I think someone lost the second half of the movie....

Huntress: Spirit of the Night (1994)
Starring: Jenna Bodnar, Constantin Cotimanis, Charles Cooper, Blair Valk and Alek Devane
Director: Mark S. Manos
Producers: Charles Band, Oana Paunescu and Vlad Paunescu
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

In "Huntress: Spirit of the Night," Tara (the very attractive and well-cast Jenna Bodnar) is falling victim to a gypsy curse. We get to see the beginning of her transformation/possession. We also get to see the first phase of a very treacherous friend screwing her over for her inheritance. But, just as things look like they're getting REALLY interesting storywise, the film ends.


"Huntress: Spirit of the Night" ends without a single of its plot threads properly resolved. It ends, literally, in mid-story, at a point where there should be at least another hour or so of material. I guess while they were busy conceiving of sexy sequences that go on for so long they become boring, someone forgot that a movie needs a beginning, a middle and an end.

The end result is that this is movie that you should not waste your time on. It's a shame that interesting ideas and an attractive cast got wasted on such a badly done film. It's no wonder Charles Band and Full Moon initial released it at arm's length--it's an awful effort even by the worst of their standards. It didn't have to be though... some trimming of the soft-core porn material and an actual ending might have elevated it to mediocre status.

(Snark aside, I think I know what happened here. Around this time this film was made, Full Moon was increasingly breaking what should have been one movie into two and filming them back-to-back. They did it with "Mandroid" and they did it with the "Subspecies" 2 and 3. Perhaps there was supposed to be a Part Two, but it never happened due to Band's falling out with Paramount and the subsequent loss in funding.)

'HorrorVision' is not worth looking at

HorrorVision (2001)
Starring: Jake Leonard, James Black, Maggie Rose Fleck, Brinke Stevens, and Chuck Williams
Director: Danny Draven
Producers: J.R. Bookwalter and Charles Band
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

After his girl friend (Fleck) and business partner (Stevens) mysteriously vanish after viewing the HorrorVision website, Dez (Leonard) finds himself locked drawn into a battle against a mysterious entity that has been born from the collective negativity on the vast expanse of internet and other digital media.


"HorrorVision" is yet another Full Moon movie with a great idea at its core, but which is killed by a combination of lousy execution and bad acting. While it's more inventive than some of the other Full Moon/Tempe Entertainment, it's still far below the best of what Charles Band brought us in the 1990s, and not even up to the level of J.R. Bookwalter in the 1990s. (Which reminds me... one of these days, I really need to get around to watching "Kingdom of Vampires.")

This movie might more properly be featured at Movies You Should Die Before You See, but the idea of all the negativity, vitriol, and hatred being put forward on the internet coalescing into a self-aware being bent on humanity's destruction is worth a ratings point all by itself. The Obi-Wan Kenobi-like character (amusingly named Bradbury, twice as amusing ten years later now that Ray Bradbury has expressed a dislike for the internet and the web) who teaches Dez about the emerging threat and how to fight also helps life my opinion of the film, especially since he is being portrayed by the best actor in the film, James Black. Not that I can be too hard on any of the actors featured... I think they all probably did the best with the awful lines they were called upon to deliver, and star Jake Leonard probably also did his best with his hollow, badly conceived and even worse developed character of Dez. (We never get to understand Dez... we're told he wants to be a scriptwriter whose talent has been sapped away by his involvement with creating made-to-order pornography, but we're really made to believe that he has any talent except for being a moron.)

However, what really ruins this movie is the excessive padding--you'll rarely see more pointless driving scenes set to third-rate metal music than you will in this movie; the fact that it features techno-horror monsters that required special effects beyond the film's meager budget to fully bring to life--although I give director Danny Dravin and his crew a tip o' the hat for almost pulling it off... the bizarre creature that materializes in the desert was very well done, considering; and the fact that this is yet another imcomplete Full Moon film that is completely lacking a third act.

Yes. Dez is stranded in the desert, the world is descending into cyber-induced destruction, and our hero is still pretty clueless as to how to effectively fight back. And that's where the movie ends. After a run-time that's barely over 70 minutes--including long credit sequences and lots of padding--the film ends with no major plot threads resolved and only one subplot done with. It's annoying and unforgiveable that the hope of a sequel loomed so large in the minds of Band and Bookwalter that they'd foist such a half-finished effort on the public. (Of course, with Charles Band, it's not a mistake but an unfortunate pattern that continues to this day. Look for the "Where's the Ending?" tag on this blog to see just how many films he's produced that have this particular flaw.

A trip to Sherwoood Forest you should skip

Virgins of Sherwood Forest (2000)
Starring: Gabriella Hall, Shannen Leigh, David Roth and Amber Newman
Producer: Charles Band
Director: Cybil Richards
Rating: One of Ten Stars

A B-movie director (Hall) bumps her head and wakes up in Sherwood Forest, where she must work with other buxom wenches to thwart the evil scheme's of the Sheriff of Nottingham's sister (Leigh) while using their sex and other womanly wiles to restoring some righteous fire and energy to Robin Hood (Roth) and his Merry Men. (Not to mention engaging in the occassional lesbian fling.)


I'm not sure how or when I got this movie. I don't even know if I watched it before this evening, but if I did, I didn't retain anything about it in memory. And that's because there's nothing worth noticing here.

"Virgins of Sherwood Forest" wants to be a sex comedy, or maybe it wants to be a soft-core porn flick... but it fails to be either. It's one of dozens of sci-fi/fantasy flavored softcore films that an uncredited Charles Band produced for his Surrender Cinema venture, and it's one of a handful lurking within the piles of unwatched DVDs stacked around my office. By most accounts, Band's venture into blue movies was mostly unsuccessful both creatively and financially, but I sincerely hope that this is one of the worst that he made. It's almost as bad as "The Killer Eye," which is the worst movie from Band I've seen yet.

The movie is dull and decidedly unsexy, the acting is almost as bad as the boob jobs on prominent display, and the sets and camera work are even worse. (In fact, Amber Newman is so bad in this film that it's hard to believe that she's the same actress who was so amusing in "Satanic Yuppies.")

There are a few chuckles here, but they are so few and seperated by such vast expanses for crap that they're not worth waiting for.