With Prison, the question is not “Remember when director Renny Harlin was good?,” but “Remember a world before we even knew who Renny Harlin was?” Produced and conceived by Halloween shepherd Irwin Yablans, the film marks a calling card of sorts for the then-no-name Harlin, who earned A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master from there and turned it into that franchise’s biggest entry at the time, which then vaulted him onto the A list with Die Hard 2.

As history has told us, ego kept him from staying there, but we’ll focus on the positive: Prison is a pretty decent, fairly ingenious flick for its meager budget.

Being abandoned since 1968, Wyoming State Penitentiary is something of an inhumane shithole, but 300 transferred prisoners are on their way over, squalid conditions and all. Lording over the grim castle of concrete is Warden Sharpe (Lane Smith, Dark Night of the Scarecrow), an unhappy bully of a man who believes in punishment, not rehabilitation.

Under Sharpe’s orders, inmate Burke (a baby-faced Viggo Mortensen, A History of Violence) breaks through a wall to reach the old execution chamber. In doing so, Burke inadvertently unleashes a malevolent spirit. Although represented on film as baby-blue light, this supernatural force is one mean sumbitch. It fatally roasts one prisoner confined to solitary, thwarts a would-be escapee in a tangle of wires and pipes, and wraps a guard in a tight hug of barbed wire.

Frightening is hardly the word for it, but the effects are impressive, especially in this pre-CGI era. There’s more to admire beyond that, including the novelty of seeing the reliable character actor Smith in a rare lead role. Mortensen shows quiet glimpses of the greatness to come; the underrated Chelsea Field (The Last Boy Scout) provides some much-needed estrogen for balance; and a few of the inmates stand out for their weird quirks, from harboring a Rambo fetish to drinking Lysol as if it were lemonade. Hey, when life gives you life behind bars … —Rod Lott

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Where would horror movies be without slime? It’s the perfect go-to method for disguising effect flaws while making the audience squirm with disgust. Enter From Beyond, the movie that puts the “goo” in “goopy.” Its chief monster, the dimensionally disfigured Dr. Pretorius (Ted Sorel, Basket Case 2), almost puts John Carpenter’s Thing alien to shame with its overall shape-shifting malleability and gallons of ooze.

As if that weren’t enough, the movie as a whole is an excellent exercise in mad science, sadomasochistic inventiveness and squirrelly Jeffrey Combs-ian insanity. Combs is Crawford Tillinghast, lab assistant to Pretorius, inventor of the resonator, a device that allows all within its psychic field to perceive the myriad transdimensional beasts that surround us all the time. After Pretorius’ head is removed by something from beyond (“It bit off his head like a gingerbread man!”), Tillinghast is persuaded to restart the experiment by psychiatrist Katherine McMichaels (Barbara Crampton) and cop Bubba Brownlee (Ken Foree, 1978’s Dawn of the Dead), because science.

True to form, the resonator shows them the world lying just beyond our eyesight. It also stimulates the pineal gland, which leads to increased libido (good), a third eye protruding from a stalk on the forehead (bad), and a taste for human brains (um … good?). This leads to the classic scene where the sexually repressed Dr. McMichaels unleashes her inner goddess, dresses up in leather, and gropes an unconscious Tillinghast. Crampton never quite sells the “psychiatrist” aspect of her character — when will people learn that glasses do not a scientist make? — but she absolutely nails the sex-maniac part.

Making the most of a meager budget, director Stuart Gordon bathes his horror in a gorgeous giallo lighting scheme and buckets of ectoplasm. Famed for his previous H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, Re-Animator (which also starred both Combs and Crampton), From Beyond is the stronger film, completely unafraid to delve into utterly depraved areas. Combs is reliably strange and wonderful; Foree plays the Ken Foree role to the hilt; Crampton goes places few actors would let themselves go; and the makeup artists, working with practically no money, rose to the challenge with inventive prosthetics and copious gore.

