Interesting premise marred by weak execution and characters

Wow. I can't believe it's been three years since I last posted a review here. Hopefully, it won't be that long until the next one!

The Day Time Ended (1979)
Starring: Jim Davis, Dorothy Malone, Marcy Lafferty, Natasha Ryan, Chris Mitchum, and Scott Kolden
Director: John Cardos
Producers: Charles Band, Steve Neill, and Wayne Schmidt
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A strange astronomical phenomena engulfs Earth in a magnetic solar storm, and throws the Williams family (the cast listed above) and their newly constructed, isolated home into a strange dimension where all time exists simultaneously.

"The Day Time Ended" has an interesting premise as its starting point, but the idea remains halfbaked and underexplained/exploited. The film meanders from scene to scene, with very little story motivation and even less logic. The characters barely interact with one another, and even when they do, you sometimes get the feeling that they are in different movies, talking past each other and delivering responses that barely make sense.

It's actually a shame, because Jim Davis and Marcy Lafferty in particular give decent performances. If their characters were more interesting and the story a little more substantial and coherent, they might have been able to save this movie. As it is, however, all we have is a drab and dull filler that is barely worth sitting through. It's not even bad enough to be entertaining in a "bad movie" sense.

The highlight of the film are the goofy claymation aliens (or dinosaurs or mutants or whatever the heck they are) that bedevil the family at roughly the halfway point of the movie. But, like everything else in the film, including some sort of evil flying robot--that can teleport through structural walls but has to use a laser in an attempt to get through a bedroom door--nothing much comes of them.

"The Day Time Ended" can be found in several different multi-movie packs; I came across it in the 50-movie Sci-Fi Invasion set. It's inoffensive filler in such a case, but it's not a film to go out of your way for and you can safely safe it for last in whatever set it's part of.

'Netherworld' has some good parts, but they add up to nothing

Netherworld (1992)
Starring: Michael Bendetti, Holly Floria, Denise Gentile, Alex Datcher and Robert Sampson
Director: David Schmoeller
Producers: Charles Band and Thomas Bradford
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A young man (Bendetti) travels to an isolated spot of Lousiana to reconnect with the father he never knew. (Well... and to claim the massive edge-of-the-bayou property and mansion he inhertited from him.) He finds himself surrounded by stranger-than-average Southerners... and voodoo-practicing hookers. And flying stone hands. And, like the saying goes: It's all fun and games until someone gets tied to the evil sacrifical altar.


Sometimes, a low-budget horror film can survive on mood and mysterious imagery and characters alone. Take "Phantasm", for example. I love that movie, but the story makes absolutely no sense and I defy you to tell me how the movie's various elements tie together, especially since the explanation "it was all a dream" goes out the window with the shock ending.

Most of the times, however, such films are miserable failures... and "Netherworld" fits into that category. I get the sense that there is an idea somewhere buried under all the crap here, but that writer/director David Schmoeller was either too lazy to develop it properly or too full of his own artisticality that he forgot to make a coherent film. Or maybe the producer meddled too much... or meddled too little. This film doesn't warrant the research it would take to find the answer.

The film has plenty of strange characters and creepy imagery--much of which actually feels like it was copied badly from the aforementioned "Phantasm--but the various parts of the film barely connect and when they do, they make no sense. And Schmoeller simply isn't good enough enough to make a movie that can survive on atmosphere alone, even when he's cribbing from a film that got it right. He should have explained how the voodoo hookers fit in with the lawyer and the house keeper; who is ressurecting people and why; and he should have simply left out the stupid flying stone hand and weird midget.

"Netherworld" is a total misfire of a movie. It's astonishing that the same team that made "Tourist Trap" and "Puppet Master" could screw up so badly on this one.

A Tourist Trap Worth Falling Into

Tourist Trap (1979)
Starring: Chuck Connors, Jocelyn Jones, Tanya Roberts, Jon Van Nyss, Robin Sherwood, Keith McDermott and Dawn Jeffory
Director: David Schmoeller
Producers: Leonard Baker, Charles Band and J. Larry Carroll
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

Five friends on a road-trip have car trouble near a closed wax museum--Slausen's Lost Oasis--off an old highway. When they fail to heed the warnings of the owner, Mr. Slausen (Connors), they find themselves stalked by a masked madman and strangely animated wax figures and manniquins. Will any of them survive the night and learn the secret of Slausen's Lost Oasis?


"Tourist Trap" is a strange little horror movie that wears its low-budget status like a badge of honor. There isn't a frame that doesn't reek of cheapness, the script is halfbaked and full of painfully repetative dialogue (much of which I hope was ad-libbed, because if it wasn't, the writer was paid entirely too much for his work), and a number of potentially horrorific scenes start to dissolve into overwrought and foolish, because the director either didn't know when enough was enough, or was trying to pad the running time.

However, there is an aura of creepiness that pervades the entire film that makes it far more scary than it should be. From the mysterious happenings at an abandoned gas station during the film's opening scenes, to characters being overwhelmed by chattering manniquins, through a very disturbing suffucation scene, and to the very final image before the end credits role, this film will creep out the attentive viewer.

Some of the creepiness arises from the way film is made up of elements that co-exist uneasily; it has the look and feel of a grubby, low-budget slasherfilm, but it is evident early on that there's more to the dangers of Slausen's Lost Oasis than a run-of-the-mill madman. Other chills grow from Chuck Connors' purposefully erratic performance, and from an effective performance by Jocelyn Jones, who's Good Girl character emerges as the villain's favorite victim. (Although, frankly, I had much more fun watching Tanya Roberts jiggle around in her very short cut-offs and tubetop!)

Although "Tourist Trap" is a perfectly serviceable horror film, it is also a perfect entry for a Bad Movie Night. The animated wax figures, the dimwitted behavior of the characters who fall victim to the maniac, and some of the film's Big Reveals, are all perfect fodder for movie fans who like to mock films as they unfold.

(By the way, the 2005 remake of "House of Wax" had alot more in common with this film than it did with either of the two earlier chillers by that title. If you liked that film, you'll probably get a kick out of this one, too.)