1991 - Directed by Mark Herrier
Starring Jill Schoelen, Tom Villard, Dee Wallace, Derek Rydall, Tony Roberts, Matt Falls and Freddie Simpson

I believe this might’ve been another one of the films whose VHS box art really intrigued/freaked me out (see also: The Company Of Wolves) when I was younger, but unlike TCoW, this wasn’t anything I ever got around to watching until recently.  The film was something I associated with the 80’s, so I was surprised (nay, stunned) to realize that the IMDB gave a release date of 1991, because it looks so amazingly dated.  A bit of further digging reveals that it was completed in 1989 or thereabouts, but released later, but I would’ve placed it much earlier, honestly.

But enough of my own personal history with this flick, what’s it all about then?

Maggie (Schoelen) is a film student who finds herself haunted by nightmares of being chased by a strange individual.  She keeps a taped diary of these dreams, as she plans to try to make a film out of them at some point. Her mother Suzanne (Wallace) is concerned for her, but she’s also receiving strange phone calls at the house, so she has other things to worry about.  Maggie’s film studies course is teetering on the verge of being dropped by the college, so fellow student Toby (Villard) suggests that they hold a horror movie marathon at a local theater to raise money to keep their course solvent. Their teacher Mr. Davis (Roberts) and the other students agree to the plan, and they even go so far as to track down a man who can help them with the old-school theater gimmicks (think William Castle, The Tingler-style gags) on their big night, providing for a fun, interactive experience.

There’s the typical 80’s montage as the kids prep the theater, and while unpacking the theater gimmicks, they find a film canister marked ‘dangerous’, so they naturally cue it up in the projection booth and give it a screening.  The film proves to be arty nonsense, but the kids’ heckling gives way to surprise as the intensity of the images causes Maggie to pass out.  Cue an information dump from Mr. Davis, who tells them (and us) that the film is by a director named Lanyard Gates (Falls), who made the film (Possessor) in response to critics laughing at his earlier works, and the final act of Possessor was played out live in the theater, in which he killed his family onstage and burned the building.

Suzanne is meanwhile still receiving strange phone calls, one of which sends her to the theater after it’s closed up for the night, where she stumbles around in the dark before being grabbed by something from the shadows. Dun-dun-dun!

Maggie awakes to no mom in the house, but her breakfast is on the table, so she goes about her normal business. 

The night of the marathon, the theater has a ridiculously Mardi Gras-esque turnout, with people in costume and ecstatic to see bad old 50’s and 60’s era horror films.  Maggie begins to get freaked out when someone asks her about Possessor before disappearing into the crowd.  Maggie slips out of the ticket booth and starts trying to track down the mystery man, involving both Toby and her requisite love interest Mark (Rydall) in the search.  Inside the theater, the crowd is digging the 1^st film, but in the catwalk above the screen there’s a malfunction with the giant mosquito that’s meant to buzz the audience, impaling Mr. Davis and killing him.  Maggie’s mystery man drags Davis’ corpse away to parts unknown, where we see him begin to make a mold of Davis’ face to fashion a rubber mask from.

Maggie’s fellow student Tina (Simpson) goes rummaging backstage to find Davis, where she runs across the killer in his Davis mask, who beckons her into a darker corner with a wave of his hand.  Tina is quickly dispatched, only to be used as a marionette by the killer to throw Mark and Maggie off the trail when they come looking for clues.

The film has a lot of corny moments, but the tone is fun for the most part, the slasher element is abetted nicely by the nightmarish dreams that Maggie has, leaving her to wonder what her connection is to the mysterious Lanyard Gates, and if he’s truly the killer stalking the aisles of the theater, or if the threat is something much closer to home.

The film-within-a-film bits are amusing, capturing the feel of those Atom Age sci-fi horrors rather well, and using the gimmicks as instruments of death was a fun choice as well, you have to wonder if any of those old gimmicks ever went wrong?

This was a fun, harmless little flick, good way to kill an hour and a half, check it out.

5/10