Wes Craven’s My Soul to Take arrives with such a preposterous premise: that seven premature babies born the night of the death of a serial killer grow up as mirrors of his personality. (Granted, the dude did expire at midnight sharp, but c’mon!)

However, his kitchen-sink prologue makes me think the ludicrous nature of it all is intended, like a self-parody that was perhaps two notes too subtle for mass audiences to notice. Scream, it is not — but it is better than what would be Craven’s follow-up, 2011’s Scream 4.

Sixteen years after that over-the-top opening, the so-called Riverton Ripper — he of the cruelly curved blade emblazoned with the word “VENGEANCE” — is back. This time, his targets are those birthday boys and girls, including the asshole jock, the blind minority, the Jesus freak (“If things get too hot, just turn on the prayer conditioning”), the abused misfit and our protagonist, the unpopular and possibly schizophrenic Bug (Max Thieriot, TV’s Bates Motel).

The Ripper is easy to spot: He resembles a prematurely bald Rob Zombie and soup-kitchen hobo. It’s an unsettling and decidedly odd choice for a villain, but the misunderstood My Soul to Take is nothing if not a picture that bops along on its own unusual, discordant rhythms. Love it or hate it, you haven’t quite seen this film done this way before. It’s wildly imperfect, but interesting in its insanity, which is enough for me. —Rod Lott

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Purportedly based on an Edgar Allan Poe short story, this film is just about as much Poe’s as some scoutmaster spinning tales around a campfire. The Argentine/American patchwork oddity Legend of Horror throws the young Pierre — he of the Elvis sideburns — into a dank prison cell with the wacky-ass, hygiene-neglecting Sidney. This Sidney fellow cackles like a hobo on ripple and has forged an unhealthy friendship with a mouse, predating The Green Mile by a good three decades.

As the two cellmates plot their escape, Sidney entertains Pierre with a story about how ended up in this good-for-nuthin’ place. Switch to a “flashback” (really a dubbed, sizable chunk of another movie altogether, 1960’s Masterworks of Terror) in which a then-strapping Sidney visits his uncle, a clock salesman with a bad eye and a piss-poor attitude toward customer service.

In due time, Uncle Freaky-Eye pushes Sidney to the breaking point, whereupon young Sid smothers the bastard with a pillow. As the cops interview him regarding his uncle’s disappearance, Sidney is driven to a confession by hearing the heartbeat of the corpse. (All ties to Poe begin and end in that one scene.)

Jump back to our prisoners, who have busted out of the joint and seek refuge. Sidney kills a couple of guards who come after them, but to the delight of the audience, does so via the magic of “Magicmation” — a fancy cinematic term for “stop-motion!” At the end, all the people Sidney has killed come back to life and cause him to be impaled in a graveyard. For no discernible reason, the film abruptly ditches the black-and-white format for a splash o’ color. Never you mind — it just makes it that much more of a hoot. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Something Weird Video.

Four years before Kevin Costner got Revenge, John Wayne’s second son got his. You wouldn’t know it from the title, but 1986’s Revenge is the sequel to the previous year’s Blood Cult, thought to be the first feature film made expressly for home video. Both chapters were shot on the cheap in Tulsa, Okla., by director Christopher Lewis, but rather commendably, he doesn’t settle for a simple rehash. Instead, he tries harder.

Whereas Blood Cult was an out-and-out slasher set partly at a sorority house, Revenge is a follow-up investigation of the murders two months later. Mike Hogan (Patrick Wayne, Beyond Atlantis) returns to town after his brother’s homicide by the sheriff’s daughter. His old farm neighbor, Gracie (Bennie Lee McGowan, reprising her stereotypical Okie-hick role in which “killed” is pronounced “kilt”), is pleased as punch at the reunion: “I ain’t seen you since you was knee-high to a grasshopper and sneakin’ in my watermelon patch!”

