Weird and super-creepy!
In the history of film, there was perhaps no actress with a worse stage name than Joy Bang. Now had she been a porn star, the name would have been a boon, but in films like "Dead People" and "Play It Again, Sam", this moniker was less than helpful in forwarding Ms. Bang's career! Perhaps she should have thought of some other pseudonym...ANY other pseudonym!The film begins with Mariana Hill playing a young lady who arrives in a creepy town. She is looking for her father--a famous artist. No one seems to know where he is--and all this is accompanied by VERY creepy music and acting. While for a long time NOTHING really spooky occurs, the film makers manage to still make a film that makes you on edge.
The lady soon meets up with a SUPER-bizarre group of weirdos--a rather bohemian man (Michael Greer) and his two ditsy and even weirder female companions (one of which is Ms. Bang--playing the more annoying of the two playmates). Inexplicably, she invites the trio to stay the night at her home--though they just exude strangeness and I can't see any sane person asking them to spend the night! Again, nothing bad has occurred--but there is an undercurrent of foreboding. I was quite surprised when I soon saw that these four were among the most NORMAL folks in this entire hellish town. Why and what was happening in this town is just something you need to see for yourself.
The film is just inundated with one sick and twisted vignette after another. The albino man is particularly strange, though I also have no desire to EVER go to a Ralph's grocery store after seeing this film'...and the movie theater will never be the same after seeing "Dead People"! You just have to see what I mean in this incredibly odd and very, very atmospheric tale. Like another horror film of the same period, "Suspiria", the film is permeated with a sense of dread though what exactly this is all about is quite vague until near the end. And, like this other film (as well as "Carnival of Souls" and "Night of the Living Dead"), they do a lot in setting a mood with an incredibly small budget.
The bottom line is that this film is immensely scary, stylish and unsettling. Despite its very humble pedigree, the film is very, very effective and is a wonderful example of inexpensive cult horror.
score 8/10
MartinHafer 31 August 2010
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2304042/35658
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