April 4^th, 2001

"WHEN GOOD DIRECTORS GO BAD..."

It's like watching a natural disaster. When a director who's well respected in the horror genre and has made a good body of work for themselves flounder around and make a bad movie. This happens to even the best of them. Even the three well-known names featured here; heck, a couple of them have scraped bottom more than once (but we've picked their absolute worst moment).

The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 [1984] is Wes Craven's "dog" movie. Even worse than The Last House On The Left (which granted may have more appeal now, it's been years since I've seen it and I've been planning to rewatch it) this sequel to his sucessful original just seemed unnecessary and quite dumb.

The cannibalistic mountain clan is back (be it a bit thinned-out in the ranks) to torture, kill and feast on some dumbass 20-something dirt bikers and girls who happen to break down out in the middle of nowhere.

It's not hard to peg the main reason this stinks so bad. The characters. They are overwritten louts who bore the piss out of us and annoy us at the same time. Throw in a complete lack of suspense (we actually groan a couple of times) and you have a movie that even makes the weak Scream 3 look entertaining.

The Prince Of Darkness [1987] is even worse than John Carpenter's recent Vampires (be it minus the misogeny and overdone gore). Set in a church that houses a gateway to Hell in the basement this has an evil green-ish liquid possessing the bodies of some College students,who are there with their professor to investigate the building, and causing all sorts of murders and evil doings.

Seriously, where else are you going to see rocker Alice Cooper get speared with a bicycle as a homeless man? And seriously, why would you want to see such a retarded scene?

Sometimes you have to wonder is Carpenter's directorial skills took leave of his body while he was filming here because you get the feeling that almost any hack could have directed this piece of crap - even if they couldn't have snagged the cast Carpenter did.

Lord Of Illusions [1995] is the best film of this bunch. Sure, it's middle-of-the-road all the way, but it gets inclusion here just to see a sucessful author/director fumble. That man is Clive Barker.

Respected in horror circles for his highly original writings and mostly twisted films, Barker fills Lord Of Illusions with plenty of imaginative ideas in telling the war between a warlock (Scott Bakula) and a enemy warlock and his cult, but the heart just isn't here.

Sure, there's some decent deaths and the acting is for the most part okay; it just seems like the story gets too muddled for its own good and eventually we can't give a rat's ass about it.

Plus I remember being quite bored during this - and that's not a good thing for a Clive Barker movie since most of his others at least keep me interested in the story.