With pipe as prop, cinema’s undisputed godfather of gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis, introduces the “lost film” of Doctor Gore in a five-minute prologue, overselling pal J.G. “Pat” Patterson Jr. as “the master of gore.” That’s not to say Mr. Patterson’s directorial debut doesn’t kick over buckets of blood; it just doesn’t carry that undefinable H.G. Lewis magic. Keeping consistent for the one and only time, Patterson oversells himself, too, by starring as the titular madman under the curious pseudonym of “America’s No. 1 Magician,” Don Brandon.

Lanky, balding, the doctor has discovered the secret to regenerating life — so complex, it entails wrapping a corpse head-to-toe in aluminum foil like human Jiffy Pop. Anxious to resurrect his dead wife piece by piece by piece, the would-be Frankenstein lures foxy women — at the beach, in a restaurant, what have you — so that he may kill them for parts. Aiding him is Greg (Roy Mehaffey), a grunting hunchback.

When Dr. Brandon acquires enough “ingredients,” we meet the lovely spouse, Anitra (Jenny Driggers). A (un)dead ringer for swimsuit model Kate Upton, she is just the way Brandon (Patterson?) likes ’em: big-titted and baby-stupid. He sees to that, in fact, hypnotizing her to wipe her brain into total subservience: “You will not even remember what a glass of water is.” With Anitra lounging in a bikini, her hubby re-teaches her everything, from the ABCs to the smell of vinegar. His curriculum seems a lot more trouble than it’s worth.

Equally not as thought-out is Patterson’s point-and-shoot direction, inert enough to make Lewis look like a Palme d’Or contender. Shots of a two-character conversation don’t match; one scene begins with the clapboard in clear view, as if Patterson simply didn’t care anymore. His alarming ineptitude is exactly what Doctor Gore, also known as The Body Shop, has going for it. —Rod Lott

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Rather infamously — or ineptly, to be blunt — Ulli Lommel has directed nearly five dozen films. So barrel-bottomed is his CV that only one of them managed to leak through and achieve any semblance of relevance. That is The Boogeyman, and one could argue it clicked only because the country was still on a horror high from the boogeyman in Halloween two years earlier. Hell, Lommel does everything he can to ape John Carpenter’s indie smash, from the synth-driven score to sequences shot from the POV of a boy holding a butcher knife.

That kitchen utensil comes in handy for young Willy, when he and li’l sis Lacey catch Mom (Gillian Gordon, The Sister-in-Law) fooling around with some dude in pantyhose pulled over his head, presumably for a spirited round of rapist role-playing; Willy stabs the guy in the back over and over, thereby putting a halt to Mom’s erotic mood. Twenty years later, Willy (Nicholas Love, Jennifer Eight) is mute and living with Lacey (co-writer Suzanna Love, then married to Lommel) and her hubby and child in an Amityville-looking farmhouse.

Haunted by memories of That Night triggered by a letter from their estranged mother, Lacey can’t function in daily life, so a psychiatrist (John Carradine, Billy the Kid vs. Dracula) encourages her to revisit her childhood home where the deadly deed took place. She does, but shatters the still-there mirror through which she witnessed the fateful knifing. Naturally, this releases the vengeful spirit of Mom’s lover, and whenever a shard of the glass glows, someone dies, like that horny teen boy in the Triumph T-shirt, who may deserve it just for a poor taste in music.

Maybe this is accidental, but The Boogeyman overcomes the trappings of a low budget and does something interesting. Oh, it’s still rough around the edges, which are as jagged as those pieces of the broken mirror, and it bursts at the seams with terrible performances, yet its mix of the slasher and the supernatural offers viewers an experience that’s not entirely expected. —Rod Lott

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A whiny young woman talks to the wrong person at a party and finds herself roofied and having sex with him in his car. However, rather than just wake up with a terrible hangover, she finds out she’s contracted (hence the title) a new form of STD: one that slows her bodily functions, numbs her nerve endings and has blood spewing from various orifices by the pint. In effect, she’s becoming a living corpse.

Yes, folks, what we have here is a new take on the zombie formula. Although the idea is good, and the underlying parable could have lent itself to an interesting moral discussion about unprotected sex (as well as the social satire of having a character turn into a zombie while her family and friends think her change in behavior is the result of being on drugs), the film instead descends straight into unintentional comedy.

