Things aren’t going so well on opening day of the Memorial Valley Campgrounds. A construction worker dies; the roads aren’t finished; and the discovery of a dead dog in the well has tainted the water supply. (“I ain’t never seen anything like this,” says a worker as he pulls out the canine carcass, apparently having never driven down city streets in his life.) Still, the camp owner (Blood and Black Lace‘s Cameron Mitchell, in a “check, please” cameo) insists the camp open.

His Dartmouth-student son is there to help (but how smart can he be, wearing sweaters on Memorial Day weekend?), much to the chagrin of the barrel-chested, hooch-hitting park ranger. They’re given hell at every turn by the ragtag bunch of campers, including motorcycle gangs, horny teens and a fat kid. But it turns out there are even bigger troubles afoot: a killer teenage caveman’s on the loose!

Yes, with Memorial Valley Massacre, you’ve stumbled on an incompetent mix of Friday the 13th, Eegah and Meatballs. The script is poor, the direction a notch below that and the acting even farther south. But how can you beat slutty chicks who like to dance in the rain or aged bosomy women with names like Pepper Mintz? Well, you can always throw in a teenage caveman! And how can you beat that, huh? —Rod Lott

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Newspaper ads for The Nest got my attention in ’88, depicting a giant cockroach mounting a busty blonde in her bra and panties — sold! Even then, as yet uneducated in Roger Corman’s business practices, this Honor Society high schooler was smart enough to know that odds were, neither that beast nor those breasts appeared in the finished product.

They don’t. Disappointment likely would reign even if they were.

Still grieving over her mother’s death four years earlier, Beth (Lisa Langlois, Happy Birthday to Me) returns home to the New England island town of North Port — just in time for the Fish-a-Whack Festival! But this burg has bigger fish to fry: cockroaches — hissing, killer cannibal cockroaches that can take a man’s arm clean off in seconds.

The townspeople could turn to Beth’s dad, the mayor (Robert Lansing, Empire of the Ants), for help, but he’s partly to blame, being in bed with the corporation whose experiments resulted in the superpowered roaches. Their only hope is Beth’s ex, a second-generation sheriff (a blank Franc Luz, 1988’s Ghost Town).

Even on a Corman budget, I’d expect a full-length feature to out-creep that one segment of Creepshow in which the bugs so memorably got E.G. Marshall’s tongue, but The Nest is unable to rise to the challenge. Director Terence H. Winkless (Bloodfist) works in a few fun gore scenes, most notably in a cat-cockroach hybrid that solidifies The Nest‘s intent as a throwback to monster movies of the Atomic Age. However, here-and-there moments fail to bond into a interest-held whole. —Rod Lott

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