And, of course, slime. By the end, as Tillinghast and Pretorious wage a mucus-bathed battle that literally turns each of them inside out, From Beyond makes a compelling case for itself as the slimiest movie ever. —Corey Redekop

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In 1921 London, Florence Cathcart (Rebecca Hall, The Town) keeps busy in her work, exposing so-called “spirit mediums” for the greedy charlatans they are. It’s not only a living, but a distraction from emotional wounds not yet healed.

Implored to do so by the stammering, handsome history master of Rookford (Dominic West, Punisher: War Zone), Florence travels to the boys’ prep school, where students have reported seeing a gh-gh-gh-ghost! While our skeptic heroine is inclined to approach the situation with disbelief, one boy literally became frightened to death. Suffice to say, the Rookford faculty takes the haunting — whether real, imagined or an elaborate hoax — rather seriously.

The Awakening unfolds in a purposely calculated manner that matches the supernatural literature of its setting’s post-Victorian era. Some call that boring; I call it a slow ratcheting of suspense, and the lovely, headstrong Hall serves as a terrific guide through the good ol’ ghost story.

Directed and co-written by feature first-timer Nick Murphy, the visually rich film does suffer from a needlessly extended ending, so it lacks the payoff of 2012’s The Woman in Black, which The Awakening closely resembles in theme, mood, production design and basic overall Britishness. It’s not quite as simple as its stick-figure credits would suggest; speaking through Florence, Murphy and co-scripter Stephen Volk (the BBC’s infamous Ghostwatch special) tackle head-on the fear-vs.-science debate that sadly, inexplicably remains relevant even today. —Rod Lott

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I assume the real estate listing for this film’s titular abode would go something like this: “Spacious Rochester Castle, private drive, lakeside view, 50 doors, basement dungeons, built-in elevator and black cat. Full disclosure: is damned.”

In the hourlong House of the Damned, architect Scott Campbell (Ron Foster, Private Lessons) has been hired to do a survey of the California place, abandoned without notice by a crazy old heiress. It’s a weekend of work, so Scott brings along not only its ring of 13 keys, but his wife, Nancy (Merry Anders, Legacy of Blood).

“Isn’t this something?” Scott says upon crossing the threshold, to which Nancy replies, “If you like Early Dracula!”

Vampires are nowhere to be seen, but while the Campbells snooze, some … thing hobbles into the bedroom. I won’t reveal the castle’s altogether-ooky secrets; I’ll only say that although 7-foot-2 Richard Kiel (007’s Jaws) is among the cast, he is not among its strangest.

The black-and-white B picture generates a great deal of good-natured fun from its unusual take on the haunted-house premise and William Castle-esque sensibilities. Directed by Maury Dexter (Raiders from Beneath the Sea) and written by Harry Spalding (Curse of the Fly), it makes for a slight, but efficient sleeper from the separate-beds era. —Rod Lott

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Part of what has allowed Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds to live on as one of his most enduring masterpieces was its unapologetic, ambiguous ending. So why spoil that lingering note of ominousness with a sequel? Especially one made for basic cable? Money, one guesses, and out of greed hatches The Birds II: Land’s End. Despite the subtitle, it’s not based on the clothing catalog, although it is as shallow and disposable.

Dim bulb Ted (Brad Johnson, Flight of the Intruder) and dim babe May (Chelsea Field, The Last Boy Scout) transport their two tots to an island shore town for the summer. Hoping for a season of R&R, the family instead ends up being dive-bombed by stark-raving-mad seagulls. The process is so routine that no suspense is to be found, but the telefilm is not without its cheap pleasures, fleeting they may be.

It’s also not without a multitude of problems, leading one to wonder things like:
• Why is ’63 Birds star Tippi Hedren here if she’s not playing her Melanie Daniels character?
• How did the shot with the boom mike escape the editor’s notice?
• Why did director Rick Rosenthal (Halloween II) take the Alan Smithee credit for this, but not for Russkies?

At least the little girls get to discover a washed-up corpse with its eyes pecked out, and their dog fails to survive an onslaught by owls. But what a cop-out ending: The birds simply fly away. Hey, I may have sat through all 87 minutes of this, but I’m not that stupid. —Rod Lott

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