For some reason, the idea of an escaped giant, mutated Tasmanian devil called "Precious" rampaging through the woods killing at random appeals to me immensely. Intended as a throwback to the monster movies of the 80's, Cemetery Gates, however, never manages to click despite the makers trying their damndest to emulate such fare as Critters and Alligator that littered the horror landscape two decades ago.

In fact, the trailer for the movie even promises "It will kill 17 people in 90 minutes". For those of us accustomed to this type of thing in slasher movies that can only mean one thing: that the script trots out as many non-developed characters as it can so that our killer/monster can gorily knock them off one-by-bloody-one - apart from our handful of main characters there's seemingly random joggers, bikers, and campers who just show-up for a few minutes before "Precious" chews them up.

Hunter (Peter Stickles) is heading off to the Southern Cross Cemetery for the weekend with some fellow college students in order to film a student film (which happens to be a cornball zombie flick - we see a few scenes of this, but it would've added more humour if they'd given us more) as well as celebrate his twenty-first birthday.

At the same time, two animal lovers have liberated our caged "Precious" from the science lab in which its lived it's entire life - a location where it also was the subject of numerous genetic experiments. Seeing as this is a horror movie, "Precious" soon gets free, murders her rescuers, and romps through the woods that just so happen to be right in the same area they're filming.

Enter cult favourite actor Reggie Bannister (Phantasm) as Hunter's father who also happens to be one of the people who've been taking care of and conducting the experiments on our quite pissed off "Precious". He sets out to try and stop the deaths as well as trying to keep his son safe. This all leads to an incredibly weak finish in an underground cave.

Cemetery Gates is the kind of modern horror flick that bothers me to some extent. It seems too many genre movies decide to take the horror-comedy route these days and that most of them just can't pull it off. Brian Patrick O'Toole sets the tone for his script early by having the dumb/slutty blonde character August (Kristin Novak) giving simulated fellatio to a lollipop as well as tossing in as many fart jokes as he possibly can. Sure, I know we're not supposed to take this seriously - I mean, the monster's a guy in a cheesy suit for crissakes! - but all the juvenile humour doesn't help out the moments where O'Toole goes for a few out-of-place attempts at character development.

There's just too much cheap (as in humour and thin plotting) and not enough silly on hand to make this very entertaining, and while it's somewhat amusing to see "Precious" reeking havoc (which also supplies a few okay deaths including a head being smushed through the bars of a fence) when it's all said and done this is a pretty boring flick.

KNB honchos Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger show-up in small roles as two hippie-type characters who are killed off and Bannister almost seems to be as bored acting in this as I was watching this. However, there is a bright spot here in the form of Novak as she manages to nail her character perfectly and seems to be having fun with it (she also has an extended topless scene for us to enjoy).

If a chintzy looking monster, dumb (and I mean dumb!) humour, and exaggerated gore are your cup of tea, you might get some mild enjoyment from Cemetery Gates. Generally, though, it should be seen for what it is: another lame horror-comedy littering the shelves at your local video store that'll soon be on sale previously viewed for under five bucks. (Chris Hartley, 3/9/07)

Directed By: Roy Knyrim.
Written By: Brian Patrick O'Toole.

Starring: Peter Stickles, Aime Wolf, Nicole Duport, Kristin Novak.