With Mick Garris in charge, the anthology film Nightmare Cinema is more or less Masters of Horror: The Movie, so at least you know what you’re in for. As helmed by Garris, the wraparound segments take place in Pasadena’s abandoned Rialto theater, where the projectionist is played by the Expendable Mickey Rourke, yet looks like Val Kilmer. Into this historic single-screen moviehouse wander five people — separately, but all curiously attracted to seeing their names on the marquee outside. Naturally, their individual stories are shown to them — and also to us, each from a director with horror bona fides.

The filmmaker with the least name recognition, Juan of the Dead’s Alejandro Brugués, comes first, getting things off to a roaring start with “The Thing in the Woods.” Beginning as a send-up of slashers, this well-choreographed piece of splat-stick aims for yuks and yucks before turning the tale on its (split-open) head, subverting everything you’ve just seen. It’s also the strongest of the quintet by far, so things are all downhill from here.

Having played in the anthology sandbox before, both successfully (Twilight Zone: The Movie) and less so (Trapped Ashes), Gremlins’ Joe Dante effortlessly offers “Mirari.” In this pleasingly lightweight bit of medical malpractice, a pretty young woman (Zarah Mahler, Beyond Skyline) agrees to let a cosmetic surgeon (a game Richard Chamberlain, Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold) do a little nip-and-tuck to her facial scar before her wedding. The result is from-the-start predictable, yet fun to see played out.

In the Catholic school-set “Mashit,” Ryûhei Kitamura (The Midnight Meat Train) turns in quite possibly the bloodiest thing you’ll see all year. Its subliminal flashes are a nice, eerie touch; its elongated end battle featuring a sword-slinging priest (Maurice Benard, Mi Vida Loca) is not. 30 Days of Night’s David Slade follows with “This Way to Egress,” a black-and-white tale that finds the ever-reliable Elizabeth Reaser (Ouija: Origin of Evil) traversing an office building structured like an actual nightmare. Containing a heavy dose of David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, the segment may lack cogency, but because that is its point, that also is its greatest strength.

Finally, in directing the last story, Garris generously gifts himself the slot of showstopper. And boy, does he ever stop the show — right in its tracks, unfortunately. “Dead” is an unqualified dud, concerning a piano prodigy (feature-debuting Faly Rakotohavan) nearly killed along with his parents in a carjacking. Well, technically, he is killed, but emergency-room doctors are able to bring him back to life, albeit one in which he can interact with the deceased. It culminates in a twist worthy of a pretzel — the stick kind — and a floating-head speech from his mom (a wasted Annabeth Gish, Before I Wake) so poorly executed, it’s laughable.

Don’t waste your time with Garris’ contribution, which, at half an hour, wastes a lion’s share of the running time. Had Nightmare Cinema ended at four stories instead of five, it would be a dream. —Rod Lott

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Hot on the hells of Clive Barker’s nightmarish ode to demonic cuckery, Hellraiser, from out of the shadows and into the black light came the satanic sequel, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, a vast labyrinth of infernal imagery and chilling characters that bested the original and, sadly, ensured that the still-ongoing series could never reach these serpentine highs again.

Still dealing with the pure trauma of seeing her father pulled apart by hooks and chains — it’ll screw you up every time — young Kirsty (Ashley Laurence, Warlock III: The End of Innocence) is being kept in an unsettling mental hospital run by the perverse Dr. Channard (Kenneth Cranham, The Legend of Hercules), a man intent on stupidly opening a gateway to hell. The guy is also a serious collector of Lament Configurations and even has a mute girl who conveniently likes to solve puzzles, mostly as a way to deal with her mother’s murder.

Channard, using the infamous bloody mattress from the first film as a protein-rich conduit, resurrects Julia (Clare Higgins, Ready Player One), Kirsty’s spiteful stepmom, now apparently risen to unholy power as the Queen of Hell or a position of equal malevolence. Meanwhile, Kirsty’s uncle (and Julia’s former lover), Frank (Sean Chapman, Psychosis), is being tortured on the daily by ghostly nudes that he can never touch. I know the feeling, Frank!

Kirsty, on the other hand, has her own devilish date with the dark side: travelling through the mazes of the underworld to rescue her father (Andrew Robinson, Into the Badlands), seemingly sent to hell by mistake. But when Pinhead (Doug Bradley, Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines) and his cadre of cenobites show up to torture her nubile flesh, she makes yet another deal with the saints of sensual suffering in a bid to stop Julia and the updated Cenobite Channard, who is now floating about with a syphilitic penis attached to his cranium.

With a sadistic streak that momentarily alarms as much as it eternally arouses, Amityville 1992 director Tony Randel — not that one, unfortunately — entrenches us even further into Barker’s world of godless sin and sanctity, creating a far more bitter version of hell than has ever been seen on film, presided over by an immense monolith called Leviathan, which occasionally shoots glowing spheres of ’80s special effects at interlopers.

To be fair, I thought this netherworld would have better security that that, but I guess that probably isn’t erotic enough for Pinhead and his pals. —Louis Fowler

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From B.J. Creators (!) comes Satan’s Mistress, a tawdry tale “based on the unusual experiences of a Northern California woman. As passion and love, once the cornerstones of her marriage, eroded, this woman became desperately lonely. There is a growing belief that in the world of psychic phenomena, the loneliness of a human being may be our direct link to…..the supernatural.”

Bond girl Britt Ekland (The Man with the Golden Gun) may be top-billed, but top-heavy Bond girl Lana Wood (Diamonds Are Forever) is the true chewy center of this bland possession confection. As Lisa, Wood is a housewife with a loving teen daughter (Sherry Scott, Swim Team) and a cruel husband (Don Galloway, Two Moon Junction) who prefers to insult her (“Pushy bitch!”) than inseminate her. That leaves Lisa high and dry and horny as hell.

Enter stage left: an evil spirit to take care of all that. First appearing as a crudely animated purple blob that looks like it escaped from the druggiest of John and Faith Hubley shorts, it pulls the bedsheets off Lisa’s nude body and goes to town. Strange things soon occur throughout the household, like tchotchkes tumbling to the floor and the family cat turning aggressive, but mostly, the story is about the sex. Once the spirit manifests in human, mustachioed form (Kabir Bedi, Octopussy), even more closed-door fornicating is had, with Lisa brought to orgasm every. Damn. Time.

Satan’s Mistress (alternately known under the name Demon Rage) may have beaten the über-similar The Entity to American theater screens in a sprint, but has lost the marathon of public consciousness. If you felt embarrassed for Barbara Hershey’s naked writhings as she was ghost-raped in that film, prepare to have that multiplied, because Wood was clearly hired here for two reasons: to be exploited. From her opening nightmare running slo-mo in a silky nightgown to a climax that sees a demon tearing said gown off her body, and with every coupling in between, director James Polakof (The Vals) takes care to present his star as boobzapoppin’ as possible, because let’s be honest: She’s quite lovely, and that’s all the movie has going for it. She appears to be okay with the gratuitousness of the proceedings, perhaps because the opportunity was one her superstar sister, Natalie, never would take. Either way, if “degradation” weren’t already spelled with double Ds, Wood’s pulchritudinous presence would merit an edit to the ol’ Funk & Wagnalls. —Rod Lott

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