Written and directed by Chilling Visions: 5 Senses of Fear contributor Eric England, Contracted is one of those horror movies in which everyone acts ridiculously stupid; therefore, you’re too busy laughing at the characters rather than fearing for their safety. While a sane and normal person would head to the ER if she peed a quart of blood, Samantha (Najarra Townsend, Me and You and Everyone We Know) is more concerned with attempting to reconcile with her ex (Katie Stegeman, Madison County). When Samantha does seek medical help, she unfortunately finds the world’s dumbest doctor (Ruben Pla, Insidious) who seems to think that her patches of necrotic skin, slow heart rate and blood leakage from her eyes and vagina are symptoms of a bad “head cold.”

To be fair, Townsend does an admirable job portraying an annoying dishrag of a woman whom others, except her ex, all inexplicably want to have sex with — even when her skin begins to rot off her face and one of her eyes turns milky-white. It’s too bad the material she’s forced to work with isn’t up to par. And just when things start to get going and we think there’s going to be a horrifically good payoff … the film ends.

Contracted is one of those movies that makes a great MST3K evening. Invite some friends, turn down the sound and riff away. Believe me, the dialogue you and your pals invent could only improve this mess. —Slade Grayson

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Once upon a time, aspiring filmmakers wanted to make movies. Today, it seems they only want to make one kind: the slasher film. That would be fine if the young pups came equipped with a new twist to offer; barring that, I’d settle for capable execution (no pun intended). In Scream Park, neophyte writer/director/producer Cary Hill obviously has the subgenre’s recipe in pocket, but doesn’t necessarily pay attention to the proper amount of ingredients. Therefore, it comes out of the oven hardly resembling what it was intended to honor.

Due to dwindling (read: nonexistent) attendance, the Fright Land theme park has filed for bankruptcy and is going out of business. On its final night, the high schoolers who work there conspire to hold an after-hours liquor party, with their butt-cut-haired manager (Steve Rudzinski, Everyone Must Die!) supervising. Making their young lives miserable are a killer in a raggedy burlap-sack mask and a killer in a more fashionable creepy-bird mask. It’s the former, however, who is more creative, what with shoving the post-coital girl’s face into the boiling grease of a deep fryer. No more fries for you, hon!

And no fun for us! With an actual amusement park in Pennsylvania as his setting, Hill makes good use of the merry-go-round, roller coaster, haunted house, etc. in the various kills, and poor use of Doug Bradley, the Hellraiser series‘ Pinhead, who cameos as the park owner who proposes a tough-to-swallow solution for turning his business around. It’s even too incredulous to ask of an audience — even one just waiting for the next onscreen slaying.

Those grisly scenes are pulled off without any panache. Free of scares or suspense, Scream Park is flat and ponderous, with some sleepy performances to match. As is the case with the majority of low- to no-budget slasher homages these days — hitting DVD within a few months’ time frame were the near-interchangeable HazMat, Murder University, Bloody Homecoming, Sorority Party Massacre and the very similar Killer Holiday — the order of the day is wasted creative force: no imagination, all imitation. That, to me, is depressing. —Rod Lott

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It’s not a party until a Templar Knight beheads someone. For the Portuguese villagers holding their annual Burning Festival, it’s going to be a party. They just don’t know it yet.

Amando de Ossorio’s Return of the Evil Dead, a sequel to his Tombs of the Blind Dead of the previous year, revives those undead Knights Templar in more ways than one, starting with a 14th-century prologue that shows why and how those dastardly killers lost the gift of sight. Why? Human sacrifices in the name of God. How? Torches.

Their ancestors’ act of revenge is what the villagers commemorate at the Burning Festival, complete with effigies of the knights. Hired for the event is a fireworks specialist who chain-smokes — not the profession’s smartest of habits. His name is Jack (Tony Kendall, The Whip and the Body), and as luck would have it, the former love of his life (Esperanza Roy, It Happened at Nightmare Inn) not only lives there, but is engaged to the corrupt, repugnant mayor (Fernando Sancho, The Big Gundown).

However, the one dick Jack really needs to worry about is Murdo (José Canalejas, Horror Express), the village idiot whose mouth is a freakish diagonal rictus. When he’s not being pelted by rocks hurled by kids, Murdo longs for the resurrection of the Knights Templar; his bloody murder of a local lovely causes them to come a-crawling from their graves. It happens during the celebration, and as anyone who saw the previous movie knows, the horse-riding Blind Dead are attracted to noise.

Silence is golden for fans of Spanish horror who are likely to find their bodies clenched as terrified villagers do their best to pass through a gauntlet of zombie knights by remaining as quiet as possible. The very idea is chilling, and de Ossorio plays it to the hilt, bathing his film in eeriness that exists even in the obvious day-for-night shots. This is a strong sequel that extends a good idea, rather than just rehash it. —Rod Lott

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