PLOT:

As part of a fraternity Hazing, five collage students must collect a bunch of items then spend the night at a haunted house. One item on the list is an old book from Professor Kapps (Brad Dourif). Once in his house they get the book but find corpses in his basement, they accidentally kill Kapps when he attacks them. The students head back to the house with the book. Unfortunately the book allows Kapps spirit to return and possess a student then kill the rest of them off.

It’s a shame, it really is a shame that a movie like this is probably going to get ignored on the video shelves, most people will probably just pass it off as another dull, uninspired direct to video mess like Dead Above Ground or Bloody Murder. Hell, I felt like that but a few others that had seen it managed to convince me to order it and I’m glad they did. The movie was originally written as a sequel to the 80s slasher movie Hell Night but changed quickly. I could see the haunted house being Garth Manner.

The plot isn’t anything overly original as you can plainly see, it’s a very 80’s movie that’s a little bit of a mixture between The Evil Dead and Night Of The Demons. There is quite a few Evil Dead references in the movie, the Book Of The Dead DVD of The Evil Dead turns up in one scene along with Bruce Campbell’s book. It shows that this was made by someone who clearly loves horror movies and as bonus, knows how to make one.

The direction here is spot on, Rolfe Kanefsky (who directed the fun There’s Nothing Out There) really sugar coats the movie with style, no scene looks dull. The opening looks great and he really milks the creepy atmosphere of the haunted house.  The script is also very well written, the dialog flows easily and is very believable. It’s also quite funny there where lots of times where I laughs out loud.

The characters in this where very surprising. They all start off very flat, The Bitch, The Bimbo, The Geek etc but as the movie goes on they become very three dimensional and I actually cared about them and was rooting for them during the movie. They take some turns during the movie and almost become different people. The acting is spot on Tiffany Shepis is excellent as the bitchy Marsha, Parry Shen does well as the male  lead, Tim and Dourif is great as usual.

Goodies wise we get quite a bit of gore, a great looking decapitation, some axe chopping, a bitten off tongue, blood soaks the screen. As Usual the beautiful Tiffany Shepis shows off her breasts. We get lots of suspense and the fact that you care about the characters ups the suspense quite a bit.

I have a few minor nitpicks about the movie. One of the death scenes just wasn’ t interesting, scary, suspenseful or violent, just felt like a waste of time. The movie is to short, I wished it went on at least fifteen minutes longer. Also I could of done with another character or two as the body count was a little low. Also the ending was a little abrupt.

But overall the above doesn’t really ruin what’s a fun, suspenseful movie. I hope people decide to give this little gem a chance, it’s better then you may think. My advice is to sit back, turn the sound way up and have a blast!

Cover Art Review:

The Us DVD cover features a blond chick holding a chainsaw, it's decent enough but could be better. The tagling is a good one but I prefer the one on the back of the box "Good Friends Are Hard To Keep.... ALIVE"