Herself a fresh widow thanks to that dadgurned there blood cult, Gracie joins Mike to take down them there sumsabitches. A few early scenes excepted, the slasher element is traded for a supernatural one à la Scanners, as members of the blood cult can choke a bitch and/or cause a cerebral hemorrhage without using any physical contact whatsoever. The switch in approach aids tremendously in letting Revenge stand on its own two feet.

That’s not the only change. Production values vastly increased (from Betacam to 16-mm film); they shelled out enough money to get Hollywood legend John Carradine in for a supporting role as an evil senator (redundant); and Lewis clearly exudes more confidence in moving the camera. Unlike the last time, Lewis penned the screenplay, resulting in humorous touches such as juxtaposing a girl’s leg being hacked outside against her friend slicing raw sausage for breakfast. For all the improvements, however, the pacing is slower and Revenge doesn’t taste as sweet. —Rod Lott

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Had The Video Dead been made at any time other than the VHS heyday in which it was, I feel like we wouldn’t care. But because it celebrated those days of browsing big boxes at your mom-and-pop video store as those days were happening, it possesses an admirable, of-its-time innocence that offsets obvious deficiencies. If released today, in our post-Ringu world where cursed videos have become de rigueur, it’d be nostalgic, sure, but unable to replicate properly that very ’80s look.

As the writer, director and producer, Robert Scott is not just a triple threat, but a triple treat. In the prologue, he establishes everything the viewer needs to know about the next 90 minutes: A TV set mysteriously delivered to a suburban house plays only the George A. Romero-esque movie Zombie Blood Nightmare; said movie serves as a doorway into our world through which these single-shoe shufflers can shamble.

Shortly thereafter, aerobics major Zoe Blair (Roxanna Augesen, in her only screen credit) and her little brother, Jeff (Rocky Duvall, ditto), move into the house while their parents are away in Saudi Arabia. It takes them a while to grasp the televised danger, partly because Jeff (who sports some gray hair) is too busy enjoying being visited by the tube’s blonde woman (Jennifer Miro, 1989’s Dr. Caligari) who embodies all his teenage sexual fantasies.

Surprisingly, The Video Dead‘s members of the undead stand out from the zombie-tape fray by actually having personality; one of them looks like singer David Bowie under a face mask of Noxzema that has dried to the point of cracking. Obviously, Scott’s little meta movie wouldn’t exist without Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, but its blend of horror and humor bring the related Return of the Living Dead franchise to mind (although Scott’s scattershot skills puts it more in line with the second chapter than the first). —Rod Lott

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Nothing in Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III is quite as good as its teaser trailer, depicting a not-in-the-movie goof on 1981’s Excalibur. It does try a little.

An opening title scrawl informs us that only one member of the cannibalistic Sawyer family lived to see trial from the crime spree depicted in 1974’s original The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and that the jury reasoned Leatherface was merely an “alternate personality” rather than an actual person. Therefore, he’s still out there, and well, Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III.

This time, the human-skin masked killer is played by R.A. Mihailoff (Trancers III) and has been gifted a new, pimped-out, gold-plated tool of terror emblazoned with the saying “The Saw is Family.” It’s a present from brother Tex (Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises), and Leatherface aims to christen it on the young couple (Rapid Fire’s Kate Hodge and Ghoulies II’s William Butler) traveling from California to Florida who unfortunately stopped for fuel at the clan’s Last Chance Gas station, run by milky-eyed, porn-obsessed Alfredo (Tom Everett, Death Wish 4: The Crackdown).

Initial scenes of the saw-and-mouse chase take place outdoors at night, and are both hard to see and clumsily assembled by Stepfather II director Jeff Burr. Much better is the second act, taking place in the surprisingly clean Sawyer kitchen; here, the movie reaches an apex with black humor and bloodletting. When you introduce a brother with a hook for a hand, a matriarch with a throat harmonica and a malevolent little girl who quotes The Coasters’ “Yakety Yak,” that tends to happen.

As an ally to our unappealing vacationers, Dawn of the Dead’s Ken Foree livens things up as much as he can. It’s not enough to be great. —Rod Lott

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