Four years before Barbara Hershey infamously got raped by a ghost in The Entity, Al Adamson had it done (poorly) to Nurse Sherri, his attempt at cashing in on the then-popular possession-pic craze.

Sherri (Jill Jacobson, The Jigsaw Murders) has the unfortunate position of working the ER when a cult leader (Bill Roy, Black Samurai) with occult powers dies on the table, and passes his soul into her. That night, as she lay on her bed, a barely animated patch of green dots and squiggly lines enters her room, parts her legs and goes to town.

From then on, Sherri’s literally not herself, speaking in a deep register reminiscent of third-rung Looney Tunes characters and slaughtering those responsible for her possessor’s death. His disembodied, superimposed head occasionally pops up to laugh manically at others. Meanwhile, all her fellow RNs can do is think of sex — and acting on it, as if they’re in one of Roger Corman’s Nurses movies.

Adamson’s reputation is that of an inept, bottom-of-barrel filmmaker à la Ed Wood — a position not quite accurate if one considers the entirety of his work, but wholly warranted if one were to judge him on Nurse Sherri alone. It’s an ambling, scattered-focus potboiler made for all the wrong reasons, and given that Adamson’s usual starlet, real-life leading lady Regina Carrol, is absent from the cast, one can’t help but wonder if he just couldn’t harness any passion this time. Viewers who are able to might want to watch both cuts; the theatrical one plays up the horror, while the alternate amps up the copulation. —Rod Lott

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Don Mancini created two horror villains in the fall of 1988. One, of course, was Chucky, as seen in Child’s Play. The other was Cellar Dweller, as unseen in Cellar Dweller, a dirt-cheap creature feature from Empire Pictures and Troll director John Carl Buechler. For his first credit, Mancini went under the nom de plume of Kit Du Bois — a name with more style than the movie.

Thirty years ago, horror comics artist Colin Childress (Jeffrey Combs, Re-Animator) died when a monster he drew on the page came to life. Thirty years later, Childress is idolized by cute brunette Whitney Taylor (Debrah Farentino, Storm of the Century) who attends the Throckmorton Institute for the Arts in order to create “the ultimate monster.” The school stands on the site of Childress’ former home, so Whitney is hot to use his basement studio to create her “populist tripe” (as comics are dubbed by the school’s administrator, played by Yvonne De Carlo of TV’s The Munsters).

Whitney draws what Childress did: a hairy demon with a pentagram carved into its chest. For no good reason, she draws separate stories of the monster attacking and eating her classmates, and whatever she draws actually happens. (“I told you so!” cries Dr. Wertham, from hell.) As George A. Romero proved in Creepshow, incorporating comic-book elements can be cinematic; as Buechler certainly learned, however, simply cutting from the action to a motionless panel is like applying the emergency brake to the story.

There’s a scene in which a scheming filmmaker (Pamela Bellwood, Hangar 18) folds a vintage comic book in half to hide it in her jacket, and I can imagine any fanboys cringing at the damage she does. I bring that up because that’s the most reaction Cellar Dweller can muster. The titular beast is a nifty practical effect, which was Buechler’s bread and butter, but the movie itself — all 78 slow-going minutes of it — makes his Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College look like high art. Cellar Dweller is so stupid that Whitney foils the hirsute varmint with white-out correction fluid. —Rod Lott

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One of the precious few genre films made by Japan’s Shochiku production studio, The Living Skeleton is a good one. The ghost story begins aboard the Dragon King, a ship carrying gold bullion, which makes it a natural to be robbed by a gang of ugly-mugged, well-armed pirates. It is, and one of its passengers, the young woman Yoriko (Kikko Matsuoka, Bushido), is raped and killed.

Three years later, Yoriko’s identical-twin sister, Saeko (also played by Matsuoka), has an uncanny feeling that her sibling is still alive. She believes it so strongly that her fiancé (Yasunori Irikawa, Samurai Spy) accompanies her to scuba-dive at the spot of Yoriko’s would-be watery grave. There, they discover a number of skeletons floating together, chained at the ankle bones — the film’s most memorable image. Then things get weird.

The Living Skeleton represents the lone directorial outing of Hiroshi Matsuno, which is world cinema’s loss because he proved himself quite adept at the camera. Several shots within the black-and-white picture impress with innovation even by the standards of today, especially those starkly framed by the sunglasses of the lead pirate, one side of whose face looks to have burnt into strips of jerky.

Although occasionally too dark (in lighting, not subject matter), the mood created by Matsuno makes up for budgetary shortcomings most evident in the use of rubber bats and toy boats. Be forewarned of an uncharacteristically jazzy score that blares! blares! blares! as shocks appear onscreen; Matsuno’s odd revenge tale of the supernatural — or is it? — comes prepackaged with plenty, so get used to hearing it. —Rod Lott

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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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