Blood Massacre – 1987, US, 73m. Director: Don Dohler.
Fright Night Part 2 – 1988, US, 104m. Director: Tommy Lee Wallace.
Schramm – 1993, Germany, 65m. Director: Jörg Buttgereit.
BLOOD MASSACRE (1987) A disgruntled Vietnam vet (George Stover) is tossed out of a seedy bar for acting like a jackass and in return stabs the owner to death. Stover and his loser friends later rob a video store, after which they escape the cops by hiding out in a remote farmhouse and holding the family hostage. The tables are turned when the family—psychopathic cannibals who use the nearby barn as a human abattoir—serve some much deserved justice by adding the criminals to the dinner menu. Director Don Dohler’s films typically fall within the so-bad-it’s-amusing category—case in point, Nightbeast (1982). But Blood Massacre is just plain bad, exacerbated by awful lighting, wooden acting, and cheap gore effects. The out-of-nowhere twist ending was apparently added by worried investors—and it’s the best part of the movie! D
FRIGHT NIGHT PART 2 (1988) The vampire sister of Jerry Dandridge swoops into town to get revenge against Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) and Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowell) for destroying her vamp brother in the first Fright Night. The sister, Regine (Julie Corman), comes armed with assorted monsters, including a wall-crawling shapeshifter (Jonathan Gries), and a Renfield-like henchmen (Brian Thompson) who eats bugs while mumbling to himself. In what is essentially a repeat of the first film, Charlie seeks help from Peter after watching his friend become the main course for Regine. The twist this time around is Charlie himself is slowly transformed into a vampire by Regine, putting his Amy-like girlfriend (Traci Lin) in danger. But the most ridiculous moment is when Regine takes over Peter’s “Fright Night” television show by turning into a vampire on air and calling it performance art. Fright Night 2 is loaded with splatter and special effects, and vampires outnumber humans two to one, yet the movie is strangely without energy. Tommy Lee Wallace would go on to direct the TV miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s It to much better fanfare. C
SCHRAMM (1993) Serial killer Schramm’s (Florian Koerner von Gustorf) life flashes before his eyes as he slowly dies after a fall from a scaffold he was using to paint over the aftermath of his latest kill. Through memories and fever dreams the viewer gets a peek at Schramm’s miserable existence, from being an ordinary taxi driver to lusting after his uninterested hooker neighbor (Monika M.), and ultimately Schramm’s uncontrollable desire to murder his fellow man—and to maim himself in a particularly shocking scene where the guy hammers nails into his foreskin. There’s a certain level of thought and characterization that went into the script, but at its core one can’t help but view Schramm as a glorified splatter art film. It’s often difficult to differentiate between what is real and what is a figment of Schramm’s shattered mind, but that was most likely the point, and it works to a degree. Recommended only for those who found director Jörg Buttgereit’s equally gloomy Nekromantik (1988) to be their cup of gore. C+