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When THE REDEEMER: SON OF Satan was released back in 1978, the ad campaign made it look like another THE OMEN. I remember seeing the ad campaign but I never saw the movie because I was too young back then. I've wanted to see the movie ever since. I finally got hold of a very cheap video, renamed as CLASS REUNION MASSACRE, and watched it for the first time. Boy, what a letdown. The original OMEN angle was extremely deceptive. The film is more like a standard Agatha Christie kind of movie (and no, it's not even close to being a giallo), sorta like a crude version of TEN LITTLE INDIANS, were people are locked up in some big mansion, in this case it's a rundown High School (it doesn't look like a school) and the stupid people are killed one by one by a maniac. The whole thing is soooo lame. I expected Jessica Fletcher to pop in at any moment and try to solve the killings.
If you look at the cast list at the IMDb page for this movie, the killer, or the REDEEMER, is played by T.G. Finkbinder, a doughy guy who overacts shamelessly in a theatrical manner and looks like he ate too many twinkies. Now how scary is that for a murderer? There's NO supernatural element in this film, or no one is killed with supernatural means. The boring killer uses a flamethrower, death by drowning or a standard shotgun to off his victims. Again, where's the originality? I suspect the producers of this film had original intended the film to be a standard TEN LITTLE INDIANS kind of movie but decided to make a few superficial changes to the film in order to sell it as an OMEN kind of film, which were popular back in those days and were making a lot of money at the box office. The core of the movie is the Agatha Christie part. The superficial additions I suspect were added at the last minute to bookend the movie: they happen at the beginning and at the very end, with a little boy (sorta like Damien from THE OMEN) walking out of a lake(!) and heading for the school, and ends with the kid going back into the lake. If you cut those two pointless scenes, it wouldn't make any difference to the bulk of the movie. In fact, the scenes with the kids don't have anything to do with the group of six adults locked up in the mansion. The whole thing is obvious and remarkably tacky and transparent. Imagine, back in the 1970s, the producers tried to sell this turkey as an OMEN kind of film. When the film was released on video in the 1980s, the producers retitled the film in order to sell it as a slasher, which were all the rage thanks to the success of HALLOWEEN and Friday THE 13TH. I wonder what title they'll come up with when they release the film on DVD today. SCREAM AND MORE SCREAMING ?!?!
Having said that, is the core of the movie good? Nope. It's lame. Acting, dialogue, cinematography. Practically everything about the TEN LITTLE INDIANS portion of the film sucks. The only good thing in the movie is the main theme of the soundtrack. It's actually good and effective.
If you expect an OMEN or DAMIEN kind of film with THE REDEEMER, well, you'll be sorely disappointed. If you expect to see a slasher kind of film under its second title, CLASS REUNION MASSACRE, well, you'll be disappointed by it as well. And if you expect a good movie of any kind, well, you won't find it with this sad excuse of a horror film.
score 2/10
Maciste_Brother 29 May 2003
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0504101/ |
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24-2-2021 04:55:16