to be a young Duane Whittaker) and it seems that this time it’s real but turns out to be another vision or nightmare. So, it’s safe to say that the movie had some tense moments, but it failed to deliver. Since it is a thriller that relies more on atmosphere, there really wasn’t blood or a high body count and a lot of dead space in between. The kills it did have (very few, most were in flashbacks) were well done, but like most movies from this era on VHS, not much is shown.

Some things working for the movie was the atmosphere and the last 10 minutes of the movie. Juliette Cummins also gets completely nude in a heated sex scene where it shows her fire crotch- gotta love that. In fact I gave the movie a whole other skull just for that. The director Kristine Peterson has also worked as an Assistant Director on A Nightmare On Elm Street 5, Reform School Girls and Chopping Mall so she’s not what you call an amateur or first timer like we see in a lot of these obscure 80’s horror movies .

I personally really like this movie. I read a lot of reviews on it calling it boring, dull and flat out shitty. I really have to disagree. The movie’s photography was great. It was shot mostly in the country and woods and the directing was as good as you can get in one of these movies. The acting was great, and I’d like to once again mention the lovely Juliette Cummins and her fire crotch.

Thinking like a slasher fan, I can’t suggest this to them. If you like thrillers that doesn’t rely on blood to be tense, check it out. I have this movie on both VHS and Laserdisc. I don’t think it’s on DVD yet either.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 9th, 2007 at 1:02 am and is filed under Horror Laserdiscs, HORROR VHS reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.